RUSH: Jill Lawrence in USA Today: Character Issue Puts Democrats on the Defensive. “Imagine the Democratic presidential candidate and his allies assailing the character of the Republican nominee in ads and speeches every day for eight months. having trouble? That’s because Democrats generally don’t have the stomach or the discipline to do it. Often they don’t even effectively fight back when under attack themselves.” (Choking) It’s parallel universe time. It’s the Twilight Zone.
What in the world is CBS firing four people for today? They don’t have the stomach or the guts to attack a sitting president and his character? What is the accusation of being AWOL from the National Guard? What are attacks on Bush about if not his character with all this talk about giving up American lives for oil in Iraq for Halliburton and Dick Cheney?
What is Fahrenheit 9/11 if not an all-out, full-fledged assault on George Bush’s character? What in the world was eight years of the attempt by the Democrats to destroy Ronald Reagan. When they said Reagan created homelessness and he didn’t care about the homeless, and he went out in the park at night and stole their cans of pork and beans and went back to the White House and opened them and ate ’em and rubbed his stomach with glee as the homeless were eating and starving at the same time, what in the hell was that if that wasn’t an assault on Reagan’s character?
This, ladies and gentlemen, this is unbelievable. The story continues: “But with George W. Bush’s second inauguration next week Democrats are pondering their choices in a February 12th election for party chairman, rethinking what might be called their character problem. ‘Democrats as a group are uneasy about attacking and defending on character,’ says Harold Ickes, a former Clinton aide who heads the Media Fund, a political ad organization. ‘But they damn well better get the stomach, because we’ve seen way too many of our candidates taken down on issues of character.’ In the past five presidential races, the only Democrat to win was the one who avoided the draft and admitted on TV to causing pain in his marriage.
The other three nominees were military veterans with solid marriages and public records. Yet their opponents — George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — managed to brand them as unpatriotic [That would be Dukakis…], untruthful (Al Gore, the ‘serial exaggerator’) and unprincipled and weak (Kerry, the ‘flip-flopper’…). All are variations on a theme: These men have character flaws that disqualify them for the White House. ‘We were caught off guard by the this perennial Republican attack-dog mentality,’ says Bill Richardson.” These people are more denial than I could possibly imagine!
They don’t think they attack on character. They don’t think they attack. Not only they don’t do it, they don’t know how! They’ve got to go get lessons on how to do it. They’ve got to go to this professor out of Berkeley named Lakoff, rhymes with (pause) and get him to tell them how to use words effective because they’re not communicating their message and now they’ve got to get somebody to tell them how to attack on character. “Some analysts wonder how a party and its top strategerist can be caught off guard by a recurring tactic. Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said, ‘It is stunning the extent to which Democrats keep repeating their errors over time.’ Bill McInturff, Republican pollster and stratege[rist], says, ‘Democrats don’t attack much on trust issues because they’re addicted to running it is conservative wacko campaign as in, ‘My opponent is an extreme conservative wacko who’s got dangerous ideas.’ I never worry about whether Democrats are tough enough.'” If… (sigh) What… Is it not an attack on character to say somebody is an extreme conservative wacko with dangerous ideas? The next segment of this story begins this way:
“What are Democrats missing? Well, for a start, some academic analysts and party figures say Democrats underestimate the weight voters give character when choosing a presidential candidate. A central tenet of political science is that the vote for president is highly personal, often based on instinct and intuition, rather than policy,” and that’s another thing where they go wrong! They try to tell themselves that whenever a conservative gets elected: “It can’t be policy. It can’t be! It’s got to be slick marketing. It’s got to be packaging. They just like him better than our guy.” No, Democrats. It’s issues.
Issues decide presidential elections. They always have, and they always will, and the Democrats say their problem is they love policy too much. “We never saw an issue that we didn’t want to talk about ad nauseum,” Ickes says. Really? Could you name for me the issues that John Kerry ran on? Name one. John Kerry didn’t run on a single issue. John Kerry ran on: “George W. Bush is an idiot. George Bush goofed up the war in Iraq. We’ve got to make friends with the French. We’ve got to make friends with the Germans. We’ve got to have international organizations run our defense. We’ve got to get back in good graces with the world because everybody hates George W. Bush like we hate George W. Bush.”
Why do they hate George W. Bush? It’s a character question! “Joanne Ciulla, the leadership professor…” One thing wrong they keep talking to these academics. It’s just like remember I told you those three academic eggheads that showed up to testify against Gonzales last Thursday. This was just tremendous. Gonzales shows up for six hours. Ted Kennedy, the swimmer, Mary Jo Kopechne, ah-ah, gets on Gonzales because he supposedly favors “water boarding,” which is a torture that could result in drowning, although it never does. I mean, the character issue was rampantly on display.
Patrick Leahy, who leaked secret information from the intelligence committee, earning the nickname “Leaky” Leahy. Joe Biden, the Chia Pet, as a caller referred to him last week, had to start talking in barrio street lingo to Gonzales, and then Chuck Schumer said to Gonzales (summarized), “You’re not going to get a free ride if they put you on the Supreme Court. These questions are sort of pansies, but if you go to the Supreme Court we’re going to hit you hard, buddy, because you don’t deserve to be there.”
Then Gonzales leaves, here come these three eggheads, and Arlen Specter says, “All right, look. I want to bring up a delicate subject. I want to bring up the subject of the ticking bomb.” He may as well have said, “On September 10th, 2001, if we had captured Mohamed Atta, would you have favored torture to get his plans for the next day?” and these guys wouldn’t answer the question. Because in the real world when the questions get hard, the academics don’t want to play ball. They don’t show up. They live in their ivory towers and they live in the world of an intellectual feast. They sit around and talk about things in an academic way but they never get down to the card cold realities of things — and that’s who the Democrats are talking to.
The most recent one here, “Joanne Ciulla, leadership professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia…” Did you ever take a course in leadership, Mr. Snerdley? You did. There was a course in leadership? You know, my contention: If leadership has to be taught, you don’t have it. If somebody has to teach you leadership you’re not a leader. Leadership, you either have it or you don’t. I mean, that’s why there are born leaders. There aren’t very many of them. Can’t teach people to be leaders, most people are followers.
That’s why I’m here and you’re out there listening, folks. Ahem. I’m just kidding. No, seriously. This woman, this leadership professor, University of Richmond, says, “Republicans are criticized for being publicly self-righteous,” but she says, “Democrats are inwardly self-righteous because they believe they’re on the side of the downtrodden so they don’t have to defend themselves.” That’s what they believe. That’s not what she said. She says, “They believe since they’re on the side of the downtrodden…” You know what she’s saying? Ends justify the means.
The Greater Good, whatever it is, whatever we have to do to achieve it is okay. If we have to lie cheat and steal, it’s okay because the greater good is what we’re aiming for, so we’ll do whatever we have to do we are above question. Let’s go to the next story in my stack. They align themselves with Larry Flynt; they align themselves with Michael Moore. These are the people that align themselves with all of these reprobates out there and celebrate them and honor them and they claim that they don’t know how to attack on character. I know.
Washington Post, Dan Balz: Democrats United in Plans to Block Top Bush Initiatives. “As President Bush prepares for his second term Democrats in Washington,” who in our previous story didn’t know how to go on the attack on character and other issues, “say they are organizing for a year of confrontation and resistance, saying they are determined to block Bush’s major initiatives and thereby deny him the mandate he has claimed for his reelection victory last November.” So the Democrats are plotting their insurgency here, folks. We’ve got a Democrat insurgency that’s being plotted even as we speak on Capitol Hill. “The Democrats’ mood and posture represents a contrast to that of four years ago after Bush’s disputed victory…” What? This is another myth.
They think they’re engaging in new behavior, and Dan Balz thinks the Democrats were angelic following the 2000 election but now they are loaded for bear, and they’re not going to take it anymore! They are through being nice, folks. They’re through looking the other way. They’re through turning the other cheek. They are going for bear. They’re loaded for it all. They’re going to put on the brass knuckles once and for all, and as they do this they will simply be capitalizing or multiplying what they’ve already done. The denial that these people are in continues to be unbelievable and breathtaking.