Not that republican hypocrisy is anything new, or that this particular crew of Presidential candidates hasn’t shown on numerous occasions to be a shining example of contradictions and a penchant for projection and duplicative comments. But yesterday’s “debate” ratchets up the unintentional comedy to entirely new levels.
I say this, despite it being so early in the primary season, because it is imperative that whichever angry hypocritical lying extremist white male “wins” the republican primary’s overall candidacy for the general election is dead on arrival. So, even this early, we should be aware of their flip flopping, projection and lies, because every single one of them will need to be brought to the foreground and kept in the public eye (not to mention discourse) to make sure that each candidate’s fatal flaws (and yes, more than one have more than one fatal flaw) are tarred to them from this point forward.
Luckily, it is easy to tell when a republican is lying (“when their lips are moving”) or when they are guilty of a certain behavior (they start to rail against “those on the left” who, in the twisted mind of the accuser, are exhibiting this behavior), there were many instances in yesterday’s debate where this shone through.
And where to even begin? Perhaps with this quote from Romney (when talking about Obama), a man who thinks the term “allies” includes a country that is harboring al Qaeda, whose leader made a deal with the Taliban, and has left bin Laden alone, despite the admission that he is probably in their country and has allowed its top nuclear scientist to sell of nuclear secrets to other countries with little to no consequences:
"I mean, in one week he went from saying he's going to sit down, you know, for tea, with our enemies, but then he's going to bomb our allies," Romney said.
If Pakistan is our ally, then frankly, I don’t want Romney deciding who our allies are, and what defines an ally.
And Romney (as well as Duncan Hunter) continued to munch on his shoe after firmly planting his foot in his mouth with this great nugget about the potential for going into Pakistan:
"We keep our options quiet. We don't go out to say to a nation that's working with us that we intend to go in there and bring on a unilateral attack," said Romney. "The only people who can defeat radical jihadists are Muslims themselves."
California Rep. Duncan Hunter echoed Romney's sentiment.
"When you have a country that is cooperating, you don't tell them you are going to unilaterally move against them," Hunter said.
Hmmmm, so what does that say about all of the announcements by Bush, Rice, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Kristol, Wolfowitz and whomever else I forgot to mention on national television that we were going into Iraq (pretty much unilaterally)? Or that we are unilaterally provoking Iran right now, even after they cooperated with us regarding Afghanistan and offered more cooperation on three separate occasions? Or, regardless of Hunter’s definition of “cooperating”, all of the other countries that we have taken unilateral action against over the years? I believe that Mr. Hunter has voted in lockstep with Bush’s unilateral plans for years now.
McCain’s thinly veiled swipes at Democrats who (1) see reality in that the escalation is not working in any meaningful way by any metric and (2) are trying to pass measures that will get our troops out of the middle of a civil war, or get them proper armor and equipment, or the required rest or training or treatment when they return, had this ludicrous comment:
"We do now have a strategy that is succeeding. We do have a military whose morale is up because they see this success."
I'm going to be judged by history, not by public opinion polls," McCain said, saying he looked to the generals on the ground to lead the war strategy.
Good news, Senator – history is already judging you and the returns are both spot on and not looking good for you. Sellout, panderer, out of touch, suck up to Bush are just a few of the words that come to most people’s minds when your name is brought up. As for looking to the generals, what about all those calls by the generals who said that more troops were needed? What about all those votes against armor and equipment when the generals asked, nay, begged for them? What about the calling for a post invasion plan by the same generals or the call by Shinseki for at least two to three times the original number of troops?
As for the “strategy succeeding”, let’s look at all the ways. No benchmarks met. More killing of Iraqis, more displaced Iraqis, more attacks on US troops, a “wack a mole” approach, funding and arming the insurgents and an Iraqi Parliament that just took August off after BOTH Sunni and Shiite blocks either left or threatened to leave.
Not to forget the “frontrunner” and biggest hypocrite of the lot, we have Giuliani chastising the boogyman “liberal Democratic assumption” of raising taxes to pay for infrastructure maintenance:
"The way to do it is to reduce taxes and raise more money," Giuliani said to audience applause.
Citing his time spent as the New York City mayor and taking a dig at the three senatorial Democratic front-runners, Giuliani said he was "against the liberal Democratic assumption that you have to raise taxes to raise money."
But those internets are a pesky thing, and it wasn’t all too difficult to find out that spending under Giuliani’s second term wasn’t all that far off from spending under a comparable period under Mayor Koch, and the big difference was the difference in inflation rates during the two periods. It was also pretty easy to find out just how much of a big spender Rudy was during his term. This spending far outpaced the rate of inflation, while Rudy refused to sign a pledge NOT to raise taxes, overreported the amount of overall tax cuts that were passed, cut taxes at the expense of other programs, dramatically increased the size of the NYC government and even according to the Club for Growth, Giuliani was a big fan of corporate welfare.
So, he only cut “some taxes” – just like other republicans, and even the conservative Factcheck.org and Viveca Novak say that he took credit for many cuts that he had little to do with, fought to keep a tax on individuals (the NYC nonresident tax, and fought to keep the NYC personal income tax surcharge for a number of years), while the biggest tax cut (half of the total) was for renters of commercial real estate – hardly one that impacts many of “We the People”.
So once again, we have a treasure trove of information that should be used against these corporate controlled, overspending, lying, hypocritical, out of touch, flip flopping double talkers.
Just because most of America isn’t watching these debates, and just because most of us aren’t as well doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be doing our homework. Consider this my homework for the week. Let’s make sure that whomever limps out of the republican primaries is a “dead man walking”.
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