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Jewish World Review Jan. 11, 1999 /22 Teves 5759
Mona Charen
Who invented politics of personal destruction?
(JWR) --- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) DON'T SPARE THEM ANY PITY, the Democrats who are now decrying the
"politics of personal destruction." The left in this country invented and perfected
the politics of personal destruction. They used it against fine men and
women like Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist (remember the
charge that he was a drug addict?) and Prof. Carol Iannone.
It isn't just a matter of turnabout being fair play. No, when the left set
out to destroy people, they targeted people of honor. Knowing that they
could not defeat them with truth, they chose lies.
For Bill Clinton, of all people, to condemn the politics of personal
destruction was an act of surpassing gall. He who smears seven honorable
people every day before breakfast (or has his henchmen do so). He who is
not
above attacking Kenneth Starr for doing a job that his own attorney general
instructed him to carry out.
Bill Clinton is corrupt and despicable. There is little argument about
that. But what of the party that harbors him, not gagging on the poison in
its system?
If you want a reminder of what the leaders of the Democratic Party are
capable of, review the history of Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme
Court in 1987.
Bork was then a federal appeals court judge, former solicitor general and
former Yale law professor. Renowned throughout the nation for his brilliant
scholarship, independence and fine writing, he was an obvious choice for
the
Supreme Court. He was also a man of unquestioned rectitude. He had put his
own career at risk to fight the anti-Semitic quotas at his law firm when
still a young man, and succeeded in getting the firm to change its policy.
He went to bat for a black, female lawyer on his Justice Department staff
who was experiencing discrimination. In other words, he did more than
behave
decently to those around him. He stuck his neck out again and again.
But he disagreed with liberals about affirmative action and Roe v. Wade.
And so the left decided to kill him. Not literally, but to assassinate his
character. And because they could not do so with the truth, they told the
grossest and most reprehensible lies.
The conspirators in this crime included Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Sen.
Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). It included every
major liberal group from NOW to the ACLU, and from the NAACP to People for
the American Way. Kennedy set the contemptible tone by describing "Bork's
America" as a place of racial segregation, back-alley abortions and rogue
police knocking down citizens' doors in midnight raids. It was all
preposterous. But Democrats don't mind lies.
Expensive ads were purchased suggesting that Bork upheld a company policy
forcing women to choose between losing their jobs or undergoing
sterilization -- totally false. One of the other judges on the case said
later "They made Bob look like some kind of Nazi scientist . .... It was
inexcusable."
One of Ralph Nader's groups published a study which purported
to analyze Bork's record on the Court of Appeals. The report, widely
reported as fact, contended that Bork was uniformly pro-business,
pro-government and anti-consumer. But the study examined only 10 percent of
Bork's cases, and falsified his record.
In fact, Bork had voted with the
majority 95 percent of the time and had voted with the court's liberals on
80 percent of the cases.
The "borking" of Bork is comprehensively recounted in Ethan Bronner's book
"Battle for Justice." Bronner, a Boston Globe reporter, is thorough, but
unwilling to face the dismaying reality of the smear campaign. It was, he
writes, "neither lie nor truth. It was half-truth." No. If you are a
horse's
ass, and I call you a horse, that is not a half-truth.
That libelous attack on one of the nation's best men set a tone. Before
they can beg for civility, Democrats must recognize that they themselves
destroyed
By contrast, everyone
knows that the things President Clinton stands accused of are true, and
that
he and his agents, faithful to their party's tradition, have been wielding
lies as weapons. Adlai Stevenson once quipped "If the Republicans will stop
telling lies about me, I'll stop telling the truth about them."
Bork
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9/18/98: Christianity and the Holocaust
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8/21/98: The unravelling
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6/9/98: These girls say no to sex, yes to excellence
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