Do you know how you can tell it’s election time? Because the Democrats are scrambling to pretend they’re conservatives. They always do this before elections, it's how they assure the yokels back in the hinterlands that they are one of them, and not some loony Washington Democrat. That means Democrats who’ve been happily supporting everything Pelosi/Obama have done, will now start taking very vocal positions in direct opposition to their party. Of course, these are fake positions, i.e. symbolic at best, but they're hoping no one notices.
In the past couple weeks and days, we’ve seen the following:
You can expect a lot more of this until November because this is how the Democrats survive. They vote far left on vote after vote in the Congress and happily support Lunacrats like Pelosi in the leadership, but then they cast a few symbolic votes in the other direction, make a few angry conservative speeches, point a dirty finger or two at their corrupt leaders, and generally pretend that they aren’t really what their record says they are.• A group of Democrats (WHAP) have “attacked” their leadership for not proposing real spending cuts. WHAP offered symbolic cuts, which they and their friends in the media described as courageous. They were of course nothing of the sort, $40 in every $10,000 of spending.
• Sen. James Webb from Virginia this week argued that it was time for the government to drop affirmative action, which he (correctly) claims helps people who don’t need it and never faced any historic discrimination, and hurts poor whites. Of course, his party will never act on this, so he can safely pound this drum without anything happening.
• Sen. Ben Nelson took the courageous step of declaring that he would vote NO on Kagan. Of course, his vote won’t matter as she is assured to win nomination. . . but just to be safe, he’s made it clear he wouldn’t join a filibuster.
• At least eight Democrats have called for Charlie “RICO” Rangel to resign. They are “outraged” at his conduct. Actually, they are concerned the American people will see his corruption as endemic. So by sacrificing the 80 year old multi-millionaire Congressmen from a safe district who is always rumored to be retiring anyway, they can claim to oppose corruption, even as they remain silent about all the other corrupt Democrats. And if Rangel does decide to retire, every Democrat will rush to the podium to take a meaningless punch at this safe target for the benefit of the viewers at home.
• A week or so ago, Obama’s HHS mysteriously issued a ruling that basically prevents abortion from being included in policies issued under the high risk pools being set up for ObamaCare. The pro-abortion people claimed they were caught off guard. Is this a pro-life victory? No. This is a sales pitch. This lets about 40 Democrats, e.g. the Stupak group, go home and tell their districts that their cave-in on ObamaCare actually did result in keeping federal funds from being used to fund abortions. Then, after the election, HHS will suddenly revise the rule to allow abortions.
• And as Bev pointed out, Steny Hoyer is actually trying to claim the Republicans want to raise your taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. . . the same tax cuts they've been promising to let expire.
Now this is not to say that they will ignore their leftist base, but they leave that up to others at this point. Indeed, while these Democrats are putting on their “I’m more conservative that Rush Limbaugh” masks, national Democrats like Howard Dean and Democratic organizations like the NAACP are out there working hard to excite the base. For example, both Dean and the NAACP have been busy slinging racism charges: the Tea Party is racist, the Republicans are racist, this ham sandwich is racist, wahhhhhhh. They’ve also been promising to end global warming, end capitalism, and turn the whole world gay.
Sadly, this has been working. Too many people in too many places like West Virginia and Ohio only hear about the few symbolic conservative instances and they don’t realize that their “conservative” representative has a liberal voting record eerily similar to Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi.
That’s why it’s important to call the Democrats out on this. When Nelson says he’s voting against Kagan, ask him why he waited to announce his vote until after it became clear she had enough votes to get nominated and why he won’t filibuster her if she’s so unqualified? When WHAP talk about spending cuts, ask them why they couldn’t find more than $40 dollars out of every $10,000? When your representative tells you they think Charlie Rangel should resign, ask them why they don’t feel the same about Max Baucus, Maxine Waters, Obama/Clinton/Sestak’s Jobsgate, and a dozen others. When Steny Hoyer speaks. . . ask him if he's really that stupid.
Their conservatism is for show only.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Ain't No Liberals Here. . .
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
27 comments:
The purpose of the Tea Party is to research candidates and to inform the public as to their positions.
I am now involved witht the First Coast Tea party in Jacksonville and I am told that this is the primary purpose. They refuse to endorse candidates. There are a lot of people hard at work compiling information.
The only two obstacles I see to this are one getting all the ionformation in time especially because many fcandidates refuse to cooperate. There are plans to do this including partnering with other websites that appear to have no political labels.
The other is finding a way to consolidate this information into a form that gets to the public. It is this second problem that I think is the real challenge.
Individualist, That's a good plan. I have often felt that it would be better for supposedly non-partisan groups not to endorse, but to instead release information. . . and at most give an approval/disapproval for each candidate.
The challenge is putting the information together as you say, but I would say a third challenge exists -- how do you cut through the lies and manipulations of the system, which lets them vote as liberals when it matters, but vote as conservatives when it doesn't, and then lets them claim they are moderates or conservatives because of their conservative voting record?
In my view, it is up to the candidate to call out the Democrat opponent. If he or she does not, who can they blame? Whether it be Ben Nelson, or the gang of WHAP, our guys need to get down and dirty. You know the old media isn't going to do it.
Andrew: I think your illustration is prescient. At election time, many Democrats have to run to the right and pretend to be somewhat conservative, in other words, more like Republicans. Sad to say, however, that we have more than a few Republicans who do exactly the same thing (McCain, anyone?). An informed public is necessary to a healthy republic, and though the Democrats are masters at misinformation, we must be cautious about messages coming from the "moderates" in the Republican Party. Individualist is absolutely right about the necessity of getting information without endorsement out to that public.
BTW, the DISCLOSE Act that I discussed a few days back would prevent corporations from doing even side-by-side comparisons of candidate voting records without that crippling and First Amendment-chilling "disclosure" statement within the ad. More squelching of the information the public needs to know.
Jed, Very true. Republicans need to get better at pointing all of this out, because as you note, the media will never do it.
Lawhawk, Yeah, McCain and a few other RINOs do that as well. Wouldn't it be fascinating if we could read their thoughts as they spit out all this conservatism? I wonder how insulting they would be toward the public they are trying to fool?
I couldn't agree more. They've been doing this for as long as I remember. I think they even set up the way they vote multiple times so they can vote both ways and tell different people different things.
First of all - HAM SANDWICHES ARE NOT RACIST!!! Anti-semitic maybe, BUT NOT RACIST!
The only problem is trying to get a candidate and/or Congresscritter in a place where they will directly answer questions.
And when someone does try, here is what happens -
Hannity/Weiner/Pete King -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMjOeMl1cPs&feature=player_embedded
Ed, This is literally how they survive in large parts of the country -- by lying about their records.
And I think you may be right about the voting system. They've created a system where you get to vote both for and against the same bill several times before it happens. That's how Kerry trapped himself so famously -- "I was for it before I was against it." That's really how they think.
Sadly, too many people hear "I voted against ObamaCare (before I supported it)" and they think, "my guy isn't like those other liberals." But it's all faked.
Bev, The NAACP has spoken. . . the ham sandwich is racist. And don't try to tell me that it has non-racist friends. The end! ;-)
That's the problem of not having a legitimate unbiased media. These guys never go anywhere where they'll really be grilled. Instead, they just go to friendly places and get tossed softball questions. And if they do go on Fox or somewhere like that, then people assume that the Fox reporter is just being partisan.
It's a fraud.
P.S. Bev, I still can't get over that Hoyer thing. Unbelievable!
Andrew, we have several Democrats in our state who ran moderate compaigns but voted for every policy that Obama/Pelosi/Reid wanted to ram down our throats: Harry Mitchell, Ann Kirkpatrick, and Gabrielle Giffords. Of course, there's always John McCain, the pretend Republican, but that's another story.
Suddenly Mitchell, Kirkpatrick, and Giffords are puffing out their chests and "outraged" by Obama's handling of SB1070, as just one example. Mitchell is my congressman. When we were under the throes of that piece of crap healthcare legislation, you couldn't find him and he wouldn't return a phone call. Now he's everywhere. I must get three pieces of mail from him a day. I'm hopeful that he'll have Obama come stump for him, especially now that Obama has a 29% approval rating in the state of Arizona. I look forward to voting for Mitchell's Republican opponent.
These politicians are as transparent as rice paper.
I know Andrew, it's appalling. They are doing that kind of stuff all over the place.
Screaming Meme Anthony Weiner (D/Crazy Liar) is blaming the Republicans because the Democrat opted to suspend the rule and opt for 2/3 vote that limits debate and forbids amendments rather than a simple majority.
NOW they are trying really hard to blame the Repubs who had legitimate concerns that could have been assuaged with an open debate, for voting against the 9/11 Heros when, as we know, all the Dems had to do was to click their heels together 3 times and the bill would have passed.
Writer X, I think that's a much more common story than people realize. They run as moderates/conservatives in their home districts, act to the far left in DC, and then come home and attack their own party for being too far left.
People need to stop buying it.
I remember you telling us about Mitchell and Kirkpatrick. I recall them supporting everything Obama/Pelosi did. And I even remember their stony silence when SB1070 was passed because they didn't know yet which way the wind would blow.
And for them to now be outraged is an actual outrage. It makes you wonder how they sleep at night? Have they no shame?
Bev, I almost included that as an example. I probably should have. That's the perfect example of this.
1. They create a bill that looks patriotic.
2. They really don't want it to pass, so they give it an impossible procedural challenge and include a poison pill.
3. Then they vote for it, knowing the Republicans will protect them by voting no, and they run around acting like they care about 9/11 responders. . . when they don't.
How can I say that they don't care? Because they've done NOTHING about this in the last 4-6 years that they controlled the Congress and because they turned this into a political vote with a poison pill.
It's disgusting.
Andrew
You are right about that, their record is the problem. The woman in charge of this stated that of the 40 odd condidates (they are doing local to national elections) only eight responded to the surveys.
They have obtained the congressional voting records and are tabulating the votes but this is time consuming. Still they have a lot of information.
The thing that gets me is how do you compile this in a format that you can deliver to the public at large. That would be key. I think one thing would be to put together an earmark list. Caculate the total earmarks of all candidates and rank them. Still....
Individualist, I would say that you need to come up with the Top 10 most important issues to the public.
Then under each item, you write what they did in bullet point format: "voted to increase taxes on ...." and "voted against ....."
Then mark the good stuff in blue and the bad stuff in red. And don't fall for the fake votes, like where they vote against something 5 times and then vote for it on the final vote.
I think adding an earmark amount would be good -- also tally up how much regular spending they requested (if that's available), and list new programs they've tried to create, etc.
But the real problem is that the way they handle legislation now, it becomes impossible to truly describe someone's record accurately because they have gotten very good at disguising it.
How funny is this - I just saw a story at The Politico saying that it's racism that only black Congressmen are being brought up on ethics charges. It really isn't only black Congressmen, but truth never gets in the way of a cry of racism.
The promises of candidates are meaningless.
I want something binding.
Candidates should be required to submit written pledges of support for three distinct, current & major issues two weeks prior to a November election and have them published online.
The pledges and a signed letter of resignation would then be sent to an escrow account.
If the (now) office holder breaks any one of the pledges, the letter of resignation is accepted and an election is held the following week.
I'm tired of the shenanigans and I think this would work better than term limits.
Or...
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the democrat party?
How many times did you vote Pelosi (or Reid) into a leadership position?
When, if ever, has your vote helped defeat a bill that your Speaker has favored?
Point of View radio uses the party platform when candidates refuse to state a position on any issue. This really annoys the dems so it must be condemning of them.
it's a good way to get the candidates to state a position or die. LoL
Ed, I saw that article. That's been par for the course for decades now. Whenever blacks get in trouble, they yell racism. You see it in the criminal justice system, in Congress and everywhere else.
Until blacks stop buying this, things will never get better for them.
Ponderosa, You're not the first person to suggest that, and I like the idea. But the problem is that I'm not sure how you decide whether they supported something or not. . . in fact, that's the problem with the modern Congress.
Take the 9/11 bill the other day. The Republicans all voted NO, but does that mean they didn't support the bill or was their NO vote overridden by the inclusion of the poison pill the Democrats inserted to get the Republicans to vote no?
I'm not sure what the solution is.
Classic bait-n-switch! That was the declared Nixon strategy, “run to the right in the primaries, run to the center in the general,” …the converse is also true on the left. I don’t think it’s going to work this time, we’re paying close attention now, we’ll see.
Stan, That has certainly been the plan in the past, and the Democrats are trying it right now. I don't know the public will buy it this time or not? They made a couple of BIG unforgettable votes. So maybe this time, the old strategy will fail?
I hope people don't buy this, but history seems to agree that they will. I don't get it.
I hope so too Mega, but you're right about history. I think that people just don't pay enough attention and they are easily swayed when these creatures return to their districts and talk about how "conservative" they really are. People tend to believe lies if they are told with enough authority.
Post a Comment