The Ghost Of Ronald Reagan Blocks The GOP's Witch Hunt

The Ghost Of Ronald Reagan Blocks The GOP's Witch Hunt
By Justin Rosario
June 30, 2012

Assuming that the GOP is not going to quietly drop the epic failure that has been the Fast and Furious witch hunt, the next step was for the Department of Justice to pursue a case against the person held in contempt by Congress on Thursday. Unfortunately, the person held in contempt is Eric Holder, the head of the DoJ. But! Despite what the GOP and Fox and Rush and Beck and the rest of the right wing echo chamber will be saying in the coming days, the reason the DoJ has declined to prosecute Holder has nothing to do with conflict of interest or a cover-up; Blame it all on Ronald Reagan.

That's right, there is a 30 year old precedent in place for declining to pursue exactly this kind of case and it all started with Saint Ronnie.

Here is the letter from Deputy Attorney General James Cole to the Weeper of the House, John Boehner about why he is passing on prosecuting his boss:




The key parts here are "The fullest explanation of the legal basis for the Department's position was provided during the Reagan Administration" and "The Department relied on this longstanding position in 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, when it declined to prosecute two White House officials who were the subject of a contempt of Congress referral from the House of Representatives." So not only was the precedent set by Saint Ronnie's administration but it was applied to people in the Bush administration just 4 years ago. Undoubtedly without a peep of protest from the right.

The take away is that when the right starts to cry about cover ups and how Obama is protecting Holder by illegally shielding him from prosecution, every opportunity must be taken to remind them to blame Ronald Reagan for it and to ask how concerned they were when the Bush White House did the same thing.

While I have absolute faith that our readers will do just that, I have no such illusions that the "liberal" media will do the same. The GOP has its phony scandal to push and the "liberal" media wouldn't dream of getting in the way of a good story.