Running Scared

The reaction by conservatives to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide put on display why the Republican Party is better known as the Grand Old Party of Hypocrisy.

After spending a decade going after President Bill Clinton in attempt to remove from him from office, conservatives are crying that it wasn't criminality, but a political squabble that resulted in a conviction for Scooter Libby.

In reality, as Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post.com pointed out "with former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby's conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction yesterday, the stench of corruption has taken formal residence at the White House."

What is really amazing in analyzing the conservative complaints is that when one compares the actions of the Bush and Clinton administrations, one is left wondering what the fuss was all about regarding the Clinton's investigations.

Then the question of firings involved management of the White House Travel Office, not federal prosecutors for political purposes; perjury investigations regarded whether the President told the truth regarding a personal lawsuit, not the reason for going to war and outing a CIA undercover official; actions of the Clinton special prosecutor led people to compare him to Inspector Javert of Les Miserables for overreaching investigations as opposed to a nonpartisan prosecutor who went going back to his day job with his reputation intact; and finally the Clinton investigations left the President with sky high approval ratings while the Libby trial has contributed to Bush being near all time lows.

(President Clinton's highest-ever job-approval numbers in Gallup Organization polling for CNN and USA Today came in a survey taken on Dec. 19-20, 1998, the weekend that the House approved articles of impeachment against the President. By comparison, new Zogby Poll released before the Libby verdict found Bush back at a dismal 30 percent approval, within reach of Richard Nixon's ratings at their nadir.)

All of this has left Bush appearing irrelevant. Other than hard core conservatives who would follow Bush anywhere, it's hard to imagine much of the rest of the country being willing to go off that cliff, which also explains why conservatives are so unhappy.

With a presidential election 20 months away, Republicans know that while they weren't able to turn the people against Clinton, they were able to convince about 48% of Americans to vote for George Bush. Many times 48% would be a losing amount (just ask John Kerry) but in 2000 Ralph Nader sucked away three percent, leaving Al Gore with a tiny popular vote victory. Unfortunately just enough votes weren't counted in Florida allowing Bush to claim victory.

So if false scandals slightly hurt the party run by a popular president, what will real scandals do to a party run by a unpopular president? Will all the close states turn blue?