Rahm's double pirouette

Left-wing bloggers were all excited about an extraordinary speech today by Rahm Emanuel, the second ranking Democrat in the House. I was excited too. It was a treasure trove of hypocrisy, even by Democratic standards.

It's difficult to even write this without laughing, but the pirouetting prince of dirty politics conjured up enough gall to deliver a 3,780-word lecture to President Bush on running an administration infused with too much politics.

We'll skip all the obvious Bill Clinton references because they are just too easy. Suffice it to say that Rahm served loyally in an administration with absolutely no core purpose but politics. Say what you will about George W. Bush's presidency but it is not a presidency about nothing.

Please read the whole speech and think deeply about the special constitution Emanuel must possess to be able to stand before an audience and say these words with his past. Even Dick Durbin must marvel at Rahm's ability to make Eddie Haskel look like a sincere man.

When savoring this speech, I found that rare passage that had double the hypocrisy packed in one delightful sentence.

The Bush Administration has redefined the famous challenge of President Kennedy's inaugural address. Instead of "Ask not what your country can do for you," it has become "Ask what your government can do for our party."

What the national audience may not know is that Rahm might very well have lost his first bid for Congress had it not been for an army of city of Chicago workers helping pound the street for his campaign with promises of government overtime. This was revealed in federal court when a former city supervisor named Don Tomczak plead guilty in a corruption case a few years ago. When Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass mentions Rahm, he gives the following label: Rahm Emanuel, D-Tomczak.

Emanuel is the political operative being credited these days with the Democratic takeover of Congress. He's ruthless and hardworking and, in victory, deserving of post-election applause.

But if City Hall had not sent Don Tomczak, the corrupt city water department boss, to Emanuel's congressional campaign in 2002--and Tomczak's political army of hundreds of city workers who stumped the precincts with the promise of overtime--then Emanuel wouldn't have narrowly defeated a local grass-roots Democrat.

And Emanuel wouldn't have been in a position to bask in all the national media love.

And evoking President John F. Kennedy is equally funny. Especially in a week when the top Democrat in the Senate said the war is lost and the top Democrat in the House refused to attend a briefing by our General in Iraq. JFK would have had nothing to do with this crew of Democrats. Here is how he felt about protecting our country.

"The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. … The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission."

It is amazing that any Democrat outside of Joe Lieberman would dare bring up JFK while the current Democrat party is doing exactly what he said America should never do.

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