The Rotten Tomato Party
Shut up.
Those are the two words that scream out at you as you browse through two posts on Hugh Hewitt's site from last night and this morning about the Democrats' assholery in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Does my choice of words offend anybody out there? It's not meant to. But the essence of good writing, or so I've always believed, is to choose terms that are as descriptive of the subject matter as possible. And the word to describe the post-Katrina Democrats is "assholes." They're assholes, every last one of them. (Well, maybe not every last one of them, but the number of individual exceptions is not statistically significant, and those people don't run the party - and if even Joe Lieberman is joining the act, I'd say generalization is justified.) And, of course, the core trait of assholes is that they never shut up.
I'll spare you the extrapolation of that metaphor in favor of some exerpts, which is doing you, dear readers, no favors whatsoever:
This is deranged babbling. Crazy Nancy actually tries to strike a pose as being more in-touch with and informed about "the plight of the storm's victims" than the President. But has she been to New Orleans? The President has. Has she bothered to do any research on what happened there last week and why? Can she even spell the world "research"? Is the term "Google" in her vocabulary? And she has the ovaries to call Bush "oblivious"?
One also has to wonder what she thinks Bush is "in denial" of. But the only danger in this equation is the possibility that this geriatric bimbo could, in theory, be Speaker of the House one day.
My first thought is, "Well, Harry, win an election or two and you might get more of a say in such matters." My second thought is, "You're just sore that you can't wrench this investigation into an impeachment star chamber" - like pumping even more Donk partisanship into this kerfuffle would actually boost its objectivity level. Or perhaps I should say, "You're just sore that the GOP is making it more difficult to wrench this investigation into an impeachment star chamber," since the Democrats will make the attempt anyway, and it's always even money whether their majority opponents will stand and fight back or run away.
But my overriding reaction is that the DisLoyal Opposition has already been wildly successful with its vicious blithering by bullying the Republicans into convening this joint committee in the first place to investigate the federal response when all the failures and mistakes and bungling and incompetence lay at the state and local level.
Hugh says, "Now they want to blame Bush for Blanco, fire Brown instead of demanding answers from Nagin, and generally want to try and politicize a disaster that most Americans just want addressed as speedily and humanely as possible." And the former is precisely what the GOP has given their enemies a public platform to accomplish.
Will it work? As you might have expected, Double-H doesn't think so:
I wouldn't characterize Bush as being "on the defensive." He just tends to look that way because, in PR terms, he almost never goes on the offensive, even during election campaigns. Isn't his style. "New Tone" uber alles.
But by the same token, the Extreme Media has never gotten it through their biased skulls that Bush isn't Bill Clinton in the sense of tacking back and forth, bobbing and weaving, constantly maneuvering for propaganda position, a pol in perpetual motion. GDub is the ultimate WYSIWYG - "what you see is what you get." Bush takes a position and sticks with it. When he says something, he means it, and it doesn't change a week from next Tuesday. He doesn't waffle. He's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
That's why they used to ridicule him as being a "dolt." But that's also why they have never been able to "get" him by catching him in a self-contradiction or making any of their smears stick to him. It is they who buzz and flit around Dubya with frenetic fury, while he remains planted where he's always been and will always remain. And that stolidity is what makes the other side's "harsh rhetoric" stand out all the more and in the worst possible contrast, which is why the Dems have spent the past going-on five years overplaying one hand after another, to the extent that they've ever had a "hand" to play at all.
Or, to employ a baseball metaphor, if the Donks would ever stop swinging for the fences all the time and settle for singles with the occasional extra-base hit, they might be able to cut down on their strike-outs.
Instead, we get this:
I guess I always fear the possibility that the other side's "harsh rhetoric" will become a winning "hand" because it happened repeatedly throughout the 1990s, a time when truth, facts, and evidence didn't matter, and lies, spin, and propaganda ruled the roost. But as I've also periodically observed, that spin machine was a complicated piece of work and required a level of operator skill that the Donks have never managed to reacquire since Sick Willie rode off into the sunset. And in any case, it is always more difficult to sell anger than it is snake oil, and the post-Katrina Dems would have a difficult time selling a fur coat to an Eskimo streaker in a snowstorm.
"Post-Katrina," "post-Plame," "post-Gitmo," "post-Abu Ghraib," "post-9/11 commission," "post-Enron," "post-Halliburton," "post-Florida2K" - where it really all began - it's all the same to them.
Maybe, some day, one of these fecal cyclones will stick to the President.
I just wish the Left would take a vacation of their own, or even better, take their "moveon" designation to heart.
Anything as long as it shuts those assholes up.
UPDATE: Here's Jim Geraghy's take, which reinforces mine like a sledghammer:
In the post-9/11 era, that may as well be a political epitaph.
Those are the two words that scream out at you as you browse through two posts on Hugh Hewitt's site from last night and this morning about the Democrats' assholery in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Does my choice of words offend anybody out there? It's not meant to. But the essence of good writing, or so I've always believed, is to choose terms that are as descriptive of the subject matter as possible. And the word to describe the post-Katrina Democrats is "assholes." They're assholes, every last one of them. (Well, maybe not every last one of them, but the number of individual exceptions is not statistically significant, and those people don't run the party - and if even Joe Lieberman is joining the act, I'd say generalization is justified.) And, of course, the core trait of assholes is that they never shut up.
I'll spare you the extrapolation of that metaphor in favor of some exerpts, which is doing you, dear readers, no favors whatsoever:
Key quote from San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi today, in a presser on the aftermath of Katrina: "President Bush is 'oblivious, in denial, dangerous,' when it comes to the plight of the storm's victims, charged House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi."
This is deranged babbling. Crazy Nancy actually tries to strike a pose as being more in-touch with and informed about "the plight of the storm's victims" than the President. But has she been to New Orleans? The President has. Has she bothered to do any research on what happened there last week and why? Can she even spell the world "research"? Is the term "Google" in her vocabulary? And she has the ovaries to call Bush "oblivious"?
One also has to wonder what she thinks Bush is "in denial" of. But the only danger in this equation is the possibility that this geriatric bimbo could, in theory, be Speaker of the House one day.
Pelosi's counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid, is upset with the plan to have one committee investigate the disaster's aftermath, comprised of members of Congress from both houses, and reflecting the GOP's majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate:
"An investigation of the Republican administration by a Republican-controlled Congress is like having a pitcher call his own balls and strikes," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.
My first thought is, "Well, Harry, win an election or two and you might get more of a say in such matters." My second thought is, "You're just sore that you can't wrench this investigation into an impeachment star chamber" - like pumping even more Donk partisanship into this kerfuffle would actually boost its objectivity level. Or perhaps I should say, "You're just sore that the GOP is making it more difficult to wrench this investigation into an impeachment star chamber," since the Democrats will make the attempt anyway, and it's always even money whether their majority opponents will stand and fight back or run away.
But my overriding reaction is that the DisLoyal Opposition has already been wildly successful with its vicious blithering by bullying the Republicans into convening this joint committee in the first place to investigate the federal response when all the failures and mistakes and bungling and incompetence lay at the state and local level.
Hugh says, "Now they want to blame Bush for Blanco, fire Brown instead of demanding answers from Nagin, and generally want to try and politicize a disaster that most Americans just want addressed as speedily and humanely as possible." And the former is precisely what the GOP has given their enemies a public platform to accomplish.
Will it work? As you might have expected, Double-H doesn't think so:
Slowly, ever so slowly, MSM is figuring out what "both Republican and Democratic strategists said yesterday [that] the opposition party is in danger of overplaying its hand. The harsh rhetoric, the strategists said, could create a backlash among the public and engender sympathy for a president who has been on the defensive much of the past week.
I wouldn't characterize Bush as being "on the defensive." He just tends to look that way because, in PR terms, he almost never goes on the offensive, even during election campaigns. Isn't his style. "New Tone" uber alles.
But by the same token, the Extreme Media has never gotten it through their biased skulls that Bush isn't Bill Clinton in the sense of tacking back and forth, bobbing and weaving, constantly maneuvering for propaganda position, a pol in perpetual motion. GDub is the ultimate WYSIWYG - "what you see is what you get." Bush takes a position and sticks with it. When he says something, he means it, and it doesn't change a week from next Tuesday. He doesn't waffle. He's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
That's why they used to ridicule him as being a "dolt." But that's also why they have never been able to "get" him by catching him in a self-contradiction or making any of their smears stick to him. It is they who buzz and flit around Dubya with frenetic fury, while he remains planted where he's always been and will always remain. And that stolidity is what makes the other side's "harsh rhetoric" stand out all the more and in the worst possible contrast, which is why the Dems have spent the past going-on five years overplaying one hand after another, to the extent that they've ever had a "hand" to play at all.
Or, to employ a baseball metaphor, if the Donks would ever stop swinging for the fences all the time and settle for singles with the occasional extra-base hit, they might be able to cut down on their strike-outs.
Instead, we get this:
Patrick Leahy wheezing and then shouting demands on Tuesday as to why the supplies weren't delivered to the Superdome was followed by Wednesday's confirmation that the Red Cross was blocked from doing so by the Louisiana state government, and the country has to ask itself - do we really want this blusterer in charge of Judiciary?
When Senator Reid sends a letter to Homeland Security Committee Chair Susan Collins that includes the questions, "How much time did the President spend dealing with this emerging crisis while he was on vacation?" and "Why didn't President Bush immediately return to Washington from his vacation?", you know that the Dems have decided that no matter the facts of the situation, they will try and use their allies in the MSM to turn this into an assault on Bush.
Which again leads to the question: Who could want these people in charge of anything -whether the House, the Senate or the presidency? The greatest natural disaster in the nation's history, with hundreds of thousands of Americans uprooted and their lives literally blown apart, and the Dems are looking for a political foothold - even though it has become obvious that their central complaint of "slow response" is the direct result of their party's chief executive's incompetence!
I guess I always fear the possibility that the other side's "harsh rhetoric" will become a winning "hand" because it happened repeatedly throughout the 1990s, a time when truth, facts, and evidence didn't matter, and lies, spin, and propaganda ruled the roost. But as I've also periodically observed, that spin machine was a complicated piece of work and required a level of operator skill that the Donks have never managed to reacquire since Sick Willie rode off into the sunset. And in any case, it is always more difficult to sell anger than it is snake oil, and the post-Katrina Dems would have a difficult time selling a fur coat to an Eskimo streaker in a snowstorm.
"Post-Katrina," "post-Plame," "post-Gitmo," "post-Abu Ghraib," "post-9/11 commission," "post-Enron," "post-Halliburton," "post-Florida2K" - where it really all began - it's all the same to them.
Maybe, some day, one of these fecal cyclones will stick to the President.
I just wish the Left would take a vacation of their own, or even better, take their "moveon" designation to heart.
Anything as long as it shuts those assholes up.
UPDATE: Here's Jim Geraghy's take, which reinforces mine like a sledghammer:
The “it’s all Chimpy McHitler’s fault” crowd is small, yet somehow has persuaded the high mucky-mucks in the Democratic party that they’re worth listening to. Some of their elected officials are echoing them. What they don’t realize is that the message coming through loud and clear to any casual listener is, “we are no use in a crisis.”
In the post-9/11 era, that may as well be a political epitaph.
posted by JASmius at 8:16 AM
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