Dis-truth Goes Marching On
I have a hard time listening to Republican blowhards who present themselves as the answer to all of our problems, so forcing myself to listen to the entire Republican debate took a lot of effort.One thing I have to note is that MSNBC sent up softball pitcher Chris Mathews over fireballer Brian Williams, who threw heat against the Democrats. If MSNBC had a real sense that presenting the news is much more important than making it, they would have the honesty to reverse the order and send up the softballer to moderate the Democrats and sic Williams on the Republicans. Then we might get a real sense of where the Republican candidatess stand on the issues.
As it stands, Brent Budowsky considered the debates “a waste”:
In neither debate did any of the candidates saying anything important, or memorable, or relevant to the outcome. What we heard, in the Democratic debate, and now the Republican debate, was a feast of gaseous emissions in a political discourse already too polluted. None of the Democrats were JFK; none of the Republicans were Reagan; none of this was a surprise; and none of it mattered either to the quality of our national discussion, the standings of the candidates, or the verdict of history, will which remember none of this.
We will not get that debate from a leadership class that is obsessed with the politics of its own advancement and lacks the courage, clarity and honor to make the hard decisions of life, death and blood that the situation urgently calls for, and our people urgently pray for.
I agree.
With the exception of Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich, no Democrat took a brave stand on principles, seeking instead to make an appeal to some nebulous humanistic center that exists only in their own minds.
It was the same with the Republicans last night. Not one could stand naked in the light of Truth and expect to win the vote of some nebulous religious-based center that exists only in their own minds. “In the tradition of Ronald Reagan” was the theme of the candidate’s reponses. Are they so lame that they cannot stand on their own merits? Maybe so, for the GOP candidates all dragged the decaying mantle of Ronald Reagan over themselves to hide their shame.
But one has to deal with the answers one has instead of the answers one wishes one has. In that vein, I take my cuts at the candidates from their responses as presented by MSNBC in their transcript. I tried very hard to find quotes that I agree with, at least in part. I am taking a few liberties with the answers in terms of context, but each quote I present is accurate, if abridged.
I open up with one such quote from Senator McCain which succinctly summarizes the importance of the 2008 election: “My friends, we face enormous challenges, whether it be a burgeoning deficit, out-of-control spending, a need for energy independence. And we need, most of all, to restore faith in our government and confidence in the leadership.”
Absolutely no argument with that statement. But I do have an issue with the selective way in which that statement is applied by Republicans when the trust of the public has been violated, say, by an aide to the Vice-President:
Moderator: “Do you think Scooter Libby should be pardoned?”
(Unknown): “… the underlying facts of this case are ones where there was not a law that was violated.”
Governor Romney: “I think it was outrageous for the prosecutor, knowing that Scooter Libby was not the source of the leak, to go ahead and begin interviewing him, gathering information, setting up a case against him. I think it was prosecutorial indiscretion.”
And yet, some of the other Republicans on stage disagreed with these bald-faced canards:
Senator Brownback: “We need to have laws to enforce these systems and, we, as leaders need to live by those laws as well. … what I would hope to do is to lead by example, lead ethically…”
Governor Gilmore: “I think that we have to insist upon the obedience to the law, and that means that we have to let the courts and the juries make decisions based upon all of those matters. I actually was an elected prosecutor. I handled many cases myself, and I also managed many other cases. The law has to apply within the discretion of the prosecutor.”
Moderator Chris Mathews pressed on, trying to find a majority to stand for pardon, but didn’t find it:
Moderator: “Congressman Tancredo wants to pardon him. Dr. Paul, do you want to pardon them?”
Paul: “No. He doesn’t need a pardon. But he doesn’t need it because he was instrumental in the misinformation that led the Congress and the people to support a war that we didn’t need to be in.”
Governor Gilmore put the final nail in that topic’s coffin by laying the issue at the door of the Oval Office:
“With respect to Scooter Libby … if the president is going to exercise … pardons or clemency, in this particular case …, you have to go to the American people and make your case as to why that kind of discretion ought to be applied. And if he can’t make that case, then he shouldn’t do it.”
So what should a president do? Wisconsin Governor Thompson tried to illuminate that topic for us by saying:
“A president can do a lot of things. A president can set a vision… I’m from Wisconsin, a blue state, and I won four consecutive times. I still have a very high popularity appeal.”
Thanks for playing, Governor. We’ll have Chris Mathews toss that question, posed by a viewer, back at the others for a response.
Moderator: “Bob Hussay from Minnesota writes that perhaps the most important skill a good president must have is the ability to make good, sound decisions, often in a crisis situation. Congressman Paul, please cite an example when you had to make a decision in crisis.”
Paul: “My major decision, political decision, which was a constitutional decision, was to urge for … years that this country not go to war in Iraq.”
Ah, the 800-pound liberal lurking in the Reagan Lie-bury! The best idea, considering that The Deciderer did go to war in Iraq, actually comes from the candidate I just made look foolish, Governor Thompson, who had something very plausible to offer considering the current condition of the country. Thompson said, “I believe the al-Maliki government should be required to vote as to whether or not they want America in their country. If they vote yes, it gives us a legitimacy for being there. If they vote no, we should get out.”
If such cooperation could be attained from the Iraqi so-called government, Governor, you will have redeemed yourself. This approach, assuming that it isn’t too late, would take the decision to leave Iraq out of the American political debate.
But what if they voted for us to remain? What then? Senator Brownback actually has an idea worthy of consideration, again assuming Iraqi cooperation:
“… I would push a three-state, one-country solution in Iraq, with a Kurdish state, a Sunni state, a Shia state, with Baghdad as the federal city.”
It would be a tough row to hoe, Senator, but it isn’t impossible. I could support such an effort.
Another effort that was presented, and that I could support, concerns the environment. Al Gore’s message must have gotten through to Governor Huckabee, for he said that
“…it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it. It’s the old boy scout rule of the campsite: You leave the campsite in better shape than you found it. I believe that even our responsibility to God means that we have to be good stewards of this Earth, be good caretakers of the natural resources that don’t belong to us, we just get to use them. We have no right to abuse them.”
Congressman Hunter must have heard the message of An Inconvenient Truth as well, for he declared:
“I think that global warming and the need to be energy-independent gives us a great opportunity … and a great challenge to remove energy dependence on the Middle East and, at the same time, help the climate. We need to take taxes down to zero for the alternative energy sources.”
This is an idea that I can support, especially considering the conditions that Hunter and Huckabee propose:
Hunter: “You know, we won World War II, World War I and the Cold War with a major industrial base. We’re losing our industrial base through bad trade policy right now. We need to make sure that all the licensing from our laboratories that goes to the private sector goes to the American manufacturing sector for these energy systems.”
Huckabee: “The most important thing a president needs to do is to make it clear that we’re not going to continue to see jobs shipped overseas, jobs that are lost by American workers, many in their 50s who, for 20 and 30 years, have worked to make a company rich, and then watch as a CEO takes a $100 million bonus to jettison those American jobs somewhere else. And the worker not only loses his job, but he loses his pension.
“That’s criminal. It’s wrong. And if Republicans don’t stop it, we don’t deserve to win in 2008.”
Such honesty! If it wasn’t for the other positions which you folks hold, I could vote for you. There is all too often a double standard applied to social ills which you find most uncomfortable.
Chris Mathews asked Governor Thompson, “If a private employer finds homosexuality immoral, should he be allowed to fire a gay worker?” Thompson replied: “I really sincerely believe that that is an issue that business people have got to make their own determination as to whether or not they should…”, and yet Governor Romney defended government intrusion into whether The Schiavo family could decide to remove life-support from a family member and to prevent a woman from choosing to terminate a pregnancy. While John McCain rails against “activist judges”, even he admits that the Congress “acted hastily” in the Schiavo case. Is the deciding factor for Republican legislation whether or not the decision to be made affects profitable commerce?
If so, then stem cells would be a no-brainer. Tom Tancredo rightfully claims that “there are billions of dollars going into this research”, and yet Republicans remain insistant that embryonic stems cell research is a huge moral issue while Governor Thompson brags about adult cell research conducted in Wisconsin at the Weissman Center in Madison, Wisconsin which has already produced some tangible benefits. Such research demonstrates that the issue isn’t one worthy of so much opposition when other viable research options are already available. But as the religious-based politician interferes, the rest of the world advances the technology and claims the patents - just another example of the ill-considered actions of Tom Tancredo’s “overarching and overreaching federal government” led for years by the then-dominant Republican Party.
There has to be some room for change, for as Rudy Giuliani ruefully admits, “Neither party has a monopoly on virtue or vice. That’s just a fallacy that we sometimes fall into.” John McCain was asked about a stated plan to include Democrats in his cabinet should he win the nomination and election. For once, he actually sounds like a leader whose vision wasn’t generated by the mushroom pizza he had for dinner last night. He said:
“… my first priority would be their talents [are] and what they can contribute rather than what their party identification is. I’d go to corporate America, I’d go to Silicon Valley and I’d say … ,
“You’ve made your money. Now come. Come and serve. Come and serve this country.”
I couldn’t agree more, Senator. I also agree with your observation that “spending is destroying the future of this country, and we’ve got to get it under control.” But the biggest single expense of the government today is the terror war, something only Ron Paul was willing to oppose. Chris Mathews asked the pertinent question:
Moderator: “Congressman Paul, you voted against the war. Why are all your fellow Republicans up here wrong?”
Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas): “That’s a very good question. And you might ask the question, why are 70 percent of the American people now wanting us out of there, and why did the Republicans do so poorly last year? So I would suggest that we should look at foreign policy. I believe that when we overdo our military aggressiveness, it actually weakens our national defense. If the goal of government is to be the policeman of the world, you lose liberty.
“We live way beyond our means, with a foreign policy we can’t afford, and an entitlement system that we have encouraged. We print money for it. The value of the money goes down, and poor people pay higher prices. That is a tax. That’s a transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to Wall Street. Wall Street’s doing quite well, but the inflation tax is eating away at the middle class of this country. We need to get rid of the inflation tax with sound money.
“I’m suggesting very strongly that we should have a foreign policy of non-intervention, the traditional American foreign policy and the Republican foreign policy. No nation-building; don’t police the world. That’s conservative, it’s Republican, it’s pro-American — it follows the founding fathers.
“An example of the loss of liberty is represented in Rep. Paul’s eyes by the national ID card. He said, “I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don’t need a national ID card. I would work very hard to protect the privacy of American citizens, being very, very cautious about warrantless searches. And I would guarantee that I would never abuse habeas corpus.”
Senator Brownback agreed, saying that “I don’t think this is the way to go…”
So where are we to go? I’m going to utilize commentary by David Michael Green of The Regressive Antidote to frame the question I’m presenting.
One day you’re gonna wake up, America. And, like every other one since last you can remember, it’s gonna be an ugly morning.
One day you’re gonna wake up and wish you had a government that could simply and competently do the basic things it was designed for.
One day you’re gonna wake up in anger at the absurdly poor education your children are receiving.
One day you’re gonna wake up and go to your lousy job with its lousy salary and non-existent benefits. You might even remember the good job you once had. Or that the government you once supported gave tax breaks to companies like the one that exported that good job of yours to the Third World (which is what they’re now starting to call your country). Or that that same government undermined the labor unions which fought to get you your good wages and benefits. You’re gonna want treatment for your maladies but you won’t be able to touch the cost.
You’re gonna want to retire in dignity but will be left instead to laugh bitterly at the cruelty of that joke.
One day you’re gonna wake up and be furious at the monstrous tax burden you are carrying, a tab which accounts for fifty of the seventy hours you must work each week just to eke by. You might even figure out why your tax bill is so high. You might remember that the government you once supported shifted the tax burden from the rich onto people like you, and from the taxpayers of the time onto those of today. And that they borrowed money in astonishing quantities to fund their sleight-of-hand, so that you work thirty hours a week just to pay the interest on a mountain of money borrowed decades ago.
One day you’re gonna wake up and wish that you weren’t being drafted to go fight wars you don’t believe in. And suddenly you’ll understand why no one would volunteer for the military anymore, and why people like you had to be drafted.
One day you’re gonna wake up and cry out for simple justice, blindly applied without bias. And perhaps you’ll remember when that principle died. When your country stood by and watched the politicization of its judicial system for purposes of partisanship, and said nothing. When it stood by and watched its highest law enforcement officials in the land lie about their failing memory of events and pretended to believe that was acceptable.
And maybe you’ll even remember that you once supported a government that lied about the very existence of global warming – back when it might have been curtailed – a government that scuttled the barest remedy for the problem in order to protect oil company profits.
One day you’re gonna wake up and want very badly to run outside and scream in anger about a government that long ago stopped serving your interests in favor of the narrow interests of a tiny oligarchy. One day you’re gonna wake up and wished you’d invested a little more energy into monitoring and choosing the people who made monumental decisions on your behalf.
With a fury you would yesterday have thought yourself incapable of, you’ll hurriedly attempt to affix Band-Aids to the tattered splinters remaining from your country’s once sturdy hull. But you’ll learn quickly the toll of those years spent wasted in a civic coma … you’re gonna find out what was happening while you were sprawled on the couch watching endless mind-numbing loops of CSI, Desperate Housewives or Dancing with the Stars.
But even on the rare occasion when you roused yourself from your stupor long enough to learn the slightest bit about the very threats that jeopardized your life and that of your species, still you found it more reassuring to follow the blustering worst amongst us, with their patently absurd pretended confidence, and their ever constant resort to the cheapest of false solutions, and the rudest of demeanors.
One day, you’ll desperately search for hope of any sort, but none will remain. Nothing will be left to save you.
The time to act is now if you want to avoid this future nightmare. Pay attention not to the buzzword and phrases the candidates use to divert your attention away from what they are really saying underneath. Find those issues you can support in these words, and base your decisions on the real problems they address. Vote not for the candidate chosen for you, but for the ideas you believe in.
Ron Paul talks about the founding fathers above, but do you know where he got those ideas from? The most concise compilation of these thoughts comes from the Father of Our Country, George Washington himself, who in his Farewell Address, attempts to warn America against creating the very political cesspool in which we now find ourselves.
It’s not too late! Read the words of the man who gave you the nation you live in and many of the political traditions you observe. Learn what evils he sought to save you from, and then save yourself. You owe it to him to hear his words and act upon them, not be acted upon by push polls and PR manipulation.
To do anything else would be un-patriotic and un-American.