SCRAPBOOK
SCRAPBOOK THE REVOLT OF THE MODERATES The reason why Bill Clinton was impeached turns out to be not very mysterious: So-called "moderate Republicans" looked at the evidence and decided the...
...And—let's be honest—this is a view shared by many conservatives and even on occasion by The Scrapbook, which has called moderate Republicans "squishy...
...With such mysterious invisible powers, DeLay is odds-on favorite to become the Democrats' new bogeyman...
...Principles are fine things...
...Time to find some fresh enemies, guys...
...Then Salon ? Now its Hustler...
...Indeed, just a day before impeachment, The Scrapbook received an anonymous fax containing five pages of talking points with which to attack House Republicans...
...The headline...
...PENTAGON MULTICULTURALISM Bumper sticker sighted last week in the Pentagon parking lot: "Only two bombing days left till Ramadan...
...Originally, the Times editorialists ardently promoted censure of the president, but only if he admitted his lies...
...A friend of ours was particularly struck by one passage...
...Meanwhile, Edsall's colleagues tried without success to prove that House whip Tom "The Hammer" DeLay had held a gun to the heads of the moderates...
...Let it be written in primers, spelling books, almanacs...
...Missed that call...
...As a poignant account in the New York Times had it: "Mr...
...Then the Times worried that people would notice they'd backed off, and started sounding tough again...
...They believed that "moderate Republican" was code for "almost a Democrat" or "spinelessly willing to follow whatever politically expedient directions are issued by the New York Times editorial page...
...Let it be taught in the schools, seminaries, colleges...
...They made the difference...
...At a time when too much rhetoric reduces every issue to "the children," our friend pointed out that Hyde managed to strike a related note, only without the cliches: "Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap...
...Gee—how exactly was DeLay get- ting his way, then...
...But there's something beyond that...
...RETIREMENT BECOMES HIM One of the mysteries of the past year is why no member of the White House staff felt compelled to resign over Bill Clinton's dishonesty...
...SCRAPBOOK THE REVOLT OF THE MODERATES The reason why Bill Clinton was impeached turns out to be not very mysterious: So-called "moderate Republicans" looked at the evidence and decided the president had perjured himself...
...The mistaken analysis of the moderate Republicans sent the media and hysterical House Democrats off on a wild goose chase to prove that evil right-wingers had somehow intimidated, hoodwinked, or body-snatched the moderates.The Washington Post's usually level-headed analyst Tom Edsall, for instance, wrote an embarrassingly obtuse news analysis last week on how the secret movers and shakers of the drive for impeachment were American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., Georgia congressman Bob Barr, and the eminent jurist Robert Bork, all of whom share the distinction of having called for the president's impeachment before the Monica Lewinsky episode...
...In fact, he shows no evidence of whipping this one at all...
...The day before the impeachment vote, former spokesman Mike McCurry was asked by a BBC journalist if Bill Clinton was fit to be president...
...This is not the language of a person who worked extra hard to grapple with the moral dilemmas of his job...
...Separately, Flynt says he has dirt on 11 members of Congress, 10 of them Republicans and one a Democrat...
...Who can blame whatever Democratic oppo outfit prepared this fax for not wanting to put its name to it, given that Newt has hardly been seen in public since he announced his resignation...
...In the immortal explanation of Peter T. King, a New York Republican and one of the handful of moderates who voted against impeachment: "Everybody knows [DeLay's] reputation of being the Hammer, and it may help him so much he doesn't have to do anything...
...DeLay is not working the phones this week...
...He is not calling in chits, mobilizing his 64 deputy and assistant whips or orchestrating indirect communication through his staff...
...At the first sign of a storm, you will want to be able to fold them up and stuff them in the pocket of your overcoat and forget you have them...
...WE FLINCH With the impeachment of Bill Clinton, our long national nightmare of the self-contradicting New York Times editorial board is mercifully brought to a conclusion...
...The Gingrich Precedent...
...Then—as we noted here recently borrowing from the superb expose of Daniel Seligman in the New York Post—they backed off...
...Oops...
...Sort of like those collapsible umbrellas, except in reverse...
...Then you can just flap with the breeze, or something...
...Remember when the Washington Post was the official organ of the Democratic party...
...HENRY HYDE'S MOMENT What a magnificent speech the chairman of the w House Judiciary committee delivered last Friday to begin the impeachment debate...
...Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in the courts of justice...
...The nature of this particular affair and then the way in which he did conceal it really does raise some very profound troubling matters...
...Clinton does not confess...
...Edsall hardly needed to spell out his subtext: Look, all you moderate Republicans, at the loony right-wing company you're keeping and come to your senses...
...It suggests the White House staff gets through the day in a fog of lazy agnosticism...
...He says there may have been conversations between his crack team and Clinton officials, but he won't comment on whether he has hired the Clintonites' favorite gumshoe, Terry Lenzner...
...But now that the decisive moment is at hand, we urge the moderate Republicans who hold the balance of power to vote against impeachment even if Mr...
...DECLINE AND FALL There's news aplenty from the vast left-wing conspiracy...
...Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt described the investigators he has hired to look into congressional sex lives as "friends of people inside the White House...
...Maybe the answer is they just stopped thinking about it very hard...
...McCurry said, "I have enormous doubts because of the recklessness of his behavior...
...Let's see if we can summarize: We flinch...
...McCurry would understand me getting into that situation, but you know you can see how pressures occur...
...The immorality is troublesome to me, but you know, you can sort of understand how an adult male gets to that kind of situation...
...I don't think Mrs...
...And, God knows, they're desperate to find a new GOP voodoo doll now that Newt Gingrich has retired...
...But most of the media couldn't bring themselves to accept this simple explanation...
...But as a loyal Democrat, Flynt says he probably won't publish the dirt he has on the Democratic member...
...We didn't have the heart to tell our friend that in this passage, Hyde was quoting, as he said, his fellow Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln...
...Here, last week, is how the final Times editorial on the subject tried to explain the shifting sands of high principle at the nation's newspaper of record: "In advocating censure, we have consistently urged the House not to offer it in the absence of an admission of lying by the President...
...And time for some fresh thinking about "moderate Republicans...
...Except that, his nickname notwithstanding, DeLay hadn't...
Vol. 4 • December 1998 • No. 15
