Even More on Dying Democrats
It should be obvious that you can't beat something with nothing. And even more obvious that the intense hatred that Democrats feel for Republicans is not enough to win the undecided center-- perhaps because the basis of the hatred is false.
Which leads to the ultimate reason why the Democratic Party is dying -- you cannot build a growing vibrant party on a tissue of lies. Both in terms of strategy and tactics, lying has become standard operating procedure for the liberal left and the Democratic Party. I suppose I should offer a qualifier here; not all the Democrats are liars -- some of them are simply unhinged from reality. Anyone listening to some of the comments by Al Gore about brown shirts and storm troopers could easily decide that he has gone insane. Since so many other liberals seem to be comfortable comparing Bush to Hitler and Republicans to Nazis, I guess we need to keep the insanity option open. Maybe they aren't lying. They're simply whacked out of their minds. In any event, I shouldn't have to point out that insanity and paranoia are rarely productive tools for building a political majority.
When Michael Moore becomes the best source of your facts, you have a problem. Of course, Moore arrived on the 2004 campaign scene long after the Democrats had made lies a staple of political discourse. Slandering Republicans has been Democratic Political Strategy 101 for many years. Kerry's claim in the last election that Bush was the worst economic president since the depression was simply a retread of Bill Clinton's bogus claim that the economy in 1992 was the worst in 50 years. This type of falsehood ran throughout Kerry's campaign. Whether the topic was Iraq, Kerry's war record, his anti-war record, his Senate record, the status of his records or even his ownership of an SUV, Kerry and the Democrats never gave an honest answer. They scared college kids with the bogus claim that Bush wanted to re-start the draft. They scared seniors with the standard lie that Republicans wanted to slash social security benefits. They embraced all the lies that Moore used to fill his movie. If you strip all the falsehoods from Kerry's campaign, there just isn't much left.
An even better indicator of the depths of dishonesty to which Democrats have fallen can be seen in their bizarre claims with respect to two issues: WMDs in Iraq and the social security crisis. In both instances, we have a long history of Democrats in the Clinton Administration and in Congress who told us repeatedly that Saddam had WMDs and that social security was headed for a crisis. Despite this well-documented record, we have heard many of the same people tell us more recently that the claim that Saddam had WMDs was a lie and that social security is just fine. One almost has to wonder if such a personality disorder is contagious.
Finally, the basic factual claims which the various Democratic special interests make about our society (and which form the backbone of their party) are simply false. As Ben Stein pointed out in his recent book racial discrimination is simply not the problem that the NAACP and liberals say it is. The claim that Republicans engage in wholesale efforts to harass and intimidate black voters is a vicious slander of the worst kind. The feminist claim that women are paid a fraction of what men make for the same work is false, and has been for at least a quarter of a century (see Ben Wattenberg's The Good News Is the Bad News Is Wrong. Environmental claims that the environment got worse under Bush are simply false. And as Bjorn Lomborg demonstrated in the Skeptical Environmentalist, the entire standard litany of the environmental left is false.
Remember liberals' claim that the homeless numbered over 3 million (Phil Collins claimed the US had 10 million homeless on the video of his big hit, Another Day in Paradise)? A deliberate lie manufactured by homeless advocate, Mitch Snyder.
Hunger advocates peddle the ridiculous claim that 20% of our kids go to bed hungry. Advocates of socialized medicine claim that every person who isn't covered by a health insurance policy receives no health care at all. Ward Churchill is a good example of the kind of honesty we expect from universities riddled with political correctness. In sum, regardless of which Democratic special interest group you look at, it will have a pet cause which is buttressed by statistics and studies which are distorted, exaggerated or outright fraudulent.
With the stonewall of the news media turning into a Maginot Line, more and more people are getting the real facts on these false claims. How can this do anything but hurt the Democrats?
And we haven't even gotten to their ultimate Achilles heel -- foreign policy. But patriotism and the lack thereof will have to wait until tonight. I have to run.
Which leads to the ultimate reason why the Democratic Party is dying -- you cannot build a growing vibrant party on a tissue of lies. Both in terms of strategy and tactics, lying has become standard operating procedure for the liberal left and the Democratic Party. I suppose I should offer a qualifier here; not all the Democrats are liars -- some of them are simply unhinged from reality. Anyone listening to some of the comments by Al Gore about brown shirts and storm troopers could easily decide that he has gone insane. Since so many other liberals seem to be comfortable comparing Bush to Hitler and Republicans to Nazis, I guess we need to keep the insanity option open. Maybe they aren't lying. They're simply whacked out of their minds. In any event, I shouldn't have to point out that insanity and paranoia are rarely productive tools for building a political majority.
When Michael Moore becomes the best source of your facts, you have a problem. Of course, Moore arrived on the 2004 campaign scene long after the Democrats had made lies a staple of political discourse. Slandering Republicans has been Democratic Political Strategy 101 for many years. Kerry's claim in the last election that Bush was the worst economic president since the depression was simply a retread of Bill Clinton's bogus claim that the economy in 1992 was the worst in 50 years. This type of falsehood ran throughout Kerry's campaign. Whether the topic was Iraq, Kerry's war record, his anti-war record, his Senate record, the status of his records or even his ownership of an SUV, Kerry and the Democrats never gave an honest answer. They scared college kids with the bogus claim that Bush wanted to re-start the draft. They scared seniors with the standard lie that Republicans wanted to slash social security benefits. They embraced all the lies that Moore used to fill his movie. If you strip all the falsehoods from Kerry's campaign, there just isn't much left.
An even better indicator of the depths of dishonesty to which Democrats have fallen can be seen in their bizarre claims with respect to two issues: WMDs in Iraq and the social security crisis. In both instances, we have a long history of Democrats in the Clinton Administration and in Congress who told us repeatedly that Saddam had WMDs and that social security was headed for a crisis. Despite this well-documented record, we have heard many of the same people tell us more recently that the claim that Saddam had WMDs was a lie and that social security is just fine. One almost has to wonder if such a personality disorder is contagious.
Finally, the basic factual claims which the various Democratic special interests make about our society (and which form the backbone of their party) are simply false. As Ben Stein pointed out in his recent book racial discrimination is simply not the problem that the NAACP and liberals say it is. The claim that Republicans engage in wholesale efforts to harass and intimidate black voters is a vicious slander of the worst kind. The feminist claim that women are paid a fraction of what men make for the same work is false, and has been for at least a quarter of a century (see Ben Wattenberg's The Good News Is the Bad News Is Wrong. Environmental claims that the environment got worse under Bush are simply false. And as Bjorn Lomborg demonstrated in the Skeptical Environmentalist, the entire standard litany of the environmental left is false.
Remember liberals' claim that the homeless numbered over 3 million (Phil Collins claimed the US had 10 million homeless on the video of his big hit, Another Day in Paradise)? A deliberate lie manufactured by homeless advocate, Mitch Snyder.
Hunger advocates peddle the ridiculous claim that 20% of our kids go to bed hungry. Advocates of socialized medicine claim that every person who isn't covered by a health insurance policy receives no health care at all. Ward Churchill is a good example of the kind of honesty we expect from universities riddled with political correctness. In sum, regardless of which Democratic special interest group you look at, it will have a pet cause which is buttressed by statistics and studies which are distorted, exaggerated or outright fraudulent.
With the stonewall of the news media turning into a Maginot Line, more and more people are getting the real facts on these false claims. How can this do anything but hurt the Democrats?
And we haven't even gotten to their ultimate Achilles heel -- foreign policy. But patriotism and the lack thereof will have to wait until tonight. I have to run.
posted by Stan at 3:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home