Partisanship isn't same as statesmanship

Commentary

Greg Bemis |

4/27/2008 - 4/27/08

This past week I was the recipient of a fundraising letter from Tom Udall in which he commented that "The biggest obstacle to putting America back on track is 49 Republican Senators who have used every conceivable procedural stunt to keep our nation on George Bush's destructive and irresponsible course."

As though that wasn't silly enough, he included a short note from Bill Richardson who said, "I've been pretty busy (needless plug) in the last year but I wasn't too busy to notice a stubbornly partisan and ideologically extreme Republican minority stonewall progress in the United States Senate."

My response is that everything these 49 Republicans did this past year was exactly what the Democrats taught them how to do the previous six years. The prior failure to move beneficial legislation, to appoint judges, to enter into productive discourse, was exactly the expertise the Democrat senators used so continually and destructively for the first six years of the Bush presidency. It is crass, divisive and intellectually dishonest to now claim that the Republicans are guilty of something from which America has suffered the past six years so extensively at the hands of the Senate Democrats.

Here are two extreme further examples of ego-driven, power-mad abuse of the democratic process that have been displayed by highly partisan Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The first is the Free Trade Agreement long in negotiation with Colombia. No economist worth his salt would challenge the desirability of free-trade agreements. No one with any intellectual honesty would question the incredible progress Álvaro Uribe has made in turning Colombia from a disaster area into a growing, politically stable, and economically flourishing South American country and friend of ours. Their products enter our country virtually tax free whereas ours still have heavy tariffs going there. This FTA would level the playing field for our exports and would maintain and enhance jobs (union ones at that) in our country.

But our union leaders feel that the incredibly improved environment for Colombia's union leaders isn't enough and have told Pelosi to kill the FTA. This is Pelosi at her worst; irresponsible, irrational, but doing the union bidding (her campaign funding) to the detriment of Americans. What hypocrisy.

And secondly, we are currently operating without the benefit of our technology and its ability to listen in on terrorists around the globe as they communicate their plans for further horrendous attacks. Why? Pelosi refuses to allow a vote on the renewal of the warrantless wiretap bill — FISA. This bill, which has done so much to protect us for the past six years, and whose counterpart in Britain contributed to the prevention of the terrorist plan to blow seven transatlantic airliners out of the air, has been sidetracked for only one reason by Pelosi. One part of the bill exempted the communication companies providing this intelligence, at the behest of our government, from liability suits by our wonderful greedy tort lawyers.

Here we are asking these private, non-governmental entities to help protect the citizens of America and Nancy Pelosi wants to make sure that the trial lawyers are free to sue any and all of these companies, regardless of whether or not there is any rational for doing so. The reason is simple. The trial lawyers are one of the biggest single sources of funds for the Democrats, and they don't want targets of their greed to be granted any protection. So today it appears that we operate without FISA protection, and if we have another terrorist attack in or on this country, we can look to Nancy Pelosi for her politically partisan vote denial for whatever mayhem occurs.

No, Messrs. Udall and Richardson, it is not just Republicans who prevent meaningful progress either in the present or the past six years. I would like to suggest that instead of taking such a cheap shot in an attempt to raise campaign funds, instead you try to convince us of all the good programs you would like to see enacted, programs that protect us, enhance our economic well being, and are worthy of bipartisan support. Wouldn't that be a challenge.

Santa Fean Gregg Bemis is an industrialist/adventurer and a concerned senior citizen.