By DEXTER DUGGAN
The media spigot was running full gush yet again after President George H.W. Bush left this life. The words flooded out that he was a tower of civility and courtesy, a model of moderation, an example so sorely needed today for us all.
The spigot gets turned on, and it gets turned off. Better to bring your own bottled water than expect to get truth serum from this faucet. Bush One hadn’t always fared so well in this liquid environment.
Still, just a few months ago the spigot spewed the same juice when Sen. John McCain’s death arrived —what a mighty example for us all, a lesson of civility we so sorely need, bipartisanship and cooperation instead of Trumpian rancor.
But hardly had McCain’s body gone under the grass than raging, threatening thugs in early September assaulted a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room and the streets of Washington, D.C. Goodness gracious, the thugs hailed — or heiled — from the same political quarter that had just been so treacly over restoring civility.
Donald Trump had dared to nominate his second conservative to the Supreme Court, this time Brett Kavanaugh, and leftism once again showed its fangs. No lie against Kavanaugh was too big, no smear too awful, to try to prevent him from gaining a role at an all-powerful High Court that the left itself had empowered — but only in order to impose the left’s own will. No one else’s hands allowed on the legal levers.
The only Republican presidents dominant media like are dead or surrendered ones. It’s a hopeless quest in this environment to think that any political brand but liberalism or leftism will win their support. At least Trump appears to realize this, although it’d be to his great benefit if he exhibited a more genial face to win voters if not reporters.
Goodness gracious, the all-wise, all-good George H.W. Bush hadn’t been so wonderful, either, according to how dominant media had treated him when, in power, he had dared deviate from what they wanted.
To start with, the spigot burbled, after toadying to a senile President Ronald Reagan, Bush chose a moron, Dan Quayle, as his own vice president.
Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee, David Souter, who later revealed himself as a strong leftist, sailed through the Senate for a 90-9 confirmation vote in 1990. But when Bush got off script and picked Clarence Thomas as his second justice, in 1991, the wise men in the back room feared that Thomas would make a mark as an awful conservative, so wheels were set in motion.
An explosion of feminist anger was carefully arranged to derail Bush’s selection. Anita Hill leapt forth with her tales against Thomas — with Arizona’s future leftist Democrat governor Janet Napolitano as her counselor — and Thomas barely scraped by to win confirmation on a 52-48 vote.
It was probably only because the manful Thomas forcefully confronted the assault smearing him that he managed to win the day rather than slinking away in defeat, as the left feels it has a right to expect from its opponents.
As long as the leftist machine gets what it wants in the D.C. power centers that control the nation, all is proclaimed to be well, no matter how much misery and suffering actually ensue, such as during the Barack Obama administration.
Dominant media glow with glee and suppress whimpers of dissent — just the opposite of the times when their will isn’t being done from the White House or Congress, times when a Trump or Reagan gets pummeled constantly as one or another variety of evil or insanity.
As Reagan’s vice president, Bush would have seen that during the unsteady times in the early 1980s when Reagan was trying to put the nation on a better economic path, the president’s every effort was derided in media quarters as foolish “Reaganomics” — until that fruitful day when the economy actually began to flower with long-term improvement.
“Reaganomics” suddenly disappeared from the media vocabulary. The spigot gets turned on, and the spigot gets turned off.
Washington and its workings are a lot like a stage play or movie. The audience sees perhaps three people in front of the curtain, or out on a celluloid street, but there are maybe 50 or 100 additional people in the immediate vicinity to make things happen, and others in support functions. And I don’t mean just chauffeurs, doormen, or Capitol police.
We were told that once Republicans finally had the White House as well as the Senate and House, then the gushers of tax money to butcher Planned Parenthood could be cut off. So voters delivered the magic trifecta in the 2016 general election, but the tax money didn’t dry up despite this golden era of Republican control, and, because all good things must come to an end, the GOP soon will lose the House.
Well, hurry, hurry. The GOP still has its trifecta for a little longer. Stop that spending for a bit while you can. Alas, we’re told, Republicans don’t want to have a scary “government shutdown,” and hardline pro-abortionist Senate Minority — not Majority — Leader Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) would never agree to the funding cut.
The spigots flow and the spigots stop due to handshakes and winks behind the curtain that we never see or hear of. Even a monstrous baby-slayer like Planned Parenthood works its will on the treasury despite a criminal kind of conduct that should put its chiefs in prison.
Despite tributes to Bush One in December, dominant media had perceived him in times past as a callous patrician cut off from the world when they found that portrayal useful.
On December 2 the conservative Daily Caller site recalled that in a 1992 story, The New York Times described Bush as a “career politician, who has lived the cloistered life of a top Washington bureaucrat for decades,” but, on the re-election campaign trail, he “emerged from 11 years in Washington’s choicest executive mansions to confront the modern supermarket.”
Times reporter Andrew Rosenthal, who later went on to run the Times’ ferociously pro-abortion editorial page, constructed a phony tale that Bush was so remote from ordinary life, he was surprised to discover a common supermarket checkout scanner.
The Daily Caller’s Kerry Picket said that even at that time, other media outlets described the Times’ account as inaccurate, but it persisted for so long that the Times still dared to resurrect it for Bush’s obituary.
When The Daily Caller asked the obituary writer “why the paper still stands by the long-debunked story,” he just referred it to the Times’ corporate communications office, which did not respond.
While Bush finally is beyond damage that the media spigots could do to his future, others have sipped themselves into silliness from the flow, such as Sen. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), who rendered himself unelectable in the Grand Canyon State after only one six-year term, and so chose not to run again.
Flake played chummy basketball with leftist Democrat Obama and played along with Obama’s political friendliness toward the Communist dictatorship of Cuba, but was beside himself with moral arrogance and anger against Republican Trump, whom Flake hectored and lectured when the Arizonan should have taken a look in his own mirror instead.
Almost gone from the Senate, Flake used some of his precious last days there to block confirmation of Trump judicial nominees unless the Senate votes on an unconstitutional bill to prevent Trump from firing the Democrats’ fine friend special counsel Robert Mueller.
A Wall Street Journal editorial called Flake’s move a “stunt” and commented: “Republicans are likely to notice that he put his personal feelings about Mr. Trump above confirming judges that any GOP president would be proud to nominate.”
Not an unquestioning ally of Trump, the Journal nevertheless said, “Mr. Flake’s self-indulgence is another example of how hostility to Mr. Trump has caused so many people to lose their own political bearings.”
Flaky Proclivities
The Wanderer asked three politically conscious Arizonans what they thought of Flake’s move. Here are their replies.
Conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard: “At this point, saying bad things about Jeff Flake’s reputation seems gratuitous. He has burned almost every bridge he had to conservatives before realizing he was still considered a good vote on judges, so he torched that one, too.
“Eventually his next career move will be unveiled, and this will all make sense. Until then, you can add judges to the list of issues that he and his replacement, Sinema, will be identical on,” Querard said.
Kyrsten Sinema is a far-left Democrat who won the general election for Flake’s seat.
Phoenix attorney and pro-life activist John Jakubczyk: “Sen. Flake has been a great disappointment, especially when it comes to judges. I do not appreciate his using the confirmation of good judges as hostages for his fight with Trump.”
Retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party Rob Haney: “Flake is the epitome of a Republican squish. His benevolence toward the brutal Cuban leftist dictators and his support of the illegal-alien invasion angered many Arizonans.
“His willingness to block President Trump’s conservative judge appointments until his bill to prolong Mueller’s ‘witch hunt’ is heard demonstrates his disregard for the country’s welfare and illustrates his childish petulance,” Haney said.
“Flake’s role as the nemesis to Trump, the most accomplished fighter for conservative policies we have ever had, has eclipsed his flaky proclivities.”
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