One of the favorite charges levelled by Republicans is that John Kerry is a serial “flip-flopper”. Of course, they rarely attempt to present anything resembling “evidence” to back up their scurrilous charges. Stealing a page from Josef Goebbels, the theory that if they stay “on message”, it will gain traction and people will take it as the truth. This is, sadly, exactly what has happened. The “Big Lie” works.
Take this example:
“I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,” Kerry said regarding the Bush administration’s request for more funding for the Iraq operation.
The line has been used in Bush campaign commercials, and the campaign distributed a memo Tuesday suggesting the vote raises doubts about Kerry’s commitment to U.S. troops.
The White House is aware that the statement does not reflect a contradiction but an inelegant way of defending a pair of Senate votes. Kerry voted for a measure that paid for the $87 billion by reducing tax cuts for those who earn more than $300,000. He voted against a measure that paid for the $87 billion by adding to the deficit.
At best, this criticism of Kerry is disingenuous. At worst, it is a heinous, craven destruction of the truth, but, oh, I forgot…the Republican strategy is “whatever it takes”. Truth may be the first casualty of war, but it has definitely been the first casualty in the Republican campaign for their Prevaricator-in-Chief.
This charge against Kerry is a lie, Republicans KNOW it is a lie, and yet they and their Prevaricator-in-Chief continuing peddling this lie. Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS. They know that most Americans can’t be bothered to investigate the relative truth of this charge. Let’s face it; most Americans are sheep. They will swallow whatever is fed to them if it is packaged well enough. Republicans know this, and they have no moral issues with twisting and mangling the truth into something beyond recognition.
If you look at the totality of Kerry’s utterances, one will see that, no, he hasn’t been strictly consistent. Then again, neither has George W. Bush, and yet no one seems to be hammering him on his “inconsistencies”.
The problem here is that Republicans are willing to twist anything John Kerry says to their advantage. The relative truth of the matter is beside the point. What matters is being able to plant the seed of doubt in the minds of voters. Sadly, it’s working.
President Bush, seated beside Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, said Tuesday: “My opponent has taken so many different positions on Iraq that his statements are hardly credible at all.”
The allegation is the basis of a new Bush campaign TV ad that shows the Democratic senator from Massachusetts windsurfing to the strains of a Strauss waltz as a narrator intones: “Kerry voted for the Iraq war, opposed it, supported it and now opposes it again.”
Yet an examination of Kerry’s words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters’ questions does not support the accusation.
I doubt that Bush has ever given a second thought to the inaccuracy and disingenuousness of the words that come out of his mouth. He no doubt has convinced himself that the accusations he has levelled against Kerry are true, so therefore he is perfectly justified in repeating the endlessly, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Then again, lying seems to be second nature to this President. After all, his lies and deceptions are why we are in Iraq and why we’ve lost over 1000 American soldiers. So why are Democrats and the media not calling our Prevaricator-in-Chief on the carpet? What “Liberal Media”?? And Democrats are spineless weenies who could should be forced into a crash course on Niccolo Machiavelli’s theory of politics.
Kerry may be guilty of being occasionally inelegantly inarticulate, but that hardly makes him a liar, nor does it make him a “flip-flopper”. Then again, if the Emperor has no clothes, what other option does he have but to repeat this baseless charge? For George W. Bush and his minions, lying is just a means to an end.
WE DESERVE BETTER.
