I asked Kossacks to help me document Republican lies awhile back, and everybody said No. It's too much work for too little reward. Soon after, I had to give it up, too.
Today, I have a new challenge: I want to collect true statements from Republicans. There are a few.
- "I want Obama to fail." (Rush Limbaugh, Jim DeMint, et al.)
- "I don't care about the Constitution," (Bill O'Reilly)
- Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) on Health Care reform. He wants to defeat health care so that it can't prove that government works.
- "I've been in the room, and [white Republicans] are scared of me." (Michael Steele)
Alternatively, when was the last Republican proposal that was not meant as a gift to corporations, racists, and the most intolerant and bigoted churches?
Of course [sigh], it depends on what you mean by "truth".
"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, but would not stay for an answer" — Francis Bacon, Essays 1: Of Truth
But we'll pretend we didn't hear that.
We're looking for something that reflects the good old-fashioned American (sometimes even Republican!) values of tolerance (most of the Founders, but especially Jefferson), honesty (George Washington, Abe Lincoln), fair play (Teddy Roosevelt), helping the downtrodden at home and abroad (Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Ike, LBJ's Great Society and Civil Rights bills), building up the country (Ike's Interstate Highway System), and protecting the environment (Nixon's EPA, f'gosh sakes)?
The final straw for me is this.
"[My grandmother] told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
-- SC Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, on government assistance
Which he followed up with
S.C. Lt. Gov. Bauer regrets 'strays' analogy
Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said Monday he regretted comments comparing people who take public assistance to stray animals, but the incident continued to draw fire.
In a phone interview, Bauer said he regretted the remarks "because now it's being used as an analogy, not a metaphor.
"Do I regret it? Sure I do. I wouldn't have to be taking this heat otherwise."
In a speech at a town hall meeting in the Upstate, Bauer revisited instructions he said his grandmother had given him when he was a small child. Bauer said his grandmother, who was not highly educated, had told him to stop feeding stray animals.
"You know why?" he asked. "Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a human ample food supply."
Bauer, 40, later said his intent was to explain the government is "breeding a culture of dependency" with its social program, which he said has grown out of control and "amounts to little more than socialism, paid for by hardworking, tax-paying families ... against their wishes."
Some on the Left have criticized Bauer as having a "tin ear".
"The comments came across as unnecessarily cruel, and perhaps a bit tin ear," said Scott Huffmon, a Winthrop University political science professor and pollster. Huffmon said the message was aimed at social and fiscal conservatives in the state, telling them social welfare is a waste of money, doesn't work and doesn't solve the problem.
No such luck. This is the standard Southern Strategy racism at work. Why don't social programs work? Because the recipients are Teeming Hordes of shiftless, dirty, no-good N*****s, that's why. [Sorry about the N-bomb, but Blacks already know about all of this, and Political Correctness toward racists is Epic Fail, just like bipartisanship with teh Party of No.] Or beaners, wetbacks, spics, ragheads, camel jockeys, gooks, slopes, Redskins, and gyps. Unlike a hundred years ago, when it was Paddies, kikes, and bohunks (Bohemian-Hungarians) who were shiftless, dirty, and no-good, including many in my family. But the basic idea never changes.
Republican Majority Leader Sen. Trent Lott said it best on the one occasion when I heard him tell the truth.
When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. [So far, so true.] And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either. [Oops. See Inartfully Worded.]
See what I mean? So what do you have? What can you find? Put it in the comments with a link, and I'll add it to dKosopedia.