Author Topic: The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies  (Read 853 times)

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richpo64

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The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
« on: September 15, 2008, 08:57:34 PM »
The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
The nomination that launched a thousand attacks.
by Tod Lindberg
09/22/2008, Volume 014, Issue 02



Historians looking back on these tumultuous times will no doubt argue over the precise date on which the Age of Palin began. Her speech at the Republican National Convention on September 3 certainly catapulted her to national renown. But there is a good case to be made for her introductory appearance in Dayton, Ohio, five days before.

It's all there: You have the same poise and panache Palin exhibited at the convention. You have the self-assurance of a champion high-school athlete who went on to bigger and better things (unlike in the gloomy Democratic, Bruce Springsteen version of life, in which it's all downhill after your Glory Days). There's the ability to deliver a barb with a smile. And above all, that day inaugurated arguably the most incoherent and blubbering partisan response to a candidate in the history of American politics--against which the charms of the candidate stood out even more clearly.

Let's get this straight: Your party has just nominated for president a fellow who has been elected exactly once to the United States Senate, in an uncompetitive race, following a garden-variety stint in a state legislature. And your response to the GOP nominee's choice for vice president--someone who has been elected once as governor following a stint as a small town mayor--is to decry the lack of experience? Nobody ever said Barack Obama was unqualified for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

Had Hillary Clinton won the nomination and selected Obama as her running mate--which, being a savvy politician, she would certainly have done, in order to fire up his 18 million primary supporters--Obama would have been perfectly positioned. Either he would be preparing himself as vice president for his run for the Oval Office eight years hence. Or he would be experienced and tested in a national campaign that he would never be held responsible for losing, with a fundraising base beyond the imagination of Croesus. Instead, it's McCain-Palin with the wind at their backs, and Palin who is being prepared as the outstanding future prospect for her party.

Now, you might think it hypocritical to criticize the inexperience of a vice presidential nominee who has similar experience to your presidential nominee, but that's just a failure of the imagination. Indeed, hypocrisy was the strange charge Democrats decided to make against McCain and Palin: Having run against Obama all summer for his lack of experience and accomplishment, how dare John McCain pick as his running mate someone with (ahem) experience comparable to that of the Democratic candidate for president McCain had been criticizing?

Well, maybe because it is not a sign of the strength of a candidate at the top of a ticket to need the experience of Joe Biden (or Dick Cheney) in order to allay concerns that he's not quite up to some aspects of the job. And, contrariwise, it is a sign of strength at the top when the nominee can look to the future and make a priority of party-building. Does anybody think that if Obama loses, he will have left his party in a stronger position by advancing the prospects of Joe Biden? Fortunately for Democrats, at least they've got Hillary in the wings.

But these weren't the only hypocrisies in the air. Remember reading the discussions of Vice President Al Gore's parenting skills in all the papers the day after his teenage son got busted for dope at high school? No? That would be because Gore called around to all the papers (including the Washington Times, where I was editorial page editor at the time) and asked us not to publish it, kids being kids and being owed some privacy. The newspapers didn't. That was then: Given a preposterous Internet rumor that Sarah Palin was never pregnant with her four-month-old baby but faked it to cover up for her daughter, Bristol was fair game. This was a judgment shared among Democrats and, coincidentally, the media (the same ones who were also all over the John Edwards love-child story, remember?).

And so Democrats started pointing at the stunning "hypocrisy" of McCain putting Palin on the ticket in spite of her pregnant daughter. Shouldn't all the GOP talk about family values and abstinence education have disqualified Palin? Because, after all, Bristol is getting married and keeping the baby, and if that isn't a sure disqualification for someone's mother for the vice presidency, what is?

Plus, Sarah Palin, we've been informed endlessly, is a hypocrite with a capital H. In all the obvious ways, such as being opposed to women's rights while still having a career. Democrats have been at the forefront of cheering women on to break supposed glass ceilings, but only the right kind of women, which you can be pretty sure a Republican woman isn't.

Then there's all the pro-life business: It just took one columnist in Salon to expose the hypocrisy there: Palin had her baby tested for Down syndrome, and then--had the baby! If she were really pro-life, there wouldn't have been any reason to have the test. As Rahul K. Parikh, M.D., explained:


We could ask, given that Palin had no doubts about seeing her pregnancy through, why she bothered to take a genetic test. Why not, as you might expect a woman in her position and with her outspoken beliefs to do, decline any testing or counseling? Of course, it seems very reasonable to want to know about the health of your baby and to have time to prepare (emotionally and otherwise) for a baby that may have a genetic disorder. But that doesn't negate the fact that by having a blood test, Palin was given a choice about what to do. .??.??. Her supporters say that Trig signals that she practices what she preaches. Her decision to make her own choice but not grant it to others is a sign of her hypocrisy.


So let's see if the pro-lifers can get this straight for a change: If you are going to have the baby anyway, you are not entitled to information about its health (even though the desire for such information is "very reasonable"), because some people who are not pro-life use such information as a basis for deciding whether to terminate their pregnancies. Got it?

But the most stunning hypocrisy of all, from the point of view of most Democrats and, coincidentally, the media again, was that McCain had promised a vice presidential nominee qualified for the job and then undertook such a haphazard, last-minute, incompetent vetting process that he found out all the things that Democrats and the media are so exercised about. And he went ahead with Sarah Palin anyway!

And just look at the bitter fruit McCain has reaped for all his "hypocrisies": Palin has helped propel him ahead of Obama in national polls for the first time. Fifty-two percent of respondents in a Pew survey think she is ready to be president now. If people could vote only for vice president, they favor her over Biden 53-44 in a CNN poll. And the unknown governor of two weeks before is now the most popular Republican politician in the country.

Tod Lindberg, a WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor and Hoover Institution fellow, is editor of Policy Review.

 
 
© Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved. 
 
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/556rvcjg.asp

fatman

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Re: The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2008, 10:34:19 PM »
There's plenty of hypocrisy to go around.

On one hand, I don't like the way that some media outlets and commentators make an issue out of Obama's middle name, his supposedly fake birth certificate, or his supposedly closet Moslem beliefs.

On the other, I really don't like the way that the press is going after Palin's kids, the misinformation and half-truths re: the Wasilla library, or the way that both sides are crying that the other side is a hypocrite.

The Press and Dems really crapped the bed with the way that they're handling Palin.  If you want to go after her issues, fine, but don't make it personal.  It stinks to high heaven of flat out meanness, and that's a turnoff to most Americans.

I might have my own views, but I think that I'm pretty fair about listening to other people's positions and deciding the merit of them.  But if all I'm going to get about a candidate is half-truth, innuendo, and flat-out lies, then don't waste my time, because I have more important things to do (like dig around to try and find the truth).

richpo64

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Re: The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2008, 10:57:25 PM »
>>I might have my own views, but I think that I'm pretty fair about listening to other people's positions and deciding the merit of them.<<

Good for you. I don't think I can say the same thing about myself anymore. When it comes to politics. I'm not interested in what Barry has to say. I've heard the tired old liberal line for 30 years. I used to vote for the occassional democrat for local offices but after the past eight years I've decided that anyone who puts a (D) after their name must have something wrong with them. I figure they must support the people who favor infanticide and think anyone who is proud of their country is Nazi. Why else would they be a democrat?

fatman

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Re: The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2008, 11:27:56 PM »
Well I'm sorry to hear that Rich, because I (and this is just my personal opinion), think that you're missing out by not at least listening to both sides.  People come from all different backgrounds and beliefs, they're not going to all see one thing the same way.  To me, it's interesting to see that other perspective sometimes even if I flat disagree or am even offended by it.  I've only been voting for 12 years, and haven't voted a straight ticket yet.  Who knows, someday I may get to that point but I kind of doubt it, I'm too all over the place with my own personal views to subscribe to one ideology or the other.

And I'm not trying to be a smartass but I'm pretty sure that there are pro-life Democrats (like pro-choice Republicans) and Democrats that serve or have served in the military.

But to each his own.

richpo64

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Re: The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2008, 12:18:15 AM »
>>And I'm not trying to be a smartass but I'm pretty sure that there are pro-life Democrats (like pro-choice Republicans) and Democrats that serve or have served in the military.<<

I'm just being honest here. There's nothing any democrat today can do to convince me they have America's best interest at heart. They've become (IMO) so partisan as to disqualify them from consideration.  I know Pro-Life democrats and democrats who have served in the military. Neither one makes any difference to me once you put that (D) after your name.

It's interesting to hear democrats say they don't agree with everything their party stands for. They'll point out abortion or they'll say they don't agree with calling the president a war criminal and then they pull the lever for the worst offenders. I don't get that at all. How can you excuse a party that's members go to a country we are on the brink of war with and attack America and it's president? How can they support a party that has surrogates in the media who arguably have committed treason?

So what can these people offer that I should even be remotely interested in? Now there are politicval parties that I'll investigate like the libertarians and other independent groups, but democrats? Never again.

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2008, 12:14:52 PM »
Like an infinite war started on totally false premises  with no end in sight is in the best interests of the people?

Like allowing banks to trade bundles of mortgages with no proper disclosure is what the people want?


Like forbidding Medicare to bid for lower prices for Rx drugs is in the interests of the people?

Like appointing some fatcat horse peddler to the top FEMA job is what the people need?
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

sirs

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Re: The Bonfire of the Hypocrisies
« Reply #6 on: September 16, 2008, 01:23:53 PM »
I really don't like the way that the press is going after Palin's kids, the misinformation and half-truths re: the Wasilla library, or the way that both sides are crying that the other side is a hypocrite.

The Press and Dems really crapped the bed with the way that they're handling Palin.  If you want to go after her issues, fine, but don't make it personal.  It stinks to high heaven of flat out meanness, and that's a turnoff to most Americans.


Couldn't have said it better, Fat    8)

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle