The current Republican meme of the week is that people shouldn’t vote for John Kerry because he flip-flops (“waffles”) on the issues. In that vein, I got pointed to this list of George W. Bush’s own waffles from the last four years:
(There’s more at the site; I wasn’t sure if posting the entire list violated the SDMB’s policy on excessive quoting)
So, would the resident Bush supporters care to poke some holes in this list? Or is this simply another case of the Republicans throwing out inaccurate and hypocritical accusations against Kerry (as usual)?
False dichotomy. Bush can waffle from sunup till sundown and it has no bearing on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the claims made against Kerry.
The only way to resolve this would be a complete listing of every statement made by both politicians to determine who made the larger number of reversals.
Enjoy that endeavor…
The real question, is which scenario will play better in the field of public opinion. I submit that most people have a pretty clear idea in their mind of what Bush stands for. But not so with Kerry. It will be much easier for the Republicans to use this against Kerry, who has yet to define himself in the voters’ psyche.
A comparison of the two candidates, which is what a campaign is all about even in the “field of public opinion”, can hardly be a false dichotomy.
Yes, it’s time for the incumbent to define his challenger before he can define himself (the lesson of the Dukakis campaign). But that only works for an incumbent who’s already seen as a safe, or at least good enough, default choice. One who already has negative approval ratings, and at a time when “the country is on the wrong track” and such is a strong majority reply in the polls, cannot count on that, though. The default choice right now, for voters doing comparison shopping, might well be Kerry, mightn’t he?
Four years ago, Bush was able to fool a lot of middle-of-the-road types into believing he was a responsible, moderate Republican.
Now they know that’s a load of bullcrap, and that Bush is an extremist who will fight to give the GOP base almost everything it wants, and who has little interest in actually compromising with Dems on anything. He claimed there wasn’t going to be the sort of partisan warfare under him that there was under Clinton, and he was right: he’s escalated it far beyond Clintonian levels. He was going to be a uniter, not a divider - but aside from the Democratic base :D, he hasn’t united much of anything.
He’s a corporate toady whose answer to all budgetary situations is to cut taxes on the rich; whose answer to all environmental problems is to dig, drill, cut down trees, and ease pollution regs; whose answer to all criticisms of our irrelevant war in Iraq is “9/11”; and whose answer to practically everything is to find a nice photo op. (Turkey, anyone?)
The citizens of this country are slowly waking up to how often Bush has lied to and bamboozled them, and how much he has done for his rich friends while doing nothing for them. It’s already too late for God, guns, and gays to save him (though maybe Diebold still can); the unseriousness of running on these issues when we’ve got a mess in Iraq, the biggest deficits of my lifetime, far too many Americans out of work, and the spectre of nuclear proliferation like we’ve never seen hovering in the background, as we play kissy-face with the Pakistanis behind it.
Maybe, but we’ve got a big head start in doing it to Bush - or, rather, pointing out where Bush has already been doing it to himself.
And this one: he loved each of his tax cuts when it was passed. Each of them included sunset provisions in order to squeeze more stuff in. He was A-OK on that.
Now he’s going around, making speeches as if those sunsets were a dirty trick that someone pulled on him.
Sean Hannity made the suggestion today that the Bush campaign should produce a commercial of Kerry debating Kerry - illustrating the supposed “flip-flops.” Apparently Sean wasn’t aware the the Daily Show had already done this - but with Governor Bush and President Bush as the debators.
Heheheh, I see the statue of limitations has expired. Once upon a time, the ‘loyal’ opposition would pounce on our dear departed comrade December for posting a OP based on a blog. Now? How dare we doubt the veracity of a blog, or presume to expect that the OP does a little research and backs up the claims made by the blog! Spew out some crap, and it is up to others to disprove it, eh? :rolleyes:
Oh, for the love of Cecil! Can’t we just bring december back, so we don’t have to listen to any more of this sanctimonious drivel? Just as long as he promises “no more limericks! Ever!”.
RTFirefly, you’ve given me the opening to mention something I just learned about from reading Molly Ivins’ Bushwhacked - Bush was involved in some very Enron-esqe shenanigans with his sham Aloha subsidiary, which served to cook his books quite nicely.
Unfortunately, I missed this when it surely must have been plastered all over the liberal media.
Perhaps Hannity can actually produce such a debate? I mean, why just talk about it and not actually come through. “I have here, in my hand, a list of all the waffling statements of John Kerry.”
To elucidator’s whims
we mustn’t cater
For the rhymes, which
december was creator,
were fun filled and wholesome,
(though awkward and gruesome)
compared to his deeds as debater.
The point is that it’s possible to construct such a list through a superficial reading of ANY politician’s public career (and easier for someone who’s been working for 19 years as a Senator than 4 as a President/candidate) to fit the spin-label of the day.
Are the flip-flop claims against Bush accurate? I’m sure Bush people have good explanations for them. Are the claims against Kerry accurate? The Kerry people have defenses for each of them. But the accuracy of the charges is never what’s discussed: only the label.
Same thing happened with Gore: his RNC focus-group tested label was “liar,” an idea that stuck utterly regardless of the accuracy of the charges (most were grossly inaccurate). But of course, one could come up with just as many lies of Bush’s. So why the differential regard? Merely because of the rhetoric, not the substance. Besides, Bush was too busy being called “stupid” to be a “liar.”
Now, the rhetoric du jour is that Kerry is a “flip-flopper.” Are there any substance to these charges? Maybe, maybe not. But the people making the charges never discuss the substance of anything in the first place, and the label quickly comes to be applied to examples without even an explanation as to what the lie or the flip-flop is. That’s how political attack rhetoric works.
But, I mean, Kerry tried to gut the intelligence budget right?
So, you can’t argue the facts in the OP (Bush’s track record), and are now resorting to the desperate refuge of attacking the source, eh? Bravo, dear Brutus! You have learned the Republican lessons of cowardice and misdirection very well!
Now all you need is to find a gullible audience to practice your arts on – because, alas, you won’t find it here…