Posted on 10/15/2010 8:33:39 PM PDT by SpareChange
The Audacity of Hoopla: My Two Cents on Impoverished Political Ploys
By David J. Aland /// 15 October 2010
As Dewey and Truman once learned, the American voting public is unpredictable, whimsical and fickle. A good politician plans for this. A poor politician counts on it. Sadly, the Democrats this year appear to have made it the mainstay of their mid-term election strategy, and no one is fooled.
The ever-glib Joe Biden put it best recently, when he pointed out that Democrats can’t boast about achievements in Congress this year, because the policy issues are “too complicated” for voters to understand. As a whole, Democrats are dodging substantive discussions about the byzantine legislation they’ve passed, what it means, and how voters will be affected. Instead, they are talking down to the voters and throwing decoys.
This should come as no surprise, particularly when the contortions it took to pass the very unpopular health-care bill resembled sleazy pole-dancing more than political gymnastics – and that Congress adjourned without showing sufficient fortitude to set tax rates for the next year, or even pass a budget for the government. In fact, about all the Democrats really accomplished before the election break was to defer the humiliation of ethics trials for Reps. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) and Maxine Waters (D-CA). As a result, the dominant Democrat strategy in the run-up to the mid-term elections is to avoid the issues and stick with dirty tricks, smears, and name-calling.
From the persistent use of “tea-bagging” to describe a grass-roots dissent movement (and the spurious allegations of racism and fringe lunacy), to the lunatic hyperbole of Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL), the circus atmosphere of this year’s campaigns started shaping up early to rival the blood spectacles that once graced the Coliseum in the declining days of the Roman Empire.
The President has been ramping up the rhetoric all along. Clearly fixated on defining this election in terms of identity politics, he has scolded his base, exhorted unions, youth, and “y’all black folks” to vote as a bloc for his fellow Democrats. But it’s more than a war or words.
In Texas, a supposed “grass-roots” voter registration program was revealed to have registered over 20,000 fraudulent voters. In Illinois, absentee ballots to military voters were delayed, and the state lied to the Dept of Justice about it. In one race, candidate “Richard Whitney” was put on the ballot as “Rich Whitey.” In Ohio, the election board disqualified political ads that addressed the abortion-friendly language of the health-care bill. In the meantime, the DoJ has been sweeping voter rights infractions from the Left under the carpet, such as the New Black Panther case in Philly. While none of this doth a conspiracy make, it all sure counts as a theme.
For the Democrats this Fall, it is not about substance and all about appearance – or, at least, how the Democrats would like to appear. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) can’t debate his opponent without prissily posturing about being interrupted while repeatedly shouting down candidate Sean Bielat. Like the President, Frank does not debate, he lectures and finger-shakes in apparent confidence of his right to do so. It’s arrogant, but it’s a habit being picked up all across the Left.
Jonathan Chait, of New Republic, recently posited that a Republican majority would result in a race war and impeachment of Obama. The President, continuing his penchant for petulance, accused the US Chamber of Commerce of funneling foreign funds into the political process – an accusation assessed as absurd by even the New York Times, and made even more outrageous by the President’s own failure of financial transparency in 2008. In the meantime, the IRS is busy investigating advocacy groups on the Right while George Soros is pouring money into every container he can find on the Left.
The abiding message to the voters here is that the Democrats do not respect them, but apparently have been granted the right to expect their support – and if they can’t earn that support, they’ll find another way to get it. Certainly that’s the lesson from the California gubernatorial race – when a Democrat candidate can call his female Republican opponent “a whore” and still get the nod from NOW, there is clearly no longer anything like “political accountability” at play.
Lecturing, sulking, rigging, skulking – the Democrats seem to be willing to do anything to get elected except deserve it. But banking on the fickle tendencies of the electorate may only result in more fickleness. As Colorado candidate Ken Buck’s recent ad notes: “…they ignored us... on Nov. 2, they will ignore us no more.”
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David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.
“Audacity of Hoopla” lol! That’s a keeper, right there.
Right up there with “Drug-induced Dreams of my Father”.
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