Laura Ingraham
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Forget Cirque de Soliel. Move over Siegfried & Roy. Democratic National
Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe hit Vegas on Saturday to rally the
Democratic faithful gathered for their annual convention and put on quite
a show, delivering a scorcher of a speech against the GOP and the White
House.
In a year where control of the Senate, House, and the majority of governorships can go either way, the McAuliffe tirade is to be expected. But given his alliances and past business dealings, the bulk of his remarks were phonier than Wayne Newton's hair color.
McAuliffe, the money-man who flacked for a President who took lying to new heights of shamelessness, flouted campaign finance laws in the '96 election, and then topped it all off by playing Pardon-o-rama, lectured on the meaning of trust.
"George Bush squandered our trust" and how "he wasted the opportunity."
It gets better.
The guy who turned a $100K investment in Global Crossing into and $18 million pay-off as average investors were left with nothing, railed against the "giants of capitalism [who] collapsed under the weight of their own dishonesty." He wowed the crowd with bumper-sticker one-liners such as: "These scandals represent a stunning betrayal." Vegas hadn't seen such bravado since Evil Knievel's big jump in front of Caesar's Palace. But the hypocrisy meter shot to red when McAuliffe pointed out that some of the participants in the President's Economic Forum this week are -- gasp! -- political contributors.
[Flash back to August 24, 1997, when McAuliffe told The Observer: "Did I ever ring anyone and say that for $50K you can have lunch with the President? Or, for whatever, you can fly on Air Force One? Yes, I did! Thousands of times! And so what?"]
As November approaches, Republicans must take off the gloves and remind the American public that the same people who recently jumped on the integrity bandwagon after Enron and WorldCom collapsed were deriding efforts to restore integrity to the Presidency during much of the 1990s. It's okay for the President to be Mr. Nice Guy in domestic politics, but the Republican leadership can't afford to stay above the fray.
It should
use the same strategy against the Dems that will be required in any strike
against Iraq: Hit first, hit hard. Repeat.
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JWR contributor Laura Ingraham is the host of a radio show syndicated nationally by
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