Far-left tool James Fallows blocked me eons ago on Twitter, or else I'd give him a piece of my mind. Here's his hacktastic hot-take today, via Memeorandum, "Five Reasons Why the Comey Affair Is Worse Than Watergate.
It's not worse people. It's not even close. Leftist hysteria is peaking, but we're not there yet. It's going to get worse. Progs will lose their minds, and publicly. There'll be violence.
I've seen a few good articles making reasonable comparisons, but so far this one's the best, and amazingly, it's at the left-wing BBC, "Comey sacking doesn't rise to Watergate levels" (via Instapundit):
How does the Saturday Night Massacre from Watergate compare to #Comey's termination?
— BBC North America (@BBCNorthAmerica) May 11, 2017
https://t.co/f1lNpbcvhS
The New York Times called for the president to leave office immediately, describing it as "the last great service" he could perform for the country.Keep reading.
The Washington Post demanded impeachment, followed by a Senate trial. Time magazine, deeming it necessary to publish its first-ever editorial, thundered: "The president should resign."
Outside the White House, protesters waved placards at passing motorists: "Honk for Impeachment." Even Washington's most influential columnist, Stewart Alsop, who was normally supportive of the president, called him an "ass." The president had lost his moral authority, argued his critics, and with it, his ability to govern. The country faced a constitutional crisis. The republic was imperilled.
Such was the feverish reaction to the events of 20 October, 1973, a date remembered in the national memory as the "Saturday Night Massacre" - a pivotal moment in the unfolding Watergate controversy.
With scandal engulfing the White House, Richard Nixon decided to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate "all offenses arising out of the 1972 election… involving the president, the White House staff or presidential appointments".
Nixon's Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and his Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus, resigned rather than carry out the president's order. Eventually, the Solicitor General Robert Bork, who was third in command at the justice department, was prepared to fire Cox.
The White House announced the news at 20:22 that Saturday evening.
On Wednesday, almost as quickly as the news that he had been sacked as head of the FBI reached James Comey in Los Angeles, these two dramatic episodes were being described as historically analogous.
The president had fired the lead figure in an investigation into alleged wrongdoing by members of his own team.
The Nixonian parallels were obvious.
Roger Stone, a Trump associate who also worked in 1972 for the notorious Committee to Re-elect the President, told the New York Times: "Somewhere Dick Nixon is smiling."
The Nixon presidential library even trolled the White House on Twitter: "FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian."
Democrats insinuated that Comey was fired for similar reasons to Cox, because he was closing in on the truth.
There were other resemblances, too. In the lead-up to the Saturday Night Massacre, the Nixon White House was still reeling from the resignation of the president's chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, a central figure in the Watergate scandal, just as the Trump administration continues to be buffeted by the swirl of controversy surrounding the forced departure of Gen Michael Flynn, his former National Security Adviser.
There's the suspicion now, as there was four decades ago, that an embattled White House has something to hide.
So is this truly a re-run of the events of 1973? Is the past repeating itself?
Even by the standards of the Nixon presidency, the autumn of 1973 was unusually chaotic...
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