From the Annals of Republican Chutzpah

With the first anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden approaching on May 1-2, the NY Times reports on the emerging right-wing line, that the Obama administration is supposedly “politicizing” the killing of Osama Bin Laden. This might be funny if weren’t so offensive, considering how after 9/11 the Bush administration relentlessly capitalized on raw emotions, national grief, and fear of terrorism to gain political advantage over Democrats. Refresh your memory with this Karl Rove quote from a Washington Post article on January 18, 2002:

“We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America,” Karl Rove said at the Republican National Committee meeting here.

That Rove quote was an early indicator of how they would manage the 2002 mid-terms. Or, just recall the staging of the 2004 Repub convention, held right here in New York City, when Mayor Giuliani and other pols fetishized the attacks, even while they were beginning to deny compensation and benefits to Ground Zero recovery workers who were already falling ill from their work on the toxic pile.

Today’s Times story, under the headline, Obama Trumpets Killing of Bin Laden, and Critics Pounce, allows Repub mouthpieces to give ridiculous quotes like the one below, in response to the fact that this week President Obama did an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams in the White House Situation Room, where the president and other administration officials monitored the raid on Osama’s Pakistan compound:

Tony Fratto, a deputy press secretary under Mr. Bush, said that it was “unseemly” to use the room for such a purpose. “I don’t believe it ever would have occurred to us to conduct an interview in the Situation Room,” he said, “and don’t believe we would have considered it appropriate.”

Worse, John McCain also tries to diminish the president:

“The one decision he got right into a pathetic, political act of self-congratulation. Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad.”

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. The Republicans are panicked that their prior political advantage on this issue has been eroded and they’re desperate to minimize what is clearly going to be an advantage for President Obama over Mitt Romney in his re-election bid. The only question is how big an advantage it will be, especially considering Romney’s George W. Bush-like line from April 2007 spoken during the Republican primary campaign of that year, ““it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” That line led to criticism from Republican pundit Byron York: “We have already spent billions and gone to a lot of effort to try to get bin Laden … it would be worth still more money and still more effort to kill the man behind 9/11.”

I also find it amusing that the right-wing often claims that Democratic presidents somehow sully or diminish the office. Remember FBI agent Gary Aldrich’s claims about the Clintons supposedly disrespecting the office, or the claims of incoming Bush staffers (later proven untrue) that outgoing Clinton admin officials had sabotaged White House phones and computers during the transition in 2001? This is also the theme to the right-wing recycling of claims this week from the 2008 campaign that  President Obama is merely a celebrity, with a racial subtext tossed in.

The Times story by Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear does far too little to remind readers of Republican conduct in this area, failing to point out the historical hypocrisy that the right-wing is dealing in here. If you feel as I do, please share this commentary widely.