{"id":4177,"date":"2018-08-17T15:09:32","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T15:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=4177"},"modified":"2018-08-17T15:09:32","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T15:09:32","slug":"opinion-the-myth-of-watergate-bipartisanship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/17\/opinion-the-myth-of-watergate-bipartisanship\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | The Myth of Watergate Bipartisanship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

\n

Reporters and political commentators often express frustrated surprise at the steadfast support of President Trump from most Republicans in the House and Senate. But they shouldn\u2019t \u2014 it has happened before.<\/p>\n

In fact, when these critics refer back to the Watergate era as a time of bipartisan commitment to the rule of law over politics, they get it exactly wrong. Defending the president at all costs, blaming investigators and demonizing journalists was all part of the Republican playbook during the political\u00a0crisis\u00a0leading up to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that\u00a032 people and three companies have been indicted<\/a>\u00a0so far by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, only four of 11 Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee joined Senate Democrats earlier this year in an effort to protect Mr. Mueller\u2019s investigation. The House majority leader,\u00a0Kevin McCarthy<\/a>\u00a0of California, said in June that he thinks \u201cthe Mueller investigation has got to stop.\u201d\u00a0Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky<\/a>\u00a0and the House Intelligence Committee chairman,\u00a0Devin Nunes of California<\/a>, have joined Mr. Trump in calling the investigation a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dispiriting, perhaps, but not shocking or unprecedented. In late 1972, when a Democratic congressman, Wright Patman of Texas, began to investigate connections between Mr. Nixon\u2019s aides and the Watergate burglary, the House Republican leader, Gerald Ford of Michigan (who later succeeded Mr. Nixon as president), called it a \u201cpolitical witch hunt,\u201d according to the historian Stanley I. Kutler in his book \u201cThe Wars of Watergate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NYT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83d\ude41 Reporters and political commentators often express frustrated surprise at the steadfast support of President Trump from most Republicans in the House and Senate. But they shouldn\u2019t \u2014 it has happened before. In fact, when these critics refer back to the Watergate era as a time of bipartisan commitment to the rule of law over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-15n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4179,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions\/4179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}