Annals of false equivalency

Michael Kranish at the Globe brings us a heartwarming story about the knife in Bob Dole's back placed there by Senate Republicans who refused to pass an innocuous international disabilities treaty because of their Tea Party constituents.  Oh wait, it turns out that, in fact, it's equally the Dem's fault!

Years earlier, McConnell had been in that 1989-90 session and often had followed Dole's moderate, bipartisan lead, voting for the ADA.

But McConnell, like his party, had become more conservative over the years, amplified by the creation of the Tea Party movement, and McConnell would famously say that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Democrats, too, became more partisan. Obama pushed through health care legislation without Republican support. Reid inserted himself into the presidential campaign, saying — without supplying any evidence — that GOP nominee Mitt Romney didn’t pay federal taxes for a decade.

The culture of Washington had shifted dramatically. In the Mitchell-Dole years, many members of Congress lived in the nation’s capital much of the year and socialized with colleagues in the other party. By the time of the 2012 session, fund-raising and home-state demands prompted many members to spend far less time in Washington.

Donald Ritchie, the Senate’s official historian, said some senators don’t have time to know their colleagues. “Someone will come into the room and will ask, ‘Who is that?’ Someone from across the aisle. They just don’t have the kind of opportunities they used to have,” Ritchie said. “One of the few times they get to see each other is when they are on the floor voting.”

Um, no.  Obama pushed through health care legislation that was designed in a Republican think tank and enacted by a Republican governor that couldn't find a single Republican vote in the Senate.  And Reid hurt somebody's feefees?

This is about a Republican Party that has gone insane.  All the false equivalency about "both sides are mean," doesn't change that fact.

The first public sign of trouble came shortly after Moran announced he was joining a bipartisan group of supporters. Word spread that the Tea Party wanted to stop treaties that its members viewed as threats to American sovereignty.

Fears of the jackbooted, blue helmeted UN thugs.

The Republican Party is in thrall to loons and the charlatans who lead them, as the story goes on to illustrate, but Kranish checked the box, "Both Sides Do It."

Must be a RINO

Apparently, the woman expected to take Judd Greg's Senate seat -- a Republican -- as Senator Greg insists, acted in a not-batshit crazy way when she was president of the Univ. of New Hampshire. Of course, that infuriates The Corner's Fredo.

His integrity can't be impugned, can it?

Oh, my. George Will on the Straight Talk Express!

Smith, behaving honorably toward someone who does not reciprocate civilities, today says McCain has an arguable case that, not having cashed any public checks, he should be released from his commitment and the spending ceiling. The FEC must decide, but it cannot act because it lacks a quorum.

Normally it has six members, three from each party. Three members -- two Democrats and one Republican -- were recess appointments whose terms have expired. Senate Republicans are prepared to confirm all three -- plus the confirmation of David Mason for a new term as chairman -- to six-year terms, but Barack Obama and three other Democrats are blocking confirmation of the Republican, Hans von Spakovsky.

Von Spakovsky is as skeptical as Smith is about the entanglement of politics in regulations for which McCain is primarily responsible. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, refusing to surrender the settled principle that each party chooses its FEC members, insists that all four be voted on as a package.

McCain, although rarely reticent about matters concerning campaign regulations, has said nothing in defense of von Spakovsky, the campaign against whom has been led by the Campaign Legal Center, whose president is Trevor Potter, general counsel of the McCain campaign.

In 2001, McCain, a situational ethicist regarding "big money" in politics, founded the Reform Institute to lobby for his agenda of campaign restrictions. It accepted large contributions, some of six figures, from corporations with business before the Commerce Committee (e.g., Echosphere, DISH Network, Cablevision Systems Corp., a charity funded by the head of Univision). The Reform Institute's leadership included Potter and two others who are senior advisers in McCain's campaign, Rick Davis and Carla Eudy.

Although his campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers -- still, he probably is innocent of insincerity. Such is his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.

Such certitude is, however, not merely an unattractive trait. It is disturbing righteousness in someone grasping for presidential powers.

Seems a certain "RINO Hunter" is amused.