Chuck Noe, NewsMax.com
Saturday, Mar. 2, 2002

"I think the Republicans' reaction is nothing short of hysterical," the South Dakota Democrat said in the sing-song little-boy voice he uses when talking to reporters.

"I'm amused, frankly. I'd asked them to take a look at what I said, because I stand by what I said."

The refusal of Daschle and other Democrats, including Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and especially the increasingly dotty Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, to apologize for recent attacks on the Bush administration is business as usual.

Contrast those bare-knuckles tactics with the White House's immediate caving Thursday after press secretary Ari Fleischer merely hinted at a well-known fact: the desperate-for-a-legacy Clinton administration's pushy, and failed, interference in the Middle East.

Fleischer initially would not back off, according to Friday's Washington Post, but wrote an apology after Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, complained to his successor, Condoleezza Rice.

Naughty Ari Gets Punished

"I mistakenly suggested that increasing violence in the Middle East was attributable to the peace efforts that were underway in 2000," Fleischer wrote.

"That is not the position of the administration. ... No United States President, including President Clinton, is to blame for violence in the Middle East. The only people to blame for violence are the terrorists who engage in it. I regret any implication to the contrary."

Imagine Daschle or Hollings or any other Democrat issuing such an apology for the far harsher things they have said about the Bush administration. It will never happen, because they play to win.

Fox New Channel left-winger Alan Colmes on Thursday night chortled that Fleischer "had" to apologize. Why doesn't Hollings have to apologize for his bizarre and baseless ramblings? Why don't Daschle, Byrd and company have to apologize for giving aid and comfort to the enemy? The pro-Democrat media establishment hasn't called on them to, for one reason.

In a televised "news conference" Friday that looked more like a lecture, reporters were shown lapping up Daschle's comments without challenge. The South Dakota leftist got away with saying he had not criticized the president Thursday, even though he had said, during wartime, that "the continued success, I think, is still somewhat in doubt."

Then he portrayed his morale-destroying potshots as patriotic. "The Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ask questions. We are not a rubber stamp to this president or to anybody else. We must do what the Constitution and what our best judgment requires."

As usual, he continued to fail to offer any suggestions on how he would get Osama bin Laden or win the war on terrorism.

Bush Refuses to Fight Back

While the Democrats, with an eye on the 2002 and 2004 elections, go partisan, President Bush continues to trumpet bipartisanship, even though that has become a solo act.

Instead of taking advantage of his popularity to put down the attacks from Democrats, he remained focused Friday on the other enemy. "It may take a while. But what Osama bin Laden's got to understand – if we haven't already gotten him, I don't know where he is – but I think he now understands that this patient and determined nation is going to hunt him down.

"He can't hide long," Bush said in Iowa.

Neither can the president and his party hide long from the opposition's escalating and obviously coordinated assaults. With the Dems throwing punches like schoolyard bullies and the Republicans reacting with slaps like shrieking second-grade sissies, it won't be surprising if the GOP controls neither house of Congress after the November elections.

News analysis by Chuck Noe, editorial director of NewsMax.com.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bush Administration

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