Cheney slams GOP - and praises Gore's pardon of Clinton!

WARNING! YOU ARE ENTERING AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE!!!

Vice President Dick Cheney today denounced the tactics used by the GOP to impeach President Clinton in 1998 - describing the witch hunt as "a time of false words and ill will." He also described the actions of Republicans who had vowed to unseat Clinton as "malevolence... furies turned loose and hearts turned cold."

Referring to the mood of conservatives after President Clinton's resignation - Cheney stated "there was great malice, and great hurt, and a taste for more."

Cheney went on to praise the decision by President Gore to grant a full pardon to President Clinton - acknowledging that it probably cost him the 2000 election.

"The President's hardest decision was also among his first. And in September of 1998, Al Gore was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon. The consensus holds that this decision cost him an election. That is very likely so. The criticism was fierce. But President Gore had larger concerns at heart. And it is far from the worst fate that a man should be remembered for his capacity to forgive."

"It was this man, Albert A. Gore, who led our republic safely through a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe. We will never know what further unravelings, what greater malevolence might have come in that time of furies turned loose and hearts turned cold. But we do know this: America was spared the worst. And this was the doing of an American President...."

RETURNING NOW FROM THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE...

FACTS:

1) All the above text ascribed to Dick Cheney is verbatim from his eulogy for Gerald Ford - with only minor changes:

A) Where it says "Clinton" - Cheney said "Nixon"
B) Where it says "Gore" - Cheney said "Ford"
C) Where it says "1998" - Cheney said "1974"

2) Cheney lavished praise on the man who gave him his political leg-up - and totally exonerated Ford for his decision to grant Nixon a pardon - even though Ford did so without securing any acknowledgment from Nixon of his misdeeds - nor an apology for the damage done. (Nixon only ever conceded that "mistakes were made".)

MORAL:

If President Clinton had resigned from office in 1998 - as a result of lying (about never technically doing even once to one woman what President Nixon did multiple times to the entire nation) - and President Al Gore had pardoned Clinton - WITHOUT securing the most groveling of confessions and apologies - just IMAGINE the Republican firestorm. And it would have lasted for decades. With no 20/20 hindsight that he had "spared the nation and brought about healing."

The Republicans would have been in full cry for trials and investigations.

And most of all they would have said that to not put Clinton on trial would have been to sweep the matter under the carpet and deny full accountability to the American people

So let us not have any more of this transparent Republican hypocrisy.

If those who are now repeatedly bleating praise for Ford's "wonderful healing action" in closing the chapter on everything to do with Richard Nixon's misdeeds even ONCE bring up again the circumstances of the Clinton impeachment - especially in relation to any future political ambitions of Hillary Clinton - then it will be time to remind them of their paeans of praise for the actions of Gerald Ford.

Let us hear no more of the "false words and ill will" directed against Bill Clinton. And no more of the "furies turned loose and hearts turned cold."

What Cheney referred to as the "great malice... and a taste for more" of the post- Watergate era - exists in spades in the "Dirty Tricks" and "Oppo Research" departments of every GOP candidate for President - and in the right-wing media and blogosphere. And we will hear much of it in the next two years...