Posted on 10/16/2010 8:08:48 AM 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 cant 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 theyve 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 years 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 yall black folks to vote as a bloc for his fellow Democrats. But its 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) cant 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. Its arrogant, but its 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 Presidents 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 cant earn that support, theyll find another way to get it. Certainly thats 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 Bucks 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.
It’s like my little dog. I can inveigle him into coming out from under the bed so I can clip his nails by pretending to put something in his dish, but unfortunately, this trick works only once.
I truly hate that nobody in a position to broadcast an opinion to the public, has the guts to call a conspiracy a conspiracy. Mein Gott, the word means to breathe together, not hide within the “cone of silence” with shadowy character actors from Hollywood. Acorn, the Tides foundation, SEIU, AFL-CIO et al, want to win elections AT ANY COST. They conspire to register non-citizens, illegals, prisoners, children and the dead to vote as they decide. THAT is a conspiracy. Not only that, but they have a reason to steal elections, to push an agenda that favors their friends financially, and in a way that is more akin to fixing slot machines. Everyone can play, but the losers so outnumber winners, that it is inconsequential......but the losers still step up with their nickles.
This is a well-written editorial that tells it like it is!
A great evocative phrase, taken from an article by Gary North, fits their actions. The Democrats ". . . at some point will return, like a dog to its vomit, . . ."
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