On cake and eating it, too

This morning’s Wall Street Journal editorial board takes on Barack Obama’s campaign for the dismissal of Geraldine Ferraro for supposed racially charged remarks;

Though Ms. Ferraro resigned from the Clinton campaign yesterday, her remarks reveal little more than a firm grasp of the obvious, even if she could have found a less artless way to express herself. There is no disputing that Mr. Obama’s skin color has been a political boon for him to date. And the suggestion that saying so aloud betrays racial animus implies that only the Illinois Senator can discuss the issue of race in regard to his candidacy.

[…]

We’re not suggesting that the Obama campaign has never been justified in crying foul over racially tinged remarks out of the Clinton camp. When Bill Clinton gratuitously invoked Jesse Jackson after Mr. Obama won the South Carolina primary, he was clearly trying to define the Senator’s victory in narrowly racial terms.

But for all of Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric about the nation’s need for a post-racial politics that “brings the American people together,” his campaign at times has seemed overly sensitive about race. It also seems to want it both ways. Mr. Obama claims that his brand of politics transcends race, but at the same time he’s using race as a shield to shut down important and legitimate arguments.

Well, Obama isn’t the only Democrat candidate that wants to have their cake and eat it, too. We all remember that Hillary Clinton takes every opportunity to tout her “35 years of experience” that qualifies her for the White House. Well, except for NAFTA and except the quagmire of Bosnia and except for Operation Desert Fox and except for a whole litany of things that have cropped up during the past few weeks that suddenly shine negatively on her personage.

But see that’s been the problem of the Democrat party for decades – and it’s emphasized this week with the Spitzer free-for-all. Writing about it, Plumb Bob Blog, in an overall excellent post today, describes the problem;

Republicans, for the most part, try to elect honest representatives, and when one of theirs turns up a clunker, they get rid of him. There was no objection, nor charge of false accusation, when Duke Cunningham got his sorry butt slammed into prison. Nobody cried when Larry Craig resigned. Republicans forced Richard Nixon out of office.

Democrats, meanwhile, continue to play a partisan game with the law that Republicans, to my knowledge, don’t play. They circle to defend any one of their number who gets arrested, no matter how guilty. They cry “abuse of power!” against the prosecutor. They accuse of “Republican witchhunt!” They create diversions in the press to cover up notice of the misdoing. And, they do whatever is necessary to hide the entire legal proceeding from public, so the public thinks there’s nothing there. If the individual ever actually has to go to prison, it’s a minor story a year later; if they plea quietly, they remain in office.

And it’s true for all aspects of Democrat politics. Vote for me because I’m Black, just don’t mention the fact that I’m Black. I have 35 years of experience in politics…well, except all of the bad stuff that happened around me during those 35 years.

They claim the Vietnam War was Nixon’s War when combat troops had been there for three years before he got into office. They tout the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even though a larger percentage of Democrats voted against it than Republicans. They don’t even mention the Civil Rights Act of 1957 that influenced the 1964 Act. They wave around welfare reform as if it were Bill Clinton’s idea – not mentioning that he was dragged kicking and screaming to the Oval Office to sign it, and then announced he’d change it over the next four years (which never happened either).

Instead of just trying to fool us and make the election about superficial things that don’t matter (race and sex don’t matter – honestly – I’d vote for Walter Williams or Michele Malkin in a heartbeat) try telling us the truth – well, unless the truth is something so ugly that you absolutely have to slap lipstick on it first. That couldn’t be the case could it?

Category: Politics