Parading for Political Points

Back in 2008, Democrats in congress, led by Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) submitted HRes 1258, which contained 35 articles of impeachment of then-president Bush.  Most of the articles dealt with war crimes, some with election tampering.  By a margin of 251-166, the motion was approved for assignment to the Judiciary Committee.  Astoundingly, 24 Republicans voted for the resolution.

The Left Wing news machine, blog-o-sphere and Bush haters were wild with delight, and played it up big.  Now Bush will get his justice.  He’s going to get impeached.  Not so fast.  The election cycle was spinning up, the Left began swooning over Barack, … the Committee never addressed the matter and it died there.  Nonetheless, it was an opportunity for the media to point to the nation’s “obvious” disgust with GWB: look what’s being done about it in the hallowed halls of congress.

This past week Republicans had two episodes of their own such grandstanding, or Parading for Political Points.  Rand Paul’s ballyhoo (an actual filibuster) to draw attention to the administration’s reluctance to give a simple and straightforward answer to the question of whether a US citizen can be tracked down and killed by simple order of “high government officials” without benefit of 5th and 6th amendment constitutional protection.

Now this.  Republicans, the Right wing blog-o-sphere and news media are drawing attention to current-president Obama’s frequent extravagant vacations and golf outings (to wit, recent vacation to play golf with Tiger Woods).   This at a time when the president’s administration cannot find the funds to continue giving school children tours of the White House.

Now Representative Louie Gomert (R-TX) has introduced an amendment to the so-called Continuing Resolution bill that would de-fund such extravagant outings and vacations (the 115 rounds of golf, private lessons from Tiger Woods, multiple trips to Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard, plus outings to Spain, Vail ….).  [Sequester Cuts: Congressman Wants To Defund Obama’s Golf Outings]

It won’t pass, and legislatively these actions won’t amount to anything — like the Bush articles of impeachment.  But they do give Rightwing-o-philes and Twitterati something to buzz about on FaceBook,  Fox, Daily Caller … it remains to be seen if the MSM (Mainstream media) will do much more than mention these so that they can ridicule them.

[I mention only in passing that after Bush had committed the US, and the world, to a second war in mid-2003, he ceased playing golf and taking fancy vacations; it just wasn’t prudent in a period when there was so much sacrifice occurring.  Vacations were to Camp David or his hacienda in Crawford, TX — where he was subjected to negative media attention, thanks to Cindy Sheehan’s protests.]

Regards,

Joe Girard (c) 2013