Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is someone who, like many other Republicans, seems to always be willing to take one for the team. Whereas during the Attourney General’s testimony, his opinion that the wiretapping program was illegal clearly stood out. He, along with Specter, kept it real at that point in all of this. Yet during the hearings yesterday, Graham was channeling Ken Melhman througout.
How I know this is a matter of understanding the fact that he’s a very smart guy, quick on his feet, and when someone like that is asked to get dumb and repeat some talking points, it tends to look awful. First of all, he insisted that Richard Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in, incorrectly. Second, he said to Nixon’s General Council (who was on the panel), “that’s why you went to jail sir”, again incorrect, as this man had been a whistleblower and went into witness protection, never stepping a foot in jail.
If Graham had simply approached it honestly, based on his feelings towards the issue rather than merely acting an assigned role handed to him by the GOP leadership, his performance wouldn’t have given the proceedings a bonafide feel of ‘kangaroo courtiness’.
He knows how he feels on this matter, as do I, as do his staff members and fellow politicians on the hill. And it’s this dynamic of the top-down strategy that turns brilliance into fart jokes right before our eyes. A disgrace in my opinion, and in a lot of ways, the primary reason we’re in this mess to begin with. These Senators got lazy once Dubya was elected, and the damage done has necessitated this constant closing of the ranks, leading to the overall dumbing down of the institution.
Too many Republican Senators bought into the idea that if they went on vacation, let the administration call the shots, it’d all work out. Why it continues…well that has more to do with the RNC’s strategy for midterms than the amount of faith any of them actually have in the status quo. And so, brilliant minds grow dull, as leaders refuse to play their REAL parts in all this.
“We’re fighting them over there, so we don’t have to do our jobs over here”
Later, when called to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Dean testified that Nixon knew of and participated in the cover-up, a statement that Nixon and his aides strongly disputed. The subsequent disclosure and release of taped conversations in which Nixon discussed the break-in corroborated Dean’s testimony. Dean was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and to defraud the government, and he served four months in prison.
Graham was right.
Graham said that Nixon ordered it, then when Dean pointed out that was wrong Graham accused Dean of ordering them (the break-ins). Nixon and Dean were wrapped up in the cover-up, but did not authorize the breakins.
This is well established in the history. The leaking of the ‘Pentagon Papers’ is what started it.
For Graham to have been correct in his accertion, the tapes would have been made prior to the breakin.
Hey, either way…Graham is a genius compared to Sessions! Graham is also a phenomenal lawyer, and normally wouldn’t have looked this dumb with all the lights on. The premise he was arguing was handed to him, rather than it having been the product of his own thought and research, and that’s why it came off bad.
Dean did serve 4 years I guess, but I’d always thought he got spared jail for his cooperation.
For the record…Nixon wasn’t impeached, he did the classy thing and steped down!
Graham is doing the best he can given what he has to work with. The eavesdropping is obviously illegal, so he sort of winds up like the guy trying to defend Massoui, if your client is an idiot you can only do so much.
For the record…Nixon wasn’t impeached, he did the classy thing and steped down!
Yeah, if only Clinton would have done the same thing but I guess we can credit him with sparing us from having Gore. What a nut job that guy turned out to be, I think the Left would agree with me there.
Right:
You probably need to let your Clinton hatred go, then maybe let the Seehawk thing go, it will make you a happier person.