Whining doesn't become Republicans, either
Few things are more pathetic than sore losers in politics.
Certainly the childish churlishness displayed by Democrats in the face of their defeats in 2000 and in 2004 should have embarrassed them. It is sad beyond words that it did not. It is nothing short of tragic when a once-great political party reveals itself to be so petty as to respond to having been defeated fair and square by falsely whining that it was robbed.
Only the economy (and residual hostility toward the war in Iraq and the administration that began it, despite the fact that we were clearly headed toward victory there by the time the votes were cast) rescued the party of rugged frontiersman Andrew Jackson from having to whine like a bunch of whipped puppies a third time in a row rather than accept defeat like a bunch of grown-ups and- excuse the expression- move on.
While the Democrats continued the pattern of character assassination and falsehood that marked the campaigns of 2000 and- especially- that of 2004, the media ignored it. Their unseemly love affair with Barack Obama led them to focus instead on the adoption of those very tactics by Republicans. Note that I did not say "the Republicans;" unlike John Kerry in 2004 (and contrary to what the media repeatedly implied), while John McCain and Sarah Palin may have been strident at times in their criticisms of Barack Obama's history, in no way did either encourage the nonsense many of their supporters were spouting about the Democratic nominee being a Muslim or a Marxist or the like.
McCain, it't true, did accuse Obama of being a socialist. But then, at least one leading Social Democratic newspaper in Germany reached essentially the same conclusion.
Contrary to Democratic folklore, the "swift boat veterans" who helped derail John Kerry's campaign in 2004 (as if it were going anywhere even without them!) were not put up to it by the Bush campaign. In fact, they had no connection with the Bush campaign. This was an effort of private citizens, and no one has ever been able to demonstrate any link whatsoever between the "swift boaters" and either the President's people or the Republican party.
But the fable of "swift boating" nevertheless established a dominant theme in the 2008 campaign. The Obama campaign established an often none-too-sophisticated "spin" page supposedly devoted to refuting Republican "smears." That it often misrepresented the facts and provided a forum for Democratic smear tactics did not prevent it from being very effective, if only because so many professional journalists treated it as an objective, definitive source of unimpeachable fact, and never bothered to research its assertions. Again and again, legitimate criticisms of Obama and his record were dismissed as mudslinging because the media chose to uncritically accept the Democratic spin on the issue.
But there was indeed another category of criticism leveled at Obama, and it was disturbingly reminiscent of the Kerry campaign of 2004- which, among other things, falsely accused President Bush of having been AWOL during his service in the National Guard (that fellow guardsmen had come forward four years earlier to relate their memories of serving with Bush during the period in question impressed Kerry and the Democrats no more than either the dental records which proved Bush's presence nor the retraction of the charge made by the man who first made it, who admitted that his failure to remember Bush might well have been due to his advancing Alzheimer's Disease!
Barack Obama is not a Muslim, nor did he attend a Muslim school in Indonesia, nor is he a Marxist, and those who repeated such silly rumors only helped his campaign by innoculating the media and the public against more valid concerns. Such transparent slanders only reinforced the media's predisposition to dismiss more meritorious criticisms of Obama's record without bothering to check them out. More than that, they enabled the absurd smear- a cooperative effort of the Obama campaign and the sympathetic media- to somehow blame John McCain and Sarah Palin for them!
Until now, I have taken great comfort in the fact that Republicans have acted like grownups in defeat. We have not claimed that we were robbed. We have not repeated the unseemly tantrums of our Democratic friends. Until now.
The conservative blogosphere has been abuzz for a while with a set of crackpot lawsuits contesting the president-elect's constitutional eligibility to assume office, claiming that he is not a native-born citizen. The state of his birth- Hawaii- certifies that indeed he is, and the "evidence" to the contrary is pure hearsay.
You can more or less judge the credibility of a blog by the degree to which it treats this circus seriously. The lawsuits will not prevent Obama from becoming our next president. At most, they will compel the state of Hawaii to produce Mr. Obama's birth certificate.
But the damage has been done. Alas, we Republicans cannot after all claim to be more grown-up in the face of defeat than the Democrats were.
I didn't think it possible, but some of us have managed to make greater asses of themselves in the face of defeat than the Democrats did over Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. And count on it: the media are going to tar all of us with the brush of their idiotic petulance.
Guys... we lost. We lost because we were unfortunate enough to have elected a president who turned out to be a screw-up, and stood by him for eight years.
We lost because we were unfortunate enough to be the party in power when the economy tanked.
We lost because we broke faith with the American people, and instead of replacing Democratic corruption and financial prodigality with rectitude and frugality, once in power we outdid the Democrats at their own vices.
And now we have to pay the price. Now we have to suck it up, and build for the future.
It behooves us to take it like grown-up men and women, rather than aping the Democrats even in their childish inability to accept well-earned defeat like grown-up men and women.
My fellow Republicans, it is time to demonstrate that the differences between us and, say, Al Franken are more than merely differences over ideology.
Certainly the childish churlishness displayed by Democrats in the face of their defeats in 2000 and in 2004 should have embarrassed them. It is sad beyond words that it did not. It is nothing short of tragic when a once-great political party reveals itself to be so petty as to respond to having been defeated fair and square by falsely whining that it was robbed.
Only the economy (and residual hostility toward the war in Iraq and the administration that began it, despite the fact that we were clearly headed toward victory there by the time the votes were cast) rescued the party of rugged frontiersman Andrew Jackson from having to whine like a bunch of whipped puppies a third time in a row rather than accept defeat like a bunch of grown-ups and- excuse the expression- move on.
While the Democrats continued the pattern of character assassination and falsehood that marked the campaigns of 2000 and- especially- that of 2004, the media ignored it. Their unseemly love affair with Barack Obama led them to focus instead on the adoption of those very tactics by Republicans. Note that I did not say "the Republicans;" unlike John Kerry in 2004 (and contrary to what the media repeatedly implied), while John McCain and Sarah Palin may have been strident at times in their criticisms of Barack Obama's history, in no way did either encourage the nonsense many of their supporters were spouting about the Democratic nominee being a Muslim or a Marxist or the like.
McCain, it't true, did accuse Obama of being a socialist. But then, at least one leading Social Democratic newspaper in Germany reached essentially the same conclusion.
Contrary to Democratic folklore, the "swift boat veterans" who helped derail John Kerry's campaign in 2004 (as if it were going anywhere even without them!) were not put up to it by the Bush campaign. In fact, they had no connection with the Bush campaign. This was an effort of private citizens, and no one has ever been able to demonstrate any link whatsoever between the "swift boaters" and either the President's people or the Republican party.
But the fable of "swift boating" nevertheless established a dominant theme in the 2008 campaign. The Obama campaign established an often none-too-sophisticated "spin" page supposedly devoted to refuting Republican "smears." That it often misrepresented the facts and provided a forum for Democratic smear tactics did not prevent it from being very effective, if only because so many professional journalists treated it as an objective, definitive source of unimpeachable fact, and never bothered to research its assertions. Again and again, legitimate criticisms of Obama and his record were dismissed as mudslinging because the media chose to uncritically accept the Democratic spin on the issue.
But there was indeed another category of criticism leveled at Obama, and it was disturbingly reminiscent of the Kerry campaign of 2004- which, among other things, falsely accused President Bush of having been AWOL during his service in the National Guard (that fellow guardsmen had come forward four years earlier to relate their memories of serving with Bush during the period in question impressed Kerry and the Democrats no more than either the dental records which proved Bush's presence nor the retraction of the charge made by the man who first made it, who admitted that his failure to remember Bush might well have been due to his advancing Alzheimer's Disease!
Barack Obama is not a Muslim, nor did he attend a Muslim school in Indonesia, nor is he a Marxist, and those who repeated such silly rumors only helped his campaign by innoculating the media and the public against more valid concerns. Such transparent slanders only reinforced the media's predisposition to dismiss more meritorious criticisms of Obama's record without bothering to check them out. More than that, they enabled the absurd smear- a cooperative effort of the Obama campaign and the sympathetic media- to somehow blame John McCain and Sarah Palin for them!
Until now, I have taken great comfort in the fact that Republicans have acted like grownups in defeat. We have not claimed that we were robbed. We have not repeated the unseemly tantrums of our Democratic friends. Until now.
The conservative blogosphere has been abuzz for a while with a set of crackpot lawsuits contesting the president-elect's constitutional eligibility to assume office, claiming that he is not a native-born citizen. The state of his birth- Hawaii- certifies that indeed he is, and the "evidence" to the contrary is pure hearsay.
You can more or less judge the credibility of a blog by the degree to which it treats this circus seriously. The lawsuits will not prevent Obama from becoming our next president. At most, they will compel the state of Hawaii to produce Mr. Obama's birth certificate.
But the damage has been done. Alas, we Republicans cannot after all claim to be more grown-up in the face of defeat than the Democrats were.
I didn't think it possible, but some of us have managed to make greater asses of themselves in the face of defeat than the Democrats did over Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. And count on it: the media are going to tar all of us with the brush of their idiotic petulance.
Guys... we lost. We lost because we were unfortunate enough to have elected a president who turned out to be a screw-up, and stood by him for eight years.
We lost because we were unfortunate enough to be the party in power when the economy tanked.
We lost because we broke faith with the American people, and instead of replacing Democratic corruption and financial prodigality with rectitude and frugality, once in power we outdid the Democrats at their own vices.
And now we have to pay the price. Now we have to suck it up, and build for the future.
It behooves us to take it like grown-up men and women, rather than aping the Democrats even in their childish inability to accept well-earned defeat like grown-up men and women.
My fellow Republicans, it is time to demonstrate that the differences between us and, say, Al Franken are more than merely differences over ideology.
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