Last year Republicans were crying treason when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi went to Syria to meet President Assad. Right wing blogs were full of hate posts calling for her prosecution (just an example of the colorful commentary on the right about Pelosi’s delegation).
Brad Blakeman, a member of President Bush’s Senior Staff, called Pelosi the “Neville Chamberlain of our time,” for going to Syria. He also said that her trip was giving aid and comfort to our enemies, a charge of treason in every sense of the word. The right wing was infuriated that a member of Congress would circumvent the president and his foreign policy powers. The Wall Street Journal, that glistening beckon of rightward thinking that it is, even printed an op-ed by a former Reagan government member that went as far to say that Pelosi may have committed a felony for going to Syria.
Republicans simmered somewhat when they realized their very own Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, traveled abroad in 1997 openly expressing that he was bypassing President Clinton. Though the call for Pelosi’s treasonous behavior didn’t fully subside because, after all, reality to Republicans is a pick and choose sport
Since April 2007 right through this week, the worst thing possible for a member of Congress to do was conduct foreign policy without the blessing of President Bush. All that changed when John McCain decided to go ahead and pretend to be president.
McCain has openly admitted that he talks to the President of Georgia every day. On Wednesday he said he was sending his very own delegation to the war shocked region to none other than conduct foreign policy. This is blatant subversion of the United States government. This is treason—just not when Republicans do it.
Where is the media at in this? Where are the op-ed’s calling for McCain’s prosecution? Where is Fox News and its endless coverage of the McCain treason saga? Where is the drug-addicted Rush Limbaugh and his blind followers at in calling for McCain’s immediate prosecution? In fact, where is the Democratic Party? Where are the Democratic surrogates on TV calling McCain the “Chamberlain of our time?” What McCain is doing is deliberately bypassing the President of the United States in order to conduct his own foreign policy.
If Barack Obama sent a delegation to Georgia all of this would be a different story. He would be the “celebrity” in front of the cameras pretending to be president. Uber patriot Sean Hannity would immediately be calling for his passport to be confiscated. Republicans are not only allowed to get away with such obvious treason but also allowed to spew their hatred all over the airwaves, internet and every media outlet in the world when their opposition does far less than what they are doing right now. John McCain is allowed, by all means encouraged, to do as he pleases without a single criticism from the media. There should be equal treatment of the Pelosi story and the McCain delegation. That would require journalists to do a little bit of work and not rely on GOP talking points to write thier stories, however.
