I don't normally post such short tossed together posts based on a fleeting bit of irritation, but this time I felt like I wanted to share my thoughts on the Republican attitude towards Reid's remarks and the way the media is portraying, passively and uncritically, those remarks.
After reading this article off the general Google News feed, http://www.oregonlive.com/... , I felt driven to actually respond for once, and directed my comment to the NRO writer, Rich Lowry, who wrote the editorial.
What I wrote is below:
Mr. Lowry, I know this is pushing my luck, but I would like to get an honest response from you on this. So Reid has just broken decorum and openly accused Mitt Romney of not paying taxes, based on the information of a trusted source, but mostly to keep the political pressure on Romney (and it's working on that respect, as every day that Romney's tax issues fill the news cycle is a day lost for the Romney campaign). You are very quick here to condemn him, to attack him as a hack.
My question is then: would you criticize Romney for campaigning and fishing for endorsements from folks that have openly questioned Obama's citizenship to this day?
What about John Boehner, who has said, "[Obama]doesn't give a damn about middle-class Americans who are out there looking for work," and, "He's [Obama] never even had a real job for [God's] sake. And I can tell you from my dealings with him, he has no idea how the real world, that we actually live in, works."
Or Representative Steve King, who declared in a radio interview:
"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been," I'll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam? I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror. Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world...If he were strong on national defense and said 'I'm going to go over there and we're going to fight and we're going to win, we'll come home with a victory,' that's different. But that's not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror."
Or Representative Paul Broun, who said, "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist." Then defended his remarks saying, "We can't be lulled into complacency. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road."
Bachmann stood in front of a poster with a picture of the mangled, dead bodies of Dachau at a rally against Obama's modest proposed health care plan. Rep. Mike Pence compared the SCOTUS ruling on the ACA to the September 9/11 attacks. Folks like Glenn Beck promote the 9/12 memorials because they are to angry and partisan to hold their respects with Democrats. Joe Walsh and Jim DeMint disrespectfully skipped out on one of Obama's rare addresses to Congress and made a public spectacle of it before, what one blogger described as:
One had hoped that Boehner and Walsh’s respective snubs would be the end of the Republican Party’s contempt, but DeMint’s remarks indicate that’s not the case: the Tea Party kingmaker’s comments signal to the rest of his party, and their constituents, that they can willfully ignore the president. They can — and should — turn their backs to the commander-in-chief. DeMint is essentially saying the President Obama is not worth his or his supporters’ time, showing the Republican Party’s absolute disdain not only for Obama himself, but the presidency as a whole."
Mitch McConnell said, “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.”
I could go on and on and on. This is just the surface and it's ignoring the kinds of Bush year comments, especially from Cheney who liked to imply and say terrorists would celebrate and Americans would die if those with differing political ideologies from him were elected. So, please, tell me, Mr. Lowry, how long are Democrats supposed to just sit back and take this kind of unmitigated and unfounded abuse from the Republican party? Comments like Reid are fair game at this point, and the likes Louie Gohmert and Joe Arpaio and Donald Trump alongside the Republican and Tea Party Caucus leadership have made them fair game. You can't expect Democrats to sit back and just take it, at some point they'll respond with similar sorts of unfounded, politically calculated attacks and Republicans like yourself and like Romney and Priebus have absolutely no right to whine about it unless you've been decrying all your own rank and file members and your own leadership for the last decade.
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And it is just the surface. It's not including the crap folks like Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, all with enormous amounts of power and influence over the Republican Party, say on a daily basis. That's why it's so totally ludicrous to see such outrage from Republicans, and to see the media, for all intents and purposes, patting them on the back in consolation and saying, "Yes, it seems as though the Democrats might have been mean to you."
It looks sort of like this:
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's response to his tax issues is as follows:
P.S. While Dkos does have reader guages, these aren't entirely accurate. I always appreciate users who vote in my poll as that gives a more accurate count of readership. Which is always nice to know; sucks to feel like you are talking to a wall.