I give up. Yesterday, a Republican event was announced to attack the President's speech to Congress on Health Care. I thought I would watch it, check the blogs, and write up the lies about health care today. No go. There is a full-court press on, in Congress, on TV, in op-eds, everywhere. Now, I know Obama's outside shooting game, so the prevent defense doesn't worry me in itself, but this is no one-camera game. We will have to get together with the President to cover the action and call the fouls correctly.
It isn't just lies now. We're past damned lies and statistics, in Voodoo Politics, where the goal is to take over your mind and make it work against itself. I'm watching on C-SPAN as Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey, M.D. (GA), and his buddy Rep. John Fleming, M.D. (LA) argue that Obama is out to destroy Medicare, and that most Americans don't want the Public Option, 52%-42%. (Real polls find 77% in favor). Just for starters. (Congressional Record link below the fold).
This is Karl Rove territory. The principle seems to be, "Whatever you do that is evil, blame your opponent for it first." I propose to call this The Rove Doctrine.
(If you want to follow up on the sickening colloquy between Reps. Drs. Gingrey and Fleming, you can read it in the Congressional Record for yesterday.)
We saw the Rove Doctrine in action in the 2000 Presidential campaign, when George Bush was pretending to be a Texas good ol' boy decrying Gore's "elitism", and again with Kerry in 2004. Happens I was at Yale the same time Bush and Kerry were. I didn't know them then, because we ran in completely different circles, but my classmates who did know them have filled me in.
How about partisanship? Bush ran on bipartisanship, as "a uniter, not a divider". Remember that? Do you know that Grover "No Tax Pledge" Norquist had previously called bipartisanship "date rape"? Teddy Kennedy found out about that after he worked on No Child's Behind Left. You want evil? My way or the highway, that's Bush bipartisanship. But at every opportunity, Bush and Rove hammered supposed Democratic, excuse me, "Democrat" partisanship and obstructionism.
The oldest complaint in the Republican playbook is "Tax and Spend". Republicans will have you know that they are the party of small government, fiscal responsibility, and balanced budgets. So, of course, Reagan and Bush ran up the biggest deficits in history. I have previously noted in this diary that Edmund Burke, hailed for centuries as the Father of Conservatism, is now just another lousy Tax and Spend Liberal, as is Richard Nixon.
Once in a while, George W. Bush did tell the truth. He did say, and I give him credit for this, that Republicans don't do nation-building. Tomorrow is the 8th anniversary of 9/11, and the record of Afghanistan and Iraq is clear. Republicans definitely know how not to do nation-building.
Secrecy, there's a good one. The most secretive Administration in history railed on about secret plots to bring in Socialism, as earlier laid out by the Great Prevaricator himself in 1961 on an LP record, Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicines. The AMA organized Operation Coffee Cup to hold coffees in private homes for playing the record and asking people to write to Congress opposing the bills of that time.
Reagan told us, "Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." He claimed that the most feared words anyone could hear are, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." And when we let him and Bush in, they proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. That is, they proved that Republican government is indeed the problem. Record deficits, rampant law-breaking, and destroying effective government programs wherever possible. How about Reagan's Interior Secretary James G. Watt, saying that we didn't have to bother about the environment because the Rapture was right around the corner? How about FEMA in, or rather, not in New Orleans?
You can hear Republicans talking about the White House directing Democrats to shout down the discussion at Health Care Town Halls and start fist fights. Of course, you can tell that's a lie, because Democrats aren't allowed in to Republican Town Halls. (OK, I exaggerate. But W. and Rove were renowned for arranging "public" events to which only Republicans were admitted, and there have been such Republicans-only Town Halls.)
What else? Filibusters. Yes, there should always be an up-or-down vote on any Republican nominee, but not on a "Democrat" nominee. Litmus tests for judges. They can demand anti-abortion credentials for Republican nominees, but Democrats have no right to ask anything for their nominations, and may only nominate middle-of-the-road, mainstream candidates. States' Rights are good. It's always States' Rights when the topic is civil rights, but not when it is medical marijuana, or gay rights, or Terry Schiavo.
Oh, that reminds me. Judicial Activists. You know, the theory of the Original Intent of the (slave-owning) Founders, and judges making up law instead of applying it. I guess none of the Republicans ever heard of the Common Law, made up over centuries in England to cover gaps in the laws, by applying accepted principles of justice. No, I'm wrong. It says that right here in Conservapedia. But it was perfectly all right in 1886 for Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite of the US Supreme Court in to declare, outside of any legal opinion, that the Fourteenth Amendment civil rights for former slaves applied to corporations, and to refuse to hear evidence on the issue. To this day, there is neither legislation nor case law on this theory, which is routinely applied to say that the government cannot examine corporate financial records except with a warrant, requiring independent evidence of wrongdoing. What if we could have looked at Enron's books as a routine practice?
I think the vilest case is elections. You always hear from Republicans about ACORN and voter fraud, a flat-out lie. As far as I am able to tell, voter fraud in the Republican lexicon means registering Blacks and other minorities to vote. It certainly doesn't mean illegally canceling "Democrat" voter registrations, or sending Democrats to the wrong polling place, or providing voting machines that don't work, or any of the other documented dirty tricks so familiar from Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
They use ACORN to distract attention from the disastrous voting machines provided by companies with far-Right Republican ownership and financing, including Christian Right people and money, and the felons some have hired to program their systems. The hanging chads in the 2000 election became the excuse for unauditable all-electronic voting machines. These machines and their vendors have an abysmal quality record, with plenty of evidence of shenanigans that should have resulted in felony convictions. But what Republican Attorney-General, state or Federal, is going to investigate the election officials who got him his position? Only Debra Bowen, the Democratic Secretary of State of California, has investigated the vendors and the machines thoroughly, decertifying many of them, and calling for a new generation of systems that can be trusted.
You know, Karl Rove is painted as a political genius for getting George W. Bush through two of the closest and most hotly disputed elections in history. If the voting machines had worked correctly on the day, either time, he would have been the chump, not the genius. That's the Second Rove Doctrine. You can fool almost enough of the people enough of the time, and steal enough votes to make up the difference.
(Disclosure: Mokurai is a Founding Member of the Open Voting Consortium)