…this is the way the right goes after everyone who stands in their way: accuse them of everything, no matter how implausible or contradictory the accusations are. Progressives are atheistic socialists who want to impose Sharia law. Class warfare is evil; also, John Kerry is too rich. And so on.
I’ve been on welfare and food stamps…did anyone help me?
FOXnews VP Bill Sammon was caught on tape making a rather unfortunate admission on a conservative cruise:
At that time, I have to admit, that I went on TV on Fox News and publicly engaged in what I guess was some rather mischievous speculation about whether Barack Obama really advocated socialism, a premise that privately I found rather far-fetched.
Then, later, walking back this statement:
[Obama’s supposed “advocating” of socialism] was a main point of discussion on all the channels, in all the media [and by 2009 I was] astonished by how the needle had moved.
You (or your proxies) go on television, you knowingly lie repeatedly, your entire network repeats said lie knowingly and with malice aforethought, on all programs 24/7, then you proclaim yourself astonished that some number of people have picked up the lie and repeated it themselves (whether knowingly or unknowingly is now immaterial; congratulations, you have successfully propagated the meme).
Now, of course, because of the ironclad rules of Cokie’s Law, you simply continue to repeat and repeat and repeat the lie you know is a lie (because you were complicit in its genesis) now with the “it’s out there, we have to report it” fig leaf. And the rest of the MSM steadfastly defends you as an accurate, respectable news source despite all evidence to the contrary. I guess that concept is “out there” too.
If you’re going to a gala for some kind of disease and then you go to a hip art event, you can’t wear the same thing
Yglesias points out the creeping government takeover of everything in the socialist hell that is Obama’s America…
I can’t imagine why conservatives aren’t more honest about this.
But the facts remain: government is smaller under Obama. Jobs in the private sector have been created under Obama, and some of those jobs have been created through the actions of the stimulus. Period.
Obamacare as we know is the crown jewel of socialism. It is socialized medicine. The American people spoke soundly and clearly at the ballot box in November and they said to us, Mr. Speaker, in no uncertain terms, repeal this bill. So today, this body will cast a vote to repeal Obamacare and to those across the United States who think this may be a symbolic act, we have a message for them.
[…]
This is not symbolic, this is why we were sent here and we will not stop until we repeal a president and put a president in the position of the White House who will repeal this bill, until we repeal the current Senate, put in a Senate that will listen to the American people and repeal this bill.
Voice: South Fulton firefighters from Obion, Tennessee, last week stood by and watched as a family’s home burned down because their services were available by subscription only, and the family had not paid the $75 fee. Outrageous? That’s not what conservatives think.
Kevin Williamson: …for their trouble, the South Fulton fire department is being treated as though it has done something wrong, rather than having gone out of its way to make services available to people who did not have them before. The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton’s firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives.
Jonah Goldberg: letting the house burn […] will probably save more houses over the long haul. I know that if I opted out of the program before, I would be more likely to opt-in now. No solace to the homeowner, but an important lesson for compassionate conservatives like our own Dan Foster [who came out for saving the house anyway] (Zing!).
John Derbyshire: I am entirely with the South Fulton fire department here. In the terms of Nico Colchester’s great 1996 essay, they are being crunchy rather than soggy […] One of the duties of conservatives in this soggy fallen world is to stand up for crunchiness. For the fire department to have extinguished the Cranicks’ fire would have been soggy, even aside from the considerable degree of sogginess it would have left on the property.
Voice: “Compassionate” conservatism means core serivices like police and fire departments are only for the wealthy. “Compassionate” conservatism means letting your house burn down over a $75 fee. Ask your representatives where they stand on “compassionate” conservatism.
This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies
In 18 short months, we went from “hold me accountable” to “get drug tested.”
I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there’s a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life’s earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, “What the heck are you talking about?” I’m trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, “You don’t know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don’t know this?!” And I said, “Please forgive me. I’m just ignorant of these things.” And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.
–and–
I refused to use the word [socialist] because I have this view that the Ninth Commandment must mean something. I remember one year Bill Clinton—the guy I was out to get [when serving on the House judiciary committee in the 1990s]—at the National Prayer Breakfast said something that was one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard from anybody at a gathering like that. He said, “The most violated commandment in Washington, DC"—everybody leaned in; do tell, Mr. President—"is, ‘Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’” I thought, “He’s right. That is the most violated commandment in Washington.” For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I’m conservative. We disagree…But I don’t need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.
Lemkin 