In a message dated 6/20/01 10:35:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<<
Thus, while a few partisans might have reached a calclulation producing a
partisan benefit for the Republicans, I think that in any group of
reasonable people, the vast majority would reach the opposite conclusion.
At any rate, the calculation of partisan advantage is certainly by no means
so overwhelming as to convincingly suggest that the thousands of
Republicans in the public arena that went on record as support impeachment
based on *principle* were lying.
>>
Not lying but not telling the whole truth either to themselves or to the
public. The timing of some of the "events' related to the impeachment were
clearly timed to influence the electorate. These strategies failed for the
simple reason that enough of the electorate did not see the effort as
anything but a political hatchet job. I think the thing that the republican
politicos failed to realize was that much of the electorate does not want to
know about the private lives of politicians. Well we want to know because we
love gossip but not because we want to judge profesionnal performance on the
basis of private indiscretions. I think most of the public understands that
many people (including a very large number of politicians) have lead
imperfect lives, have not lived up their public or private moral standards. I
would be more convinced that republicans were truly in the impeachment thing
is they showed more outrage about the moral shortcomings of their own leaders
(Gingrich, Livingston etc).
