Tom Daschle, in a tape segment on the News Hour (PBS), September 26, 2002, said the following, and we quote, “They’re making it more difficult by not allowing us to proceed on homeland security.”

That statement is an outright, baldfaced, damn near treasonous lie.

Do you recall watching Tom Daschle (D. S. Dakota), the Senate Majority Leader, ranting with patriotic fervor the day after President George Bush said the Senate doesn’t seem to care about national security?

Can you picture him in your mind, at the podium, listing senators who had honorably defended their country in wars, then demanding an apology from Bush?  Did you know that the statement for which he was demanding an apology never happened?  

President Bush’s complaint about the senate had to do with the fact that it has been sitting on the home security legislation, refusing to move it forward because the Democrats, as usual servants to one of their largest political contributors, organized labor, wanted to make it virtually impossible for the president to replace incompetent government employees.  (Sometime when you get a moment, look up the word "sinecure.")

Daschle’s raving about Bush’s so-called denigration of men who had risked their lives in combat was not in any way relevant.  It was an attempt by Daschle to cover up the essence of the matter – the fact that he and his friends are blocking a bill that is critical to this nation’s ability to deal with the kind of terrorist threats that slaughtered thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001.

The president, with good reason, refused to cave in and apologize for a statement he never made.  Democrats on the inside saw the national response to Daschle’s stupid, misleading speech, and privately began to edge away from their own senate leadership.  Why?  Because this is an issue that can hang them all out to dry.  With the election so near, and the polls showing that the economy as an issue is in the basement compared to national security matters (and Bush’s polls at 70%!!), they began to realize that they were standing on the brink of a political chasm and about to take a big step forward.

The word went out to Daschle.  Spin your way out of this, they told him.

And, so, this lying little squeak from South Dakota sat there in front of the cameras today and, said, “They’re making it more difficult by not allowing us to proceed on homeland security.”

The man who has been blocking progress on homeland security, whose Democrat pals have been blocking progress on homeland security, said that.

Our question has to do with the people of South Dakota.  Is there something wrong with the water in that state?  If not, what is the reason that they send a senator to Washington who for purely partisan political reasons is willing to put American lives at risk?

Is it because no South Dakotans were in either of the World Trade Centers when they went down?  (LL)

© 2002 Oregon Magazine  Photo links to a Daschle PAC