Posted on 04/20/2005 8:32:45 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Democrats trying to sink the nomination of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador scored a big victory yesterday, when Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, declared himself unready to back the nominee. The Dems' efforts to beat Bolton on ideological grounds--that he's too pro-American and has "disdain" for the U.N.--having failed, they turned to that old standby, the politics of personal destruction.
Voinovich's concern for the Golden Rule is certainly touching, but does it apply to air traffic controllers? What prompts the question is an incident that occurred in 1995, when he was governor of Ohio. The Cincinnati Enquirer's Cliff Radel described the incident in a June 1996 column:
Gov. Short Fuse blew on Oct. 20 when federal rules delayed his plane's takeoff as the president arrived in Columbus.
When this order is in effect, no planes other than essential aircraft are cleared for takeoff. That reduces the chances of a terrorist staging a kamikaze attack on Air Force One.
The order kept the governor and his plane on the ground. And he was honked.
Gov. Voinovich called it "bull"-something and ordered his pilot to break the rules and take off. He even dared the control tower to "shoot us down." That, too, would have cost. One hour of flying time for an F-15 Eagle fighter jet runs $3,399 to $4,037.
The Federal Aviation Administration "responded by slapping the governor with a standard $1,500 fine," and Voinovich decided to fight, at taxpayer expense. "We're paying his lawyers' $95-an-hour fee," noted Radel in June 1996. "Their bill could top out at $20,000."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Now I am with you on this one. IMO, *all* of the GOP 'leadership' have at one time or another trashed Bush in one way or another.
And I am keeping a list; Hagel and Lugar are already on the list, under the heading of "Will Not Vote for Under Any Circumstance."
As I have said many times before, never let it be said that the GOP ever fails to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
I think we need to look into every member of that committee who is blocking this and see what we can come up with. As a matter of fact, just about every dem has had "incidents" where they have yelled at subordinates. Let's make these a little public.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1387642/posts
Check out this link - evidently the lady from MOB was lying through her teeth - and her boss has come forward and told an entirely different story about her and about Bolton.
Now .. it's getting interesting.
I'm feeling in a contrarian mood tonight.
IF the charges leveled against Bolton were true (I mean all of the ones listed by the democrats in the hearing), would it be wrong to consider them before confirming the nominee?
We presume the charges are all false, since they are put forth by democrats. That is generally a good bet. And of course we "know" that this is a ploy to delay the nomination so they can dig up more dirt. And we know that they will try to make stuff up.
But if we can investigate the charges, and show them to be unmerited, and them confirm the nominee with the democrats voting against anyway, isn't that better than rushing him out of the committee and then finding, to our shock, that the charges WERE true and republicans look like we rushed a nominee without regard to the merits?
That would be disastrous to our fight for judicial nominees, because every time a republican said "there is nothing to the charges" the democrats would point out how we rushed them to vote on Bolton and see how that turned out.
If we investigate and clear Bolton of these (supposedly baseless) charges, I think Voinovich will vote for him, and his support will have more merit with the american people because they have been told how "principled" he was to give it a look, and if by George he looked at it and was satisfied that there was nothing there, well that pretty much shows the democrats are just playing politics. Then when the judicial nominees come up and the dems call them extremists the republicans can point to this as why they just don't trust the dems to be honest.
So far, as evidence comes forward it is looking good for Bolton. If there are rational explanations for why Biden's rant is largely false, it should not only get Bolton out of committee, it should make it hard for the democrats to filibuster.
I can guarantee you if the republicans had voted him out thursday, the MSM would have given the dems enough cover to filibuster on the floor, saying that the committee didn't do its job.
If we believe Bolton in this matter, we should be able to stand a couple of weeks proving that the next set of charges are baseless.
Now that I've said all that, I will admit that I wanted him voted out of committee, and I think Voinovich should have told Lugar ahead of time there was a chance for this so Lugar could have played a hand that looked more like the republicans grudgingly giving the recalcitrant democrats one more week to finish their work, instead of it looking like the republicans were happy to run roughshod over the dems until one "principled" republican put a stop to it (proving the democrats had a point asking for the delay)
I am a strong Bolton Supporter, although I will say that if every charge Biden leveled were found to be true I wouldn't write nasty letters if the senate didn't confirm him.
The MSM plays this as a blow to Bush, but if they were honest they would point out that, prior to the hearings, there was NOBODY anywhere who had any idea of this "anger problem" that the democrats are now using, or in fact of the other charges. After all, the democrats say they just learned it (I don't believe them). How could the president be held responsible for things he had no way of knowing?
Thanks
Char :)
I hope that what Dubya does is just not send up another nominee for the UN. Just let it go without an ambassador.
As much as I would have liked to see Lugar force a vote, I'm glad he didn't. I truly believe all the allegations against Bolton are completely bogus and if Sen. Norm Coleman and Sen. George Allen have their way, they will expose these false allegations and the people behind them for the frauds they are.
I mean WTF, The woman behind the claim that Bolton chased her through the halls of some Hotel in a former Soviet Satellite Country is the Founder and current Chair of "Mothers Opposing Bush" or "MOB". This woman is not credible and she will be exposed if she is brought before the Committee to testify on these allegations, she will take the 5th and Joe (Jack-in-the-Box) Biden will have the door of his dark cubicle shut until the next time he surfaces as we hear "POP GOES THE WEISEL" :-)
Are you serious???? The allegations have already been debunked as flat out lies. Read National Review On-line and the letters from the employer of the accuser. The woman is a dangerous nut case.
See Post #28
Force a vote? He called the White House this very morning and asked them to WITHDRAW Bolton!
I don't get it -- how will withdrawing the Bolton nomination and replacing him with Giuliani make the Democrats pay??
Hillary gets a free ride plus time and money to help other Dems....
Maybe Rudy makes life unpleasant for Kofi et al., but I wouldn't count on it...
The answer is in the article posted by Cyber Ant on Post #24. It was also reported on Fox earlier this evening. This woman "whistle blower's" boss has come forward refuting her entire story. So, there weren't any skeletons in Bolton's closet about which President Bush needed to be informed.
At first, it looked a bit like the Linda Chavez kerfluffle, when she was nominated for Sec. of Labor only to have the disclosure leaked, that she had once sheltered an illegal. But this flaming of Bolton must be mostly a concocted story, according to the article cited by Cyber Ant.
No, I'm not. I left out the sarcasm tags.
Did he really?, Post the link to this story
And the aftermath, says a Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is that committee chairman Richard Lugar on Wednesday morning broached the subject of pulling back the nomination with White House officials and the State Department.
Maybe I didn't pay enough attention. If Voinovich hung in there yesterday, wouldn't they have voted it to the floor?
Oh well, you provided an opportunity for me to post about the story being debunked. You have to post those sarcasm tags around here because there are so many DU disruptors lately that you never know when a poster is serious.
Yes. And if Lugar had held the vote at 3:30 when he first called it, the vote would have been 9 to 8 and, unless I am mistaken THAT would have put it on the floor, too.
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