[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 26 (Friday, February 12, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H650-H654]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MEDIA MISREPRESENTATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, it might surprise a lot of my 
conservative friends, but one of my joys every day is reading The New 
York Times, and especially the editorial page of The New York Times. 
There are a lot of writers there that I do not particularly agree with, 
but I certainly appreciate their flair and their style and just how 
they are really some of the best and the brightest writers in the 
business.
  One of the best writers stylistically is also one of the most liberal 
and somebody that I rarely agree with, and that is Anthony Lewis. A few 
days ago, on February the 9th, Mr. Lewis wrote an article entitled 
``Self-Inflicted Wound'' regarding the impeachment process, and gave a 
searing critique of the House managers' performance in that. He talked 
about his greatest concern being the moral absolutism these House 
managers took over to the Senate trial. This is what he said:
  ``Representative Lindsey Graham's voice trembled as he ended the 
Republican prosecutors' presentation of evidence. `For God's sake,' he 
told the Senate, `figure out what kind of person we have here in the 
White House.'
  ``Why the trembling emotion? Frustration, I think. Mr. Graham and the 
other Republican managers are true believers.
  ``If they could only see it, one reason'' that Americans don't 
understand their argument is ``their absolute conviction that they are 
right.''
  Mr. Lewis goes on to say: ``Americans are wise to be uncomfortable 
with absolutism. Sir Isaiah Berlin, the great British historian-
philosopher, showed us that certainty about everything has been the 
hallmark of totalitarian movements.''
  Mr. Lewis goes on to say: ``The Republican managers did not 
understand how their zealotry troubled the audience. The Financial 
Times put it, they were `blinded by their moral righteousness.''' And 
he goes on to discuss how such moral absolutism is dangerous for this 
Republic.
  Well, I personally believe that the House managers have done a very 
good job and been pleased with their performance. But if Mr. Lewis 
believes that they have been blinded by moral absolutism, then I think 
that is certainly a message he needs to get out to the American people. 
But I wish while he was getting that message out to the American 
people, I wish he would also send a message to the most extreme 
elements of the left in this House, and in the media, and in Hollywood 
and across America that moral absolutism from the extreme left is 
dangerous, just as it would be from the extreme right.
  For over a decade the extreme left has practiced the type of moral 
absolutism of the destructive nature that Mr. Lewis warned of. I 
remember back in 1987 at the beginning of the nomination of Robert 
Bork, who has been so villified over the past 11 years it is really 
hard to recognize that he was one of the most respected voices in the 
judiciary for years and years. But in 1987 the blind moral absolutism 
of the extreme left took a vicious, vicious turn during the nomination 
of Robert Bork.
  As Charles Krauthammer wrote in The Washington Post on February the 
9th, ``The Democrats owe Robert Bork an apology. You remember Bork: the 
brilliant judge and legal scholar who was so savagely attacked when 
nominated in 1987 by President Reagan for the Supreme Court that his 
name became a verb. `Bork: to attack viciously a candidate or 
appointee, especially by misrepresentation in the media.''' That is 
Safire's political dictionary.
  ``Within hours of Bork's nomination,'' Krauthammer goes on to write, 
``Senator Edward Kennedy was on the floor of the Senate charging that, 
`Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into 
back-alley abortions, among other travesties; blacks would sit at 
segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' 
doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught evolution, 
et cetera.'''.
  Now, these arguments were absolutely false. They were proven 
absolutely false and outrageous. But the extreme left took them and ran 
with them and savagely attacked Judge Bork simply because he did not 
agree with them and their view of the Constitution. He believed that 
the Constitution should be interpreted in much the same way that many 
today still believe it should be interpreted, and that is looking at 
the original intent.

                              {time}  1030

  But I do not recall in 1987 Mr. Lewis ever talking to the Senator or 
condemning anybody for this sort of moral absolutism that now 
supposedly is this great threat to western-style democracy. Sadly, I 
expect they did not. And sadly, I expect they never will so long as the 
moral absolutism and the extremism and the vicious attacks come from 
the left.
  We do not hear about it in the media, either. Let me tell my 
colleagues, I was deeply, deeply offended, I was deeply saddened by a 
campaign commercial that ran in Missouri, the home State of the 
minority leader of this House. This is what this Democratic ad in 
Missouri said in 1998. I am not talking about 11 years ago. I am 
talking about in 1998.

[[Page H651]]

 This is what the Democratic ad said right before this past election.

       When you don't vote, you let another church explode. When 
     you don't vote, you allow another cross to burn. When you 
     don't vote, you let another assault wound a brother or a 
     sister. When you don't vote, you let the Republicans continue 
     to cut school lunches and Head Start. When you don't vote, 
     you allow the Republicans to give tax breaks to the wealthy 
     while threatening Social Security and Medicare, * * *

a false message that continues to be delivered today on the House 
floor.

       Do vote, and you elect Democrats who want to strengthen 
     Social Security and Medicare.
       When you vote, you elect Democrats committed to a Patients 
     Bill of Rights that lets us, not the insurance companies, 
     make choices about our health care.
       Voting will change things for the better. On November 3, 
     vote. Vote smart. Vote Democratic for Congress and the U.S. 
     Senate.
       Paid for by the Democratic Missouri Party, Donna Knight, 
     Treasurer.

  That was an ad that aired on WGNU radio, St. Louis, Missouri, that 
was targeted toward an African-American audience.
  Now, to me this is so shocking. It is demagoguery of the lowest order 
to suggest that if they vote for me, I am a Republican, then they 
support churches exploding; if they vote for me because I am a 
Republican, they are voting to allow another cross to burn; if they 
vote for me, they let another assault wound a brother and a sister. 
Because after all, according to these Democratic ads, Republicans 
support church burnings. According to this Democratic ad, Republicans 
support crosses burning. According to this Democratic ad, Republicans 
also support brutalizing African-Americans.
  Basically, this is an argument that the Democrats rolled out the last 
hour, an argument of the first order of closed-mindedness and moral 
absolutism and extremism. How in the world can somebody in a campaign 
stoop that low?
  I suppose the Democrats can bring up the Willie Horton ad which 
attacked Michael Dukakis in the 1988 campaign. But did that ad say that 
every single Democrat was for letting murderers out of prison? Did that 
ad say that Democrats supported church burnings? Did that ad say they 
supported cross burnings?
  These people do not know about my background. They do not know about 
every Republican's background. In fact, I would challenge them to find 
a single Republican that is elected in Congress that supports cross 
burnings, that supports church bombings, that supports the assault of 
African-Americans or any American.
  This ad says here, ``scandalous, insulting and patronizing.'' But I 
never, ever heard major media outlets take the Democrats down for 
engaging in this type of shameless, hateful, mean-spirited, extreme 
race baiting.
  I have never once heard the minority leader, who is from Missouri, 
come to this floor and attack his State party for suggesting that 
Republicans support cross burnings. I have never heard the minority 
leader come to this floor and attack his State party for suggesting 
that the Republican Party supported cross burnings. I never once heard 
the minority leader come to this floor and attack his home State party 
for suggesting that the Republican Party supports the assault of 
African-Americans. Not once.
  In fact, I have not heard any Democrat come forward and say that. And 
I certainly have not heard the major media types come forward and say 
that. No, the moral absolutism that they want to attack today is the 
one that suggests by our House managers that the President committed 
the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice. And while they want 
to quote the polls about how all the people love the President, I have 
never heard them once quote the poll that 86 percent of Americans, 
according to a recent CBS/New York Times poll, believes that this 
President committed the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice.
  But to them, and certainly to Mr. Lewis with the New York Times, that 
is dangerous moral absolutism, that is extremism. But I guess it is not 
extreme to suggest that if they are a Republican, if they believe in 
limited government, if they believe in lower taxes, if they were 
willing to fight to balance the budget in 1995 when the President said 
balancing the budget in seven years will destroy the economy, I suppose 
that that sort of extremism, that sort of race baiting, that sort of 
moral absolutism is okay. It is certainly the message that we have 
picked up from the media.
  But it does not stop there. Also, our dear friends from Missouri had 
this to say in a January 26, 1999, Democratic senatorial campaign press 
release. The headline was, ``White Supremacist's Presidential Choice: 
Senator John Ashcroft.'' That is shocking. That is absolutely shocking.
  They go on and give a press release and say that the Council for 
Conservative Citizens had some member that said they would have chosen 
John Ashcroft as their presidential nominee if he had run, this one 
person. And so from that, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee 
from the home State of the minority leader gives us a headline that 
calls Senator John Ashcroft, a great Missouri governor, a great 
Missouri Senator, just a great man, calls him a white supremacist's 
presidential choice.
  Now, I have got a question to ask, and I certainly hope in the coming 
days the minority leader of this Senate will step forward with an 
answer that I think Americans need to hear. Just how desperate is the 
extreme left to elect people in the State of Missouri and across 
America to public office? What will they do? What compromises will they 
make? What slanderous attacks will they participate in? What low grade 
race-baiting will they engage in? How low in the gutter will they go to 
win seats?
  We certainly know that the minority leader wants to be the Speaker of 
the House. We know they are five or six seats away from doing that. And 
if they do that based on issues, then God bless them because that is 
what this great Republic is all about. It is about the power of ideas. 
And if the minority leader and the Democrats in Missouri and the 
Democrats across America have an agenda that Americans want, then I 
wish them all the luck in getting the six seats that they want and 
taking over this House. But one has to seriously question the strength 
of their ideas when we look at the gutter tactics that they engage in 
to win, saying that because I am a Republican I support cross burnings 
and because I am a Republican I support church burnings, or saying 
because I am a Republican I support the deliberate assault of African-
Americans. That is shocking and moral absolutism of the first order.
  Yet again, I hear absolutely nothing from Mr. Lewis. I hear nothing 
from other people in the mainstream media. And maybe that is because a 
lot of the most scandalous attacks have actually come from the media.
  I give my colleagues the tirade of Geraldo Rivera on February 2, 
1999. Of course, Mr. Rivera has been unabashedly the President's 
cheerleader, and he followed the lead of many people on the left with 
their vicious attacks, vicious personal attacks on men and women who 
did not share their view of the President, who for their own reasons 
believed, like 86 percent of Americans, that the President committed 
perjury and obstruction of justice.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). If the Member will suspend, the 
Chair reminds all Members that they must refrain from discussing 
allegations and proceedings currently pending against the President.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, I certainly will not do that. I am 
simply reflecting the views of the polls.
  But certainly Rivera and many other journalists did not for one 
second see how anybody could be troubled by certain allegations against 
the President of the United States.
  So, on February 2, this is what Mr. Rivera on CNBC said: ``I don't 
want to be a brown racist, substituting for white racism here. But 
don't you think 13 guys, all of whom, you know, are not noted for any 
contribution to civil rights, I'm talking about the House managers, all 
of whom are born-again, all of whom are right-to-lifers, all of whom 
are, you know, anti-immigration, pro-English only, etc., etc., don't 
you think that when that face is presented, isn't that one of the 
reasons the majority, the vast majority of the American people support 
the President? When they look at the people prosecuting, some say 
persecuting him, and say, wait a second, those people

[[Page H652]]

wouldn't even let me into their home or their neighborhood or to work 
alongside them?''
  Now, this is a classic sort of diatribe, not only from Mr. Rivera but 
from the extreme left, that has so dominated the media in the past few 
months. First of all we have reverse race-baiting, and I read the 
Democratic ads from Missouri, Mr. Speaker, that engaged in extreme race 
baiting. We have religious intolerance.
  If they cannot attack a conservative's position, then just say they 
are born-again, say they are right-wing extremists. Because make no 
mistake of it, in 1999, among with the elite in America, among 
educators, among media types, among Hollywood types, being a born-again 
Christian is seen as being closed-minded and extreme.

                              {time}  1045

  This sort of religious intolerance continues and continues. It is 
demagoguery of the first order. Now, I know these guys, all 13 of them, 
and I know they do not share the same religious views or the same views 
on immigration.
  But it is this sort of moral absolutism, ``you either believe 
everything that I believe, or you are evil,'' that Mr. Lewis supposedly 
is concerned about when it comes from the right, but certainly not when 
it comes from the left. You know, it seems that the Christian right has 
been the favorite whipping boy of media elites and our own far left 
Democratic peers here who dominate their caucus for some time.
  I wonder if Mr. Lewis in being concerned about moral absolutism has 
ever written about the vicious attacks that constantly take place and 
are launched against those Christians who are unfortunate enough to be 
conservative? Because certainly the conservative right, the Christian 
right, is constantly attacked and demonized in moral absolute terms, 
but we do not hear such persecution about the Christian left. In fact, 
Members of the Christian left are able to attack those that disagree 
with them with personal vicious attacks without any accountability.
  Of course, we had a great example just this past week where the 
Reverend Jesse Jackson did not agree with everything that George Pataki 
agreed with, so, what does he do? He compares them to racist 
segregationists governors in the south from the 1960's.
  The message is clear: ``You either agree with me all the time, or you 
are evil.''
  I saw a member, a respected member from the extreme left a few years 
ago, compare our former Speaker with Bull Connor. Of course, many of 
you remember Bull Connor. He was the drill sergeant, the police chief, 
of Birmingham in the 1960's who took care of African Americans who 
actually wanted the same freedom we have all been able to enjoy for 200 
years. He was the police chief that loosened the dogs on them, that 
allowed dogs to tear African-Americans to pieces just because they 
wanted to protest to gain the same rights and the same dignity that I 
have and that my children have and that white Americans have had for 
almost 200 years. His actions, and the actions of other 
segregationists, who were willing to attack African Americans for 
simply pursuing their rights, was evil of the first order.
  Now, that is a moral absolutism that I feel comfortable saying and 
talking about. And yet today, if you disagree with somebody on welfare 
reform, just do what the Reverend Jesse Jackson did, and compare them 
to segregationists, racist governors in the 1960's.
  I heard other people going throughout the 1998 campaign doing the 
same thing, calling the former Speaker, Newt Gingrich, and Trent Lott, 
the current majority leader, ``the forces of evil.''
  Talk about dangerous moral absolutism. It does not matter whether you 
agree with everything that Speaker Gingrich and Majority Leader Lott 
support legislatively.
  I did not support everything that Speaker Gingrich stood for. I do 
not support everything minority leader Dick Gephardt stands for. I 
certainly would never say he is a racist or a bigot or hateful or a 
socialist or somebody who, like his party in Missouri says, supports 
cross burnings or supports church burnings or supports beating up 
African Americans.
  It is extremism, it is moral absolutism of the first order, and it 
cannot be tolerated in American politics in 1999.
  I look forward to a follow-up column by Mr. Lewis. It does not have 
to condemn all of these things. He does not have to condemn the 
Reverend Jesse Jackson saying Mr. Pataki is a bigot. He can choose the 
Missouri ad that said John Ashcroft is a white supremacist choice for 
President, or perhaps he can go ahead and attack the Missouri ad----


                      announcement by the speaker

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). The Chair would remind Members 
that they are to refrain to references to sitting members of the 
Senate.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. I thank the gentleman, and I certainly made only 
positive references to the Senator from Missouri. But in deference to 
the Speaker's statement, I will refrain from mentioning his name.
  But the Senator, who was viciously attacked in these Missouri ads, 
did not deserve that. It is this moral absolutism that Mr. Lewis is 
concerned about from the right, but obviously turns a blind eye to when 
it comes from the left, that is dangerous to democracy in this country.
  Other media types have thrown kerosene on the fire. Newsweek's 
Eleanor Clift said on January 9, ``I think there are real questions 
about separation of powers, and I do not think that the President 
should go up there and appear before the Senate. Second of all, that 
herd of managers from the House, I mean, frankly, all they were missing 
was white sheets.''
  So here we have a columnist that Newsweek allows to write for them 
whenever she wishes saying that Henry Hyde was leading a group of 
clansmen over to the United States Senate.
  Then we have Time Magazine's Jack White on February 1 speaking of 
White House lawyer Cheryl Mills.

       Her rhetoric wasn't fancy, but it was on target. The GOP is 
     a party, all after, that owes its post-Barry Goldwater 
     resurgence to opposition to civil rights, and while its 
     leaders from time to time proclaim their belief in racial 
     justice, their pledges have been mostly lip service. Oh, they 
     are too gentile for a sheet-wearing bigot like David Duke, 
     but all too willing to embrace bigotry if it is dressed in a 
     suit and a tie.

  That is shocking to me, and I guess I have to go back and look at my 
1994 campaign literature, because I thought I got elected because I 
believed in balancing the budget. I thought I got elected because all I 
talked about was the need for tax relief. I thought I got elected 
because I talked about the need to have my two children being educated 
by their teachers and their parents and their local school board 
members, instead of by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
  See, I thought I got elected in 1994 because I believed that a 
smaller, more efficient, more caring government was the wave of the 
future. But now I find from Time Magazine that actually I owe my seat 
to opposition of civil rights.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not know how many Americans can even begin to 
understand how offensive such characterizations are, how absolutely 
offensive, in light of my life, in light of my personal beliefs about 
civil rights. It is just absolutely offensive.
  So, if you are keeping a scorecard, Mr. Speaker, Republicans have a 
majority because they are bigots, they are afraid to embrace David Duke 
because he wears a white sheet, but not if a David Duke dresses in a 
coat and a tie. According to the extreme left, the Democrats in 
Missouri and across the country, Republicans are ``the forces of 
evil.'' Republicans support cross burnings. Republicans support church 
burnings. Republicans support the brutalization of African Americans.
  This is the voice of the Democratic Party. This is their explanation. 
This is their ally in the media's explanation on why we are here.
  It is very interesting, we Republicans, at least for the next two 
years, are the majority party in the House and the Senate. It is very 
interesting that Geraldo Rivera and all these people that are 
castigating us and saying we are extremists and racists and bigots, it 
is amazing they constantly talk about how Americans have the good 
nature and the good sense not to expel this President from office.
  But there seems to be an inconsistency, because those same Americans

[[Page H653]]

that supposedly had that good sense, according to these same Democrats, 
elected Republicans to Congress because we are bigots. It does not go 
together.
  Of course it does not go together, because it is mean-spirited, moral 
absolutism that Mr. Lewis wrote about. But, again, I suppose again it 
is only dangerous when it comes from the right, and not from the left.
  We had a New York Times article on January 25th talking to a 
Holocaust survivor. Of course, they found one that would say that Mr. 
Hyde's work reminded her of what the Nazis did under Hitler in the 
1930's and the 1940's.
  My gosh, this is the remarkable thing. I was a history major. I have 
read so many books about World War II and the prewar period. I am just 
shocked by the cruelness.
  There is a new documentary out on the Holocaust survivors in Hungary. 
I am just absolutely shocked that we have heard time and time again 
over the past four years the comparison of the Republican party to a 
movement that slaughtered 6 million human beings, 6 million Jews.
  Talk about frightening moral absolutism. Every time they compare the 
Republican party to Nazis, because we want the school lunch program to 
grow by 6.4 percent instead of 6.6 percent, and because we want to 
allow states and localities to distribute these free school lunch 
programs instead of huge bureaucracies in Washington, D.C., they 
minimize the horrors and the impact of the Holocaust. They minimize the 
absolute evilness of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis that he ran.
  It is just shocking. About as shocking as John Hockenberry, who has 
his own show on MSNBC, who refused to simply suggest that the 
Republican House managers were not ``uniquely stupid,'' but he said 
instead, ``uniquely stupid is not the word I would use to describe this 
process. The word I would use is Stalinist.''
  Now, of course, for those history students that know Russian history, 
it is estimated that Joseph Stalin while running the Soviet Union 
throughout the 1920's to the 1950's may have been responsible for as 
many as 40 million deaths in his own country. But according to a man 
who runs his own show on a major cable network, MSNBC, controlled by 
NBC and Microsoft, Mr. Hyde is running an operation that compares to 
the operation of perhaps the greatest murderer in the 20th Century, 
Joseph Stalin.
  But, again, no outcries, no outbursts, no editorials, no op-eds from 
Anthony Lewis about moral absolutism from the extreme left or 
absolutism in the media, or absolutism from the extreme elements of the 
Democratic Party. No, it is just allowed to pass by without a single 
word of protest.
  And who has heard protest about what the President's dear friend and 
fund-raiser and Hollywood star Alec Baldwin said on December 11, 1998? 
He shared his views with Connan O'Brien where he said regarding the 
House vote on possible impeachment of the President, ``I come back from 
Africa, and I am thinking to myself that in other countries they are 
laughing at us 24 hours a day.'' And Baldwin goes on to say, ``and I am 
thinking to myself, if we were in other countries, we would all right 
now, all of us go down together,'' and at this point he starts to get 
up and he starts to shout, he said, ``we would all go together down to 
Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death.''

                              {time}  1100

  ``We would stone him to death. Wait, shut up, shut up, no, shut up, I 
am not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would then 
go to their homes and we would kill their wives and we would kill their 
children, and we would kill their families. What is happening in this 
country? What is happening in this country?''
  Mr. Speaker, what is happening in this country?
  Now, I think that is a question that could be well posed of Mr. 
Baldwin. And that is a question that we could pose to NBC for airing 
that. It is a question we can pose to the mainstream media. My 
colleagues would be surprised how few Americans know that the 
President's friend and fund-raiser, Alec Baldwin, suggested that 
Americans come to Washington, stone Henry Hyde to death and kill him.
  Now, he says it was just a joke. Let me tell my colleagues, I have 
got the clip. It is on my web site. One can click it and download it, 
Mr. Speaker, and decide whether one thinks he was joking or not. It is 
absolutely shocking. I think the most shocking thing is not the 
stupidity of Mr. Baldwin, not the callousness of Mr. Baldwin. To 
suggest that Henry Hyde and his wife, who is deceased, and his family 
be drug out of their homes and murdered.
  Now, the biggest shock is that NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, The 
New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and every 
other major media outlet has covered this up and not talked about it at 
length, simply because the extremism and the moral absolutism and the 
hate and the vile, mean-spirited, overreaching came from the left, came 
from the President's supporters instead of the President's detractors.
  What is doubly shocking for me on a personal note is having 2 
children in Pensacola, Florida that I am always away from when I am up 
here in Washington, and putting myself in the position of Chairman 
Hyde, and I suppose since I am a Republican, he says all Republicans 
should be beaten and stoned, I am surprised that Mr. Baldwin, who has 
his own wife and his own family, who is very protective of that family, 
who in fact has gone after photographers for coming too close to his 
wife and his child when they were coming home, why he would say such a 
thing about Henry Hyde, Henry Hyde's family, about Republicans and 
Republicans' families.
  When he got angry a few years back because his wife was coming home 
from the hospital with a child and photographers were pressing in and 
taking pictures and harassing him, I understood him getting upset. As a 
father, I understood. So do we not think as fathers, as husbands, he 
would understand? Apparently not. Apparently a lot of people do not.
  Mr. Speaker, this process has been a brutal, brutal process over the 
past year, past year-and-a-half. And it has, since I suppose Mr. Lewis 
is correct, that moral absolutism in some cases is dangerous.
  Now, of course, we can call right, right and wrong, wrong. We can say 
safely that segregationists that abused African-Americans in the 1950s 
and the 1960s who were simply trying to gain the same rights that all 
Americans enjoyed are evil; and that Adolf Hitler, responsible for the 
extermination of 6,000 Jewish human beings is evil; and Joseph Stalin, 
who killed 30 million people, at least, in this century is evil; and 
Mao Tse-tung, responsible for up to 60 million deaths in this century 
alone, is evil. There are moral absolutes. But suggesting that somebody 
like Henry Hyde should be killed, or that Henry Hyde and the House 
managers are evil; or to suggest that Henry Hyde and the House managers 
are Stalinists, as Mr. Hockenberry on MSNBC did; or to suggest, as 
Geraldo Rivera on CNBC did, that these House managers are racists and 
bigots and anti-immigration; to suggest that all Republicans are evil; 
that as a member in this House suggested that Newt Gingrich and Trent 
Lott represent the forces of evil; or to suggest that I, simply because 
I switched from being a Democrat to being a Republican, because I 
believed that the Democratic party veered radically left and became the 
party of big government and high taxes; to suggest that because I did 
that that I am evil, that I am a racist, that I support church 
burnings, cross burnings, the brutalization of African-Americans; to 
suggest that is demagoguery of the first order and it is wrong.
  Mr. Speaker, it is my hope that in the coming weeks and months this 
process can become more civil, and people can avoid such mean-spirited, 
hateful personal attacks from not only the extreme left and the 
Democratic party represented here in the House, but also the extreme 
left represented on television shows that Americans are exposed to 
every night.
  I have quite a few, maybe less than I had an hour ago, but I have 
quite a few Democratic friends, in fact I know I have quite a few 
Democratic friends. It is my hope that they will come forward and 
condemn the minority leader's home State Democratic party for 
suggesting that all Republicans support cross burnings or support 
church burnings. I hope they will step forward and

[[Page H654]]

have the courage to say we can move forward, we can win on the issues, 
we can lose on the issues. We can win on whether we want a bigger 
government and higher taxes, or whether we want a smaller government 
and fewer taxes. We can win on the things and engage in the type of 
debates that Americans expect us to engage in.
  I think if that happens, then this horrible exercise of personal 
destruction that started in 1987 with Judge Bork, continued with 
Justice Thomas, and continued through this decade with Republicans and 
Democrats alike, maybe, just maybe, we can go into the next millennium 
and really talk about the future. Maybe we can talk about the future of 
education, talk about the future of Social Security and how to save 
Social Security, how to make Medicare stronger, how to protect 
ourselves against the dangers that continue to explode across the 
world.
  If we do that, and if Mr. Lewis will step forward and attack the 
moral absolutism and the extremism that has come from the extreme left 
over the past year, then I think maybe America has a chance to have a 
representative government in Washington over the next century that they 
can once again be proud of.

                          ____________________