{"id":2228,"date":"2004-07-30T11:11:07","date_gmt":"2004-07-30T16:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2228.html"},"modified":"2004-07-30T11:11:07","modified_gmt":"2004-07-30T16:11:07","slug":"a-french-speaking-socialist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-french-speaking-socialist\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A French-speaking socialist’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow, those Republicans sure are a positive, issue-oriented, forward-thinking bunch, aren’t they? Members of the “optimistic” party have decided to turn this election season into a contest — strictly among themselves — to see who can coarsen political discourse in this country the most.<\/p>\n

In recent months we’ve seen Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) compare voting for John Kerry<\/a> to voting for Hitler and bin Laden, Bush Education Secretary Rod Paige call a group of school teachers<\/a> a “terrorist organization,” and Dick Cheney tell a respected U.S. Senator to go f— himself<\/a>. Somehow, these same characters have the chutzpah to call Dem rallies “hate fests,” proving once again that irony is alive and well.<\/p>\n

But now we have yet another example of a high-profile GOP leader taking the (very) low road. This time, it’s Sen. Trent “segregation wasn’t so bad” Lott<\/a>.<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Trent Lott today told an enthusiastic Neshoba County Fair crowd that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is “a French-speaking socialist from Boston, Massaschusetts, who is more liberal than Ted Kennedy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is what political discourse among experienced GOP officials has come to. Kerry is a “French-speaking socialist.” The only thing more disturbing about Lott’s attack is that it’s considered fairly normal in Republican circles and hasn’t generated any real attention.<\/p>\n

I can’t help but wonder about yet another double standard. If a Democratic senator were to call Bush a “barely-literate fascist,” would conservatives and the mainstream media just yawn and dismiss it as politics-as-usual?
\n
\nAnd just to add some context to Lott’s comment, it’s not as if he got caught up in a moment and just blurted it out accidentally.<\/p>\n

It was a line that Lott said he’d been working on for a while, and it produced loud applause from hundreds of Mississippians gathered at Founders’ Square, the centerpiece of the historic fair.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Great. Maybe the GOP can remind us all again about how the Dems are running a campaign based on “anger” and “bitterness,” while the Republicans have embraced a positive message.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow, those Republicans sure are a positive, issue-oriented, forward-thinking bunch, aren’t they? Members of the “optimistic” party have decided to turn this election season into a contest — strictly among themselves — to see who can coarsen political discourse in this country the most. In recent months we’ve seen Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) compare voting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228","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=2228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}