Wednesday, November
16
Mickey
Kaus explains the Bob Woodward angle in the Plame affair.
HH: Joined now by Mickey Kaus,
he of Slate and Kausfiles.com,
one of the country's preeminent authorities on the mess known
at Plamegate. Mickey, what was your reaction when you heard Bob
Woodward's admission today?
MK: My reaction was this has so
many ramifications, I can't possibly track them all down.
HH: Let's start, though, with
the fact that he kept this from his editor. What do you, as a
longtime Washington journalist, think about that?
MK: That doesn't bother me at
all. It's the same charge that was made against Judith Miller,
and I thought it was bogus with respect to her. I don't tell my
editor everything. And if you want to keep it secret, you make
a practice of not telling people, even people you trust. Why worry
that they'll somehow accidentally leak it?
HH: Even when people are going
to the grand jury, and being accused of committing crimes, and
this investigation is far-ranging, and you know for a fact that
a month before Bob's column came out, you already knew? Doesn't
that endanger people of wrongful prosecution, Mickey Kaus?
MK: I don't think it was endangered.
I mean, it would have been a crime for Scooter Libby or anybody
to disclose Plame's status, even if Woodward already knew. Woodward
hadn't published it. He was a dead end.
HH: Okay.
MK: So Fitzgerald's investigating
crimes. So presumably we find out the truth, and indict people.
And if somebody's wrongfully indicted, then you can step in.
HH: Well, that's what somebody
did at this point. They consider this leak to be so significant.
Who do you think talked to Woodward?
MK: Powell. That's who I think,
if I had to bet.
HH: Oh, that's interesting.
MK: I mean, he's buddies with
Powell. He's apparently hinted that it was an ex-official.
HH: Yes, he did.
MK: And Powell is the logical
ex-official. Other speculation focuses on Cheney, just because
he's the bogeyman of the hour. And also Bush himself. The only
evidence of Bush himself would be that there was...remember there
was that mysterious meeting between Fitzgerald and Bush's lawyer
right before the indictment. You know, why was that going on?
One explanation might be that they were talking about this.
HH: Now tell me a little bit more
about the significance for the Rove, get Rove movement. This blows
that up, doesn't it?
MK: The get Rove movement was
sort of running out of steam anyway. The charges against Rove
are focused entirely, as far as I can see, on perjury. Keep in
mind the basic thing is disclosing this woman's identity does
not appear to have been a crime, because there was a source for
the Novak article that eventually made public her name. Fitzgerald
knows who that source was. We don't know who the source was, but
we know it wasn't Rove or Libby. And Fitzgerald has not indicted
that person, so obviously, he feels that just merely leaking the
name to a reporter was not a crime. So they're focusing on perjury,
and did the people try to cover up this non-crime.
HH: Now Mickey Kaus, step back
for a second. We are now way into the deep grass, and people are
listening on the radio, and they're saying what is this all about.
MK: There's a lot more grass to
go.
HH: I know, but what is it all
about? It's not Watergate.
MK: It's all about that in the
course of discrediting, quite understandably discrediting an administration
critic, it came out that the critic's wife worked for the CIA,
and it turns out that she was a semi-undercover agent. So all
the CIA people are rightly annoyed that this leak occurred. The
left has accused the Bush administration of maliciously leaking
her name to punish the critic. And there is a law against leaking
the names of covert CIA agents. And so, a special prosecutor was
called in to see if anybody in the administration violated the
law by leaking her name.
HH: And that's all blown to sky
high at this point.
MK: Not blown sky high, but it's
been pretty much discredited. Certainly the idea that they maliciously
outed her, in order to punish Wilson, doesn't seem to be true.
And it does seem to be true that they were treating the information
very gingerly, and yet Libby decided to go ahead and leak it to
Judith Miller. So, he had some consciousness that it wasn't just
like harmless information.
HH: But it was out there in the
ether. I mean, it was out there for thirty days, and if Woodward,
who else? Now let me ask you, if Powell is a possible, does that
tell us something about why Larry Wilkinson, his former chief
of staff, has been out blasting at the cabal in the White House?
MK: Explain that to me. I mean,
a preemptive offensive?
HH: Yes, yes. Going out there
and just throwing more dust in the air, and talking about the
cabal in the White House, and trying to get a thousand knives
unsheathed in ten different directions.
MK: There's so many other explanations
for that. This was time for the realists to come out of the woodwork
and trash the Iraq war. That's why we had Brent Scowcroft come
out in the New Yorker and trash the war. And you know, if you're
somewhat cowardly, you would wait until the war was unpopular
before you trashed it definitively. So now Scowcroft, to his credit,
did write an op-ed before the war started. So he's much less pusillanimous
than...
HH: Yes, he's been against it...he's
been a realist since 1991. Now Woodward is quoted today by Howard
Kurtz. Have you read the Howard Kurtz piece yet?
MK: I haven't, no.
HH: Let me tell you what he told
Howard. "I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets.
I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."
You know, that could be a direct quote from Richard Nixon in 1974.
It's Woodward is Nixon. And now, Rather and Woodward have both
become their prey from thirty years ago. It's just odd.
MK: Well, yeah, except I would
do the same thing. And I would venture to say that you would,
too. The problem with Nixon is that if you listen to the tapes,
he was running an incredibly corrupt, sleazy administration. Woodward
isn't doing that.
HH: Well, I don't know. I have
to disagree with you about that. You know, I let you off the first
time, but let's come back around. Woodward is sitting there aware
that Bob Novak is not the source for this, that someone else has
put that out there. And he lets Fitzgerald go down...
MK: By Bob Novak, you mean Libby?
HH: Novak's column comes out,
and it starts this witch hunt for who leaked to Novak...
MK: Right.
HH: But Woodward knew thirty days
before Novak printed his column from a source other than Scooter
Libby and Karl Rove, and he sat there and did nothing. I think
that's profoundly indifferent to justice.
MK: It is, if Woodward knows that...maybe
if Woodward knows that his source is also Novak's source. But
I think that Woodward doesn't know that. I don't think Woodward
knows who Novak's source is. I think somebody told him something
and he didn't do anything with it. And it doesn't affect the prosecution
one way or the other.
HH: Oh, but it has to affect the
prosecution, otherwise Fitzgerald would not have talked to him
today, or on Monday. It has to matter a great deal, or why put
him under oath and take his deposition?
MK: I don't know. I have a little
bit of evidence that it's relevant to the case, Hugh. And I'm
not shouting...I haven't put it on my blog that I have this evidence.
HH: Uh-oh. Let's call Fitzgerald...
MK: Hey, prosecutor. Subpoena
me.
HH: I think we should. I think
we should get word to him and the transcript of this conversation.
MK: I mean, that's a ten thousand
dollar lawyer bill right off the...
HH: Well, that is true, but would
you let someone go to jail, or get tried. I mean, it's ruined
Libby already.
MK: That would explain why Woodward
has been so against the prosecution.
HH: Yes.
MK: And he has had some residual
guilt that he let it go forward, so he was trying to speak out
against it.
HH: But he wasn't telling the
truth as he spoke out, because he wasn't revealing his motive.
I mean, I think it deeply tarnishes him.
MK: I think he had both motives.
I think he genuinely thinks it's a misguided prosecution, as I
assume you do also.
HH: Yes, yes. I think it's...
MK: So why can't he go on national
television and say that?
HH: Because he could have ended
it. He could have put a knife in it a long time ago. Mickey Kaus,
I will read your analysis at Kausfiles.com later tonight. Thank
you, Mickey.
End of interview.
Posted at
10:00PM PST
South
Dakota Senator John Thune hints that there might be a tinge of
regret among the Senate GOP over yesterday's Warner-Frist vote.
HH: I am now joined by Senator
John Thune of South Dakota...We've got to throw hammers at your
colleagues today, John Thune. What happened yesterday? You were
on the right side of that vote, as were a lot of the freshmen.
Richard Burr joined us yesterday, Tom Coburn joined us yesterday.
You guys got it right. What happened to your colleagues?
JT: You know, I really think,
Hugh, there is so much concern about public opinion polls, and
that sort of thing, around here now, that people just got sort
of hoodwinked into going along with that. And it essentially was
a Democrat amendment that we modified a little bit, and watered
down a little bit. But essentially, it said the same thing. And
I think it was just absolutely the wrong message to send to our
troops, and to the people who are trying to win the War On Terror,
that we've got deployed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. And
also the wrong message to send to the people that we're trying
to libertate, the Iraqis, and clearly the wrong message to send
to the terrorists, because essentially what we said was that our
resolve is weakening and softening. And if you mess around with
us long enough, we're going to go away. And that is not what we
have to convey. The only way that we will win this War On Terror
is to project strength, and that's what we should have been doing.
HH: It seems very clear to me
that the reaction has been overwhelmingly, even brutally negative
on your colleagues who voted, in effect, to undercut the war effort.
Have they been hearing from people today?
JT: They have, and I've got to
tell you, I've talked to a number of Senators today, Hugh, who
were on the other side of that vote yesterday, who if they had
a do-over, would have changed. I mean, I don't think anybody anticipated
the blowback that they would get. And I don't know why, because
you know that was the way the media was going to spin it. But
there's been a tremendous, I think, amount of resistance coming
in from people around the country, who see this as a signal and
a sign of weakness, which again, you can argue that it was a sense
of the Senate resolution, which may be meaningless and non-binding,
but nevertheless, it is symbolic, and it makes a statement about
where the United States is, puts us on the record of where the
Senate is, with respect to the War On Terror. And I think it sends
entirely the wrong message, and I think there are a lot of people
who given another chance, would vote differently.
HH: Are your colleagues listening?
Will there be another chance to vote differently?
JT: I hope so. This will get discussed
again when the Defense Bill gets into conference with the House.
My sense is that this is...I would hope this is the kind of thing,
although it's been now such a...there's been such a public view
of this, in terms of the visibility that it had when the story
came out this morning, it may be hard to reverse course. But I
think when it goes into conference, I hope that the House insists
on striking that provision, and I hope that our Senators will
realize they made a mistake, and let's knock that thing out of
there, and again, do what we should have been doing in the first
place. And that is expressing support for the hard working men
and women who are fighting freedom's cause over there in Iraq.
HH: Senator Thune, just a suggestion.
Why is it impossible to go to the floor with a resolution that
says we know what we did, and we made a mistake, and we wish to
correct it on behalf of the men and women in the American military,
our Iraqi allies, in order not to send the wrong message. Why
not own the mistake like New Coke, and just get it out of the
record?
JT: That's...there's been some
discussion about that, frankly, Hugh, and I've been...and even
suggested that that might be something we should do, just to get
people on the record. Now maybe that sends a mixed signal or a
mixed message, based on the vote yesterday, but I do think that
people really underestimated, miscalculated the effect that this
would have on the American people. And again, this is the trap
you fall into when you start paying attention to public opinion
polls and the leftist media, because there is absolutely no reason
we should have taken that step yesterday. And I think people now
realize it. So you may see something along the lines of what you're
suggesting. That at least is being discussed and kicked around
right now.
HH: Now clearly, the leader has
taken a big blow, especially if he does intend to run for president.
He is taking most of the harpoons, but walk us through where this
came from. Was this John Warner's idea? Or was it Bill Frist's
idea?
JT: I think what they were trying
to do was give Republicans in the Senate something to vote for,
that wasn't the Democrat approach, which was essentially a timetable
for withdrawal. And so, they struck a few lines, and finessed
and massaged a little bit of the language. But with the exception
of the specific timeline language on the end, it was still very
much the same resolution. And if you went back and read it, and
a lot of us did, it still did...there were intimations in there
about '06, and I think it just did do exactly what we shouldn't
be doing right now, and that is telegraphing to the terrorists
that if you mess with us long enough, that we're going to go away.
And right now, the message we need to be sending to the terrorists
is we are here to win. And that is where our troops are. That
is where our commanders are. That is where the young men and women
in uniform, when you talk to them, they believe in this. And what
this did, I think, is just undermine their morale, and give more
boldness to the enemies. So it was the wrong step to take, but
I think when you ask what was the origin of this, I think it clearly
was an attempt by our side to give Republicans something to vote
for that...so they could feel comfortable voting against a timeline,
which, frankly again, I don't know why we had to do that. We could
have cast a no vote on the timeline and moved on.
HH: You know, Senator Thune, we
don't want cover, we want victory, and I'm wondering if, in fact,
there is concerns about morale, why we didn't get it done today.
But I'll leave that to you to persuade your colleagues. I'd like
to ask you, though, Richard Burr yesterday, your colleague from
North Carolina, said that you and he and the other freshmen got
this right, because you were closer to the people on the war,
and that...I mean, you went toe to toe with Tom Daschle and the
entire noise machine of the left, day after day, for two years.
You know what people think about this war, and I don't think the
American people are where the polls suggest they are. What say
you?
JT: I agree. I think that people
in this country understand whether they agree with our going there
in the first place or not, is irrelevant at this point. At this
point, we have to win. Not finishing the job, and not prevailing,
is just not an option. And that's why the vote yesterday in the
Senate was so disconcerting, and I do think that the freshmen,
as well as some members of the Armed Services Committee, of which
I'm also a member, saw this for what it was. And I remember we
were having this discussion on the floor, and I think that you
did. You saw a very strong vote from the Republican freshmen,
suggesting that this is not the message we want to send to our
troops, and it's not the message we want to send to the terrorists.
And I wish that...frankly, there were others I talked to. There
was one member I talked to today, a Senator friend of mine who
voted the other way, and we had this discussion before the vote
yesterday, and he said I wish I had listened to you. That was
the right vote. But you know, I think there's a lot of that going
on now. Unfortunately, that vote's been put up there, and the
interpretation has been attached to it. It's exactly what the
Democrats wanted to see happen, and now we have to live with the
consequences of that. But you're right. It's not too late for
us to send a much clearer message, and I hope we'll be able to
do that.
HH: First rule of holes...stop
digging. John Thune, thank you for making time for us. Go back
and call your colleagues, and get them to undo the damage significant
that they did yesterday. Always a pleasure.
End of interview.
Posted at
5:55PM PST
Wednesday, November
16
Bush's
Inferno?
HH: (reacting to bumper music)
This is a little hell music, because I'm joined now by Dr. David
Allen White, professor extraordinaire at the United States Naval
Academy, to answer a question for me. We're talking about the
betrayal of George W. Bush by the Senate majority he put into
power today, undercutting him at the knees, weakening the war
effort, sending the wrong message to Zarqawi and our Iraqi allies.
And I was wondering, David Allen White, where does that rank in
Dante's seven circles of hell...betrayal?
DAW: Well, let's go into the pit,
Hugh.
HH: All right.
DAW: Let's go all the way to the
bottom. In fact, here we are, at the last canto of the Inferno,
Canto 34. And Dante the pilgrim, and his guide Virgil, get down
to the absolute pit of hell. And what do they find? The king of
the vast kingdom of all grief, stuck out with half his chest above
the ice. The first thing to notice, the pit of hell is not fire.
And there aren't demons with little pitchforks. We've seen them
up above. We get to the pit of hell, and it's cold. Why? Because
all charity is gone. Charity grown cold has lost warmth, all connection
between human beings. Lucifer is there. He's got three faces,
a parody of the Trinity. And in each of his three faces, he is
chewing on an ultimate sinner. That soul up there who suffers
most of all is Judas Iscariot, says Virgil, the one with head
inside and legs out kicking. The other two whose heads stick out,
the one who hangs from that black face is Brutus. See how he squirms
in silent desperation. The other one is Cassius. He still looks
sturdy. But soon it will be night. Now is the time to leave this
place, for we have seen it all. The ultimate sin is the betrayal
of benefactors and friends.
HH: Wow.
DAW: And what we see in the pit
of hell, charity grown cold, and the face of the devil himself,
who of course, was the first one to betray his great benefactor,
his closest friend, God Himself. And now in each of his three
mouths, he crunches on one of three sinners: Judas, who betrayed
Christ, and Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Caesar. The other
interesting thing, Hugh, not one of those three traitors dared
to approach and make clear to the opponent what he was about to
do. Did it suddenly, unexpectedly, without warning. Now you and
I have some disagreements about this, as you well know.
HH: About the war itself.
DAW: Yup. But the interesting
thing is, we're friends. We can discuss it.
HH: Yup.
DAW: There is a dividing line
that has been lost in this country, between public and private.
As a private citizen, you and I can debate these issues. As a
public servant, when I go into the classroom at the United States
Naval Academy, I would not attack my Commander-In-Chief. I would
not dare to take those young souls that I am forming, those young
minds, and begin to turn them against that mission. That would
be betrayal. It would be a betrayal of duty, a betrayal of the
man who saw to it that I'm in that classroom. And if the Senate
doesn't understand that, they better grow up and get a clue.
HH: Now David Allen White, it's
interesting. There have been lot of betrayers in history. But
he took...both Cassius and Brutus had been made by Caesar.
DAW: Absolutely.
HH: And they owed everything to
him.
DAW: This is the point. Where
would any of those people be without the leader not just of the
country, but the leader of their party. He made them. If they
have disagreements, they go to the White House privately, express
them, try to work them out. What went on, Hugh, I agree with you,
is appalling, even though we disagree on the basic issue.
HH: Now we are not saying, I don't
think we're saying. I want to make sure you agree with me on this,
that it is wrong to disagree publicly with the president after
you've gone through different steps. If you have conscience, and
you have to vote against something, you can. But you don't do
it when he's out of the country, and you don't do it in a sudden
attack.
DAW: You don't do it when he's
out of the country, and you don't do it without consulting with
him.
HH: Yup.
DAW: You go...you spend time talking.
You explain your position. You don't cut him off at the knees.
That's what went on today.
HH: So it's Cassius, Brutus, and
Judas Iscariot.
DAW: You got it. The lowest pit
of hell.
HH: And it's cold. David Allen
White, we have to do a segment sometime on the other six, because
they're not pleasant places, either.
DAW: Well, but then we need to
ascend upward, Hugh. There's Purgatorio and the Paradiso as well.
HH: Ahh, David Allen White, always
a pleasure, my friend. Thank you. That's why you listen to this
show, America, because you need to know what's going on, and the
classical background for understanding it from Dante.
End of interview.
Posted at
1:00AM PST
Tuesday, November 15
Former
assistant secretary of defense Frank Gaffney on the Senate vote
today to hose the president.
HH: Joined now by Frank Gaffney,
president of the Center for Security Policy, www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org.
We drag Frank out of wherever he was today, because today, November
15th, 2005, is a turning point in the Global War On Terror. Hopefully,
it's one from which we can walk backwards, but I think it's a
disastrous vote in the Senate today, to reprimand the Bush administration
on its conduct of the war, though they're spinning it differently.
Frank, do you read this, the vote today, 79-19, led by John Warner,
as other than a rebuke of the administration?
FG: I read it in a different way.
I read it as creeping defeatism.
HH: That's what I'm saying.
FG: It may be the same thing,
I don't know. But it's not just a rebuke of the administration.
It's a signal to our enemies that their strategy is working. And
while I think it is fair to say that it is not as direct an affirmation
as it would have been had the Democratic version passed, it's
still...as they say, good enough for government work. It will
communicate unmistakably, to the people trying to kill our forces
in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, that if they just redouble
their effort, we'll be even closer to the Democratic position
than we are today. And either way, it's now just a matter of time
before the sort of Vietnam cut and run syndrome, the Beirut cut
and run syndrom, the Somalia cut and run syndrome, that has been
very much a point of conviction for the Islamo-Fascists we confront,
will be again affirmed. And nothing could be more counter-productive
in this war for the free world.
HH: Now Frank Gaffney, where did
this come from? I woke up this morning, went online, saw that
Bill Frist was announcing this on the Today show. I have never
gotten wind of it before, and there was no time to marshall common
sense or an appeal to reason. It seems like they caved, because
John Warner got a burr up his saddle. And in the middle of a war,
it's astonishing.
FG: Well, I can tell you from
personal experience, having worked at one time with Senator Warner
in the United States Senate, that this is very much the man's
modus operandi. And I say that with affection for him, but he
took the Senate Democrats' bill, he struck some of its more objectionable
provisions, and added, I guess, a few...to gloss some of the thrust
of what was left. And once you had him and presumably some of
the other Republicans breaking ranks with the president over this
version of the Democratic legislation, I guess the Senate leadership
decided that they couldn't stop it, and they might as well join
it, and make it look less bad by so doing. I think it was a mistake,
as I have often thought such initiatives by Senator Warner have
been mistakes.
HH: Now again, Frank Gaffney,
any doubt in your mind...well, they defeated the Democratic version,
calling for a timetable, 58-40. Any doubt in your mind if they
had just done that, and engaged in the debate toe to toe, that
it would have been a day for celebrating resolve as opposed to
a day for mourning defeat?
FG: I think it would have been
a lot better all the way around if they had stopped there. You
know, unfortunately, this is so short-sided, because not only
is it going to have, I think, these sort of untoward, or worse,
strategic repercussions, but it isn't going to serve the Republicans
well tactically.
HH: Oh, it's a disaster. I mean,
that's what I do. I do politics. I think Frist's campaign for
presidency is over. I think George Allen hurt himself badly today.
I think Republicans and independents, and even Democrats who are
serious about the war, watched this today in horror and shock,
that the president, while abroad, Frank, he's not in the country,
gets dealt a Vietnam-like defeat by his own party.
FG: Well, look. I think it may
be a slight overstatement, Hugh, to say this is like the Fulbright
initiatives of the past, or the Mansfield amendments, and their
ilk. But you certainly are right that it communicates all the
wrong messages. And that's what ought to be a matter of real,
real soul searching, and I think, some holding to account by Republicans,
and as you say, independents and Democrats who are serious about
the war. And most especially, Hugh, as we've talked about many
times, the subject of our new book, War
Footing: Ten Steps American Must Take To Prevail In The War For
The Free World. This is so much bigger than Iraq, and this
communicates to the American people, and to our allies, and of
course, to our enemies, that we're sort of thinking no, it's just
all about Iraq.
HH: When we come back, Frank Gaffney's
going to stick with me, because I'm going to try and...this is
an odd position for me to be in. Frank's too soft on these guys,
and I don't want to let them off the hook. This is, I think, a
political catastrophe that needs to be stricken from the bill
immediately, repudiated. People need to change their votes, and
they need to hear from you on that subject.
---
HH: The serious people know what
happened today, and Frank, I think you may be sugar coating it,
and let me explain to you why. In part of this resolution, the
Senate today demanded, or requested, they watered it down, requested
additional reports from the Pentagon on the conduct of the war,
to which Secretary Rumsfeld went out and said Department of Defense
and Department of State...literally dozens of Iraqi-related reports
to Congress each year already are being sent. And the Pentagon
alone sends Congress I don't know, said Rumsfeld, it's something
over 900 reports total every year. I hope someone reads them,
the secretary of defense said. The Senate resolution bought into
this sort of hard left theory or mythology about Halliburton and
Cheney. It's really quite rancid what they did today in building
into their tapestry of a resolution the embroidery of the left.
I think it's disgusting.
FG: Well, I don't want to be misunderstood
here, Hugh. I think it's disgusting, too. I just wanted to be
clear with you that when Senator Warner pocketed much of the Democrat
rhetoric, I think he made a mistake. It's a mistake, as I said,
I think he's made before, and it's a classic politicians, you
know, let's find some common ground here. The only thing I was
quibbling about, and maybe it's a quibble. Maybe it's a serious
point, is this is not the same thing as cutting off the funds
to prosecute the war, which we did in Vietnam.
HH: Agreed.
FG: But, where I think we are
also agreed is, this is how this thing starts. You get somebody
doing this today, and maybe six months, maybe a year from now,
somebody says well, that's what we did then, and now, based on
this report, it's time to cut off the funds, bring the troops
home. It's the wrong message to send, especially since at the
time we thought, I think it was wrong, but we nonetheless thought
we could safely cut and run from Vietnam. I think it had long-term
strategic, and adverse repercussions. But nothing like what you
get when you're dealing with a global, totalitarian, Islamo-fascist
operation, that will simply respond to this kind of behavior,
by redoubling its effort to kill as many Americans there, and
elsewhere, and here, as they can.
HH: Frank, to me, it is a strategic
win for them. If they popped champagne, they'd be doing it tonight
in their caves or wherever they are, because they realize that
this Senate, which is run by Republicans A) may not be run by
Republicans in fifteen months, I think, given the reaction to
this kind of round-heeled resolve. But also, that it doesn't matter.
They will prevail if they just keep fighting and keep the pipeline
of Islamo-fascists as you call them, streaming into the western
part of the country to fight our Marines.
FG: Yeah. But again, Hugh, you
understand this very well. We're watching similar kinds of behavior.
We can argue about whether it was their idea or whether they're
simply capitalizing on it. But make no mistake about it. Similar
kinds of ideological violence is being wrought in France, not
just in Iraq, not just in Jordan, in France. It was narrowly averted,
it appears, in Australia. We had the new Folsom State Prison,
out in your neck of the woods, that narrowly averted a bunch of
Islamists blowing up three National Guard facilities, and some
synagogues, and the Israeli consulate in L.A. I mean, this is
not a war that is isolated to Iraq. It didn't happen because of
Iraq. It hasn't been made worse, in my estimation, by Iraq, but
it will be made worse by our failure in Iraq, if that is what
we're now about to have dealt to us, as we did in Vietnam at the
political level, not at the military.
HH: Yes. Now let's talk very practically.
If you're an Iraqi politician tonight, and you were thinking about
running on a slate on December 15th, or in fact you are running
on the slate of December 15th, what do you read into the Senate
resolution today, Frank?
FG: Well, this is the really frightening
thing. In War Footing, we talk a lot about the psychology of people
who have lived under terror. And I don't think any American can
comprehend what that's like. But one thing that you do when you
do live under terror, is you are highly attuned to changes in
the political correlation of forces. And if the Iraqi people,
and most especially their leaders, take away from this episode
that the United States is going to do to them again what it has
done repeatedly in the past, which is to sell them out, you'll
hear them all heading for the tall grass. And whether that means
the Baathist tall grass, or the Zarqawi tall grass, or the Iranian-backed
Shiite tall grass, I don't know. But it isn't going to be good
for them, and it sure as heck isn't going to be good for us.
HH: I have here an e-mail from
a Marine from 1968-70, who is just disgusted today, says he's
feeling what he felt then, when he was off fighting in Vietnam,
and saw the political will behind the war collapse. If you're
a Marine out in the western desert...there's a huge offensive
underway on the Syrian border right now.
FG: Yeah.
HH: And you see this on CNN tonight,
what are you thinking, Frank Gaffney?
FG: I think you're thinking that
you hope that common sense will prevail. You're hoping that people
like Hugh Hewitt, and a lot of other folks around the country,
are talking the truth to the American people, and encouraging
them to do just what you did a moment ago, which is to raise hell
about this with their elected officials, and demand that that
vote be recast, and that votes be changed. And I think that's
what you hope will happen, because, like that Marine who wrote
that incredibly powerful letter that the New York Times couldn't
bring itself to report fully...
HH: Yeah, that they scandalously
censored. Right.
FG: ...which talked about going
back, because it was so important, because it was his duty. He
knew he might not come back from it, but he felt for the third
tour it was important for his country, and for his loved ones
that he do it. That's what they're feeling right now. And to think
that they are being undercut at best, and at worst, they're being
put at greater risk as a result of this kind of pusillanimous
behavior, is sickening, to say the least.
HH: Frank Gaffney, as always,
a pleasure.
End of interview.
Posted at
11:45PM PST
Hillsdale
College president Larry Arnn putting today's Senate vote into
historical perspective.
HH: Joined now, as promised, by
Larry Arnn, president of this fine
institution, and Churchill historian extraordinaire. Before
we go to Churchill, and what happened in the Senate today, Dr.
Arnn, you have a wonderful place here. This is really beautiful.
I'm back in the Mid-west, and I'm happy as can be.
LA: Thank you very much.
HH: I drove south out of town
tonight, went down to the Ohio Turnpike, turned right, went over
one exit to the end of Indiana, turned right again, came up and
turned right again, did this big...this is just beautiful country.
That's why it's called the bounty lands.
LA: There you go. We're in the
hills of southern Michigan. There's not a lovelier place on the
face of the Earth, and remember, we're in the middle of a college
that doesn't take any money from the government.
HH: 1844, this institution was
founded. By whom and why?
LA: Well, Ransom Dunn, Austin
Blair and Edmund Fairfield are the main people. Daniel McBride
Graham, two of those people would be friends of Abraham Lincoln.
It was built to support the cause of civil and religious freedom,
and intelligent piety, through sound learning.
HH: Yeah, you know, Arnn, you
and I have been pals a long time, and you've got quite an institution
here. Why is Hillsdale so famous? Explain to people...they get
Imprimus, obviously, and I'm sure they can sign up for it right
now, if they want Imprimus, the free newsletter with tremendous
stuff to write down, and we'll give you the ID of that in just
a second. But why has Hillsdale cut such a figure in higher ed?
LA: Well, we were famous early,
and then about 1959, the federal government started giving money
unconstitutionally, we're going to talk about that in a minute,
to higher education, and they started regulating it. We were famous
from the first day. We've never had a day in our history where
we didn't take people of any color, and both sexes. And we've
never counted. We don't believe in that. So we found ourselves
in a scrap, because they demand that you count and admit and hire
by color. And we wouldn't do it. And so, finally, in '77, it came
to a head, because the Carter Department of Health, Education
and Welfare, Joe Califano, wrote us a letter and said you've got
this indirect student aid. The GI Bill is an example. And that's
a Constitutional example. Some of it is not Constitutional. And
so you've got to start counting that stuff. And we said no. So
we had to get rid of it all. And so now, we do all of our need-based
aid, all of our financial aid of every kind, by private resources
alone.
HH: And it's a classic education.
It's also devoted to the old approach to what matters in the teaching
of someone.
LA: Well, it turns out...I think
we probably didn't understand it fully, but it liberates you to
pay attention to what the college is for. And you know, colleges,
by the way, are not for diversity. They're for truth. Now the
pursuit of the truth is controversial. So there has to be room
for argument. But what there's not argument about is what you're
trying to do. Liberal education means education in the highest
things, the things for the sake of which other things are done.
So you do begin with a dogma that there are high things. And so,
right now, what most colleges are organized to say and to believe
is your perspective, my perspective, aany perspective, any subject
matter, whatever you want. And that's one reason, by the way,
why they can't get students to read really good books. Really
good books are hard to read. And so you have to train yourself
to read them. And you're not going to go through that effort if
you don't have a reason.
HH: Now President Larry Arnn,
I said...I've devoted the first two hours today to what is a fundamental
turning point, I think, in the War On Terror. And it can be reversed,
it's got to be reversed. And you bring to the table knowledge
of Washington, knowledge of Lincoln, and knowledge of Churchill.
Each of those men were deserted by their allies at crucial moments
in their career. Today, though they're attempting to spin it,
Republicans in the Senate voted 79-19 to demand from the Bush
administration, although they watered it down a bit, reports,
and demand a transition next year. A political defeat for the
president while abroad, that's unprecedented since he took office.
And at the same time, not unprecedented in the lives of leaders
who have to do difficult things. How did that happen to Washington,
Lincoln and Churchill?
LA: Well, you know, by the way,
I can't really quite think of...it's actually hard to think of
a time when they did that to Churchill, except in the 1930's...
HH: In the 30's, when he was cut.
LA: Churchill gets into a fight
with the government in 1929-30 over Egypt and India. He doesn't
want to give them up. Hitler comes to power in January, 1933,
and that becomes the third reason why he fights with the conservative
government. And the official policy of the Tory Party at that
time is disarmament. And Churchill started saying that's a mistake.
And so from 1933, until 1936, he more or less was alone. Beginning
in about 1935-6, they began to admit that re-armament would be
their policy, but it was very slow. Now during this time, which
is called the wilderness years in his time, and it's certainly
one of the two greatest periods in his life, and maybe the greatest,
he is alone. I mean, you can go to the Roman Catholic Cathedral
in London, which still stands...all the buildings around it are
new, because it was bombed out everywhere near it, except the
building, the string of buildings, where Churchill had his London
place. And overlooking a playground up there in this London flat,
he and about eight people would get together and write the speeches
with which he would argue, and finally argue down, the conservative
government. It's the reason why they built most of the air force
they had in place for the Battle of Britain in 1940. Well that's
true, he was very lonely. And their deal there was that they weren't
seeing things through. You know, they went to see Hitler, over
what were the steps in Hitler's conquest. He occupied the Rhineland,
having a treaty committment not to do it.
HH: Right.
LA: At that point, he was very
weak. All they would have had to have done was to oppose him,
and he thought they would. And then, he would have backed up,
and then maybe forces hostile to him would have been strengthened.
HH: Then the Wehrmacht might have
thrown him out of bounds. They might have just tossed him overboard,
because they were nervous at that point.
LA: Certainly forces that wanted
to do that. And then, you get the Anschluss, the taking of Austria
by plebiscite, and then military occupation. And then in 1938,
begins the pressure on Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakis is already
flanked on the south by the taking of Austria, but Czechoslovakia
has a very fine army, many divisions, and an excellent munitions
industry. And they begin this fight, and the fight is over the
land where the Czech fortresses are, and over the land where the
munitions factories are. And Neville Chamberlain goes to see Hitler
to make a deal with him, and they make that deal on October of
1938. And then in March of 1939, he breaks the deal, and takes
the rest of Czechoslovakia. And then curiously, by the way, and
this is maybe what you're looking for, and I think it's true,
there are these places to fight along the way where it's favorable
to fight. And then when they do fight, they give a guarantee to
Poland, which no one can reach. France nor England, and Hitler,
his arch-enemy, the Soviet Union, and by the way, he has played
off British and French opinion beautifully. Well what he does
is he makes a deal with the Soviet Union over Poland. And so they
attack Poland together. Britain comes into the war, but they've
got no means to reach the front where the war's actually going
on, and so nothing...that's in September, 1939, when that happens,
September 3rd, and there's no real fighting in France and Britain
until May the 10th, 1940, which also happens to be the day that
Winston Churchill comes to power. So I mean, what's fearsome about
this thing is I can think of a variety of policies that we might
have followed toward Iraq. We might have followed the policy we
had, which was we're going to stop them flying, we're going to
deploy the military for the better part of a decade...
HH: We're going to rely on the
U.N...
LA: Yeah, the U.N., and we're
going to do those things that we were doing. And the trouble with
that is, this is a very hostile guy, and he's rich, as we now
know, and there were signs of it back then that he's corrupted
parts of the U.N., and he's corrupted several countries and leaders
in it. And so, Bush thinks to himself, this guy has broken a treaty
with us, which by the way, he did. He attacked Kuwait, we went
to help Kuwait. He signed agreements with us so that we would
stop attacking him. He's broken those agreements. So that comes
to the second kind of policy we might have followed, which is
we could have gone in there and said we're going to kill him.
We're going to go get him. And we're going to find him, and we're
going to kill him, and we're going to give them a shot at freedom.
And if it doesn't work afer a while, we're going to get out. That
seems to me, by the way, an option we might have followed. We
followed something grander and more difficult...
HH: Hold that thought.
---
HH: President Arnn, as we went
to break, you were explaining what George Bush actually did, the
third course, and the one he adopted.
LA: He did something, and I'm
going to confess something here. I was skeptical at the time...
HH: I remember this.
LA: He said he's going to build
a democracy in Iraq. And all the training that I've got makes
me think that's going to be really hard to do. And I will confess
something else. I'm surprised at how well it's gone. I don't know
at this moment myself how successful it's going to be. But first
of all, it's touching that the Iraqi people are so interested
in their freedom. And if they were to get it, as the Japanese
for example, or the South Koreans got it before, that would be
good for us. And so, what I think is the case now, I mean, I would
have gone there with more limited objectives, were it me. But
having gone there, and having it go the way it's going, and winning
the battles that we're winning, and having a constitution in place,
and soon a fully elected government, to give them a sign that
you're going to leave...and remember, they're going to be watching
for that over there.
HH: Zarqawi is making notes. Larry
Arnn, let me ask you this. You teach a seminar on statesmanship
which I would dearly love to take, actually. And Bill Frist wants
to be a statesman. I like Senator Frist a lot. It's hard not to
like him. But...and it's hard not to like the people running the
House. But what do they not get about statesmanship, that they
have to understand at this perilous moment?
LA: Well, there are two things,
and one is, they are not...I mean, the foreign policy thing is
simple, and I'll state it in a minute. But remember this problem,
and this problem is profound, and it plagues us all, and we have
to fix this as Americans. There is no talk of the Constitution
of the United States as a limiting factor on the authority of
the government today. They do every subject matter, and they are
not, by the Constitution, empowered to do it. And so, their counterparts,
two generations ago, or three or four or five, I mean, the founders
of our country loved education. They gave it a massive subsidy
in the form of land, given through state governments. They found
a Constitutional way to do it. Since September 11th, 2001, defense
spending is up 60%. Higher education spending, which is unconstitutional
and wrong-headed, is up 250%. Since September 11th, 2001. So first
of all, they are not what they must be, which is the party of
the Constitution.
HH: And that diverts them from
their appropriate Constitutional job, which is the foreign affairs.
And they do have the right to overlook what the president does,
but they've got to do that the right way, and they have to do
it correctly.
LA: If you are in a fight with
a bad man, and you know, I just told you, I'm not sure I would
have chosen this ground exactly for the fight. But we're in a
fight with the worst people in the world. Do not show them weakness.
And by the way, every party loses elections. There are two ways
to lose them: nobly or ignobly. And I'm afraid they forget the
distinction.
HH: That's very profound, because
what you're saying is they're so desperate...I mean, they are
acting desperate. In the House, they're voting against exploring
ANWAR. They can't cut the budget in the Senate. They're cutting
the knees out from underneath Bush. They're panicking, and statesmen
don't panic. They take setbacks if they have to.
LA: There's a memo written in
1929, by Winston Churchill, who says to Stanley Baldwin, maybe
it's time to let them come in. Now by the way, he's speaking of
the conservatives, and talking about the liberal socialists, liberal
pack, maybe, or labour alone, coming in.
HH: And we have to tell our audience,
Dr. Larry Arnn, who Stanley Baldwin is. He was the head of the
conservative party, but he was a time-serving, status seeking,
power aggrandizing, cypher.
LA: Very shrewd, very political,
and you know, his strategy, by the way, that led to the second
World War, was I'm going to pick the Bolsheviks off agains the
Nazis, to which Churchill replied, too easy to be good. And so,
at some point, people have to know of you, that there are important
things for which you will lose an election. And these people have
lost any sense of that.
HH: How do you assess, in our
short time left, President Arnn, George W. Bush as a leader?
LA: Courageous, good, decent,
high-minded, fine, a spendthrift...important categories of Constitutionalism,
unknown to him. The story of Iraq is still to be written, and
if he builds a democracy in Iraq, then I'm going to say that he's
a better and more foresightful man that I was on that point, and
hug him in delight, in his victory.
HH: Of course, Lincoln was a spendthrift
as well, and somewhat indifferent to the Constitution when required
to save the Union.
LA: That would be false.
HH: What about habeus corpus,
Dr. Arnn?
LA: The Constitution says that
in an emergency, the government may suspend the writ of habeus
corpus...
HH: Is that not with the consent
of Congress...
LA: And when Congress was called
back into session, he got them to authorize what he had done.
HH: But he had...but as I would
like to just close this segment with a nodding appreciation for
the fact that Lincoln did what Lincoln had to do at the moment.
LA: So he did.
HH: So he did. And Washington
did what Washington had to do, despite written instructions from
Philadelphia to the contrary, correct?
LA: George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln are both very great Americans, and we would have no country
without the both of them.
HH: Larry Arnn, it's a pleasure
to be on your campus of this wonderful institution. Thanks for
having me. I look forward to having you back again many times.
End of interview.
Posted at
11:00PM PST
Jed
Babbin on the poor decision by the Republican Senate today.
HH: We're joined by Jed Babbin,
guest host extraordinaire, former assistant secretary of defense
in the first Bush administration, and keen commentator on matters
relating to the Global War On Terror. I've asked him to join me
today. I'm just so amazed and disgusted by what the Senate did
today, and I'm calling all my heavyweight friends. Jed Babbin,
79-19, what happened to the Republicans? Where did their round
heels come from?
JB: Well, I think they've been
building for quite a while. People have been chipping away at
those heels ever since we landed in Baghdad, in April of '03.
And these guys, Hugh, I have rarely...I've been watching politics
for almost forty years now. I have never seen such political cowardice
as the Republicans displayed today. This is the cheapest of cheap
shots, and if I were the president, I'd be just absolutely appalled.
I'd be right on the phone to say Bill Frist,...well, I'd say a
lot of things to him on the phone that I can't say to you over
the air.
HH: Well, now Jed Babbin, as former
assistant secretary of defense, you must have watched with keen
interest as the secretary of defense went out today and slapped
them back, saying what do you mean more information? I send you
900 reports a year. I hope somebody reads them. Can this be interpreted
other than a slap at the president and the administration?
JB: No, it can't be possibly anything
else. I mean, everybody knows these guys get all the reports,
all the information they need, and what they don't get, they can
just pick up the phone and get. The point of the matter is, Hugh,
these guys don't want those reports. What these Republicans are
doing, and this is the really despicable part, is they're distancing
themselves from the president. They're looking towards next year,
and they're saying if things aren't going just real perfectly
in Baghdad come '06, maybe we'll agree to the next Levin amendment.
Maybe we'll put a schedule on for the withdrawal of troops. They
want...the Democrats want to make this Vietnam. These guys, these
Republicans, are just so cowardly, they won't even say it.
HH: Well, they want it to be a
slow-motion version of Vietnam. It's not even the courage to demand
withdrawal or a timetable. Let me read you the good guys list,
Jed. These are the fellows who voted against the amendment on
the Republican side. Bunning, Chambliss, Coburn, Cornyn, DeMint,
Graham, Inhofe, Isaakson, Kyl, McCain, Sessions & Vitter.
What do they know that Senator Frist and his colleagues don't?
JB: Well, probably, those are
the guys who are not up for re-election next year, and they know
what...the fact is, that we're in a war. I mean, these guys, the
rest of these people, and I'm trying to struggle to not use an
expletive on your show. What these clowns are doing is basically
saying hey. We want to get ourselves out from under blame for
the war. We want to be able to run away from it, and we want to
be able to go to the American people next year and say oh, yeah,
I voted to make them tell us more about what they're doing. These
guys...again, it's just cheap political cowardice. That's all
this is.
HH: Jed Babbin, I'm trying to
find some way to acquit some of my friends in this body. Not Senators
Frist and McConnell, who are leadership, or Warner who sponsored
this, but some of the ones who just arrived there. Is it possible
they just thought oh, it's a go along to get along moment with
John Warner, one of the old bulls of the Senate?
JB: It may very well...could be,
but if they really had paid attention since they got there, they'd
know that John Warner is not really one of the old bulls. Now,
you know, we've talked about it on your show before, you don't
want to cross somebody like Ted Stevens. Ted Stevens plays hardball.
But anybody...any freshman can roll John Warner. So I don't know
why these guys need...
HH: Unpack for us, would you?
That's a little inside baseball that's very interesting to my
audience. Why is that true?
JB: Well, because Mr. Warner is
a very gentlemanly gentleman, but he is not a very effective leader.
He's not a very strong personality, and unless you're talking
about a military appropriation that's going to the state of Virginia,
he'll compromise pretty much anything. I mean, I like the guy...
HH: Then why didn't Bill Frist
stop this?
JB: Well, Bill Frist was starting
it. Bill Frist is another one of these guys...Bill Frist is running
for president, Hugh. And the problem we've got with pretty much
all of these clowns is that they look in the mirror, and they
see a president of the United States. That's what we have with
McCain, and his amendment to this thing on so-called torture amendment.
It's an absolute fraud. The fact of the matter is...well, actually,
the amendment is not a fraud, but the debate about it is. But
he, and all the rest of these guys are running for president,
and that's all they're worried about.
HH: It's like picking up a spare
if you're Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani. John McCain, Bill Frist,
George Allen all knocked themselves down today, because they all
voted one...McCain voted against the Warner amendment, but he
voted for his own handcuffs on the president when it comes to
interrogation. He says it's about torture, but it's not. Jed,
what about that vote?
JB: Well, that's really a big,
big problem. The debate on the McCain amendment is as dishonest
as anything I've seen in a long time, and Hugh, I've been in Washington
darn near thirty years. I've seen an awful lot of dishonest things.
HH: You got there when you were
five.
JB: Let me just set this out for
your listeners, because I think it's really important for people
to understand. Torture is against the law. Whether you're an American
soldier, whether you're working for the CIA, it doesn't matter
whether the McCain amendment passes or fails. Torture is illegal,
period. It's a felony, and nothing in the McCain amendment's going
to change that. What McCain does is he puts in place a lot of
different terms, which are undefined, and you're a much better
lawyer than I am. I'm just a recovering lawyer. You're a real
lawyer. You know, when you have an undefined term in the law,
it's a license for prosecutors and everybody else to question
what's going on. He's putting these terms in with respect to interrogation
of terrorist prisoners, that's going to make everybody in that
business at risk. And it's not going to help. It's not going to
be about torture. It's about making the law vague, when it's pretty
solid right now.
HH: Jed Babbin, can the House
leadership be bucked up to strike both of these measures from
the defense appropriations bill?
JB: I don't think so.
HH: Ugh.
JB: I think they're going to try.
I just don't think they're strong enough. The overwhelming votes
like on the McCain amendment, 90-9 in the Senate. That's going
to be real hard to knock down. The president needs to get up the
gumption to veto this thing. He's never vetoed anything. This
is a really good place to start.
HH: Jed Babbin, I began my career,
post-college, in the study of the Western White House with Richard
Nixon, writing a book called The Real War. And a lot of that time
was devoted to the dissection of what happened in Vietnam. I have
the sickest feeling today that we're in a bad movie replayed.
Your assessment?
JB: Well, Hugh, I wish I could
disagree. I really do, because the Democrats want this to be another
Vietnam. They don't care if we lose. They want America to be defeated,
because in defeat is the only way they can regain power. That's
the only path to success for them, and they're perfectly willing
to push America down it.
HH: Jed, I don't agree with that,
but I will say this. Political opportunism...they believe they're
political opportunism will not lead to defeat. But they are unaware
of its consequences. Republicans should know better. Jed Babbin,
always a pleasure. What's the website? What's the blog over at
American Spectator, Jed?
JB: Well, it's www.spectator.org,
and then just click on Amspecblog.
HH: Go. There's lots of great
stuff there breaking this afternoon.
End of interview.
Posted at
8:44PM PST
Oklahoma
Senator, Dr. Tom Coburn, on the Republicans in the Senate going
south today.
HH: I'm joined now by the third
Senator of the day, another Senator who got it right today. Tom
Coburn is a Senator from Oklahoma. He's also a doctor. Dr. Coburn,
welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show, and thanks for your vote against
the Warner amendment today. What happened to the Republican caucus?
TC: Well, you know, a little inside
baseball, they were trying to run side-by-side to defeat the Democratic
altermative. And of course, when you practice that kind of legislation,
you're going to get poor results. You can't have a committee run
a war, the war...we have to win this war. This is a real war,
and what they did is damage the American people today, because
together, we can win this war. If we divide ourselves, we'll lose
the war, and most Americans don't understand that if we lose this
war, it's not like walking home from Vietnam with our head down.
It is we lose our way of life. And they will pick off the Europeans,
one at a time, we will not have allies, we will not have the trade,
the standard of living that we have today, and we will be vulnerable
evermore.
HH: Now Senator Coburn, Doc Coburn,
Republicans know this, generally. Was there no debate in the caucus?
Didn't anyone stand up and say are you people crazy? This will
encourage Zarqawi, discourage our Marines and soldiers, absolutely
devastate Iraqis who are risking their lives running for office
with bombs going off. I mean, didn't anyone bring this up?
TC: This didn't come before the
caucus, and it was made as a defensive move against what the Democrats
were doing, and it just shows you when you legislate that way,
not on the basis of principle, not on the basis of what is right
and virtuous, but on the basis of fear that you may have something
worse, then you lose. And you lose trying to negate a worse, but
nevertheless, you lose. And Hugh, the important thing is Americans
have to understand. We had a hearing today on Iran's pursuit of
nuclear weapons. The president of Iran has said he wants to use
nuclear weapons to eliminate Israel, and eliminate all Anglo-Saxons.
People need to understand...if you don't believe what radical
Islam believes, then you should die. And that's the rule we're
fighting. And they want to rewrite history on how we got in the
war. The fact is, is four commissions have already looked at that.
There was no manipulation of the intelligence date. But the point
is, is you have career, professional politicians who are more
interested in their career, than they are in doing what's best
for this country. And that's why you get the kind of votes you
get.
HH: Now Senator Coburn, Dr. Coburn,
I know a lot of my audience understands the stakes, but they are
mystified when they see the president who is traveling abroad,
get blindsided by a Senator majority, he actually more than any
other individual, put into place. How do we change this?
TC: Well, I think we have to go
on the offensive, and talk to America. I gave a speech this morning,
and as a matter of fact, if all your readers...you ought to put
this
on your website, is a commentary be retired Major General Vernon
Chong, retired from the U.S. Air Force. He wrote a wonderful commentary
about this is a real war. And you ought to get that commentary
and put it on there. People need to understand this is a real
war. And if we lose it, and we can lose it if the American people
are divided, then what will happen is the very thing that we went
to war to prevent, will come about.
HH: Okay, given that, and I will
find that, Vernon Chong, and I'll post it over at Hughhewitt.com.
Do you foresee...have you heard from your constituents today,
Dr. Coburn? Is the Senate kind of looking over their shoulder
and saying what did we do? Have you seen any of your colleagues
regretting what they did?
TC: No, actually I haven't, but
I've been in a hearing all day on Iran, and their pursuit of nuclear
weapons. So I haven't.
HH: And so, if this goes to the
conference, and there is an outcry from Republicans and independents,
and even Democrats who understand what a disaster this is, will
it make it out of the conference? Can it be stripped out, this
Warner amendment?
TC: Oh, this isn't going to come
out at conference. I can assure you, it's not going to come out
of conference. But the point is, the game playing needs to stop.
And we're all Americans, we're not Republicans and Democrats,
we're all Americans first. And we have to suck it up, and start
thinking about our long-term future, and quit playing the political
game, which says how do we nail somebody to make ourselves look
good. And that's what the Americans are counting on us to do.
And this is one of the unfortunate side effects of weak leadership,
and a pursuit of power, instead of pursuit of principle.
HH: And so, how does that get
through to Republicans, because again, I'm focused like a laser
tonight on your colleagues in the Senate? You only had 13 who
stood with you and voted against the Warner amendment. That means
we've got 42 Republicans who got this wrong. That's a lot of trouble.
TC: Well, I think you've got to
look at the 13 Republicans who voted with you, and say do they
really represent the Republican Party? And that's true. And you
know, if you talk about this, or you talk about spending, or anything
else, just go correlate the votes on spending with the votes on
people who got this right. They'll be the same people.
HH: Is the piece by Chong that
you're referring to, where he walks through this war is for real?
TC: Oh yeah.
HH: Okay. I've got that underneath...
TC: You know, he outlines exactly
what's going on. He outlines all the events that the radical Islamo-Fascists
have done since the bombings in Lebanon some twenty-some years
ago. And he outlines the 7,000 terrorist events that they've carried
out since 1981. And he outlines what the battle is, and how we
lose the war, and the political correctness that's killing us,
like not profiling those people who are most at risk to hurt us.
HH: And Dr. Coburn, how do you
think today's vote is perceived by Zarqawi and his terrorist minions?
TC: Oh, you know, it emboldens
them. It emboldens them. There's no question about it. And we
need...it underlines the president, number one. Number two, it
undermines our troops. Number three, it says the Congress knows
how to run a war better than the Defense Department? Give me a
break.
HH: Yup. So now, given...if you
see John Warner in the hall tonight, Dr. Coburn, what are you
going to say to him?
TC: It's really Frist. It's not
John Warner. It's really Frist.
HH: Explain.
TC: This is a leadership thing
that was put forward to counter the amendment by the Democrats.
And it's one of those unfortunate things when you say well, we'll
take the lesser of two evils, when you should have stood up and
said we're not offering an alternative. We think this is wrong.
We should have stood up and spoke on it. But that wasn't the case.
HH: All right. You know what?
I've got to correct the record. John Thune voted against this,
too. I misread that, and I'm so glad to hear that. Why is it only
the freshmen are getting this? Not only, but mostly. It was you
and DeMint and Burr...
TC: Because we're connected to
the American people.
HH: That's interesting. Explain
that.
TC: And the longer you're in Washington,
the less connected you are.
HH: That's very important. Now
are the caucus of the freshmen going to get together on this stuff,
Dr. Coburn?
TC: Well, we're getting together
on a lot of things. And so, I would assume that most of us will
be together on this as well.
HH: All right. Now, a quick question
before I let you go. Do you see any trouble with Justice Alito's
confirmation?
TC: Oh, I think it'll get filibustered,
ultimately. And I think we'll have the Constitutional option,
and I think it'll pass, and he will become the Supreme Court justice.
HH: I appreciate your confidence,
I appreciate your strong voice, I really appreciate your vote
today, to try to stop the undercutting of the war effort, Senator
Coburn from Oklahoma. Thank you, Doctor.
End of interview.
Posted at
5:45PM PST
South
Carolina Senator Jim DeMint on the same stupid Warner amendment
vote.
HH: I'm not joined from Washington,
D.C., by Senator Jim DeMint of the great state of South Carolina.
Senator DeMint, thank you for being on the show. It's good to
talk to you. Congratulations on voting the right way, which was
against the Warner amendment today. What happened to the Republican
caucus?
JD: ...I don't know, Hugh. I think
it was clear to me that a lot of members, Republicans and Democrats,
felt like they needed to show the American people that we wanted
to get out of Iraq at some point. I think the president has met
every deadline he set for himself, and I've been to Iraq twice.
The generals are very focused on the understanding that the more
they turn over to the Iraqis, the sooner we can get out, and I
was obviously disappointed in either bill. I just don't think
we need to be telling our commander in chief how to conduct a
war when he's set his milestones, and he's made them. And I think
we'll get out of Iraq when the right time is to get out of Iraq.
But this is a war we've got to win, Hugh. I'm afraid people are
just treating it like a political game here in Washington. We're
in a war. We have been for a couple of decades or more, and we
need to be serious about it, so I mean, I appreciate you talking
it up. I just wasn't going to vote for either bill.
HH: I've got to tell you, Senator
DeMint, the lines, the e-mails, the blogosphere, the general public
reaction among supporters of the war is white hot rage at the
Republican caucus. I can't put it any other way. I think it hurt
the NRSC's fundraising. I think it hurt Bill Frist. I think it
hurt George Allen. Are they aware of how this is perceived, and
how it has been widely celebrated on the left side of the political
aisle, among the fever swamp, the Michael Moore crowd, as being
a capitulation?
JD: I don't think they were when
they brought it up. I think they were trying to...basically, the
strategy was to beat the Democratic amendment, with a subsitute,
without the deadline in it. And so I think the strategy, the legislative
strategy was just to beat the Democrats. But I think in the process,
it looked like capitulation, and it looked like the hammering
by the Democrats had softened us up to the point where we halfway
agreed with them. And so, I know that wasn't the heart of the
Republicans, and I know that wasn't the intent of the leadership,
but I voted against it, because that was the way it felt to me.
HH: Now I have some experts on
later in the program, Senator DeMint, and I know what they're
going to say, which is this is exactly the wrong message to send
to terrorists like Zarqawi, to dead-enders from the Baath Party,
and even to Iraqis who are now going to second guess whether the
United States Senate's got staying power. Did that come up in
the floor debate?
JD: No, it didn't, and it should
have. I mean, I think when the Iraqis start to wonder if we're
going to stay the course, then it becomes increasingly dangerous
for them to step forward and run for office, and to keep rebuilding
the way they're doing. And again, I don't think it was the intent
of any of the Republicans, but I just think we are not as sensitive
as we should be of what signals we're sending to other parts of
the world, and particularly to the terrorists. And I think all
the demagoguery from the Democrats are empowering the terrorists
and endangering our troops. And I think the bills today were unnecessary,
and sent the wrong suggestions.
HH: Well Senator Jim DeMint, thanks
for joining us on short notice from the floor. I hope you go back
in and see either the majority leader or the whip this afternoon
or evening, and just pound on the table if you have to. This is
a disaster, and there's no covering up, there's no sugar coating
it. And I think they buckled, and they've got to get off the floor.
Senator DeMint, thank you.
End of interview.
Posted at
5:16PM PST
North
Carolina Senator Richard Burr on the very ill-timed and ill-considered
vote today by the Senate Republicans to cave on the Global War
On Terror.
HH: On a very sad day for America,
a day of decisive rebuke in the United States Senate of George
Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld,
the Pentagon, and the war effort, an astonishing vote to demand
regular updates from the president. It's called a rebuke by the
Washington Post. It is nothing but that, and to explain how the
Senate Republicans went so wrong today, I'm joined from Washington,
D.C., by United States Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina,
who voted the right way, which was against the Warner amendment
today. Senator Burr, thanks for joining us on the Hugh Hewitt
Show.
RB: Hugh, good evening. Greetings
from Washington, and it is a sad day. We got a defense authorization
bill finished this afternoon, but at a significant cost. You know,
Hugh, I said to my staff when I came back in, I can't envision
any point where I would encourage Congress to vote on something
like this when a president, regardless of what party they're in,
is out of the country. And clearly, today's vote, I think there
were a lot of people that weren't paying attention to what it
was that we were voting on. Congress has the oversight authority
already. We continually get updates from not only the generals
in the field, but from the folks on the ground here in Washington.
Members actively go to Iraq and to Afghanistan, and see first-hand
the war. To set this artificial timeline, to do it when the president's
out of the country, it provides nothing new to Congress.
HH: Now Senator Burr, there's
a lot of ground to cover here. I want to start with the facts,
so my audience understands what happened. Let's being with...the
Senate Democrats wanted to embarrass the president and demand
a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. That was defeated handily,
58-40. Why did Senator Warner and Senator Frist then co-sponsor
this amendment? What were they thinking?
RB: Well, Hugh, I think that Senator
Bingaman's amendment that was basically this language but with
a date certain for the removal of troops, they felt that Republicans
needed to show that they were anxious and observant to everything
that was going on in Iraq, and that to ask for this 90 day update
was a prudent thing. I think they forgot that we get an update
even more often than that. It comes in the Armed Services Committee,
it comes in the Intelligence Committee, it comes for the general
membership of the Senate, probably more often than 90 days now.
HH: Now Senator Burr, I'll be
asking defense experts throughout this program, which I'm devoting
to this subject, who the winner is today. And I'm going to ask
them how Zarqawi reads this. And I don't think a terrorist would
be wrong to read this as an initial crack in what has hitherto
been a solid political support for the war, no matter how long
it took, because we have no choice but to win it. And I mean,
is there any other way to interpret this as exactly what our enemies
would love to see, a weakening of political will?
RB: Hugh, I think that the insurgents
will always see an opportunity and seize it, and I'm sure that
they will in this particular case. I believe today in Iraq, and
tonight in Iraq, there are probably Iraqis that are scratching
their head, wondering are we going to leave them again, or are
we going to go before, in fact, they're ready to take their own
security over. I think more importantly, we've got some troops
that are in the field, some that I've sat and had dinner with
in Baghdad, who see the hope in the eyes of the Iraqis every day
that they go out on patrol. And the Iraqis now see them as their
pathway to democracy. As long as they're there, they know they
have hope of their own security. And they may perceive this as
a premature departure on the part of the American troops.
HH: The United States Senate voted
today overwhelmingly to rebuke the Bush administration on its
conduct of the war, to demand more information. A vote of 79-19.
Only thirteen or fourteen Republicans opposed this, Senator Burr.
Why did it come up so quickly? There's a sense about this that
majority leader Frist, and Senator Warner, chair of the Armed
Services Committee, rushed this through before the Republican
and the independent, and even some Democratic support for the
war could make their voice known, and rebuke their rebuke.
RB: Well, clearly the leadership
wanted to get defense authorization done today. It was our intentions
to finish it last week, and we couldn't quite wrap it up. I think
there were some dicey issues, there were some things that were
worked out over the weekend, as it related to the Graham amendment,
that removes habeus corpus for detainees, and some agreements
that were met with Senator Levin. But Hugh, I'm sort of getting
used to being in the single digit number of a vote lately, after
some of the battles we've had on appropriations issues as well.
HH: Well, I appreciate your standing
tall on this. I'm sure there was enormous pressure. What are you
hearing from callers to your office and e-mailers? Are they supportive
of your vote standing with the president and with the war effort?
RB: Hugh, I think it'll be tomorrow
before we really get a sense of where people are, just simply
because this has all happened this afternoon. Once again, you're
right on top of things, and that says a lot about the content
of your show. It's up to date. But I think as people begin to
watch the news tonight, as they begin to ask questions, as they
begin to look at what actually was passed, they'll find that this
really went a lot further than the authors of this amendment led
people to believe.
HH: Now let me ask you again,
Senator Burr, this has to go to the conference now. Any chance
of stripping it from the bill in the Senate passing, you know,
having a moment to draw its breath? I just can't...George Allen,
I'm stunned, voted for this. And I just don't know what to say.
RB: Hugh, I think the answer is
yes, we're going to do everything we can to strip it from the
bill. But I've got to go back to something I think you and I even
talked about before the last election cycle, and that is that
conference is not for the purposes of getting rid of the stuff
that you didn't have the guts enough to keep out in the first
place. And I think where we are now is conferences should be there
to perfect a bill, and to work out the differences, not to fix
the things we knew we didn't want in the bill. We've got to stand
up and speak out against them, and vote against them.
HH: Now Senator Richard Burr,
there is also...we're coming off a week where your counterparts
in the House, with whom you served this past January, fumbled
the ball on ANWAR exploration, couldn't even get a budget deficit
passed. Now we have this shipwreck in the United States Senate
cutting out the legs of the Bush administration on the war. What's
happened to Republican leadership on the Hill?
RB: Well, clearly they are down
to one leader in the House, in Speaker Hastert. Factions have
gone in two different directions. It makes it almost impossible
to believe a scenario where they can get budget reconciliation
this week, and that's even with ANWAR out of it. You know, I think,
Hugh, I've voted and passed ANWAR six times while I was in the
House over ten years. So it's incredible to me that they can't
move it. But certainly, ANWAR will go back in, in the conference
report of reconciliation. But we're going to be here a lot further
into December than I think members had planned.
HH: And generally speaking, the
collapse began with the Katrina blowback from the base. But do
you see any effort by leadership in both houses to kind of get
together and say what is going on here, and try and re-establish
some defensible ground? Because I think Democrats must be the
happiest they've been in five years.
RB: Hugh, I do. the House and
Senate leadership meet daily now. The level of cooperation is
great, and I think the plan really is focused on next year, and
how we come out with an agenda that one speaks to the majority
of the American people, really does embrace the issues that are
conservative in every realm. And I think that has to dovetail
with the message that the president comes with in the State of
the Union. We've got to quick being risk averse up here. We've
got to be bold, we've got to come out with solutions to our problems,
and not just excuses. And I think it was a dark day for all of
us when we saw government's response, both federal, state and
local, to Katrina. But we can't let that get us down. We've got
to come up with a solution to not only that, but we've got to
end this spending spree that Congress has been on.
HH: We've got a minute left, Senator.
You are the chair of the sub-committee on bio-terrorism, public
health preparedness. That puts you in the middle of Avian flu
preparedness. Are we up to speed on that potential epidemic?
RB: Well, once again, we're trying
to catch up, and we're probably better off than anybody around
the world. But Hugh, the ability to meet a health disaster like
Katrina, potentially in every state around this country, we've
got a lot of work to do before we can do that. And I think that
there are a lot of great minds working on it. But this will involve
state, local and federal officials coordinating a plan that is
a workable plan.
HH: Senator Richard Burr of North
Carolina, I really appreciate your coming to the phone today and
talk with us after a long day on the Senate floor. Good luck in
fighting the good fight, getting your Senate colleagues, especially
the Republicans, to rethink this disastrous move today, and get
back on track.
End of interview.
Posted at
4:25PM PST
Monday, November 14
The
Smart Guys on the Alito documents, and the opening rounds of the
abortion debate to follow.
HH: I'm joined now by the Smart
Guys. They are two Con-law professors who join me whever Con-law
is in the news. Erwin Chemerinsky from the left, and from Duke
University Law School. John Eastman from the right, and my colleague
at Chapman University Law School. And you need to listen to this,
because...not just the huge Alito story today, but perhaps one
of the most significant decisions for anyone who has a kid in
any public school, or going to have one in any public school.
Not just special ed kids, but everyone affected by today's decision
impacting what special education kids may get from their school
districts...John, have you heard about it?
JE: Yeah, I have heard about it.
This is an opinion by Justice O'Connor, two dissents and Chief
Justice Roberts not participating, held that the burden of proof
in having an individualized education plan for disabled children
is, by the preponderance of the evidence, on the person seeking
to challenge the status quo. So the parents that want more services
provided have the burden of proof, rather than the government
or the public school having the burden of proof to demonstrate
that what they're providing is adequate.
HH: Now the reason I believe this
is so hugely significant is that school districts across the United
States have typically refused to engage parents in any kind of
litigation over this, because they've been afraid they were going
to lost. Erwin, I don't know if you can now hear me, that was
generally the way that school districts...they just fold when
parents, unsatisfied with special ed developed needs assessments,
objected.
EC: I think your description is
absolutely right, and I'm trying very quickly as we're talking
to learn about it. I understand it was a 6-2 decision, holding
that parents, not school officials, have a burden of proving that
a parent's claim that an educational plan for disable children
does not satisfy the child's needs. So I think this is a big victory
for schools, and makes it much more difficult for parents.
HH: John Eastman, do you agree
with this assessment, that it will probably change...I think it
gets to funding right away.
JE: I do, and look. Let's be very
clear what the Court did here. It basically followed the traditional
rule, that if you sue the government, you have the burden of proof
of showing that your claim is correct. And here, the suits were
saying what the government is providing doesn't meet the statutory
obligation. The parents have the burden of proving that that's
correct, rather than the defendant having the burden of proving
that what they are providing meets the statutory definition.
HH: Well, we will follow the repercussions
of this over the days and weeks ahead. Now let's turn to the Alito
memo. Erwin, you must have been shocked to read what Judge Alito
wrote twenty years ago in his job application to the Meese Justice
Department.
EC: I don't think any of us were
shocked to read it. I think all of us thought that's exactly what
Samuel Alito believed. This was an article in today's Washington
Times, and it said that twenty years ago when applying for a position
in the Justice Department, then-non-judge, Samuel Alito, now Judge
Samuel Alito, expressed a strong belief that the Supreme Court
was wrong in protecting abortion rights, and praised the efforts
of the Reagan administration to get Roe V. Wade overturned. I
think what this means is it's not going to be a question of what
Samuel Alito believes on abortion. I think the question is going
to be, should someone with those beliefs be confirmed to the United
States Supreme Court?
HH: John Eastman, your response
to that question framing by Erwin?
JE: Well, I actually agree with
that. I mean, I think Judge Alito's position here was clear. It
was the Reagan administration position. It's a position shared
by roughly half of the country, and you know, we've been ducking
this fight and this debate, as if it's some kind of fringe thing.
It's not. What the Supreme Court did in 1973, was take a hot political
issue, with competing rights on both sides, and take it out of
the hands of the political process, as if to say, you citizens
of the country have nothing to say about that. And for thirty
years, there has been a sustained political campaign to try and
revisit that decision. And quite frankly, I think the time is
long overdue that we have that debate in the United States Senate,
and I hope Judge Alito will articulate...re-articulate his view
that most people in the country agree with, that the decision
in Roe V. Wade is one of the most poorly reasoned decisions in
the country, and let's get a serious, honest debate about this.
HH: But we already know that,
because the Casey majority rejected the Roe reasoning as silly,
and threw it overboard. But Erwin, let's get some factual issues
down first, and we might have to go two segments here. Just because
he said that in 1985, does not mean that he would vote to overrule
Casey, does it?
EC: It doesn't necessarily mean
that, but of course, there's no way we will know until he's on
the Supreme Court and casts a vote what it would be. All we can
do is look for evidence. John Roberts could disavow a brief that
he signed in the Justice Department, urging the overruling of
Roe V. Wade, by saying I was just taking the position of my client.
Samuel Alito in the strongest possible language, said that he
believes that abortion should not be protected as a right in the
Constitution. I can't let John's statements go unchallenged. I
think Roe V. Wade was exactly right in its conclusion and in its
reasoning. I think the Supreme Court was right to say that privacy
is protected by the Constitution, and a fundamental aspect of
a woman's privacy is to decide for herself whether to terminate
her pregnancy. I think Casey reaffirmed Roe, did not reject its
reasoning in any way.
HH: John Eastman?
JE: Well, look. We all have a
right to privacy, and we all have the right to do what we want
with our own body. It's when you start implicating other people,
other human beings, and let's be very clear here. You know, a
human fetus is a human fetus. It's not an animal fetus, and it's
not a bundle of asparagus. It is a human being, and the notion
that it's not, or that it's entirely up to an individual to decide
who other human beings are and who not, is a throwback to a day
when a slave owner got to decide that his own slaves were not
human beings. I mean, it is preposterous, and for thirty years,
we have been slaughtering 1.6 million people a year. That's three
per minute, Erwin. And the fact that we have not had this debate
in the courts, because of Roe V. Wade, doesn't mean we haven't
been having it in the political process. And the only way open
to people has been through the political process, to change the
courts. And it's time to have that discussion on the floor of
the United States Senate.
HH: Erwin Chemerinsky?
EC: John, you totally beg the
question of whether a fetus should be regarded as a human being.
I understand you regard the fetus as a child. I don't. But the
question shouldn't be for you or for me. It should be for each
woman to decide for herself whether to continue or terminate her
pregnancy. And that was what was right in Roe V. Wade. 68% of
the American people in a recent CNN opinion poll, said that they
believe that Roe was rightly decided. Over 50% of the American
people in a poll said that anybody who doesn't believe in Roe
shouldn't be confirmed for the Supreme Court. So I think you're
right. This is the battle. But I totally disagree with the way
you beg the question here.
---
HH: John Eastman, let's not pass
over the quotas issue, either, but I want to give the floor back
to you.
JE: Well, sure. I mean, Erwin
says that he doesn't believe in an unborn child as a human being,
and that I do, and therefore, it ought to be up to each individual
person. He doesn't take up the direct analogy, southern slave
owners, at some point during the course of the ante-bellum south,
started arguing that black slaves were not human beings, and that
therefore, they could treat them as property, and the Constitution
required that they protect their propery interests, which is uncannily
like the woman's claim to protect her liberty interest, because
she alone gets to determine whether this is another human being
or not. The analogy is direct, and the Supreme Court weighing
in on it has not only Constitutionalized abortion, to take it
out of the hands of the political debate where it belongs, on
how great a penalty, if any, we're going to apply for performing
abortions, but has led the Court to uphold partial birth abortions,
which are abortions where the baby is already delivered, all but
intact, almost entire outside of the mother's womb, and then killed
in some of the most heinous surgical operations you can even describe.
This is what Roe V. Wade has wrought, and I'll tell you. You ask
most American people, and the polling data's pretty clear here,
70-80%, when you say would you allow for abortion on gender selection?
Would you allow for abortion, because we've discovered a gene
we don't like? Would you allow for abortion because of the inconvenience
to the mother? Would you allow for abortion in the third trimester,
or at partial birth? Overwhelming majorities say no to each of
those, and yet the Supreme Court's Constitutionalization of this
issue has prevented any political judgment on those questions.
HH: Erwin Chemerinsky?
EC: I think the analogy to slavery
is offensive. We all agree that slavery was an abhorrent practice.
But there is not now, nor will there ever be any consensus on
the question of when somebody becomes a human being. I do not
believe that a fetus before viability is a human being. You do.
But the question is who should decide that? Should it be for the
state to force women into unwanted pregnancies? Or should it be
for each woman to decide for herself? It's not a question on how
the matter is phrased in an opinion poll. 68% of the American
people believe Roe V. Wade should be affirmed, and should continue.
And John, you raise red herrings when you talk about post-viability
killing of children. 99% of abortions are performed before viability.
And what procedure is used is between a woman and her doctor.
And again, this is the question. Who should be making this choice?
Should it be the woman and her doctor? Or should it be you and
the state? I think that your position would mean that abortion
should be unconsitutional, should never be allowed. And I hope
I never live in a country that has that.
HH: John Eastman?
JE: You know, if we're talking
about abortions in the third trimester, you're talking about the
closest thing to infanticide that has ever been upheld in any
civilized country in the world. And for the American people not
be able to have a say in that, politically, because the Court
has taken it off the table, and let's be very clear. When American
people are asked should Roe V. Wade be affirmed, they don't understand
that it means abortion on demand, up until the 9th month of pregnancy,
because of the health of the mother exception, and the way it's
been interpreted. Don't be dishonest, Erwin. And the comparison
with slavery is exactly right. There were people at the time who
said slavery is a positive good. And it's entirely up to me, the
slave owner, to decide whether these people are human beings or
not, or whether they're going to be treated as my property. It
is a question you cannot leave...have decided, as if there are
not two lives at stake here. I mean, this is preposterous to say
that it's not a human being. What else is it?
HH: Erwin, I have a question for
you. Does this constitute special circumstances, extraordinary
circumstances, in the view of the Senate, do you think?
EC: Well, of course, the 14 Senators
who came to the agreement to preserve the filibuster said it could
be used in extraordinary circumstances. But no one knows quite
what that means. The Democrats who are part of that, like Lieberman,
have said extraordinary circumstances includes ideology. The Republicans
who were a part of the group, like Lindsey Graham, say extraordinary
circumstances doesn't include ideology. Now my guess is, I mean,
we can go on with the abortion debate at length, and I can call
John's position preposterous, just like he called me preposterous.
But if I can go beyond the abortion issue to what it's going to
mean politically, I think this increases the pressure on the few
moderate Republicans, and the relatively few moderate Democrats,
because there are a few pro-choice Republicans, like Snowe and
Collins and Chafee. This makes it much harder for them to vote
in favor of Alito. It increases the pressure on the moderate Democrats.
If it comes to a filibuster, will they filibuster. And then my
guess is what it's always going to depend on here is, if the Democrats
filibuster, will moderate Republicans vote to eliminate the filibuster,
even if they're willing to vote for Alito.
HH: You get the last word this
week, Erwin Chemerinsky.
End of interview.
Posted at
11:55PM PST
Bill
Sammon on the Alito document he broke today, and the impact of
it on the nomination.
HH: Bill Sammon of the Washington
Times presented last night (Hillsdale
College's new media conference), and then this morning, I
arise to find he's got the scoop
of the week in the Washington Times. Alito rejected abortion as
a right. Bill Sammon, good to have you on the Hugh Hewitt Show.
BS: Thanks for having me, Hugh.
HH: Now you didn't breathe a word
of this to me last night, so I could have had a blogger scoop.
We were up there clinking glasses and getting along very nice,
and you're sitting on a big, huge story. When did it come to you?
BS: It came to be...I was actually
here at Hillsdale to enjoy myself and kind of relax for a couple
of days, brought my sons here to look at the school as well. And
I got a call in my room yesterday from a real good source of mine,
who said look. Doing a document dump tomorrow, but there's a radioactive
single document that you're going to want to see, and we're going
to send it to you right now. So, I took a look at it. I made some
calls, did some research, and we put it out there in the Washington
Times this morning. I was nervous about posting it...you know,
a lot of times, we'll slip it to Drudge or something like that.
But we were just worried that the Post would come back and match
us, or the New York Times would match us, so we really wanted
to get a clean hit, so we kept it pretty quiet until after midnight.
HH: Let me read the first three
graphs of Bill Sammon's story from this morning. Judge Samuel
A. Alito, Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote that
"the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion,"
in a 1985 document obtained by the Washington Times. "I personally
believe very strongly in this legal position," Mr. Alito
wrote in his application to become deputy assistant to Attorney
General Edwin I. Meese, III. The document, which is likely to
inflame liberals who oppose Judge Alito's nomination to the Supreme
Court, is among many that the White House will release today from
the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. So congrats, Bill, on
a scoop which has enormous implications. Did, in fact, it inflame
the liberals that you talked to today?
BS: Oh, absolutely. You know,
you had everybody from People For The American Way, to the Nan
Aron's of the world, saying basically that the document proves
that he is likely to overturn Roe V. Wade. And of course, the
White House pushback on that is wait a minute. The guy has jurisprudence,
fifteen years of ruling from the federal Appeals court, and he
also has his personal politics, which we are seeing in this twenty
year old document. At no point in his fifteen years of rulings
from the bench do those politics manifest themselves. So in other
words, he is able to separate the two. And they use the analogy
of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Here's a woman who is arguably, and I
think it's probably true, that she's more liberal than Alito is
conservative. She's an ACLU lawyer, she thought that we all have
the right to polygamy and prostitution and the age of consent
should be 12. And there's some pretty way out things that she
stood for. And yet, she had a judicial temperament, and the Republicans
in the Senate were willing to judge her on that. And that's what
they're asking Alito to be judged on.
HH: But now surely, the left has
at least this much right. If he can get confirmed with this kind
of a paper trail, it really clears a huge hurdle on the road for
future nominees, because this has always been the bright red line
which no one can get around. Bork couldn't get around it. I don't
believe Edith Jones was nominated because of this. Maybe Michael
Luttig fell prey to this as well. It really would change the dymanic
if someone who has written this explicity, I do not believe it's
there, can get onto the Supreme Court. Do you agree or disagree
with that?
BS: I agree, and here's why. The
difference between this guy's writing in this document and Roberts,
you know, because the White House is now saying they were both
young attorneys in the Reagen administration, and they're both
the same, and you guys confirmed Roberts, so you've got to confirm
Alito. Well guess what? It's not the same. Alito says I personally,
strongly believe that the Constitution doesn't provide the right
to an abortion. And Roberts didn't. Roberts kept leaving some
wiggle room. And all those paper we went through, it was always
like well, I'm arguing for the administration. I'm their advocate.
And it's an important distinction, because there's no escaping
that this guy feels deep down in his bones, not only does the
Constitution not provide a right to abortion, but he went on to
say nor does it provide a right to affirmative action. And he
really...and you've got to remember. He was applying for his first
political appointment job. He was a career lawyer switching over
to the political track, and so he was trying to establish his
conservative credentials. And so, he went into this remarkable
litany of here's where I started becoming a conservative, listening
to Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr., reading National
Review. And then he talks about certain law professors, here's
where I went to Yale, because this guy preached judicial restraint.
And it's really a windo into what this guy is made of, and it's
in very direct, unambiguous language. And that's the kind of thing
that does inflame the left, but it also rallies the right. The
right is saying hey, the guy may not go wobbly after all on abortion.
Maybe he's one of us.
HH: I'm talking with Bill Sammon,
chief White House correspondent for the Washington Times. That's
your official title, by the way, Bill?
BS: Yes it is.
HH: What do we call you? Chief
political poobah at the Washington Times?
BS: No, I think senior White House
correspondent...I've been called worse.
HH: Okay. Now...in the off-the-record
conversations, was Roberts just smarter than Alito? Now I worked
with John, I shared an office with him. I never knew what he believed,
because I think he had his eye on the big game the whole time.
BS: Right.
HH: Did Alito just show us too
much leg?
BS: Maybe so. That's the feeling
I got when...and of course, you're looking at the thing twenty
years later. And you're thinking now the guy's up...he has to
go face the Senate Judiciary Committee in six weeks, or whatever.
And it's easy to sort of Monday morning quarterback. But then
you look at Roberts, and you've got to feel like that's a guy
who knew all along, I better watch my step. You never know where
I might be down the road. It's kind of like...you know, there's
guys like Al Gore that are born and want to be president their
entire life, and they structure their lives around it. And then
there's guys like George W. Bush, who kind of say yeah, maybe
I'll be president, halfway through his life. I'm not saying that's
a perfect analogy to Alito, but I do think that Alito was maybe
less carefull than Roberts.
HH: By the way of background,
America, I learned last night for the first time Bill, who has
been on this program many times, you see him often on Fox News,
is actually a native of Cleveland. Roots for the Browns, and this
explains his great common good sense, and why he understands politics,
as only a Buckeye can. And in fact, your beat for the Plain Dealer
was the Cuyahoga election commission, which really called the
shot in 2004. That's very funny.
BS: I told my editors, just half-jokingly
before the election, the day before the election in November,
that it was going to come down to Cuyahoga county, because they're
just as corrupt as can be. I mean, there was just everybody...I
found a cat that was registered to vote there when I covered it
for the Plain Dealer. And sure enough, the night of the election,
it all came down to Ohio, and then within Ohio, it came down to
my old stomping ground, Cuyahoga County. And I thought it was...
HH: And that cat voted three times,
probably.
BS: Exactly.
HH: Bill Sammon, let's go back
to the big story that you broke today, though. Did you hear anyone
today say springing extraordinary circumstance? You know, last
week, the Gang of 14 said everything's fine, not to worry. Did
any of them come forward today and say oops?
BS: Well, I saw that in the blogs.
I saw that in the blogs. And that, sometimes, is a harbinger of
what is then...Senators are going to say. I went to Free Republic,
for example, and there were people saying I wonder if this is
going to constitute extraordinary circumstances. I wonder if they're
going to unsheath the filibuster tiger. So there's a lot of talk
out there, and it's maybe a foreshadowing of what we're...I think
this hasn't really registered with everybody yet. It's going to
take a day or two to kind of settle out.
HH: How satisfactory is it to
steal a march on the Washington Post and the New York Times like
you did? I mean, we were talking about it last night. You lectured
on how wonderful it is to get a scoop in the age of new media,
that old media used to be able to bury. But this one's a big deal.
You must have gone to bed smiling last night.
BS: Oh, yeah. Actually, I couldn't
go to sleep, because you get excited. I've been in this business
a long time, but there's nothing that beats the thrill of the
scoop. And you know, I get scooped just as often as I scoop the
other guys, and so you've got to wake up a lot of days and look
at the Washington Post and the New York Times kicking your butt.
So the day you get them feels really good.
HH: Now Bill, you've got a new
book coming out called Strategery, following up on Misunderestimated.
You were with President Bush in the Oval Office for an hour, you
were retelling last night, just what? Eleven days ago?
BS: Yeah.
HH: Did he bring up this phase
2, second offensive on his weapons of mass destruction with you?
Did you talk about the attempt by Democrats to rewrite history?
BS: No, we didn't, because, and
this is going to sound funny, but it's actually true. Because
this book is trying to take a long view, and it's not going to
come out for a couple of months, I'm trying to stay away from
sort of the skirmish of the week in these kinds of interviews.
I'm trying to get like where are we going with Mideast democratization.
What's the next big domino to fall. That kind of stuff. So we
didn't get into that much, although I have talked to him quite
a bit about that in the past. It's interesting to see him fighting
back, and finally saying okay, I'm going to take this fight to
the Democrats, because I'm just getting my head caved in here.
And you know what's interesting? It's a year now since he had
an opponent, the personification of somebody that he could rail
against every day. And that got his base excited every day. And
now, for a year, he's been taking the high road, and he doesn't
really have anybody to rail against. And that's part of the disillusionment
of the conservative base. So now he's saying okay, now Democrats,
you're distorting my record. That's getting everybody excited.
HH: Bill Sammon, let me close
on this. We've got about a minute left. You've been covering the
White House since '98...'97. So you've been there with Bush from
day one. You've spent a lot of time with him, more than any other
correspondent. Has he aged in your view? Has he got the same energy
level, the same love of the job, as that first year, even after
9/11?
BS: I think he has aged a little
bit. You know, when I sat there in the Oval Office with him last
week for an hour, I don't think his spirit is flagging, but he
seemed tired, a little bit tired. And in fact, a couple of times,
he talked about being tired, you know, this is tiring, or the
election is tiring, or that's tiring. And I hadn't really heard
that kind of language seeping into his vernacular very often in
the past. So yeah, gosh, five years into this job's got to take
a toll, and every day, they're caving your head in. So, I think
he's holding up pretty well on balance.
HH: Bill Sammon from the Washington
Times, congratulations on a big scoop. Thanks for stopping by
the Hugh Hewitt Show this afternoon. Great to be on the same program
as you, Bill Sammon.
End of interview.
Posted at
4:26PM PST
Blog
of the week.
The A-Team gets the Crosley Solo
for their visual of where Ted Koppel's victory gardens are. Congrats,
A-Team. Don't you love it when a plan comes together? For the
rest of you, it's a new week, and a new Solo awaits you, if you
blog on something you hear from Hugh or one of his guests. Send
me your entry at generalissimo@hughhewitt.com.
If it's good enough, it'll qualify for the poll on Friday, and
then the rest is up to the blogosphere.
Posted at
3:00PM PST
Sunday, November 13
Give
me a war.
Or so goes the line from the movie
Kingdom of Heaven. As a result of what Bill Sammon reports
in Monday's Washington Times, the left now has their ammunition
to try a filibuster stunt on the Alito nomination to the Supreme
Court. In part of a document dump from the Reagan library expected
to be made public later on Monday, Sammon got hold of a 1985 document
in which it's pretty clear where Judge Alito stands on the abortion
issue, as it pertains to the right to privacy.
Regardless of what he did or did
not mean in this document, the end result is that there's going
to be a fight now. President Bush tried to go stealth with Harriet
Miers, and got beat by his own base.
Now, he's got a credentialed conservative
out there, and the public debate the right has dreamed about for
years is now going to happen. Barbara Boxer, dimwit Senator from
California, is going to seize on this like you wouldn't believe.
It is now up to the same base that was AWOL a month ago to now
show up and start taking up rhetorical arms, because it's going
to take a conservative village to raise a Supreme Court justice.
Posted at
11:53PM PST
Saturday, November
12
Beltway
Boys preview.
HH: I'm joined by Morton Kondracke,
he of the Fox News Beltway Boys. Fred is not available this afternoon,
but he will be there on the set tomorrow afternoon at 6PM in the
East, and 3:00PM in the West, when Morton and Fred talk about
the week's events in the Beltway. Morton, there's a lot of cover.
I want to start with John McCain's speech last night to the American
Enterprise Institute where he blasted...
MK: I was there.
HH: He blasted Pentagon policy
in Iraq. Did you find it persuasive?
MK: Well, now wait a minute. The
first thing he did was to counteract the suggestion of John Kerry
that we begin pulling out 20,000 troops, and then leave by the
end of next year.
HH: Yeah, he wants to add troops.
MK: Huh?
HH: He wants to add troops.
MK: McCain wants to add troops.
I mean, he's criticizing the Bush policy as well. And you know
something? It's interesting. I think that the Pentagon actually...and
the military commanders in the field, actually want to have a
withdrawal policy next year. And I've talked to people who think
that that may be the White House policy as well. I don't find
it in Bush speeches, but there are people around who...and especially
Republican Congressmen, who would love to have a withdrawal sometime
next year, a substantial withdrawal, in order to help them out
politically. And McCain is saying we need more troops. We need
10,000 more troops than we've got already, because the implication
is that the Iraqi security forces aren't ready.
HH: He also blasted war doctrine,
though. Quote, our forces cannot hold the ground indefinitely.
When they move on to fight other battles, the insurgent ranks
replenish and the strongholds fill again. Our troops must then
re-enter the same area and refight the same battle. And he called
for a holding pattern...
MK: Right, right.
HH: You know, secure the cities
and let the country...you know what? I know he served his country.
I respect him for that, especially on Veteran's Day, and especially
his record. He doesn't know squat about running a war.
MK: Well, look...
HH: He never was a general.
MK: Now wait a minute. It is a
fact, and I've seen this cited elsewhere, that in towns like Talafar,
we go in, we sweep out the enemy, we kick them all out of town,
and then we leave. And as soon as we leave, the enemy comes back
and kills all the people who've cooperated with us. And somebody's
got to hold that kind of territory. And when the Iraqis are ready
and capable of doing it, then it's their job to do. But there
are a lot of places where it doesn't look like they're ready.
HH: Yeah, but they're up to 220,000.
But I'm more going to the point of...I don't know how to fight
a war, Morton. You don't know how to fight a war, and McCain doesn't
know how to fight a war. I think...
MK: Well, what makes you think
McCain doesn't know how to fight a war? He's a member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee...
HH: Because he's a fine pilot.
He spent seven years in a prison camp, for which we honor him,
and he's been a United States Senator, and they don't know diddly
about fighting a war.
MK: Look, there's a lot of people
who agree with John McCain about how you fight this war.
HH: Agreed. I know there are.
But not Republicans.
MK: Oh, yeah. They're Republicans.
HH: Chuck Hagel.
MK: No, no, no, no, no, no. There
are a lot of people who...I mean, that I've talked to military
people, I've talked to people who have served in civilian capacities
in Iraq, and they agree with him. And they're hawks. They're hawks
who think exactly the same thing. And as a matter of fact, this
whole gang at AEI, which is Republican, basically agrees with
him.
HH: Well of course, the AEI is
the center...the Weekly Standard is, as well. I wish Fred were
here, because he's kind of the dissenter on this.
MK: Fred agrees with that. Fred
agrees with McCain.
HH: He does not.
MK: He does.
HH: He does not.
MK: He absolutely agrees with
McCain. I'm telling you, he does.
HH: Well, we'll find out next
week.
MK: Watch the Beltway Boys tomorrow,
and you'll see. He does.
HH: Well, that's a good tease,
Morton. You're getting the hang of this tease business. The American
Enterprise online today has the Maverick is back by David White,
and it's full of praise for John McCain. I want to contrast his
speech attacking Don Rumsfeld and the Pentagon policy, and he
attacked Don Rumsfeld on the Today show this week as well, with
Mitt Romney, who came into town, to the Federalist Society, to
attack judges, and specifically, the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
Morton, which is better politics? To attack the Pentagon, Rumsfeld
and Bush? Or to attack judges?
MK: I don't think John McCain
is playing politics. I think John McCain is saying what John McCain
thinks. Now, he might be wrong. For all...you know, I'm not a
military expert. He might be wrong. But I think that it's evidence
of his independent thinking, that he has a theory about how you
win this war, and he's going to enunciate it. And look, Rumsfeld
has made a lot of mistakes. I mean every...it is now almost universally
acknowledged that we were too optimistic about what the aftermath
was going to be like, that we didn't have enough troops at the
time, we didn't secure all kinds of strategic points, we let ammunition
dumps get away. We should have at least retained some of the Iraqi
army intact, and tried to turn them around and have them fighting
insurgents, and stuff like that, try to win them over. No, a lot
of mistakes were made, and I don't see any reason not to say so,
as long as what your end is, is that we win.
HH: Or, as long as what your end
is, is self-glorification, and the advancement of your political
candidacy, so you'll say and do whatever you have to do.
MK: Now look. I don't think...
HH: And with three years left
in the administration, Morton...
MK: Yeah, but John McCain is not
Chuck Hagel. I mean, Chuck Hagel is a defeatest. John McCain is
not a defeatist.
HH: No, he can't run for president
as a defeatist, but he's trying to run as a super-hawk. And the
only way to do that, given that we have super-hawks running the
country, is to criticize them for a mythical strategy they haven't
deployed. I actually find it appalling that not only on the left
is the president being attacked, and he swung back today, but
that McCain and Hagel and these other people, who very well ought
to know not how to run a war...
MK: Hagel is not attacking him
from the right. Hagel's attacking from the left. He's a crypto-Democrat
out there.
HH: I agree with that, but he's
a member of the Republican Party, so I'm saying on that side of
the aisle. Let me turn to Mitt Romney's speech, though. Mitt Romney
comes into town, goes to the Federalist Society, and blasts away
at the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and other ideologically driven...
MK: That's a fish in a barrel.
HH: Yeah, it's a fish in a barrel,
but what works better in the GOP primary?
MK: Well, of course. So, is Mitt
Romney not playing politics? Of course he is.
HH: No, but he happens to be right.
They're both playing politics, but he happens to be right.
MK: Okay.
HH: What about ANWAR. Do the Republicans
get this back? I just had David Dreier on, and we were throwing
hammers at each other, because I think this...they ought to read
some of these people right out of the their chairmanships, and
out of the party, like Castle and Bass and Reichert up in Washington
state, on ANWAR.
MK: Well, look. I think that the
moderates are absolutely wrong on ANWAR. How are you ever going
to get energy independence and reduce oil prices, unless you have
more supply?
HH: Agreed.
MK: So, and ANWAR's a place to
get it. Furthermore, I'm mad at the moderates for a reason that
you won't agree with, and that is that they used whatever power
they had, their leverage here, to save the caribou, as they see
it, in Alaska, instead of fighting for a better deal for poor
children, and Medicaid, and...
HH: They don't care about the
caribou.
MK: Well, what do they care about?
HH: They care about environmentalist
whackos who vote because they care about the caribou.
MK: Yeah. You're probably right.
HH: Do you actually think anyone
in the Congress cares about the caribou?
MK: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I mean,
ANWAR is holy ground.
HH: Oh, they might care how they
taste.
MK: Huh?
HH: They might care about how
they taste. They don't...they're not environmentalists.
MK: Well, listen. There is a holy
aura about ANWAR. You would think that it was the locusts of God,
instead of caribou. All there is is caribou up there.
HH: Mort, you're a realist. We're
in the middle of a war. France is on fire. I read the Washington
Post story on the Netherlands assassination squads today. Amman's
been blown to pieces. We've got Australia on a terror alert.
MK: Yes.
HH: Two attacks in Britain. And
they're worried about the caribou?
MK: Well, yes. I think it's stupid,
too. I'm conflating a lot of things, but basically, in the end,
what they care about is wild animals maintaining their pristine
state, undisturbed for the rest of time.
HH: Would we ever have bombed
like the caucuses, when we were at war with Hitler, with these
people in charge? I mean, they had animals there, too. Morton,
let's talk about Arnold. I would appreciate your perspective from
far outside of California. What do you see happening out here?
MK: What I see happening out there
is that Arnold got a rebuke, partly because I don't think Californians
really wanted all these special referenda, and they're mad at
him for putting all this stuff on the ballot. But you know, the
polls that I've seen indicate that people don't want to re-elect
him. On the other hand, when he's matched against his two presumptive
opponents, he does okay. He's within range.
HH: Yeah, but if Reiner gets in,
that's going to get ugly in a hurry.
MK: Huh?
HH: Rob Reiner. I mean not Beatty.
Beatty's a fool. But if Rob Reiner gets in...
MK: Oh, Beatty's not going to
get in. Do you think Reiner's going to get in?
HH: Yes, I do. Reiner, actually,
has got a lot of ambition. Let me ask you about the desire of
some not to focus on France. Has the interest in France evaporated
quickly in Washington, D.C?
MK: No. Everybody's looking at
it. I mean, everbody's sort of enjoying it, actually. No, really.
HH: It's too serious to enjoy.
MK: Huh?
HH: It's too serious to enjoy.
MK: Well, I know. But it is...well,
it is serious in the long run. Right now, it's just...basically,
I think one person has dies, isn't that right?
HH: Yeah.
MK: And a lot of cars have gotten
burned.
HH: Ten thousand cars.
MK: Yeah. So, so far, it's fun
and games, and it shows us how feckless the French are, both socially
and economically.
HH: And finally, the Cisneros
probe is on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today. It's
been ten years they've been probing Henry Cisneros.
MK: I know. What a waste.
HH: You know, you live in the
weirdest city in the world. I used to live there, too, but I still
laugh about it. Morton Kondracke, we'll watch tomorrow night at
6:00PM with Fred Barnes on the Beltway Boys.
MK: Bye, Hugh.
End of interview.
Posted at
10:00AM PST
Friday, November 11
Congressman
David Dreier on the House decision to pull ANWAR out of the deficit
reduction bill.
HH: Joined now by Congressman
David Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee, number three
in the House leadership, and maybe he can explain how the sheriff
of Kings County, former sheriff, Dave Reichert, and Charlie Bass,
and Michael Castle, and all these other Republicans went south
on a national security issue. David, welcome back, but boy, what
a disappointing week in your colleagues back there.
DD: Happy Veteran's Day.
HH: And to you.
DD: Hey listen. Let me say that
obviously, it was a bump in the road. But you know, on the issue
of ANWAR, you know, exploration in that tiny little area that's
the size of Dulles International Airport, using 21st Century technology,
which will not devastate the environment, we have not had every
Republican. We have had 30 Democrats in the House of Representatives
who voted with us. You know, you point the finger of blame at
Republicans, and I would love to have these Republicans with us.
But they've consistently opposed it. The real problem has been
the fact that Nancy Pelosi has prevailed on every single Democrat,
even if they believe it's absolutely essential that we explore
in ANWAR, to vote no. And so, that's something that we've been
unable to count on. What our decision was, as you know, and if
we did end up taking it from this bill, for the vote that we would
have had yesterday, what we wanted to do was recognize that it's
in the Senate bill, and we would have fought very hard to have
it as part of the conference agreement. It was the only choice
that we had, Hugh. I mean, it's very clear that was what we were
trying to do...
HH: Congressman, you know, we
go back a long time. There is a different choice. There's a choice
about having a vote so that we can know who not to support. I
mean, I'm going to campaign against Sheriff Reichert. I'm going
to...if Mark Kennedy voted to get ANWAR out of this, or was one
of the problems, I'm taking him off the website, he can't be on
the show. This is a national security issue.
DD: And obviously, I agree with
you, because I've been a proponent since the whole notion of it
began. So I hope you don't campaign against me.
HH: No. I know you're right on
this. We've got to get rid of these people without spines.
DD: Well listen. I mean, Hugh,
again, these are members who have been on record...and let me
tell you what they're up against. They're up against multi-million
dollar campaigns spent against them in tough districts. I'm not
apologizing for them, because I believe that it's the right thing
for us to do to pursue it. But they are demonized regularly by
many in the mainstream media, and by their Democratic opponents.
And so, they have not supported it traditionally. Again, I would
focus on those 30 Democrats. And I'd be happy to get that list
for you. It's those 30 Democrats who have a record of supporting
ANWAR. They have a record of having done that, and now, simply
joining Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi. What is it they've chosen
to do? To ignore their committment to national security on this,
and vote to try and prevent us from being able to pursue it.
HH: David, not in a hundred years.
I have very little influence, if any, over Democrats. But there
are a lot of Republicans and centrists who listen to this show,
and they want to know...you know, they don't want to give money
to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, because it might
end up in Lincoln Chafee's pockets. They're not going to give
money to the National Republican Congressional Committee. You
guys could lose the majority over ANWAR. I firmly believe that.
DD: And you know what? We're fighting
as hard as we can to make sure we get ANWAR. And I'm determined
to do that. We're working through this weekend. We're going to
be seeing the chairman of the Budget Committee convene the caucus
to try and put together a package. The other thing that's in this,
of course, is...you know, you take...it's solely ANWAR. What we've
got is that we've got people on the...I was just on with Robert
Reich on Larry Kudlow's show. And here they are saying we're balancing
the budget on the backs of the poor. And these people are taking
that beating as well. So this is not ANWAR alone.
HH: But Congressman, all due respect,
ANWAR represents a tax hike on every American at the...you know
this. We've agreed on this. Because we have no marginal supply,
prices go to $3 dollars a gallon. That's a massive tax hike on
the people who are least able to pay it. And if Democrats want
to use garbage rhetoric, we need to go back and hit them, not
surrender. And you guys...you didn't, but these liberal Republican
moderates, Sheriff Reichert, Charlie Bass, Michael Castle, they
surrendered. They were like the French this week.
DD: You know, I will tell you
something, Hugh. I mean, I've got to say that people who've been
on record having not supported ANWAR, juxtaposed to those who
were on record in support of ANWAR, and are now opposing it for
pure political reasons, are the people we should target. I blame
Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean much more than I do any of these
Republicans. That doesn't mean that we're not striving to get
every single Republican on board in support of this. But this
is a challenge with which we've contended for many, many years.
And I believe that now is the best time that we've ever had to
try and get this through. It's in the so-called reconciliation
package, which means that they can't filibuster it in the Senate.
It's included in the Senate bill. 51 votes will put it over the
top, and I think we can do it. And what we want to do is we want
to put together a package that will allow us to get it through
the final conference agreement at least. We have to take it one
vote at a time, and so we're regrouping right now, and trying
to figure out how we can make this...
HH: Well David, why doesn't the
conference take away leadership positions, like from Castle and
Charlie Bass. Castle has been around, screwing things up, for
I don't know how long. What's he been in the Congress for? Since
'93?
DD: Yeah, he was the governor
of Delaware. And then he ran for Congress. And you know, I would
say...I would encourage people in your audience to call every
single member of Congress they know, Democrat and Republican.
And encourage them to support this package, because it's a responsible
package. It's one which is not going to be gutting programs for
the poor, but it's going to be trying to cut $50 billion dollars
in so-called mandatory spending, slowing the rate of growth of
spending. We need to be able to rein this in. Now remember, that's
what this bill is all about.
HH: No, no. No, it's...David...
DD: This is about trying to cut
mandatory spending.
HH: That's fine. $50 billion here,
$50 billion there. We're below 4% GDP deficit. It's not that big
of a deal. But ANWAR is. ANWAR is national security. I mean, I
think you guys did not understand where the base was on this,
fundamentally. They don't care about the spending.
DD: Let me just tell you something.
HH: They care about the security.
DD: Let me just say something.
You're wrong. The people I talk to care about spending. And in
fact, it's not just below 4%. It's 2.6 percent of GDP, and that
is a very low figure...
HH: Yes.
DD: ...and so that's why...you're
right. Economic growth needs to be pursued. But that doesn't mean
that we...and remember, this is welfare reform. This is Medicaid
reform. These are critically important things for our base as
well. And I think...
HH: They're not as important as
ANWAR, David. I really believe that.
DD: Of course. And you know what?
We're going to fight as hard as we can to make sure that we pursue
exploration in ANWAR.
HH: All right. And so, you're
back...so, they're calling in the reprobates this weekend, and
beating them up with hammers?
DD: Let me just tell you, conversations
are being held. I'm actually out here in California, right now.
I flew in late last night. I had two Veteran's Day speeches that
I gave today out here, and thanks to all the veterans in the audience,
by the way...
HH: Absolutely.
DD: ...for giving us an opportunity
to have this exchange that Hugh and I just had. And I will tell
you that we've got a lot of work to do. We know it. But we need
to hang together, so everyone in your audience should call every...
HH: Well, I think we ought to
hang a couple of liberal Republicans first. But David Dreier,
thanks for coming out and doing the best to explain that sorry
situation.
End of interview.
Posted at
11:54PM PST
John
Podhoretz on the supposed trouble the conservatives are in.
HH: Joined now by John Podhoretz,
a frequent guest here on the Hugh Hewitt Show. He's a columnist
for the New York Post, a wonderful author, and a frequent talking
head, and also just a generally nice guy. John, welcome back.
JP: Thanks, Hugh.
HH: John, I am dismayed at the
House Republicans, at Senator Olympia Snowe. So much so that I'm
not worried about the president or the war. As he demonstrated
today, he'll swing back. But I don't know what you do when you've
got people like Dave Reichert, a freshman in Washington state,
who votes against ANWAR in a time of $3 buck oil, $3 dollar a
gallon gasoline, what are your thoughts?
JP: Well, I think it's all connected.
I think the fact that the president fought back today is a necessary
element in getting the Republican Party in Congress under control.
I think that they have the feeling that he's...that they've taken
a lot of heat from him, and are suffering from his declining poll
numbers. And if he isn't willing to fight back and try to seize
the initiative, they're going to go off on their own, and just
try to protect their own hides. So I think what happened today
is very important.
HH: I agree. But what's interesting
is that they feel like they've suffered. Of course, no one suffers
in an off-year. You can't suffer in an off-year. There's no elections.
JP: No, but they're worried. Look,
it is the nature of Republican politicians, particularly ones
in sort of swing states, to assume that bad news, any form of
news that does not instantly go their way, threatens them bodily.
And they are very much affected by the ebb and flow of daily flow,
as opposed to people who live in very solid red states.
HH: How long does it take to get
the message across, though, that the easiest way to get wiped
out politically, is to be nervous, and to be indecisive, especially
on something like exploration for oil, and $3 dollar a gallon
era.
JP: Okay, but you're talking about
the party as a whole.
HH: Right.
JP: And I'm talking about individual
politicians who are in a time when some of the glue that has held
the party together, between the White House and the Hill, is coming
loose. You have Tom Delay, who is no longer the majority leader.
We see the costs of the loss of Tom Delay in what's gone on in
the House this week. I find it very difficult to believe, for
example, that a vote would have been scheduled on a bill that
they were going to lose, if Delay wasn't sure that they weren't
going to win it in the first place.
HH: Right.
JP: I mean, that's just incompetence.
HH: Yup.
JP: You are not supposed to sort
of get yourself into a position where you lose something at the
last minute. And if you think about Delay, who was a kind of managerial
genius of a sort that we actually haven't seen in the House in
many decades, you know, he would not have let that happen. And
I think that this is a wake-up call to the House...to the leadership,
to Denny Hastert and others, that they need to get themselves
in line and on track. As for Olympia Snowe in the Senate, I think
what we have there is people who think that the president is weakened.
And when he was strong, they were too chicken to go against him
on things like extending the tax cuts. But when he is...when they
feel he is weakened, they can sort of do whatever they want. And
he needs...therefore, it is a kind of battle that the president
needs to take on. So it's extremely encouraging news that he has
decided to fight back today. I mean, that speech was very important,
as long as he doesn't drop it. You know, he's got to keep doing
it.
HH: Yup.
JP: He has got to keep the pointed
attack up. He has spent nine months...the administration has spent
more than a year since the election, sort of with its dukes down,
letting itself get beat up. And it can't allow it anymore.
HH: Now John Podhoretz, from your
perspective as a New York Post columnist, I know you're watching
what's going on in France, because New York being almost an international
capitol as well as an American center of business. And today in
the Wall Street Journal, Dan Henninger writes about the French
economic collapse. And Mark Steyn in the Spectator last week wrote
about their demographic collapse. These are serious issue. I mean,
these are very big deals, especially when you've also got the
Amman bombing, et cetera, and yet you have Democrats who are making
stuff up, who are just not serious people.
JP: Well, I think what you have
here, and I described this in my book, Bush Country, are people
who think that...who understand that what 9/11 represented was
the degree to which the world has altered itself, and the degree
to which an ideological enemy as the president outlined in his
speech today, has now...is now facing us down. And people who
think that 9/11 was a kind of a fluke, it was a lucky shot, a
bunch of freaks, you know, grabbed some airplanes and got us.
And since we haven't been hit again...
HH: Fifty months today. It's been
fifty months.
JP: ...since we have not been
hit again, they want to go back into a bubble, and they're bubble
is, we're not at risk, we're only at risk because of what we do,
because of the divisions in our own politics, we're at risk because
of what George W. Bush does. We're at risk because of what Republicans
do. And aside from whether or not it's crude, it's wrong, it's
everything, it has this quality of kind of ostrich sticking your
head in the sand, refusing to accept the reality that's in front
of you. You know, 14 days of rioting in France, tens of thousands
of cars destroyed, people walking into weddings and blowing themselves
up in inflict the maximum number of casualties...
HH: Yeah. Islamist groups in Australia
trying to blow people up, assassination squads in the Netherlands...
JP: Everywhere. And you know,
we saw London...London only happened three months ago. So this
is the reality, and the fact is that one half of the political
system has decided that it does not want to deal with the reality.
It wants to live as though the reality does not exist. And the
president called them irresponsible, and I think that's true.
But I think that something else is going on. I think there's a
kind of pathological refusal to face reality.
HH: That pathological refusal
on display at Hofstra yesterday, where they had a reunion of the
Clinton administration, including Bill Clinton. And I just want
to read a paragraph, get your comment. Former secretary of state
Madeleine K. Albright talked about how satisfying it was to work
for a president who was so knowledgeable, so hard-working. And
she said her colleagues made foreign policy recommendations to
him quote through consensus, not cabals. Judging by applause and
laughter, the audience caught the reference to a recent speech
by a former Bush official complaining that Iraq policy is dictated
by a Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal. Madeleine Albright was the most irresponsible,
greatest failure as a secretary of state since World War II, and
she gets laugh lines at this, John?
JP: Well, but wait. First of all,
let's recharacterize a couple of things. Lawrence Wilkerson, the
guy who referred to the...
HH: Cabal.
JP: ...Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal,
was not a Bush administration official. He is a Powell administration
official.
HH: Right.
JP: He is Powell's personal aide
of twenty years. If Powell was working for Clinton, he worked
for Powell. If Powell's working for Bush, he worked for Powell.
And Wilkerson, who described this war as a result of a cabal,
also in a wild contradiction, said things like there was no disagreement
that Saddam possessed...we all agreed that Saddam possessed weapons
of mass destruction. We all agreed that the only thing there was
some disagreement on was whether he had nuclear weapons now. And
yet, if that was the case, what was wrong...what could be wrong
with declaring war?
HH: I don't know, but it is astonishing
to me that they report these symposium as though they're serious.
John Podhoretz from the New York Post, thank you.
Posted at
5:15PM PST
Blog
of the Week.
The entries, week by week, are
getting stronger and stronger. Thanks to all who participated.
The voting, legal and otherwise, goes on for the five at the top
of the page until noonish, Monday. Vote early and often. Next
week's Crosley Solo winner might be you, if you pick something
said on Hugh's show, blog about it, and send the link to generalissimo@hughhewitt.com.
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and a little typing. Good luck.
Posted at
2:00PM PST