Here’s a news story for you. Go read it. I’ll wait for you.
Rick Davis is breathtaking in his Orwellian manipulation of the language. Here’s my brief analysis of what he’s doing to the public:
“John McCain held the Bush administrations feet to the fire more than anyone else for the first four years of the administration.”
Okay, that’s an easy one. Surely even the most brain-damaged nutjob realizes straight out that there’s been another three and a half years of Bushdom, during which McCain voted with the Current Occupant’s desires 90% of the time. These votes include voting to authorize the administration’s torture policies; kill the new GI Bill; authorize unwarranted surveillance; kill expansion of SCHIP; you name it, he’s voted with the White House position. (If I were a real blogger, I’d link to all those votes.)
“…he has attacked Sarah Palin and thrown the George Bush card back on the table.”
“The George Bush card”? Really?? The sitting President, the leader of McCain’s party, is now equivalent to Willie Horton?? It’s an amazing admission on Davis’s part that the past eight years of Republican governance have been an appalling disaster. He cannot possibly have meant that.
“If you bring up his association with William Ayers or Rashid Khalidi it’s, ‘Oh boy, that’s off limits; you can’t do that,’ but they can prosecute a campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars with no accountability.”
William Ayers? ::sigh:: A mischaracterized relationship with no discernible influence on Obama’s thinking or policies. A bogeyman. Rashid Khalidi? A completely falsified characterization, outright lies as to who Khalidi is and what he stands for. A racial bogeyman.
And notice the asymmetry of the sentence: two scary people = …? The natural end of that equation should be the aforementioned George W. Bush, but Davis can’t go there, can he? So he just tapdances. And notice too the awful awfulness: “prosecute… millions of dollars… no accountability.” Just what accountability does U.S. law, and here I’m thinking of the 1st Amendment, provide for campaigns, Rick? What accountability is Obama evading that McCain is adhering to? (vid. sup., re: Ayers, Khalidi)
“You have to wonder what his version of America is going to look like when people who disagree with him get attacked over and over again,” Davis said.
This is a stunning statement, absolutely gobsmacking. It’s a direct dogwhistle to the people who sincerely believe that Obama intends to establish a police state and round up all “right-thinking” people after his election. Crazy? Absolutely, but I’ve read their blog posts and the unhinged comments thereunto. These people are completely panic-stricken about the coming black power/Islamic/socialist destruction of our country. One is reminded of the recent research on the conservative brain being motivated by fear.
The statement is also a damnable hypocrisy, given the hell-for-leather tar and feathering the Republican party has been engaging in since Newt Gingrich passed out his little pamplet of labels to use against liberals. In this campaign alone, remember flag pins? Saying the Pledge? “Hate America”?
Not only all of the above, but Obama just aired a 30-minute infomercial in which he didn’t mention John McCain, or even the opposing side, even once. Can you imagine a 30-minute McCain production doing that? I didn’t think so.
In short, Rick Davis’s got nothing but LOLPreznents: “Hugely successful campaneing: ur doin it wrong.” Only four more days, my friends.
So much to which I wish to respond.
Probably the thing that I find most surprising is you apparent believe that while McCain is a slinging meaningless mud (I agree with this clause, btw), Obama is apparently an altruistic non-politician. Obama, my good friend, is a man with a comfortable lead. If HE were 8 points in arrears in the polls, he’d be slinging Keating 5, and more of the “McCain is unstable” junk of only a few weeks and points in poll differential ago. Bottom line: Obama, your agent of change, is the same POLITICIAN that picked a machine-raised-and-owned Joe Biden for the ticket. Like the tribunes, he knows how to best work the machine to his purpose. Does this mean he won’t govern well? Not at all. It just means he is a true politician and has and will continue to act like one. Don’t buy the lie that he is something different.
You find the language used against your candidate abominable? Yeah, me too. I have a dream. A dream in which candidates will talk about relevant issues, make real commitments and keep them. A dream in which both sides will seek to communicate their vision without demonizing the other.
And BTW, McCain was one of the voices in dissent to Bush’s torture plan in 2006. Here is one of the links for which you were looking.
And just to make myself clear: Ayers, Wright, the use of his middle name as a weapon, the commentary on Palin’s clothing, the implication that McCain is on the verge of senility… none of these things are appropriate or relevant.
I beg to differ: George W. Bush was comfortably ahead in the last election, and the same people who are now running McCain’s campaign still defined Kerry by mudslinging rather than stick to the high road. I am going to assume that this team would be doing the devil dance even if they were ahead. I also firmly believe this is one reason they are behind. The American people finally, finally smell a rat.
Furthermore, while John McCain talked a good game against torture, he voted for Alberto Gonzales’ torture bill.
And pouting about what might be cuts no mustard with me. Exactly how many convicted Republican senators can dance on the head of a pin?
Point one: Dem’s sling mud when they have to:
Mud Meter from 2004
Point two: You don’t want might, you want IS.
Mud Meter for 2008
It would seem that Mr. Polite has finally grown tired of the pot shots from the sewer and has decided to join his fellow candidate there in the last few days. Note that by this (objective? beats me) standard, in the last 10 days, he’s kept things fairly even in this regard.
Cool! No links to background info, though, like what constitutes “negative.” In fact, no links to anything that might explain how it’s all measured.
I don’t know why I want to chime in. I can’t do talking points. But I do want to say that for many of us, we have no illusions about Obama the politician. Sure, he has linked himself to a desire for “change,” but that has so many meanings; it’s a tried and true rhetorical and political ploy. Is he truly girded enough philosophically to take on the aberrations that have lubricated economic policy since the Eighties? (An opinion) Who knows? Newt was mentioned. For me, change lies in the thought that with Obama we will begin to flush out the Children of Newt from our political landscape. The Children of Newt’s primary lever has always been: tap into the sad American pathology that bubbles in many below the level of rationality and use that advantage to bind together a national will. It was this kind of split-off thinking that led to the advent of W. You know it’s true. Get this attitude out of our policy-making culture. Let some rationality, some urbanity, some world-awareness, some solid smart talk come back to the table. We want to dry up and cure the sad American pathology. Make it a thing of the past like Aztec sacrifice.
Exactly.
Can you two just have sex and get it over with?
JB hasn’t fully recovered from his years of madness. He went for the Limbaugh laugh line.