THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Liberals are attacking the Ashcroft nomination by saying this

Ashcroft is opposed to some laws, so he cannot enforce them as Attorney General.

As I keep pointing out, one thing you have to do to be a respectable conservative is to have no memory at all. In this as in so many other ways, I am not respectable. I remember.

I remember in 1977, when President Carter's Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service said that, if it were up to her, no immigrant would ever be turned away. She said she only enforced the law because she had to.

Nobody said a word except my boss, Congressman John Ashbrook.

You could find incidents of liberals being against laws they had to enforce in every administration, but if you did, it would convict you of having a memory, and therefore of not being respectable.

Remember that the liberal argument against Ashcroft is that you cannot enforce a law you do not approve of. That would seem to mean that every member of the entire Federal bureaucracy will have to be given ideological clearance. Their job is enforcing the laws. How do you think they would come out on prohibitions on abortion funding?

Another little memory. Remember that the Supreme Court voted five to four in the Florida decision that made Bush, Junior, president?

One of the four liberal justices who fought Bush all the way was Souter. After the liberals attacked his more conservative Supreme Court nominee, Bush, Sr., wimped out and appointed Souter, probably the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court.

So if you were worried about whether Bush Junior would do to Ashcroft what he did to Chavez, you had every right to be.

Respectable conservatives forget anything they are ordered to. When liberals come up for confirmation, they will forget what was done to Ashcroft.

Respectable conservatives forgot what was done to another conservative, Newt Gingrich..

When Hillary Clinton got her eight million dollar book deal, a few conservatives mentioned that liberals ruined Newt Gingrich because he had a four million dollar book deal.

But when liberals told them to, respectable conservatives shut up about the double standard between Hillary and Gingrich.

Thank God for Fox News! They are respectable conservatives, but they still dare to have a memory.

Everybody else barely mentioned the fact that Hillary was getting an eight million dollar book deal while Gingrich was ruined by the liberals for half that. On CNN, Greta Sustern told conservatives to forget the Gingrich campaign of personal destruction, and the respectables obeyed their orders as always.

But not on Fox News. Fox News has Gingrich himself on regularly and O'Reilly simply won't shut up about Hillary's book deal.

Fox is taking over conservative respectability, and they have more guts than the minor league conservatives they are taking over from.