Quote:
Good Riddance To The Gingrichites
CBS' Meyer: GOP 'Chess Club' Ruled The House For 12 Years And Won't Be Missed
This is a story I should have written 12 years ago when the "Contract with America" Republicans captured the House in 1994. I apologize.
Really, it's just a simple thesis: The men who ran the Republican Party in the House of Representatives for the past 12 years were a group of weirdos. Together, they comprised one of the oddest legislative power cliques in our history. And for 12 years, the media didn't call a duck a duck, because that's not something we're supposed to do.
I'm not talking about the policies of the Contract for America crowd, but the character. I'm confident that 99 percent of the population ?- if they could see these politicians up close, if they watched their speeches and looked at their biographies ?- would agree, no matter what their politics or predilections.
I'm confident that if historians ever spend the time on it, they'll confirm my thesis. Same with forensic psychiatrists. I have discussed this with scores of politicians, staffers, consultants and reporters since 1994 and have found few dissenters.
Politicians in this country get a bad rap. For the most part, they are like any high-achieving group in America, with roughly the same distribution of pathologies and virtues. But the leaders of the GOP House didn't fit the personality profile of American politicians, and they didn't deviate in a good way. It was the Chess Club on steroids.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/15/opinion/meyer/main2182755.shtml
See George, politicians are always promising things but when you promise to be saints, to restore honor to government, to uphold family values, to be honest and then go to such inordinate extremes the other way, well, it's just kind of hypocritical.
It's even more hypocritical when one postures that he is in favor of all these "moral vlaues" but that self-same person knee-jerkingly defends the scroundrels who have broken virtually every promise, and more, that they made.
There's nothing wrong with defending one's principles but this continued defence of these morons is unconscionable.
I disagree with the reporter. His job is and was to point up the obvious. In that he, and the media at large, failed miserably in their duty.
Has anyone ever see "Hardtalk" on the BBC. The gentleman who moderates the show doesn't let the politicians/bureaucrats slmie their way out of the very question he asks. He presses them, he demands honesty, he keeps to the issues at hand.
Compare that with the US media, guys like Tim Russert, even George S, who regularly lob softball questions and then let the politicians spin them any old way they want. Most are worse; they actively connive to mislead, they've provided and still provide a platform where the lies of the day can, because they appear on TV, be given a sheen of honesty, when they are anything but.