Posted on 01/27/2006 3:03:23 AM PST by 13Sisters76
Enough with the distortions By David Limbaugh
Jan 27, 2006
We often talk about the Democrats' conspicuous lack of a policy agenda as proof they are a party in decline. But I think there's even better evidence of the phenomenon: They habitually misrepresent what they stand for and what Republicans stand for, and constantly mischaracterize President Bush's actions.
If they had confidence in the salability of their ideas, would they need to play word games, resort to euphemisms, revise history, distort facts and repeat patently false charges?
I long for the days when the worst you could expect from a liberal was the articulate but good-faith presentation of wrongheaded ideas. Today, the political exponents of liberalism reside predominantly in the Democratic Party, which -- on the national level -- is on the verge of intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
On issue after issue, they dissemble -- grossly and shamelessly. They aren't honest about their positions on abortion, the Iraq War, their criteria in confirming judges and "values" issues, to name a few. They must believe they can't afford to be.
Worse, they paint President Bush as a liar and miscreant at every opportunity. The most egregious example is their unconscionable charge that the president lied about Iraqi WMD. I honestly don't know how President Bush has been able to withstand the libels with such dignity and class, except for, in his words, "family, faith and friends."
Consider Hurricane Katrina. They couldn't be satisfied merely to criticize President Bush for failing to coordinate a multi-layered government response in New Orleans, which, in my view, would have been unfair enough, given the obstacles he faced with state and local leaders. But they had to go further and accuse him of racism because of the hurricane's allegedly disproportionate impact on blacks, a presumption that was later discredited.
How about "torture?" When isolated incidents of abuse of enemy combatant terrorists were reported, they insisted on imputing the charges to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush. It didn't matter a whit to them that the administration has not authorized illegal techniques in dealing with captured terrorists. What mattered was that this was an opportunity to taint them as sadistic ogres.
More recently, they've latched on to the administration's eavesdropping of Al Qaeda without a warrant, which they insist on misportraying as the president's "domestic spying program." They intend to leave the impression that the "power-mad" president has a perverse interest in monitoring private communications between innocent citizens.
Can someone please tell me what motive President Bush would have -- other than laudably trying to prevent further terrorist attacks -- to listen in on private citizen's phone calls? Can they produce just one innocent victim of the NSA surveillance program?
Better yet, can anyone explain why the administration should need to demonstrate probable cause to listen in to a suspected terrorist's communications when time is of the essence? Do we really want to hamstring our intelligence agencies when going after the enemy in war -- as opposed to pursuing suspected criminals for law enforcement purposes?
More importantly, does anyone really believe Democratic leaders oppose the blanket practice of monitoring Al Qaeda, and, if so, why? Or are they just grandstanding, as usual, to score political points?
How about their deliberate attempts to smear Judge Sam Alito as unethical for not initially recusing himself in a case involving Vanguard, a company in which he owned an amount of stock whose value couldn't conceivably have been effected by the outcome of the case? Even after Alito's eminently credible explanation for sitting on the case, Sen. Ted Kennedy tirelessly repeated the charge, as if Alito had confessed to flagrant misconduct.
Also consider their hand wringing over President Bush's evil scheme to "pack the court" with judges who will conspire with him to emasculate Congress. The charge is almost too absurd to repeat in respectable circles. They know full well the president's fulfillment of his duty to appoint justices to the Supreme Court does not fall within the definition of "court packing," which was a term used to describe FDR's plan to wholly restructure the court to obtain a rubber-stamp majority.
Then there's their deliberately misleading description of the president's court appointees as ideologues, when those appointees were chosen precisely because of their commitment to judicial restraint, a judicial philosophy that eschews "ideological" jurisprudence.
On the bright side, as a conservative, it is fairly comforting to realize that Democratic leaders do not have sufficient confidence in the popularity of their ideas to sustain a consistent position on Iraq or to present the truth to the people on a host of other issues. Until they reacquire that confidence, we can expect more negativity, hyperbole and scandal mongering, which is hardly a formula to win elections.
David Limbaugh is a syndicated columnist who blogs at DavidLimbaugh.com. He is also the author of Persecution and Absolute Power: The Legacy of Corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice Department.
Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com
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Find this story at: http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/davidlimbaugh/2006/01/27/184027.html
bttt
The left could NEVER be truthful about their true platform...a complete elitist tolitarian government. I believe if left un-checked, they would make joe stalin look like a preist. They are the most dangerous threat we face today.
As understood by old commies and today's radical left, the truth is that which advances their goals. Factuality is irrelevant.
ping
Are you a lawyer?
And yet in the midst of a campaign it's the Dems who holler loudest about the tone and how the Republican has "gone negative." The whole Dem party has gone negative.
And much of the discourse about the Patriot Act.
And the way the far right attacked Miers. I'm glad Miers was withdrawn, and replaced with Alito, but the mothods some on the "right" used to attack her were disguisting.
Honesty and integrity has long been lacking from the extreme edges of political discourse.
However it seems to be getting more rare in general instead of just on the fringes.
good article
good stuff...bttt
David does a good job of describing what I think. After such a bad 2005, politically speaking, we are blessed that our political opponents are democracrats.
The proglem with the left is twofold: 1) they don't stand for much - just a lot of very loud bleating and bitching about the administration- no solutions, just bitching and moaning; and 2) the things that they kind of sort of do support are not backed by more and more of the population, such as getting out of iraq or unrestricted abortion on demand.
But it basically boils down to the fact that Americans like strong leadership and won't back a passel of weenies.
The way Miers was promoted was just as bad as the way she was attacked. No angels in that one.
Are you referring to illegals-lovers or WoD thugs?
Naw. Inside joke.
Projection. The Nazis were socialists, just like the Osamacrats.
Yea, it was handled poorly all around.
"The sob's that continue to vote for these morons out of party line loyalty"
Good point. That is the group that the dims must rely on to get any votes. As more of these leftist freaks show the "rest of us" how demented the libnuts' policies are, the dims have to keep on hoping their dumbed-down loyalists will stick with them. I do believe a lot of them have left that plantation. If anything, it's energized the rightwingers to vote against the dims. And that is a good thing ;)
Libs proved this during the Clarence Thomas hearings, which I watched on PBS.
The Left's comments on the hearings ***bore little resemblance*** to what I actually saw and heard during the hearings.
I was disgusted when I saw what the libs did, so I left the Democratic party (I had voted for Liberals, Democrats, and Socialists since 1968)
(***"bore little resemblance"*** is a euphemism for "were filled with lies")
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