Beyond Chutzpah: Cheney Implies Terrorists Are Happy Lieberman Lost
At a time when the real enemies in the war on terror have reared their murderous heads (exploding shampoo? no need to sex that up), to hear Dick Cheney and company using illogical, over-the-top, fear-mongering rhetoric conflating Ned Lamont’s victory with the war on terror is as deeply offensive as it is jaw-droppingly outrageous. Chutzpah doesn’t even begin to describe the Vice President of the United States suggesting that the outcome of the Connecticut primary might embolden “al Qaeda types”. Sure, and the final tally on So You Think You Can Dance will really give them the greenlight: “Travis beat Benji? The infidels must die!” The argument is as phony as Joe Lieberman’s claim that he’s running as an independent for the sake of his party and his country.
Is this Administration really so devoid of ideas that they’ve been reduced to trotting out Dick Cheney to throw some “red meat” to the faithful and accuse Democrats of hating America? Is this the best they have to offer? Sadly, that would seem to be the case. You have to know that at some level, Republicans are fully aware of how morally bankrupt their reign has become, and yet they know that cannot afford to admit what is so obviously true. To do so would provide validation to those of us trying to separate them from their jobs…and for Republicans, it’s all about seizing and maintaining power by any means necessary. If it takes lies, deception, and outright manipulation and fear-mongering, then that’s what will happen. The war on terror? Just another golden opportunity to create and milk fear…and another fabulous fundraising scheme. The war in Iraq? Just another test of our patriotism and our willingness to swallow the Party line. After all, a “real American” would never advocate “cutting and running”…would they?
I suppose it could be taken as a sign of the GOP’s complete ideological bankruptcy that they’re now reduced to tossing around cliches and questioning the patriotism of Democrats. They have NO idea how to fix things in Iraq. Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s Iraq policy is such a complete clusterf—k that it’s completely beyond repair. Freedom may be on the march in Iraq, but it’s only because it’s being frog-marched at gunpoint by Shiite and Sunni insurgents.
Those charged with conducting the war against terror have become so obsessed with 9.11 and so thoroughly corrupt that there is no telling how safe we are from CURRENT threats. Yes, we may be able to prevent more airplanes from being flown into buildings, but what about all of the other, more likely threats this country faces? This government, under Republican leadership, has proven itself completely incapable of taking care of business.
I’m not going to hold forth on how Democrats can and will do a better of job. It’s not as if they’ve done a bang-up job of presenting alternatives. Really, though; isn’t it time we gave them a chance? Isn’t it time we held Republicans accountable for their lies, deception, and corruption? Youdamnbetcha….
And will someone pleae tell Joe Lieberman to just shut the hell up and run as a Republican?
The GOP message machine knows how ludicrous it is to keep tying the war in Iraq to the war on terror, but they also know how effective it has been. So there they go again, with Cheney claiming that Lieberman was “pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security.”
Cheney knows damn well that, far from making us safer, “an aggressive posture” on Iraq has had the exact opposite effect. In a survey of 100 top foreign-policy experts (both Republicans and Democrats), 84 believed that we’re losing the war on terror and 87 thought Iraq has had a negative impact on our efforts to defeat terrorists.
Here’s the bottom line: Ned Lamont ran against the war in Iraq, a war that Joe Lieberman vehemently supported — and still supports. A war that 60 percent of Americans are against. A war that is the defining foreign policy initiative of the Bush administration — an initiative that has been an abject failure on every level. A war that has put the GOP’s back against the electoral wall. So it’s firing back with it’s favorite weapon — fear — trying to make the case that being against the war somehow makes Lamont soft on national security or, as RNC chair Ken Mehlman put it, “a leading proponent of the isolationist, defeatist, blame-America-first philosophy.”
Talk about desperate. So do Cheney/Rove/Mehlman really believe that 60 percent of the public are blame-America-firsters? Or that because 60 percent of us agree that Iraq is a disaster, we somehow don’t have “the will” to, in Cheney’s words, “stay in the fight and complete the task” of taking on the terrorists — and thus are encouraging al Qaeda types?
Of course not. They know being against the war in Iraq doesn’t mean you are against fighting the war on terror. It means you are against a failed policy that has created more terrorists than it has killed, that has cost America 2,591 lives and $305 billion dollars, that has thrown Iraq into a bloody sectarian civil war, and that has so lessened our standing abroad that we are unable to be a real power broker in an exploding Middle East.
So, it’s true, then. The GOP really is out of ideas. They really have NO idea how to extricate themselves from the clusterf—k Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader has saddled them with in Iraq. And now the rats are scurrying, hoping to somehow distance themselves from Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader. No, they’re really all INDEPENDENT-MINDED Republicans; they really DON’T blindly and unquestioningly support Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader. They really don’t hold their tongues and goose-step behind the Party leaders.
Like Hell they don’t….
It’s been said that desperate times call for desperate measures…and there are few folks more desperate right about now than Republicans running for office. Man, running as a Republican right about now has got to be like running uphill with a piano strapped to your back- you still have a chance, but that’s a huge handicap to be lugging.
WE DESERVE BETTER.
