Give Me A Frickin' Break

From over at Media Matters:

MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh, and conservative author and TV personality Ben Stein suggested that, through their role in exposing the Watergate scandal, which resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon, newly disclosed "Deep Throat" W. Mark Felt and Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were responsible for the fall of South Vietnam and the genocide in Cambodia that left approximately 1.7 million people dead.

BUCHANAN: There's something deadly serious here. People that brought down Nixon also resulted in the fall of South Vietnam, the death of hundreds of thousands of people. ... Nixon was brought down by people who were a hell of a lot worse than he was. [MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, 5/31/05]

LIMBAUGH: Had they not brought down Nixon, we wouldn't have lost Vietnam. Had [they] not brought down Nixon, the Khmer Rouge would not have come to power and murdered two million people in a full-fledged genocide. [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/1/05]

STEIN: When his [Nixon's] enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:

1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.

2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN [Richard Nixon] would never have let this happen. [The American Spectator, 6/1/05]

This is clearly some kind of GOP talking point.

Let me see. Who was President after Nixon? Ford. Who was Ford's Chief of Staff? Don Rumsfeld, you might have heard of him. Who was Deputy Chief of Staff? Guy named Cheney. Cheney then replaced Rumsfeld when Rummy became Secretary of Defense under Ford.

Now, you're not calling these guys incompetent, are you? You're not saying they lost Vietnam and brought about the Khmer Rouge? Surely not!

I didn't know Bob Woodward and Mark Felt briefly became President for a day in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon.