The old politics of fear and lies

Black churches haven’t been burning the last eight years. Social Security recipients aren’t chosing between food and medicine, inner-city children aren’t starving from a lack of food in school lunch programs, the elderly haven’t been tossed out on the street, the 14th Amendment wasn’t rescinded…all of the fear-mongering the Democrats did for the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections has not come to fruition. Imagine that.

But with Obama down in the polls, he’s turned in the last few days into the kind of politician he promised us he wasn’t. Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post writes;

On immigration, Obama is running a Spanish-language ad that unfairly lumps McCain together with Rush Limbaugh — and quotes Limbaugh out of context. On health care, Obama misleadingly accuses McCain of wanting to impose a $3.6 trillion tax hike on employer-provided insurance.

Obama has been furthest out of line, however, on Social Security, stooping to the kind of scare tactics he once derided.

“If my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would have had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week,” Obama said Saturday as he campaigned in that retiree-heavy state. “Millions of families would’ve been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves.”

This is simply false — even leaving aside the incendiary language about “privatizing” Social Security. As the invaluable FactCheck.org noted, the private account plan suggested by President Bush and backed by McCain would not have applied to anyone born before 1950. It would not have changed benefits by a single penny for current retirees like the nice Florida folks that Obama was trying to rile up.

Marcus continues;

Obama’s ads on Social Security are equally misleading. “Cutting benefits in half, risking Social Security on the stock market,” it warns. “The Bush-McCain privatization plan. Can you really afford more of the same?”

Cutting benefits in half? As FactCheck notes, “this is a rank misrepresentation.” No one at or near retirement age would have been affected.

So this new poltics, this “change” has become another chill wind. Since Democrats can’t compete on issues, they return to relying on fear. And you know they’re goofed up if the Washington Post notices Democrats  lying.

Of course, the readers of the Washington Post are having none of it;

bdunn1 wrote:
Ms. Marcus:
You write: “Obama has descended to similarly scurrilous tactics …”
Scurrilous seemed like a strong word, so I looked it up in my “Webster’s New World” and found:

1. using indecent or abusive language; coarse; vulgar; foulmouthed
2. containing coarse vulgarisms or indecent abuse

It’s very telling that you used that word when others would have been more accurate to describe the ads.
Do you wonder if Democrats are tired of taking the completely high road, presenting reasoned arguments and then seeing voters choose two Bushes over more-qualified candidates (Dukakis, Gore, Kerry)? Let’s vote for someone we’d like to have a beer with! (I was in several crowded bars last night and I’d want none of those people in the Oval Office.)
The Republican playbook paints opponents with a broad brush and truth be damned. If the truth gets stretched, so be it. It’s about winning (as you note at the end of your piece) and that’s the truth. I’m 59 years old and I have never seen this country and its Constitution and the rule of law under such assault. NO MORE YEARS. The middle class can’t take any more.
The premises behind the ads are true. That’s what counts to me at this juncture.

Whoopie Goldberg already wondered if she needed to worry about being a slave again, so the idiot starving children rumor will be coming out soon, too.

Category: Politics