What is the most heinous Republican lie?
One of the more disgusting charges Republicans made against Barack Obama was that he was weak on terrorism. Trump repeated endlessly that Obama couldn’t say the words “radical Islamic terrorism” although when he, Trump, was in the Middle East this week, he couldn’t say them either. Then there was the ever-delightful Sarah Palin, who accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists.”
It’s really a mark of cowards and swine that they have to stoop so low, but with Republicans, if the shoe fits… Besides, Republicans always are accusing Democrats of being weak on military matters. Now, down in that close Georgia House election, they’re going after Jon Ossoff, calling him “a mouthpiece for terrorists.” Never mind that it’s a ridiculous, outrageous lie; enough naïve voters will believe it to possibly salvage the election for Republicans.
Democrats are no less against terrorism than are Republicans, obviously. If there’s a difference, it’s that (a) Democrats want to spend Pentagon dollars wisely, not profligately, and (b) Democrats tend to use diplomacy as a life-saving alternative to force.
In the wake of Manchester—the first serious terrorist event to occur on Trump’s watch, even though it was in England, not America—Republicans are amping up the charge that Democrats are weak. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal had an odious column by Daniel Henninger in which this apologist for all-things Trump blamed the attack on the Democratic Party. He accuses Obama of having presided over “four major terrorist attacks…inside the U.S.: Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino and Orlando (conveniently forgetting that Sept. 11 happened under George W. Bush). Now that Obama’s no longer president, Henninger turns his fury on the Democratic Party, which ignores terrorism, he implies, in order to be the “Trump-Is-Russia Party.” Hillary Clinton tried to “duck the terrorism problem” in the 2016 election cycle, he rants, and the (allegedly pro-Democrat) New York Times underplayed Trump’s Riyadh speech.
These allegations are all lies, easily disproved; one expects a tea party point of view on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, but fabrications and innuendoes so unfair, so mean-spirited and vicious are rare, even for the Journal—and that’s saying a lot.
Let’s not blame Henninger alone. He’s just a GOP water carrier, doing his job the way Rupert Murdoch pays him to. The right wingers can never admit that Democrats do anything good or well; they have to pretend that Democrats have some sort of predilection in favor of anti-western, anti-capitalism violence. Those smears play well with their base, even though capitalism has largely failed those among them who have lost their jobs and gone from well-paid manufacturing jobs to be Wal-Mart greeters, if that. The fact that Trump’s proposed healthcare bill will throw tens of millions of them off their healthcare plans, and raise their premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs significantly, is further proof that the Republican Party doesn’t care about poor people, no matter how much they say they do. (When have Republicans ever stood for anything except cutting taxes on the rich?) Slandering Democrats is the perfect way of keeping Republican-voting poor people from turning against the GOP. “I don’t particularly like Trump for taking away my health insurance,” goes their thinking, “but at least he’s standing up to those damned commie-radical Islamic terrorism-loving Democrats.”
Well, it is, at least, a strategy, even if it depends on stupidity to work. The ironic thing is that Hillary Clinton was so tough on terrorism—she spoke a far tougher game than Obama—that the Left turned against her, for that and other reasons. Probably, Hillary felt she had to be a warrior woman, in order to deflect Republican anti-Democrat attacks but also because right wing gun-toting white men believe that women are weak. Women aren’t, of course, but Bible thumpers who think women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen tend to be the same ones who think that Democrats love terrorists, and who voted for (and still support) Trump. And that, my friends, is what the modern Republican Party has become.
Have a great weekend, and happy Memorial Day!
“Well, it is, at least, a strategy, even if it depends on stupidity to work.” Agreed, but:
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
Bob Rossi, right, “and there’s a sucker born every minute.”