If you think this is bad, wait until the polls get close again.
Last week, to put it midly, was eventful.
To begin with, we had the historic turbulence in the markets and the financial sector of our nation, influenced, unquestionably, by global economic turbulence.
And this leads us to the first lie told by the Democrats — that President Bush is responsible for the economic challenges we now confront.
Indeed, it was remarkable to watch the Democratic leadership stand in front of the country and tell the American people that the problems facing us economically are President Bush's problem, not the country's. You talk about political cowardice. One would think that the Party that runs Congress wasn't part of the country or the government — but in fact we all should know that it was Bush and McCain who suggested several years ago that tougher oversight was needed in the market, and Democratic friends of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae demurred. Please.
The second lie told us by the Democrats and their media was that John McCain blew up a "bailout" deal that was ready to be implemented late in the week. In fact, there was no deal because no one had bothered to consult with the Republican House leadership. McCain, in fact, played an important role in trying to shore up Republic House support for needed legislation.
The third lie told us by the Democrats was that Senator Obama played a significant role in the process. We now know this, too, is pure fiction of the sort political hacks spin out each election year. Senator Obama was a bystander to history, and mostly had his finger in the air checking where the political winds were blowing. Frankly, he is increasingly just the same old politician. Change, smange.
The fourth lie we were told was that Obama won the Friday night debate. CNN did a quick poll — the only problem was that their poll, as they even admitted when pressed, contained a disproporitionate share of Democrats. So, they release a poll that Obama won, get it out on the networks, and then people who hear the news assume Obama won and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is deception of the highest order, even beneath the pro-Obama media.
The final lie we have been told is that Governor Palin's interview with a scowling Katie Couric somehow indicated she is not ready for primetime politics. What it proved, really, was that she is still getting her media sea legs. Well, goodness gracious, when a 30-year pro like Joe Biden makes a gaffe a week, you would think folks might give Palin a month or two to adjust to the national media glare.
The sad truth is that sexism does live — and Governor Palin has been subjected to it nonstop from the media and the Democrats, who have held her to a standard no one else in the campaign has been held to. That is a lie by double standard.
But if you think this is bad, wait until the polls get close again. Steel yourself for many more such examples of mendacity in the weeks ahead. Those who worship at the altar of federal power will do anything to obtain that power, that they might be worshipped by those dependant on them for all those things a powerful government can bestow.
shadroui@yahoo.com
Read more articles by George Shadroui
Well, this really shouldn't come as any surprise knowing that Democrats have no sense of decency, even amongst their own. My favorite line of theirs is the Republican Smear/Attack Machine. Meanwhile, the only true smears have been coming from the Left, most of them during the primaries. I believe it was Hillary's camp that was very high on publicizing the rumors about BHO and the whole Wright thing, which has pretty much disappeared once he sealed up the nomination (how convenient, huh?).
It's fantastic. They will smear themselves and then pass it off as the Republicans who did it. I believe accountability and responsibility are missing words in the Liberal Lexicon.
Comment by Anderson | September 30, 2008
"Last week, to put it midly,(sic) was eventful."
At least 4 major lies put forth by Republicans are now without cover.
1. Republicans are fiscal conservatives.
2. Republicans believe in small government
3. Republicans do not use judicial activism.
4. Republicans are opposed to the use of affirmative action.
Comment by felix | September 30, 2008
Felix, since you are clearly a big government conservative, why are you worried that Republicans are just like Democrats. Wouldn't a third Bush term be precisely what you crave?
As best I can tell, it was the conservatives and Republicans who tried to reign in the spending bailout bill. Republicans reconciled themselves to the fact that Bush was not a conservative long ago. This is old news. He has other qualities we admire, but small government conservatism is not an issue on which he led. One could get into why, and the fact that is greatest failures were his partnership with Democrats, but that is a debate for other day.
How strange to hear a Democrat talk about affirmative action as if it is a negative. Shouldn't you be applauding it? Actually, the great thing about Pain is that she was chosen for the right reason — she bright, principled, and yes, green, but she will do just fine if McCain becomes president.
I have no idea what you are referring to on the judicial activism front. perhaps you could enlighten me. In any case, even if everything you wrote is true, it simply underscores the need for moving further to the right, not electing an unapologetic socialist, however gifted politically he might be.
Comment by George Shadroui | September 30, 2008
George writes:"Felix, since you are clearly a big government conservative"
I was thinking that Felix was a leftist troll?
Otherwise your article was good, just a little alarmist. Most of the voting public knows that all kinds of lies fly around during a campaign and they discount most of them. Maybe it would be more interesting to point out what is NOT said during the debates and 30 second spots. Democratic support for radical Feminists, Homosexuals, Welfare cheats, Congressmen with $90k in their freezer, undemocratic signup cards for unions, anti school choice, and the Big A (Killing babies). I left out the war on fathers because it is included in the feminist agenda and Newt brags about how he passed the Welfare Reform Act (which was written by Ted Kennedy and criminalizes fathers).
Comment by Ivan Ivanovich | September 30, 2008
related to the big gov't conservative comment, i was trying to be droll……sorry it didn't work.
Comment by George Shadroui | September 30, 2008
George
Yea, I see it now. You are forgiven and I hope you will forgive me for being so quick on the draw. :>)
Oh, this gives me a chance to add another Dem favorite not mentioned much: Tree Huggers.
Comment by Ivan Ivanovich | September 30, 2008
Who says that the media will allow it to get close? What is going to be sad will the aftermath of this Thursday's debate.
Even if Sarah Palin reduces Joe Biden to a whimpering mass asking for forgiveness and swearing he will never vote Democrat again the media will say Biden won.
Have you heard what CNN and the mass of thousands are saying she has to prove? They are saying she has to show that the answers she gives are not just something that she learned in the past few weeks, but actually thought through her responses from years and years of deep introspection and studying the great issues of the day like Senator Biden has done.
The media have made a huge investment in Obama. They want to make sure their investment comes through in spades. They can't afford after all of this time shielding and protecting their boy Obama that he does not get the prize. They have to push him over the finish line.
They have to make all things evil Republican. They hate conservatives, they hate us, and yes that is the appropriate word hate. If they could pass legislation to have us rounded up and placed in camps they would. Remember these present day liberals came from the tree that gave us Manzanar.
Comment by jfking | September 30, 2008
Felix lists “At least 4 major ‘lies’ put forth by Republicans …”. The initial reaction seems to be to put the lie to his remarks. Instead, let’s put his remarks to the test and see where they lead. There is enough substance to his remarks they should be rebutted with more than care than distemper. My experience is: when rank-&-file liberals make this kind of claim, they speak from media distillations more than informed opinion. At the same time, conservatives aren’t particularly immune from going into reactive defense mode; leading with a right jab more than armed with fact.
1. Republicans are fiscal conservatives.
Republicans are fiscal conservatives … except when they behave like democrats. Too often republican politicians get wrapped up in the mechanics of policymaking and convinced government is the answer to whatever ails us. In this, they are no more immune to the seduction and trappings of power than democrats who revel in it. They typically forget those principled stances for which they were sent to Washington in the first place.
When Nancy Pelosi said “Democrats believe in a free market. We know that it can create jobs, it can create wealth, it can create many good things in our economy. But in this case, in its unbridled form … it has created chaos” (see http://www.kansan.com/blogs/mandatory_socialism/2008/sep/30/_/ ), she illustrated the fundamental difference between liberal-socialists believing in the power of the market to serve socialist goals and fiscal-conservatives (as opposed to fiscal-RINOs) who believe bending the market to serve such goals is not only inappropriate, it is exactly what caused the current problem. She further revealed the typical liberal misconception of what constitutes a ‘free’ market. A free-market is, by definition, ‘unbridled’ and markets on the scale we are talking are inherently chaotic; and it is this attempt at bridling chaos (be that liberal voodoo economics or republican overreactions to slumps) that is so objectionable. O’Biden echoed Pelosi’s approach, last night, to the market almost verbatim when he described the situation as “… proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild …” Both Biden and Pelosi are market control-freaks imbued with the delusion they are uniquely qualified to manage the unmanageable. It is this same delusional hubris we see in the climate-change lobby, who imagine we have both destabilized and they can control inherently chaotic processes. It is okay for government to prosecute bad actors; it is inappropriate for government to micromanage the market and to oversee individual lenders and investors, because this is an exercise in futility that only serves to inhibit the entrepreneurial spirit that fuels growth. So, this is another difference between the typical republican who seeks to regulate minimally through the prosecution of violations and typical democrat who seeks to regulate maximally through a constant, intrusive oversight (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley auditing provisions). Where one seeks only to deal with outcomes, the other presumes to control those outcomes. Both can be bad for the market, but only the latter has proved catastrophic every time it is tried.
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is one such act, a key ingredient in the current mess, and illustrative of a century of governmental meddling. CRA both forces lenders to participate in fraudulent practices and encourages them to do so; yet has proved political suicide to oppose. Even when amended or addressed by bailouts (this latest one does no better), it is precisely these market disrupting social-engineering devices that are left in because to remove them invariably sparks liberal howl-fests. We saw that when Bush tried to reform Social Security, and we would see it happen again should republicans make a concerted effort to really fix this mess and not just band-aid it. To illustrate this, take a close look at ACORN, the community service organization that gave Obama his start and to which he is still actively tied ( http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=670 ). ACORN has been fighting tooth and nail against repeal of the CRA guaranteed loan provisions for nearly two decades. Obama began his service in ACORN in 1992 doing “voter mobilization” (see http://www.justsaynodeal.com/acorn.html ). Both ACORN and La Raza have recieved millions from CRA and are notorious for using CRA to pressure banks into making unstructured sub-prime loans. The way ACORN operates is to create or exploit laws intended for limited purposes for unlimited political gain. So called community organizers are party operatives who ‘facilitate’ benefits distribution to racially distinct groups in exchange for votes. Often clients are easy prey unable to navigate entitlement systems. The organizer convinces the client he/she can get benefits only through them and asserts these are entitlements they have been denied (they aren’t denied, but this doesn’t work if you tell them they can do this themselves). So the operative games the system to distribute goodies costing ACORN nothing, while reminding clients just who it was that got them these goodies come election time. ACORN, through its Housing Corporation got ‘special administrative funding’ written into the CRA enabling legislation. This, then, is their ‘cut’ for mulcting taxpayer funds with which to buy votes and party loyalty. The original version of this latest bailout had provisions in it giving away millions to ACORN and La Raza with no accountability for its use.
2. Republicans believe in small government
Item two in Felix’s list is really just a restatement of item one. Money, programs and the size of government are interlocked. The more programs you have, the more money you need, more regulations you need defining its distribution, and more regulators (bureaucrats) you need to administer it and wield it as a cudgel the better to let the citizen know who’s boss. Republicans generally do believe in small[er] government, but this is not a general rule the way its opposite is among liberals. Oh sure, I know lots of liberals who swear they believe in small government, but I have yet to find one willing to put that into practice. You can’t both be for smaller government and sky’s-the-limit entitlement programs. You can’t be for pork elimination only when it’s the other guy’s pork and not your own.
3. Republicans do not use judicial-activism
First of all this is something of a non-sequiteur. Only judges can engage in judicial-activism. The rest of us can only support or oppose it. Once again, however, republicans are less monolithic in opposition to this particular idea than democrats are supportive of it. I challenge Felix to find a single self-proclaimed democrat or liberal who is opposed to judicial-activism. I thought not. Felix regards this as hypocrisy only because he thinks judicial-restraint a core Republican (as opposed to conservative) principle. The converse would be calling a Democrat who demands greater judicial-restraint hypocritical, but as there is nothing principled in defending judicial-activism other than the long standing habit of it, that too is a false dichotomy.
Another mistake he makes (a common one among liberals) is his confusion of the term ‘Republican’ with ‘conservative’. Many Republicans are conservative and many only believe they are conservative even when fuzzy as to definition and behaving in definitely liberal modes. This is even true of Congressional republicans. Republicanism is that ideology which favors a republican form of government, libertarian principles, rule-of-law, sovereignty vested in the people, and the practice of civic virtue by its citizens as necessary to the preservation of said government. Conservatism, on the other hand, is no more than the impulse to preserve those things that have proved necessary to our way of life and form of government; and disinclined to the often mindless novelties of so called ‘progress’. Conservatism is not a coherent philosophy of government; as is socialism. It has no fixed goals and does not, in itself, describe an ideal society. Conservatism in Saudi Arabia encompasses something very different than it does here, but is ‘conservative’ because it preserves the societal status quo. Conservatism is, therefore and generally, the antithesis of Progressivism. Many people have tried to pin down conservatism, but it is better described by what it isn’t. It isn’t socialism, it isn’t reckless, and it isn’t particularly statist though it sometimes tends that way. Bill Buckley had as good a definition as any when he said it is a man standing astride the road shouting stop (an objection to the mad rush to make hasty changes). Conservatism, in this country, is closer to our founding principles than is liberalism (aka, progressivism, socialism, communism, &c) because that is what most American conservatives think worth preserving and only conservatives do not try to embellish, stretch or corrupt its founding principles to achieve something still ‘better’. Libertarians are, technically, the truest conservatives, but there is some disagreement on this point too. It might be more correct to say libertarians are conservatives obstinately devoted to principles.
The real question, then, is whether or to what extent Republicans and/or conservatives believe in the Constitution as written or follow the unscripted prescription favored by liberals that bends the Constitution for expedience’ sake. More Republicans and conservatives oppose the practice (even when it results in court decisions we like) than do democrats and liberals. Liberals have long argued the case for judicial-activism as a ‘unique and proper “remedy” to our Constitution and have asserted a ‘Living Constitution’ over the fixed reading favored by conservatives. To the liberal, judicial-activism is a hallowed and rectifying feature of the Constitution rather than a usurpation of the legislative role of Congress; despite it appearing no where in the Constitution, specifically denied as a possibility in the Federalist Papers (1787-1788), and contended since it was first presumed by Marshall to be a pre-Constitution, colonial common-law, practice in Marbury v. Madison. The Bush appeal to the Supreme Court invalidating the improper action by the Florida Supreme Court in 2000 was a rare case of double judicial-activism; one in which the activism of the higher court negates that of a lower court. It was also the rare exception to rule ‘conservatives won’t support judicial-activism’, one we may well come to rue if Mark Levine is proved right.
Perhaps the best measure of republican support of judicial-activism over the years is our courts. Time and again, conservative Republican presidents have put moderate to liberal judges on the bench. A quick look at the appointments of Supreme Court judges by past and present Presidents over the last 55-years is revealing. While Republicans Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush have occasionally appointed originalist or textualist (Scalia) judges, most have proven highly liberal once on the bench. Contrast this with the uniformly and consistently liberal to radical judges appointed by Democrat presidents Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, and Clinton.
Eisenhower appointments
Earl Warren: moderate to liberal - presided over racial integration, civil-rights, church-state separation, police arrest procedures (Miranda rights), and was nominated by both parties to high office before he was made Chief Justice.
John Marshall Harlan II: one of the few true conservatives appointed to the bench, Harlan advocated a limited role for the judiciary.
William Brennan: proved to be a strong, almost radical, liberal who strongly supported abortion and was reviled by conservatives and hailed by liberals of the Roe v. Wade period
Charles Whittaker: moderately-liberal - considered to be vacillating in personality, he was a swing voter who voted liberal a little more often than he did conservatively.
Potter Stewart: moderately-liberal - was another swing voter put on the bench by Eisenhower supposedly to give it more ‘balance’.
JFK appointees
Arthur Goldberg: radical-liberal - was a prominent labor attorney and Democrat Party appartchik before his appointment to the bench; consistently argued for a broader construction of constitutional rights, and it was Goldberg’s anti-capital punishment dissent that unleashed the torrent of 8th Amendment death-penalty challenges.
Byron White: considered a moderate-liberal, White generally supported the big-government policies in the mold of the wartime FDR liberalism of his early career.
LBJ appointees
Abe Fortas: radical-liberal - served as general counsel to FDR’s PWA and as an advisor to the United Nations organizational committee under Truman. Fortas was controversial for getting a finding against LBJ (primary election fraud) overturned that proved crucial to LBJ staying in the race and, eventually, being tapped for VP. While on the SCOTUS bench, Fortas was key to overturning ‘parens patriae’, the paradigm shielding parental rights from the usurpation of states, the architect of the landmark majority opinion that eventually banned religious-based creation narratives from public school science. Fortas has the distinction of being one of the few Supreme Court justices ever removed from the bench for cause (corruption).
Thurgood Marshall: strongly-liberal - the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, he is best remembered for arguing before the bench in Brown v. Board of Education as chief counsel for the NAACP. On the bench he supported criminal rights, abortion, civil-rights, and affirmative action; and opposed the death-penalty and veteran’s preferential rights wherever they conflicted with feminist preferential treatment.
Nixon appointees
Warren Earl Burger: moderate-conservative - though considered a strict-constructionist, he nonetheless upheld affirmative-action, abortion, bussing, search-seizure protection, voted to outlaw the death-penalty (later overturned), but otherwise ruled conservatively if often uncontroversial.
Harry Blackmun: strongly-liberal - is best known as the architect and author of the Roe v. Wade decision. He started his career on the bench voting 87% conservative, but within a few years sided more with liberal views and was 71% liberal by his final 5-years.
Lewis Powell: ? - renown among liberals as a moderate, he is regarded an appeaser among conservatives.
William Rehnquist: moderate-conservative - appointed by Nixon, he was later upgraded to Chief Justice by Reagan. One of the few consistently conservative justices appointed by republicans to the bench, even though his application of principle was sometimes uneven.
Ford appointee
John Paul Stevens: strongly-liberal - chosen by Ford as a moderate-conservative who would, nonetheless, be acceptable to the Democrat dominated Congress; he has been hugely disappointing to conservatives and has taken some of the most liberal positions advanced by the bench.
Reagan appointees
Sandra Day O’Connor: ? - chosen by Reagan to be the first woman to SCOTUS, O’Connor has drawn considerable criticism from conservatives her whole time on the bench. Though she most often voted with conservatives, she had a penchant for writing separate opinions at odds with fellow conservatives Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia that tended to support liberal conceptions of procedure that undermine originalist-extualist readings.
Antonin Scalia: conservative - a maverick who also writes separate opinions, he is a strict textualist who puts Constitutional intention formost.
Anthony Kennedy: strongly-liberal - another pick hugely disappointing to conservatives, he upheld abortion and partial-birth abortion, gay-rights, strict church-state separation (Judge Moore case), restrictions on capital-punishment, the Guantanamo Bay ruling, flag-burning, and the Kelo v City of New London case (violating eminent domain).
George HW Bush appointees
David Souter: strongly-liberal - most often voting liberal, Souter was a Reagan holdover chosen because his vague paper trail would be less problematic in the aftermath of the Bork rejection. Denounced as ‘extremely right-wing’ as Bork, he was hotly opposed by Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, NOW, the NAACP. Souter has consistently voted for abortion, against school prayer, and, in 1992, formed the infamous and unshakable ‘troika’ with Ginsberg and Breyer.
Clarence Thomas: no argument he’s a conservative as well as an originalist. Even so, he sometimes takes libertarian positions that cause some conservatives to blanch (e.g., medical marijuana, capital punishment, pornography, and the Child Online Protection Act).
Clinton appointees
Ruth Bader Ginsberg: radical-socialist - is arguably so inflexibly liberal she qualifies as three-for-one, has never once sided with a conservative on anything, is unabashedly radical-socialist, feminist, gay-rights promoter, environmentalist, anti-capital, cherry-picks the Constitution when it suits and is off the map in her preference for foreign and international laws and norms over Constitutional ones.
Steven Breyer: indisputably liberal – outright rejects the principle of strict interpretation to embrace foreign laws and practice. Breyer’s method, though deemed such by the left, is little more than drawing a straight line to his objective then finding precedent wherever it may be found and ill-suited, and calling it an interpretation. Calling him a scholarly counterweight to Scalia is a joke. His is a philosophy of jurisprudence with no anchor point, only preference.
GW Bush appointees
John Roberts: so far, so good – still early
Sam Alito: so far, so good – still early
Hopefully, we’ve broken the string of disappointments, but if the Republican Presidential track record is any guide, liberals have little to worry about and all the hair-pulling hysteria is nothing but smoke-screen for keeping the court as far to the left as possible.
4. Republicans are opposed to the use of affirmative action.
Again he’s confusing republicans with conservatives. Try to think of this, Felix, as a Venn diagram with a large circle of republicans overlapping a much smaller subset of conservatives. Not all conservatives are Republicans, though, almost without exception, conservatives favor the preservation of the union (the original Republican principle). More to the point, though, most who call themselves republican have not done the due diligence it takes to be a real conservative. Too often they support socialist agendas deemed toxic by real conservative unawares. Just because these ‘conservative-lites’ haven’t made the full transition does not invalidate conservative principle; it just means they still have some bad habits to shuck and are still gulled into such habits listening to liberal morons in lofty positions of ‘authority’.
I remind Felix (assuming he ever learned this) it was Nixon, the arch-Republican, who gave us affirmative-action in the first place. It was an experiment that failed, and conservatives are the first and only ones seemingly able to admit this glaringly inconvenient truth. We aren’t opposed to affirmative-action so much as we are opposed to something that does not achieve the desired goal of blurring the divide between black and white America. It not only fails to achieve this laudable goal, it is driving us further apart. One definition of insanity is continuing to do something that doesn’t work and clearly produces unwanted results. That makes affirmative-action a basket-case.
Comment by Bob Stapler | October 3, 2008