July 17, 2007
Working the old switcheroo
Hypocrisy and politics have long been close friends, but the levels to which Republicans are taking things these days are down right ridiculous. It’s as if they don’t understand the durability of recordings of their previous statements, or just think people are either too dumb to notice or too apathetic to care. I’d like to think people are smart enough to see through this, but there’s scant evidence they do.
It’s hard to choose who is the most egregious at the hypocrisy game. The Republican caucus in the Senate continue to filibuster every measure the Democrats draw up to reign in Our Fine President or his tragically miss-targeted war. This comes after six years of that party calling Democrats obstructionists every time they tried to use the traditional minority power to block Senate business. Now they use the same tool without ever explaining why they’ve turned around on the issue.
Then there’s Louisiana Senator David Vitter who just emerged from his groundhog hole to decry the new set of prostitutional shadows besmirching his good name. Vitter, a champion of family values and “traditional” marriage admitting frequenting a DC hooker after his phone number showed up in her records and has been accused of frequenting local prostitutes back home. How long until this alleged serial adulterer is back speaking out about abstinence education and the sanctity of marriage?
Of course there’s always Our Fine President himself who goes ahead and commutes his criminal lackey’s prison time while continuing to press for stiffer sentencing regulations to limit judges discretion. Oh yeah, and there’s the matter of his approving the unlimited detention in secret and public prisons of all sorts of people who never face charges or any sentencing at all. I’m not sure how he squares all of this, but I’m sure he finds it fair and balanced in his two-tone world. The people he locks up must be evil and his friends and advisors must be good so his action was appropriate.
Even more amazing is the whole al Qaida thing where he and his spokespeople are calling everyone we shoot at in Iraq al Qaida and never stopping to note that the organization we’re fighting there was created after we arrived and is only loosely attached to the al Qaida who hijacks the planes on 9/11. The reports just issued say terrorism is worse since 9/11 and yet they don’t see this as a sign their strategies are not working. Nope they’re too busy trying to patch up their legacy with a retroactive reason for Iraq that they continue to ignore the real al Qaida and let it grow stronger with each and every misstep we take.
Three years back this same party tarred John Kerry with the flip-flopper label for changing his mind about the Iraq war and deciding that upon further review, he and the rest of America had been duped. They made this label stick and his efforts to explain his change of heart were largely ignored because he couldn’t state the complex issue in terms as simple as the names he was being called.
It’s an audacious game plan that party seems to be running. It’s almost as if they’ll say or do anything to win the support of a core group of people, whether or not they believe in or more importantly, live up to the ideals they vocalize and legislate. Their anything goes to get the job done mentality is difficult to defeat politically because you can’t argue against someone’s principles if they abandon them so readily and hope no one notices.