I didn't vote for him but...

I'd nearly forgotten why Bob Dole is my favorite Republican...

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," Dole wrote in the personal e-mail. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

"When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me,'" he wrote. "Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years."

Dole also made clear he has no plans to read the book.

"I have no intention of reading your 'exposé' because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job," he wrote. "That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively."

"You're a hot ticket now but don't you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"

Okay, I know he's just upset because the partisan wall of silence has been breached (again), and that link shows he also threw in some predictable whining about "the liberal media," and I can't help being bugged by his judging the book when he hasn't read it (that always makes me think of a prof I knew in Iowa who once told me she would never watch Forrest Gump because "it's a celebration of anti-intellectualism" - how could she know without watching it?). But that said...

First of all, while McClellan's disclosures have been music to my ears this week, thee's nothing there that everybody who cared wasn't aware of years ago. Speaking of years ago, Dole is right, that's when he should have quit if he's known all along about the lies he "exposes" here. I really hope nobody out there thinks he's a hero for speaking up now, but I'm getting the impression some folks do.

From a more selfish but realistic point of view, there's also the matter of partisan loyalty here, and I know how that feels. Now Republicans everywhere know what it's been like every time Joe Lieberman has opened his mouth for the past five years or so.