Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, who has been praised by President Bush for her role in helping America and was feted at a State Dinner last May, expressed personal alarm at the charge.<\/p>\n
Arroyo told the New Straits Times, a Malaysian newspaper, that she was asking her foreign office to demand an apology for the “unfair and baseless accusation” from the House GOP leadership.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That seems reasonable. <\/p>\n
Even an NRCC spokesman said the questions “should probably have been vetted better” than they were. The Dems had an amusing response.<\/p>\n
But Greg Speed, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told HOH that he’s worried about how this latest development will affect all of the menus in Thai restaurants located in the United States.<\/p>\n
“House Republicans’ foreign policy is apparently getting even more reckless — they’ve gone from renaming french fries ‘freedom fries’ to naming Thailand and the Philippines ‘terrorist countries,'” cracked Speed. “I guess soon we’ll have to call our Thai food ‘pad liberty.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s not a bad line, but if the Dems were to screw up something like this — under our House speaker’s signature — you better believe the GOP would have this story everywhere. I can see it now…<\/p>\n
Republicans would instantly create “Thai- and Filipino-Americans for a Better America,” which would hold a press conference at the National Press Club with a dozen crying Thai and Filipino children who have been traumatized by the “hate-filled speech” coming from the Democrats. Elderly citizens would be on hand, holding signs saying, “I’m Not A Terrorist.” Tom DeLay would be there to ask how any Thai- and Filipino-American voters could be expected to vote for Democrats on Election Day after they’ve levied such offensive and baseless attacks against them. Ed Gillespie would appear under a professionally-made backdrop — with the words “Republicans Stand With Pacific-Asian Americans” on it — to announce a new voter registration initiative for the community. “The Democrats won’t respect the Thai and Filipino communities,” Gillespie would say, “but we will.”<\/p>\n
We — Dems — are just not as good at this kind of demagoguery. It’s a shame, because this nonsense works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fundraising letters, by their very nature, have to be at least a little over-the-top. I know; I’ve written more than a few. But these shameless appeals for cash have to be tempered by a certain, inescapable reality — sometimes they’ll be read by someone other than your target audience. With that in mind, no matter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}