Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Sir,

If you are so tired of hearing about the SEVENTIES, why don’t you tell your attack dog Hughes (among others) to stop it with the prevarication of “I’m disturbed that he [Kerry] would pretend to throw his medals over the wall.” If you long for a meaningful debate on the issues, look to your own party, sir, for they push and push with half-truths, innuendo, and at times outright lies until the other side blows its top. Which is the very position in which your party would like to find the ‘enemy.’ At least Kerry went to Vietnam, at least he fought, and yes, the Bush administration are chicken hawks, with only one fighting during war time, and one other in the armed services at all. It takes Lautenberg calling them chicken hawks to put you over the edge? Did you not feel any anger at Hughes’ slandering of Kerry? At the slandering of McCain and Cleland?

Did you not feel any remorse when Cheney at Westminster deflected his own faults during his time as Secretary of Defense onto Kerry? Did you think of when Cheney was Defense Secretary when HE suggested to President H.W. Bush that the defense budget be cut in the 1992 State of the Union? Or do you have amnesia when it comes to your Party? Look up the 1992 State of the Union, where you find that Bush I says “The Secretary of defense [Cheney] recommended these cuts after consultation with the joint chiefs of staff.”

You feel rage when the Democrats are pushed to the point of anger and yet you do not respond to the faults of your own party? Have you no shame at all, or is it just attack, attack, and attack?

Good grief, this is has all got to end.

Dan,

There are a lot of Democrats tonite (counting me) who are grinning, whooping it up and shouting Yeah! Way to go, Senator!

Finally, they saw a response to the smear campaign, distorted Bush ads and don’t forget your Conservative radio attack dogs!

You chide the Senator, but what about Karen Hughes equating pro-choice marchers to terrorists?

Sen. McCain wants all this to stop, but this is how he should’ve responded in South Carolina!

When you put a leash on Delay and a muzzle on Coulter, Drudge and Rush, then we’ll talk about a cease-fire!

It’s not going to stop—it’s going to get more intense. And unfortunately, it has to. We have a candidate running for president who does NOT GO A SINGLE DAY without singing the praises of his own military service thirty years ago. What do you expect?

I have no doubt that if Bob Dole had given stump speeches in Colorado (“Ah, these snow-covered mountains remind me of the place I nearly had my arm blown off in World War II”), or if George Bush the elder had visited a Boeing plant (“Ah, here they built the plane that I was heroically shot down in—I can tell you something about planes and air-craft carriers for real”), then the Democrats would have raised questions, especially if veterans were coming forward in droves to question those accounts.

So far, the only candidate to personally cast stones about war records is Kerry. Bush can’t control the bloggers and pundits you mention, Bert, even if he wanted to. And he especially can’t control the veterans who feel that Kerry’s conduct AFTER the war was an attack on their character not consistent with his “band of brothers” rhetoric. If Kerry wants to use veterans as props in his campaign, he can’t also expect—and demand—that they keep their mouths shut. If Bush’s guard record has gaps, it’s not nearly as damaging—he has four years as president to run on. It’s Kerry who has to present a resume to voters, and so far (since he’s basically voted for when he didn’t vote against most of Bush’s proposals) he isn’t coming up with anything better than an ambiguous and sometimes questionable four month tour of duty three decades ago. He’s made this bed, now he has to lie in it.

And I do mean “lie” in it.

While I agree that Mr Lautenberg’s comments were unseemly for a U.S. Senator. I think it is equally damnable the lies and disinformation being spewed by Mr. Cheney. I believe he’s probably old enough to know better, too.

An interesting article appeared in the Post Today. I find it humerous when certain venom spouting commentators like to believe that the RNC is only interested in issues and does not engage in gutter politics.

On Monday morning, Sen. John F. Kerry was confronted with a 1971 videotape that appeared to contradict his past accounts of whether he had thrown away his military medals as a Vietnam War protest. This was no accident, not in a campaign season in which opposition researchers are constantly trying to unearth damaging material about the Massachusetts Democrat and President Bush. In this case, copies of the tape were provided to two news organizations by the Republican National Committee, according to several media staff members familiar with the situation who, not surprisingly, said they could not be identified while discussing confidential sources.

Imagine that: The RNC engages in raises issues about a decorated veteran and are incensed when someone raises issues about [ersons who actually avoided Vietnam. Hmmmm

Greg:

What attack on Kerry’s service has Cheney made? I know he has attacked his Senate voting record, but I don’t think any of the Administration people have attacked Kerry’s service or his anti-war protest era. Your post above is the first thing I’ve seen that ties the GOP to the release of the tape, and I’ll have to read that story.

But we can agree that Kerry’s Senate voting record is fair game, right?

I like how during the 92 and 96 elections, the GOP said that Vietnam military records cut to the core of the suitability of presidential candidates. I believe that Kerry agreed with that sentiment, in fact. When the first round of AWOL discussion was going on, Kerry expressly asked people to drop it. Now, however, after these ridiculous attacks on Kerry’s relative heroism, I think that turnaround is fair play. If the GOP wants to make an issue of military service, they can’t do it only on their terms. They will be brought to account in the same way. I applaud the Democrats that are finally hoisting these couch potato warriors by their own petard.

so dan, the “inapropriatness” aside, is the senater wrong?

Hughes’ slandering of Kerry, the South Carolina primary slandering of McCain, and the Georgia Senatorial election slandering of Cleland are just part of the Republican pattern. Do something once, do it a thousand times. Say something once, say it a thousand times. It doesn’t really matter if your argument doesn’t fit the circumstances (if your opponent is a war hero for example), it is the PARTY LINE. In this way, the modern Republican Party resembles nothing so much as a grouping of Communist apparachiks.

a few examples to chew on:
“Tax relief” for tax cuts
“Death taxes” for the anti-plutocracy inheritance tax
“class warfare” for honest debate about ordinary progressive income taxes
“waffling, flip-flopping” for anyone who doesn’t repeat the same thing a thousand times

The Republican Party is nowadays the party to two main kinds of people—treason-sniffers and simpletons. The former sense disloyalty in complexity beyond the PARTY LINE and the latter believe that repetition equals steadfast adherence to principal.

George,

I did not say Cheney himself had made statements against Kerry’s miliary record.

The RNC has done that as I quoted in the Post article.

I said Cheney had “lied and provided disinformation” distorting Kerry’s voting record.

For example: speaking about Mr. Kerry’s position on military cuts while apparently forgetting his own proposed cuts to the same programs.

This kind of distortion and mischaracterization, I personally find insulting and beneath the office of Vice President.

There does not seem to be any moral compass in his speechifying or sincerety coming from his positions.

I think what he’s sick of are the constant attacks on the patriotism of liberals, and those who don’t agree 100% with Bush’s War Plans, or execution of the war so far, and to honest about it, I’m sick of those things, too.

It gets especially tough to take when the people attacked are veterans, and those doing the attacking did not serve in the wars they advocated at the top of their lungs.

Max Cleland fought during the siege of Khe Sanh with medal worthy valor, only to be cut down in a tragic grenade accident through no fault of his own. He was merely trying to pick up a grenade he thought he had dropped from his belt, a grenade in fact left by a young soldier who had fiddled with it’s firing mechanism inadvertantly.

It is a measure of how dark the conduct of certain GOP commentators has become that they painted this brave soldier as a bumbling drunk who blew himself up on his own grenade. And that they smeared a man who had protected his country as being aligned with the evil men who meant to destroy it.

Reading Plan of Attack, I came upon a disturbing account of how Rumsfeld and others kicked out a pair of the people who had been planning what to do in Iraq after the war Only one of them was reinstated. Their crime? Not being one-hundred percent loyal to the plan of attack as it was being presented, or as Woodward has somebody saying, being aligned with the Chalabi camp. We could have used plans like there’s, but the administration was more interested in stacking the political deck.

The reality is, the stone the builder rejects may end up being the best candidate for the cornerstone, or at least a valuable part of the structure. We don’t always know ahead of time what is right. It is always good to have a second theory or theorizer available to redeem failed plans and philosophies.

And of course, the last comment truly points toward the childishness of the Republican Party. I think this last poster summarizes the comments made to Dan’s column. I think nothing else need be said.

The post of which I post has been deleted.

> if Bob Dole had given stump speeches in
> Colorado (“Ah, these snow-covered mountains
> remind me of the place I nearly had my arm
> blown off in World War II”), or if George Bush
> the elder had visited a Boeing plant (“Ah, here
> they built the plane that I was heroically shot
> down in—I can tell you something about planes
> and air-craft carriers for real”), then the
> Democrats would have raised questions,
> especially if veterans were coming forward
> in droves to question those accounts.

As I recall, Dole’s WWII heroics were pretty much center-stage the whole 1996 campaign. His wounded hand was constantly the subject of editorials and biographic peices (I remember a story about how Dole liked Nixon because Nixon had the decency to always extend his left hand for a handshake). And Bush’s ordeal in the shark-infested Pacific ocean was always part of his bios and advertising, and you saw pictures of him by his jet plane all the time. (Even Bush II used photos of himself in his flight suit in 2000 - and he wasn’t a hero at all!)

The reason why you don’t seem to remember the Republican candidates’ use of their military records is simply because the Democrats didn’t make a big gigantic controversy about them. For good reasons: First, it would have been wrong. Second (more cynically) Clinton, realizing he was in a glass house himself, fawningly and overtly paid both Bush and Dole the great respect they deserved for their military service. There was never the slightest bit of disrespect from the Democrats.

Today Republicans are quite simply taking advantage of the fact that the military has traditionally been on their side. They are exploiting this, feeling safe that since they (to abuse a metaphor) live in a steel house they can throw stones at veterans and war heroes all they want — as long as those veterans are Democrats.

-Cf

Also, during the 1992 and 1996 campaigns, we were not at war (much less entrenched in an ugly and questionable war)… so naturally the Commander-in-Chief’s knowledge of military affairs and appreciation of the sacrifice made by our troops wasn’t a forefront issue.

-Cf