Nutjobs Ranting About Politics.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sgtclub
It's obviously an attempt to further tie the Swiftees to Bush. It's Clintonian. Do not address the charge directly, just smear the persons making the allegations.

Clintonian? I think Nixon was the master of that game. And even he didn't invent it? Are you people ever going to get over the Cinton obssession?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Um, don't you regularly profess love and admiration for Ann Coulter, the woman who gnawed on Cleland's stumps for laughs?

I was referring to operatives, not pundits. the GOP can't control what members of the press do and say.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Bullshit yourself. The attack ad juxtaposing Cleland's picture and Osama's picture may have sprung from a policy dispute, but it was a smear just the same. Cleland was not a friend to Osama because he had a difference of opinion as to how DHS should be set up.

If it makes you happy, I don't think this is just a partisan thing. The most appalling smear to me still is the McCain business from 2000.

I haven't seen that one. Post a cite if you have it.

As for McCain, the original post limited the time period for the claim to the last 3 years.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Cite please? Who has the GOP smeared? I know I know, Max Cleland, right? Bullshit. That was a policy dispute, which the DEMS pulled a bait and switch on and tried to say Bush was questioning Cleland's patriotism. Same with Kerry. The response to any legitimate policy dispute is "Bush is questionning my patriotism."

Good god, man. You really need to start reading things other than the Drudge Report. Give us an anonymous PO Box, and we'll raise money to send you a subscription to The National Review or something. Baby steps at first.

It's tough to know where to start with this, and there's insufficient time to build a true laundry list, but let's start here.

1. Please explain to me how what GWB did to McCain was not a smear, if not a sexual crime. You can start with GWB's close association with the fellas who declared during the 2000 primaries that "McCain abandoned the veterans." Bonus points if we credibly attribute this to a "policy dispute."

2. Richard Clarke. Sure, you might say, the Administration was merely concerned with factual accuracy in its criticisms ("On page 242, it was really TWO Predator drones, not ONE!! The man's obviously incompetent!!").

But that's not all. That sissified major media outlet WaPo agrees:

The latest case in point: Richard A. Clarke, who served four presidents (three Republican, one Democratic) -- most prominently as White House chief of counterterrorism during this administration and its predecessor. He has written a book about his experiences, saying that the Bush administration didn't take the al Qaeda threat seriously enough. (I note, skeptically, that he allowed the book to be released last weekend in a well-coordinated media campaign designed to maximize sales, thereby upstaging his own testimony on Wednesday before the government panel investigating the 9/11 attacks.)

Here's what happened the very next day: Clarke's account sparked a serious discussion of the many issues he had raised; the Bush White House thanked him for trying to make sense of what he had learned in 30 years on the job; and the media kept their focus on what he said and not why he might be saying it.

Of course, nothing I wrote in that previous paragraph is true. (It's sad what passes for an active fantasy life in Washington.)

Here's what really happened: Administration officials undertook a counter media blitz. Clarke is a partisan, they said. He is disgruntled. His "best buddy" is the chief foreign policy adviser for Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting. He "wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff." He "may have a grudge to bear because he probably wanted a more prominent position." The book, said presidential spokesman Scott McClellan, is "Dick Clarke's American grandstand."

And that was just Monday.

Don't take it too seriously, Club. I am criticizing Bush, but it's also with some degree of admiration. When a GOP consultant preciently commented a year ago that with Kerry as the nominee, when the GOP is through with him "people will have a hard time remembering what side of the war he fought on," I can't help but feel a small bit of envy.

Clinton was good, but they just tried to make problems go away. The Bushies are fucking incredible. When they play hardball, they don't just take you out -- they take out your family, your friends, even your dog. De Niro's Al Capone would be proud.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Cite please? Who has the GOP smeared? I know I know, Max Cleland, right? Bullshit. That was a policy dispute, which the DEMS pulled a bait and switch on and tried to say Bush was questioning Cleland's patriotism. Same with Kerry. The response to any legitimate policy dispute is "Bush is questionning my patriotism."

Perhaps that's because the Bush Administration's response to any criticism is to question the critic's patriotism.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Clintonian? I think Nixon was the master of that game. And even he didn't invent it? Are you people ever going to get over the Cinton obssession?

Fair enough, though the Clinton team perfected it.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I was referring to operatives, not pundits. the GOP can't control what members of the press do and say.

Look, if we're going to be given responsibility for the rest of the media, you at least have to take Coulter.

And calling Coulter a pundit is an insult to both puns and ditzes.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I haven't seen that one. Post a cite if you have it.

As for McCain, the original post limited the time period for the claim to the last 3 years.

Huh? Are you saying you haven't seen the Osama/Cleland ad? That's what the whole thing was about. What can you possibly be claiming bullshit about, then?

If you're saying, instead, that you're not familiar with the McCain dispute, we've already posted about that recently.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Fair enough, though the Clinton team perfected it.

Vince Foster doesn't count. We're talking about character assassination.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
As for McCain, the original post limited the time period for the claim to the last 3 years.

Good thing, too, because otherwise I was gonna get mind-fucked by the GOP sending out Bob "Tell him to stop lying about my record" Dole to do just one more hatchet job for the Gipper.

When one member of the GOP accuses another member of the GOP of dirty tricks, which one are you programmed to believe, Club? The one with better poll numbers?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Good thing, too, because otherwise I was gonna get mind-fucked by the GOP sending out Bob "Tell him to stop lying about my record" Dole to do just one more hatchet job for the Gipper.

When one member of the GOP accuses another member of the GOP of dirty tricks, which one are you programmed to believe, Club? The one with better poll numbers?

Atticus, please. Bob Dole is a private citizen now.

Are you seriously suggesting that the Bush Administration had anything to do with Dole exercising his first amendment rights with a vicious and factually incorrect diatribe on CNN?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Are you people ever going to get over the Cinton obssession?

Sure, I'm sure four years of Kerry will go quite far in that regard.

Of course, if he loses we might just have another clinton to extend the madness.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I haven't seen that one. Post a cite if you have it.

Don't have a cite. A quick google only came up with a bunch of articles, with predictable outlets having predictable views. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna give the Club for Growth site any page hits in the hopes of finding the clip itself.

Here's an article from '02 describing the ad controversy.

In addition, had not read this before:

• This may be the reason Cleland was defeated. But in its outrage, the Journal somehow fails to mention a notorious Chambliss press release accusing Cleland of "breaking his oath to protect and defend the Constitution." The alleged evidence? Cleland's vote for a successful 1997 amendment to the chemical weapons treaty (supported by several prominent Republican senators) that removed language barring inspectors from certain countries from being part of United Nations inspection teams in Iraq -- hardly sufficient grounds for such a grave and inflammatory charge.
  
  As syndicated columnist Mark Shields has argued:
  
  This is not the usual garbage of cheap political campaigns. This comes close to a charge of treason. To break that oath --"to defend ... against all enemies foreign and domestic" -- which Max Cleland first took as a young Army second lieutenant before volunteering for combat in Vietnam in 1967 and then took again following his 1996 election to the Senate -- would be nothing less than an act of deliberate disloyalty to his nation.

cite

"Breaking his oath"? That, my friend, is taking a policy dispute and making it a smear.

[Say_hello_for_me]

As Clubby and Mr. Hand and Gattigap have at least implied, this Cleland thing could get uggggly.

Want to get a veteran to shame the president? Fine.

Want to get a wounded veteran to shame the president? Fine.

Want to get a veteran wounded by a self-inflicted wound to shame the president on behalf of a candidate with a self-inflicted wound? [Sound of tires screeching to a halt in the mind of any sane person]. This is a train wreck already, and the wreckage is about to get carpet bombed. How long til someone points out this irony on TV?

Worse yet, what if the Swiftees trot out a few of their wounded to say, basically, yeah, but we were actually wounded by enemy fire.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Atticus, please. Bob Dole is a private citizen now.

Are you seriously suggesting that the Bush Administration had anything to do with Dole exercising his first amendment rights with a vicious and factually incorrect diatribe on CNN?

It appears he was only incorrect about the bleeding itself, not about the bleeding coming as a result of enemy fire and/or being related to any medal in any way. If your peddler hadn't started by trying to sell his lies to America, we wouldn't see Dole making any mistakes in the process of debunking them.