The Affable Wrestler
Dennis Hastert is generally portrayed in the mainstream media as a regular Midwestern guy, the high school wrestling coach-turned-House Speaker who somehow found himself working with barekuckles politicians like Tom DeLay. Well, now this down-to-earth Republican who once coached kids on the rules of fair play is using bare knuckles, letting his elbows fly, and much worse. As reported by today’s The Hill, Hastert is throwing manure at George Soros:
The spat began in an interview on Fox News with anchor Chris Wallace, in which Hastert said, “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. …”
Asked if Soros had earned money from drug cartels, Hastert added, “Well, that’s what he’s been for a number years — George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he’s got a lot of ancillary interests out there. … I’m saying I don’t know where groups — could be people who support this type of thing. I’m saying we don’t know.”
It gets worse. The Hill has the courage to provide the larger context for Hastert’s slander:
Conservatives have sought to discredit Soros by attacking his foreign and Jewish roots and his support of liberal causes, and by saying that his currency speculation actually hurt the very people he claims to want to help.
“No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice,” wrote GOPAC, an organization that helps elect GOP candidates, on its website last year.
In William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” Shylock was the Jewish banker whose venality would not stop him from cutting human flesh to repay loans.
Tony Blankley, the editorial-page editor of The Washington Times, said Soros is “a robber baron, he’s a pirate capitalist, and he’s a reckless man” in an interview on Fox
News.
Will Hastert be challenged in the mainstream media on his malicious claims? Will this become a major story on the broadcast networks and cable news? Don’t bet on it.
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One other note… today The Washington Post editorial page once again blithely and approvingly cites a Republican line on why we had to go to war:
Mr. McCain offered a powerful argument for going to war in Iraq: that whether or not Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, “freed from international pressure and the threat of military action, he would have acquired them again. . . We couldn’t afford the risk posed by an unconstrained Saddam in these dangerous times.”
That sounds less like an argument for Bush’s headlong rush to war than it does for Kerry’s - dare I say it - more nuanced position, i.e. “international pressure” and “the threat of military action” (emphasis added) should have been pursued longer and might have avoided a war.