The party's over: GOP is to blame - Hyposcrisy & I. Lewis Libby

The countdown to irrelevance for the Republican party has begun - and they have only themselves to blame. They've done nothing to counter the perception they're hypocrites who will compromise their beliefs for power and campaign cash. And while they can't stop their demise from happening, they don't have to accelerate it like they did last week.

It started monday with a no-confidence resolution on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. This is a man who fired 10% of the US Attorneys in the Justice Department, but didn't (and doesn't) know why they were fired or why they were considered for being fired. He oversees a Justice Department where an official actually feared if she testified truthfully about the performance of her job duties, she could be prosecuted for breaking the law! Senate Republicans called the resolution a political stunt which would do nothing but get Senators up for re-election on the record so their vote could be used against them on the campaign trail and used a procedural move to block it from coming to the floor for a vote. Well, if the resolution itself is just a political stunt, then what do you call the move to block the resolution from coming to the floor - if not a political stunt? I call it hypocritical.

Then came the news that now the "16 words trial" is over, Scooter Libby is going to jail while his appeal is pending. Conservative editorial boards, columnists, and rank-and-file Republicans called for the President to pardon him. He may have perjured himself, they say, but nobody was charged with committing the underlying crime so there should have been no trial in the first place. This was a prosecutor who was out of control.

They were singing a different tune when the prosecutor was Ken Starr, the investigation was into a land deal known as "Whitewater", the defendant was President Clinton, and the question became whether or not he asked Monica Lewinsky to lie under oath. Talk about no underlying crime - President Clinton was never charged with breaking any laws, Whitewater or Monica-related, but for the crime of lying about getting a little on the side, not only was he impeached, but the Wall Street Journal said the President's offenses were so serious that he, "should be indicted, upholding the principle that even Presidents and ex-Presidents are not above the law." Adding that he "could be considered for a Presidential pardon" if he'd "stop denying his wrongdoings". They went after him for Whitewater, filegate, the travel office firings, and Web Hubbell's suicide - and they got him for lying. Why not let it go? Because "we cannot tolerate perjury," according to Ken Starr.

Libby's crime (perjury) was a bit more serious. He misled the FBI to cover his lies, the Vice President's lies, and the President's lies. They didn’t lie about something serious like whether they had touched a consenting adult in a private place, just about Iraq's nuclear weapons capability - in order to justify a pre-emptive invasion of a country which posed no threat and didn’t attack us. No big deal. It's not like the result of those lies is an open-ended military occupation of a Muslim country by a largely Christian army which has cost hundreds of thousands of civilians lives, tens of thousands wounded, and almost 3,500 dead American military personnel - costing almost a half a trillion dollars and leading to a predictable (and predicted) civil war which is tearing the country and the region apart.

But there was the Journal again, saying "the time for a pardon is now" the day after the guilty verdict, calling the conviction a "travesty of justice". After the sentence was handed down, the Journal was back at it, insulting our armed forces by calling Libby a "soldier" in the war in Iraq who didn't deserve to be "left behind" by the President and insulting the Justice Department by saying Patrick Fitzgerald didn't know if the case was about outing an undercover agent or perjury and obstruction (actually, the case was about perjury which obstructed the investigation into the outing of an undercover agent). If Libby told the truth about what he knew the President and Vice President had authorized, both men would have been charged with the underlying crime.

Of course, everyone knows this - from the Wall Street Journal editorial board down to the rank-and-file Republican, they just want their guy pardoned - despite the fact he has never expressed remorse or regret for what he did. That's why they're seen as hypocrites and that's why when November 2008 comes, they'll lose the White House, seats in the House, and seats in the Senate. And they'll be on their way to joining the once-formidable Whigs and Tories.