Hell, Furt there’s “disquiet” amongst the right of center blogs when The Leader makes the sun come up!
Alright, we’re obviously all idiots. Please go through the Rove quote, sentence by sentence, and tell us exactly what it means, as the conclusion that we all came to is so obviously idiotic.
Whatever the blogs were blogging, Dick C’s hanky-waving faux upset at the word “Lesbian” was news the same night as the debate, and lead the dead-tree press the next morning. That same morning, all of the rightwing-radio was on the topic. There’s no way in heck that a spontaneous “community” response to Kerry’s remarks would make the news without the WH pushing the story heavily.
What do you envision? A weekly meeting, chaired by Mr. Rove, with Ms. Coulter and Mssrs. Limbaugh and O’Reilly dutifully attending and being given their assignments for the week?
I can’t disagree with that statement, though I’m sure we’d disagree on the direction.
Here’s one way in which Rove’s evil genius was apparent–he made not one, but two outrageous statements, one of which was just moderately offensive (the bit about liberals wanting indictments and conservatives wanting to go to war) and one that was extremely offensive (the bit about the motivations of liberals to put our troops in more danger). When the Democrats express their outrage at the extremely offensive statement, the apologists defend the less outrageous statement.
But as for the first statement, I remember my fellow liberals and I looking at the smoking remnants of the attack and wanting to figure out what the hell had just happened, while the conservatives wanted to go start bombing some brown people post haste. Except that was after the Oklahoma City bombing.
Consider: why didn’t we launch a “war” against Timothy McVeigh? Why didn’t we go to war against ex-military loners? Why didn’t we invade Kansas, where McVeigh made his plans and prepared his explosives at a campground near Junction City? The analogy is not perfect, so don’t start picking at nits in it; it’s just intended to show that a push for full-scale war is not necessarily the wisest or most logical response to acts of terrorism.
I believe that a carefully targeted military response was justified, but that the response to terrorism has to be something between a full-scale international invasion and traditional law enforcement, incorporating elements of both. If Karl Rove thinks that meant I was insufficiently outraged, well, we can’t all be reactionary nutjobs.
As to his comments about liberals and their motivations, I can only quote lefy uberblogger Atrios: “For the record, my motives aren’t to get more troops killed. If those were my motives I’d ship them off to a war on false pretenses without sufficient equipment to keep them safe.”
No!!!
Look again at the conversation we had:
What is the statement I’m referring to when I say that similar statements are offered on this board regularly? Answer: Christians want gays ridiculed and harassed.
(Note on my last post: I thought I had made my point about Oklahoma City in another thread, but it was in this one two pages ago. Didn’t mean to repeat myself.)
Are Rep. Hostettler’s ® recent remarks an example?:
There is no need for an organized conspiracy: they all exist to butter up each other. They hear the ongoing message, and they develop it and confirm it. “Me too!”
Indeed, this is part of the problem with Democrats vs. Republicans right now for Democrats. Democrats are mostly a disparate conglomeration of different factions and interests. Republicans really ARE much more monolithic overall, and even where they aren’t they at least have a good sense of when not to squabble and ask a million issue questions of their candidate, and so forth. Democrats all think they have the right to lecture their leaders about complex policy issues (why aren’t you talking more about hybrid cars in HOV lanes!? What about left handed jewish african american dockworkers!?) Republicans know when there’s a time for that (mostly in private, and only to a limited extent) and when to just get to the much more important business of enhancing and repeating and reinforcing the current message. There’s no real right or wrong to this sort of strategy, but that’s the way things are, and it’s much more effective in the Republican’s favor in our modern media environment.
Do you enjoy misrepresenting both what Durbin said and what people here said about why he said it?
Durbin made a point that I think we can both agree needed to be made, but he used a dumb big red target to do it. Republicans spent time money and phone banks to get ordinary people so outraged at Durbin that the calls from soldiers disgusted with a trumped up reimagining of what he said really did have him in tears. And his actual point: that something is deeply wrong with an America that accepts the methods and images of some of its worst enemies, got completely swept under the rug. And yet, people like you basically sneered and applauded more than anything.
Forced “the” issue? What is the issue Sam? Is it just all about political manuevering? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because Durbin actually cared and was horrified that the reports he was getting were acts done by his country rather than, say Saddam’s Iraq, where they would have been perfectly routine. And he got sideswiped because he actually dared to imagine that people might be just as horrified.
YMMV, but to me all of that suggests that it was not a calculated Rovian manuever, but rather a sincere response on Cheney’s part.
This OTOH hand was something that I think Rove thought through and decided to say.
Not at all. All I am saying is that there has been a progressive lowering of the discourse. The source of this, I don’t know. Perhaps direct input from right wing think tanks, perhaps undercover direction from the WH, most probably it is a result of the kind of group think that Apos talks about, with everybody reading the same news, getting the same talking points, reading the same opinion columns.
Whatever the explanation you come up with, now we have a result. It is becoming accepted to equate normal political dissent i.e. opposition party politics with a crime punishable by death. It used to be something that the screeching harpies carried on about (NewsMax, Coulter, TownHall), slowly it has bubbled up to the mainstream harpies (O’Reilly, Rush), and now to the harpies in charge (Congress, Rove). Unfortunately, confronting this equation at any point before the current allows it to be dismissed by the rest of the right as a fringe view. But inevitably, it seems that this fringe view has become mainstream.
All I’m saying is that there are other views like this in the pipeline. The most obvious is that dissenters/liberals/Democrats/war objecters are responsible for our failures in Iraq and any future terrorist attacks. Also, views like the one pointed out by Elvis are right there in the pipeline – Democrats are uniformly anti-Christian and perpetuating a organized discrimination campaign against them. Coming soon, views about Democratic obstructionism being the cause for failures in Social Security, energy policy, and Medicaid/Medicare reform (even though the White House’s proposals for these things are highly unpopular, they will make the Democrats the Bad Guys). Summer Offensive and all that.
I give up.
Just answer this, if you would. Are you defending Rove’s comments?
Not perzackly. The basic ploy when someone can’t defend something they wish they *could * defend is to point fingers at people who really suck, which means you really suck, which means Karl doesn’t suck so bad in comparison to how much you suck, and anyway the real focus of this debate should be how much you guys suck.
Thanks for quoting me out of contex. It should have been clear to even the casual observer that I was explaining Rove’s calculated use of the term “liberal”, not agreeing with him.
A “spontaneous” response spoken by Lynne to a rally of Bush supporters immediately after the debate. Echoed by right-wing radio and pundits endlessly the next day. Conveniently driving the actual debate off the front page. Sure, nothing orchestrated there, hmph. My mileage definitely does vary.
This is a perfect example of what Rove meant when he said that the liberals want to fight the war with indictments. You honestly bellieve that Bin Laden attacked, therefore we go and kill or arrest Bin Laden and the people who planned the attack, and get on with life. If another attack happens, well, it’s another bunch of guilty folks, so we track them down, arrest them, and get on with life. Repeat ad nauseum. Thus the easy way in which you can draw a parallel between the Oklahoma city attack and the WTC attack, thinking that only ‘nitpicks’ differentiate them.
But this conflict is NOT primarily just a police and intelligence matter, which is what John Kerry said and what a lot of you believe. Trying to win this war with indictments and police and intelligence is like trying to solve your wasp problem by buying a better fly swatter.
If you wanted your McVeigh analogy closer, you should presuppose that McVeigh’s organization has tens of thousands of people in it, many leaders, tacit approval of several countries, free passage across the borders of those countries, training camps situated within them that the governments of those countries allow, etc. Let’s say there was still a large collection of Nazis in Venezuela, and they had much power and money and were using it to fund schools to teach people to be Nazis and to hate America, and set up training camps to teach these Nazis in the ways of terrorism. Timothy McVeigh is close to that government, and one of the leaders of that movement. Then he attacks the Oklahoma city building, and the people of Venezuela, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico cheer in the streets.
Still a police matter?
That is a mischaracterization of what Kerry really said, and probably an intentional one so as to fit your point better. In other words, a lie.