An escalation of rhetoric

November 17, 2005

CBS Early Show anchor Harry Smith, describing the new White House, particularly after Dick Cheney’s attack, said, “The White House basically called the Democrats liars.” Actually, it’s probably safe to remove the word “basically.” Consider the latest from the WH Communication office.

Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director, says challenging Democrats is essential. “Our strategy has to include hitting back … and calling them out for what are actually lies,” she says.

As a substantive matter, the White House describing the Dems’ comments as “lies” is painfully ridiculous, especially since their list of alleged falsehoods is, at this point, blank. But notice also the use of the “l” word. The White House communications director didn’t just make some off-hand remark in a casual setting; she told a major national newspaper that critics of the president in Congress are offering actual “lies.”

In other words, it’s not only a new White House offensive; it’s an escalation of rhetoric.

To be sure, they certainly seem to have given up on reasonable discourse. Last week, for example, after Sen. Ted Kennedy called Bush’s salvo against Dems “deeply regrettable,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said it was “regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush than he ever did about Saddam Hussein.”

I’m just not sure the Bush gang really wants to go down this road. Yesterday, for example, Cheney went after congressional Dems and mentioned three leading Dem senators by name. But in discussing the war on terror, the Vice President made no mention of Osama bin Laden. In fact, no one at the White House ever seems to acknowledge the one terrorist who helped orchestrate 9/11 in the first place.

Under the new standards of WH rhetoric, Dems might be justified in telling reporters, “If Bush and Cheney went after bin Laden with the same passion they use to go after congressional Democrats, the world would be a safer place.”

A cheap shot? Cynical? Probably, but this is where the White House seems anxious to go. It’s a shame, but if they want to play, we can play.

“If Bush and Cheney went after bin Laden with the same passion they use to go after congressional Democrats, the world would be a safer place.”

To quote a famous political thinker, it is “fair game.”

This is long overdue, but the timing may be right for a Demo offensive here, particularly as we no longer have “a popular president.”

Bring it on.

  • “If Bush and Cheney went after bin Laden with the same passion they use to go after congressional Democrats, the world would be a safer place.”

    Go get em, CB. Give em hell — or give em the truth and they’ll think it’s hell.

  • It never ceases to amaze me. Michael Moore was right. “We live in fictious times.” With republicans the real truth have now become lies and their lies have now become the new truth.

  • I think the media should demand to know what, exactly, these “lies” are that the White House communications director is referring to.

    But that’s probably too much to ask.

  • “A cheap shot? Cynical?”

    No, it’s the truth. We are dealing with theworst cabal of liars and thieves since the Nazi’s ran Germany i the 30’s and 40’s. These guys could give Joseph Goebels pointers.

  • A cheap shot?

    I’m trying to dredge up some sense of the compassion that would be required for me to feel like CB’s excellent point would be out of bounds. There’s nothing like that in me. Screw ’em and go at ’em like they keep trying to go at their perceived enemies. Cheney’s like a machine gun stuck on full auto mounted on the pilot house of a sinking boat. If what we say is based on truth there is nothing I can imagine which should be off limits.

    These pricks need to be so isolated in their madness that they would seem to be standing in the middle of Time Square wearing nothing but a sock. Wart’s, fat asses, flat feet and spitting maniacally in their fury. Hanging OBL around their necks as regular as taking out the garbage would be a fine place to start.

    May they go down screaming.

  • I’m having one of my blank moments, an
    irreality event. Let’s see if I have this
    straight: Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell et al
    conduct a non stop propaganda campaign
    lying and terrifying Americans into supporting
    a totally unnecessary war that destroys
    another nation, and the Democrats, some of
    them, are now suggesting that we might sort
    of want to pursue the second phase of the
    Senate investigation that Roberts promised
    to conduct after the election, and they are
    all liars, those horrible Dems? What lies?

    Okay, one more time. Maybe I’ll pull out of
    this mental warp: Bush, Cheney . . . .

  • How the hell is this out of bounds?

    I’m sorry, but if it had been FOUR YEARS since Osama bin Laden blew up downtown New York City and Bill Clinton hadn’t caught him, do you think we’d hear anything else?

    Seriously, how is this OK? Christ, even Jimmy Carter got better results than George Bush does. How is it out of bounds to point out that four years after 9/11, bin Laden is still free as a jaybird?

  • Democrats have nothing to gain by pulling their punches in this and many other respects. And this certainly is not a cheap shot. “Why haven’t we caught Osama Bin Laden?” should be asked frequently by every Democratic candidate between now and next November.

  • To quote the Moron-in-Chief:

    “Bring. It. On.”

    Watching these guys get speared with their own lies will be the better fun than anything.

    Wolfie “The Gulf War Made Me” Blitzer just got his head on a platter from John Murtha when he tried to use Cheney’s words against Murtha’s call for withdrawal.

    Given that the only two combat veterans they have on their side is a liar who never made “ace” (regardless of Navy propaganda 30 years ago) currently in the middle of his own scandal (Cunningham) and John McCain, while the Dems have all sorts of folks who served, I’ll be happy to go up against a coked-out drunk and a fatassed moron who never met a draft deferment he didn’t take.

  • This escalation in the decent of America and American culture is rather pathetic. Likely enough it is another smear tactic with the large upside of getting the media to talk about something else. Indeed it may be adding another issue about Republican failure/filth to further obscure the already super saturated collection of scandals. Who can keep up with it all. Journalist/MSM lack direction or motivation, even the blogs cannot get to it all. Something tells me a concerted left wing effort to keep a light shining on all this abuse, corruption, ethical backflips, deception, theft etc. could be effective.

  • Cheney looked sooo butch in his Tux, straining against the doppel-kummerbund Lynne shoe-horned him into in the West Wing shower stall.. The tough talk worked too. I’m sure Osama (and the civilized world too) was quaking in his boots. I was ready to put the DNC on DefCon 4.

    At least until Murtha blew the pasty old fraud off the airways.

  • I’m starting to think that the Democrats maybe ought to retire the “Bush lied” attack. For one thing, when Bush was riding high in the polls, very few of them had the guts to even attempt to slow down his idiocies. An anti-war John Kerry is fairly ridiculous.

    But a better reason is that they don’t NEED to talk about pre-war intelligence hyping. Let’s give Bush the benfit of the doubt, what then?

    Even if he was 100% correct about everything pre invasion, he sure has screwed it up in the three years since. THAT should be the dem mantra.

    “I told you so” is satisfying to say, but it rings hollow in the mouths of the Dem “leadership” who, in any event, went along with the whole game.

    “We gave you everything you asked for and you totally botched it up” sounds much less like a CYA strategy. Then we can start the conversation about impeachment for criminal incompetence.

  • So this is the best they can do without Rove? No wonder Scotty’s cuttin’ and runnin’.

    This is going to be so much fun to watch.

  • Dems need to get it through their heads once and for all, that nobody voted to “go to war” in Iraq. The vote was to give the President the authority to take military action in Iraq, after assurances from the administration that all political and diplomatic means would be exhausted. At the time, voting to give the President this authority was a reasonable position. It would let Saddam know that the US was serious, and put teeth in the negotiations.

    We now know that any efforts by the administration to gain an acceptable outcome short of war were in bad faith. We know that the books were cooked, and the war was a foregone conclusion. BushCo wanted war in Iraq, and they wanted it before 9/11, from the first day they were in office.

    Also keep in mind that Congress did not have access to the same intelligence the administration was using. They had the cherry-picked, stove-piped intelligence that the administration wanted them to see.

    Repubs and the laughable, toothless media are responsible for this war. Repubs were thinking re-election, big oil, and Halliburton. The media was thinking ratings.

    If you’re against the war, and outraged at BushCo, for Gods sake stop beating up on Dems, and put the blame where it belongs- with the party that by hook and crook, has dominated the power structure of all three branches of Government for the past 5 years.

    Your other option is to vote for Nader again. Good luck with that, let us know how it turns out.

  • Say what you want to about Bush, but instead of hitting a camel in the butt with a million dollar cruise missile or 3, Osama got flushed out of Afghanistan like crap through one of them little burros.

    Osama: He may still be alive, but his production values are way WAY down. If that is what you want for Democrats who have no spine, I guess you are further to the political Right than Attilla the Hun.

    We have a nasty unpleasant war, fought, as usual by very nasty terrorists who have no respect for the usual rules of war. Just as Hitler’s SS didn’t follow the rules of war, just as the Communists didnt follow the rules of war, the Muslim Terrorists haven’t followed the rule of war. Is it any surprise that the war is unpleasant? War is unpleasant by its nature. If you can’t stand it, then move to France with the surrender monkeys, but let me give you a hint: Don’t buy a new car.

  • Oh, by the way, I am against the continuation of the war. The Terrorists should surrender immediately.

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