Letter: GOP’s defense is just new McCarthyism

Sunday, March 19, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

Nate Ogden's March 15 letter, "More concerned about threats by terrorists," typifies the Republican reaction when President Bush is criticized. Their standard operating procedure seems to be to blame Bill Clinton. I can understand their pain and agony with the latest free fall in the polls for their president at 33 percent in the Pew poll released last week. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., has put forward a call for censure of Bush for illegally spying on us Americans, and you guessed it, the GOP senators are calling him a traitor.

If step one - blame Clinton - doesn't get any traction, step two is to attack the person and call him/her a traitor and unpatriotic. This is not going to work anymore. Joe McCarthy tried that approach and didn't work in the long run, but he did ruin a lot of innocent lives, most of whom were patriotic Democrats. Of course, with our current batch of Democrat wimps in Congress, I guess the GOP will get away with it for a while.

James J. Poupard, Henderson