As I wrote yesterday in "Gagging on Deep Throat", the mouthpieces of the conservative ascendancy have had two predictable responses to the revelation that former FBI #2 man Mark Felt was Watergate's "Deep Throat."

First, they rushed to Nixon's defense, seeking to rewrite history by calling his crimes no different in kind or degree than those supposedly committed by Kennedy, Johnson or Clinton, and his downfall the result of the perfidy of liberal media. (More on this topic in a subsequent post.)

The second tactic, of course, was to savage Felt himself. Far from calling him a hero, Watergate-era felons like Liddy and Colson, Nixon contemporaries like Kissinger, Stein and Buchanan, and Bush apologists like Coulter and Crowley used terms like "traitor", "criminal" and "troubled" to describe the man who helped the Washington Post make Nixon's crimes public.

Surely, then, the pundits of the Right must have spit the same venom at Linda Tripp, the woman who taped her conversations with her friend Monica Lewinsky back in 1998 and 1999. As Jon Stewart might say, um, not so much:

• Ann Coulter. The bombastic bulemic of the Beltway, who later called Bill Clinton "a very good rapist", had only praise for Tripp. "I do think she’s a great American hero. We never would have found out about the corruption and illegality at the very top of the government but for Linda Tripp. If you imagine what the world would be like if Linda Tripp hadn’t kept those tapes – a very different world."
• Pat Buchanan. On July 21, 1998, Nixon speechwriter and White House Goebbels-lite rushed to Tripp's defense, "What did Joe McCarthy ever do to Owen Lattimore to compare with what these thugs are doing to Ken Starr and Linda Tripp?"
• Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg, a fixture at the National Review owes much of his good fortune to his mother and Linda Tripp handler, Lucianne. Of Tripp, Goldberg gushed "Linda is waiting for her medal. Actually Linda is waiting for a single even-handed article in a major paper."
• Matt Drudge. Internet gossip monger Drudge dedicated a book to Tripp, stating, "She is somebody who took on the establishment. She is one lady in suburbia who said to the president of the United States, 'I'm going to get you, and I'm going to prove that you're a crook -- and I'm going to do it any way that I can.' We have a great American tradition of taking on people who abuse power and Tripp, whether you like her or don't like her, did just that. I'm sure most of your audience sees through a lot of the propaganda the mainstream press put out there -- where the first lady is a hero and Linda Tripp is the villain."

For the conservative movement, Linda Tripp for her role in Clinton's undoing is a martyr, a patron saint. An entire cottage industry supporting Tripp has emerged, including speaking opportunities in front of grateful, frothing-at-the-mouth conservative audiences.

Bill Clinton's infidelities and dissembling to the nation were grotesque and inexcusable, no doubt. In contrast, Nixon's crimes, including the Watergate cover-up, obstruction of justice, illegal invasion of Cambodia, and the constitutional crisis he spawned are qualitatively different, having posed a real threat to the Republic.

For conservatives apparently, Linda Tripp, the woman who made public her surreptitious tapes of her conversations with her friend, is a hero. (Not surprisingly, Bush friend and recorder Doug Weade is not.) And for the same people, Watergate source Mark Felt, the man whose risks may have saved the United States by stopping Nixon, is a scoundrel.

—Perrspective 6:06 PM | Permalink | TrackBack (0) | Comments (13) |