Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
One of the most obnoxious and tenacious memes the Democrats have been echoing for the last few months is the “Why is Bush not going to funerals of soldiers” nonsense that got its most widely seen airing in a NY Times piece by Andrew Rosenthal. Rosenthal asserts:
But someone of rank from the White House could and should be at each and every military funeral. Ideally, Mr. Bush would shake the hand of someone who loved every person who dies in uniform
Congratulations to Dan Drezner, whose response to Matt Yglesias’s idiotic postings on the Bush visit to Baghdad were far classier than mine, but managed to essentially say the same thing. I am not apologizing for my postings- they were and are spot-on and deserved, but it is nice to see Dan can be a touch more patient than I can be in these situations.
Often times, I am guilty of attributing the worst to Democrats, assuming they are just liars and hypocrites. I am starting to think they are just suffering from groupthink induced memory loss. The most amusing example of this is the recent outrage over certain Republicans being pressured to vote a certain way on a major piece of legislation.
For the record, I am not in favor of these sorts of strong-arm tactics, but it is absolutely absurd for Democrats to pretend this is a Republican-only sin. How soon they forget:
Back in August, when he was trying to get his budget passed, Clinton made a deal with moderate and conservative Democrats who argued the plan relied too much on higher taxes or didn’t cut spending early and often enough: Vote for the budget, and the moderates–including Penny–could propose a new set of spending cuts in the fall. (Clinton made a similar agreement with Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.) They relented. Clinton’s budget passed by one vote in the House and by Vice President Al Gore’s tie-breaker in the Senate.
Democratic leaders thought they were off the hook. They obviously didn’t understand how painful the vote was to moderate Democrats. Citing his frustration with the recalcitrance of the pro-spending groups in Washington, the 42-year-old Penny announced that he would resign from the House at the end of his term.
And the following weekend’s talk shows prominently featured freshman Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (D-Pa.), who cast the decisive vote. The Almanac of American Politics 1994 calls Margolies-Mezvinsky’s district a “quintessentially Republican seat.” Margolies-Mezvinsky had run for the open seat in 1992 as both a liberal and a deficit hawk, winning by only 1,300 votes. She had announced her opposition to the Clinton budget a couple of hours before the vote.
Margolies-Mezvinsky had to be bullied into changing her position. The televised images of a harried, almost-tearful member of Congress explaining her switch made Margolies-Mezvinsky an instant, if unintentional, celebrity.
These bullying tactics also provided an opportunity for the moderates to demand that Clinton deliver on his promise. Penny got Clinton and House Speaker Tom Foley to agree to a vote on spending cuts before the House adjourned in November. When Clinton offered his “rescission” package, House members could propose amendments that would be voted on individually, without any revisions, at that time.
Strong-arming is nothing new, and Kevin’s implication that some physical harm might come to Republicans who voted against the Prescription Drug Benefit (“Nice kid you’ve got there, Nick. Be a shame if anything happened to him….”) is more over-the-top rhetoric from the theatre of the absurd that once was the Democratic mainstream.
Not content to merely be cynical, “Big Media” Matt Yglesias takes a second swipe at the Bush visit to Iraq and decides that nothing goes with cynicism like a healthy dose of condescension:
Scanning around the web, it seems to me that too many of my liberal colleagues are willing to give the president credit for today’s little stunt supporting the troops. Consider, however, whether you think that the leaders of the Democratic Party would have been wildly opposed to taking a little Thanksgiving-time trip of their own to pose with the troops for photo ops. Seems to me that they would love to have done that. But they weren’t invited.
They didn’t have to be invited, foolio. For example, Hillary Clinton managed to find a way to Afghhanistan, and she managed to do so without a written invitation from the White House. If you will notice, the only person who went was the President. It wasn’t the President, Bill Frist, and Dennis Hastert. It wasn’t the President, every Republican in the Senate, and every Republican in the House. It wasn’t the President and every Republican from a swing state. It was simply the President, and, as he can not be a Republican and a Democrat at the same time, it appears that your keen Ivy league-honed skills of deduction are accurate- no Democratic politicians went along.
If, by chance, you were to attempt to research your vacuous claims, and during the course of that research, you had visited the popular search engine called “Google,” and typed the phrase Senate + Visit + Iraq, you would have noticed that numerous politicians from both political parties have managed to find their way to Iraq, all sans an offical ride on Air Force One. Why, gosh, that tricky web search even turned up this story:
“U.S. Sen. John Cornyn will join several Senate Armed Services Committee colleagues for a trip to Iraq and the surrounding region next week. The delegation will meet with U.S. and Iraqi officials involved in the reconstruction effort. While there, Cornyn will visit with and encourage the Texas troops and receive briefings from coalition forces and humanitarian organizations. The Committee
It certainly did not take long for the parasites at the Democratic Underground to go into full conspiracy mode about Bush’s surprise visit to the troops in Baghdad. Check out this stuff:
So now that Shrub (or Rove) has proven he can go anywhere secretly…
Let’s be honest, there’s a good (though paranoid of me) chance this was done not just as a publicity stunt, but as a test.
What do you think the real purpose of this test was? Where will he go next in secret? What did they just prove today, other than that they can mobilize Air Force One, and send the president into a “war zone” (even though it’s technically “mission accomplished”), and the media either doesn’t bother to notice or is told not to notice.
Will America now be ready for the media to show Shrub anywhere, no matter how photoshopped or faked the trip might be, so that they can make him out to be a superhero by rigging fake trips and fake photo opps for him?
Was this done to find out whether the media really doesn’t care about keeping track of the president, and that they can now abuse that lack of attention?
They showed the world, and they showed us, something. And they proved something to themselves today.
What is it? Is this beyond Orwell?
Entire, broad portions of the modern left are now perpetually stuck in the same wave of paranoia that has encompassed Dave Neiwert (And Dave, please spare me the “It ain’t paranoia if it is really happening” line. That was witty the first 8200 times.). It is really damn amusing, if you ask me. Yes, Mr. Rabrrrrrr, this was just a test. Bush will now be in 7-8 places at once- in fact, right now he is watching you through a special turkey breast camera that was stuffed into your turkey. All reports of your activity will be reported back to the mak you refer to as KKKarl Rove.
Idiots. Then there is this absurd thread, which contained the following tidbits of silliness:
to pretend like he was crying . . . whatever – so he started crying before he came out now while he was talking to them. b.s.
If this was suppose to be low-key for security, why were reporters invited. This was about publicity, not about thanking the troops. I like the comment of him not visiting the dead troops only those that are still of use to him.
and
but think about this. Only Fox News is covering this story? That means Rove fed it to them. What if Bush is not in Iraq? What if this is all a gimmick and he’s on some airstrip in Texas?
and
I wonder how much this political grandstanding cost us? And how many hungry people could have been fed today with that money? Just asking.
Paranoid, delusional, bitter, mean-spirited, and thankfully, completely out of power. These people are so vile that half of me wants Bush to win in 2004 just to hear them squeal. Maybe they will move to Canada and will be Chretien’s problem for a while.
And before my trolls feast, I am not questioning their Patriotism. Just their frigging sanity.
BTW- I think it is pretty damned decent that Hillary is spending the holiday with the troops from Ft. Drum who are stationed in Afghanistan. Good for her.
*** Update ***
The wingnut Atriettes over at Eschaton have lost their god damn minds, while ‘moderate’ Democrat Matt Yglesias calls it all a’ poll-driven PR stunt’ and TalkLeft suspects it was just an attempt to upstage the Jr. Senator from New York. Make sure you read the comments sections at each site for a good laugh.
How delusional with Bush-hatred are these guys- and tell me again how you hate him for his policies. May of these ‘moderate’ Democrats have simply lost their mind, and they have lost a good bit of the country, too.
For the record, Matt should probably read the articles he links to, as this quote is rather relevant:
Presidential aides later said Mr. Bush had conceived of the idea five or six weeks ago, but only informed Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House chief of staff Andrew Card, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on Wednesday.
Officials said afterward that if word of the trip had leaked out
I wonder what made people eat the first one of these. They couldn’t have known it was going to taste that good.
Via the Calpundit, I see this whole master/slave nonsense is progressing farther than I thought it would. People really need to get a grip.