How to Discreetly Feed The Beast

[paft.livejournal.com]

Recently, Eric Cantor provided a textbook example of how the GOP has been countenancing (and therefore encouraging) extremist rhetoric while pretending not to countenance (and therefore encourage) extremist rhetoric.

Right Wing Heritage Foundation Speech 5/4/10

Audience member at Heritage Foundation: My question is – and this is something I personally don’t understand…. in light of what Obama has done to leave us vulnerable, to cut defense spending, to make us vulnerable to our outside enemies, to slight our allies. How…what would he have to do differently to be defined as a domestic enemy?”

(Laughter and applause from audience.)



Eric Cantor (smiling, after waiting for the claps to die down) Listen, let me respond very forthright to that. No one thinks that the president is a domestic enemy. (boos) It is important, it is important, it is important for us to remember, we have the freedom of discourse in this country. And the president’s policies, the administration’s priorities, in my opinion, do not reflect the common sense conservative traditions on which the greatness of this country was built…

Here, Cantor makes a statement that’s been demonstrated to be untrue in the seconds before he made it, and is again demonstrated to be untrue by the audience reaction after he makes it.

“No one thinks the president is a domestic enemy.”

No one? Someone just said he did -- and a bunch of other people just applauded him for it.

A “forthright response” would be to say, “No, the president is not a domestic enemy merely because we disagree with his policies.”

But Cantor just couldn't say that. He knew being that "forthright" might have gotten him booed off the stage by those "no ones" who've been incited by the inflammatory rhetoric the GOP has been banking and encouraging for twenty years.

Comments

[paft.livejournal.com]

Whether or not you agree with these folks is beside the point. The point is that the Tea Party I attended was NOT non-partisan. Anyone who deviated from the rather narrow right wing viewpoint of these people got called out as an "infiltrator" or booed.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

The point is that the Tea Party I attended was NOT non-partisan.

So you're judging the entire group based on one event? Does that mean that the next time there's an anti-war protest with people calling the troops "war criminals", we can judge every Left-leaning person based on that? Super! Thanks for clarifying!

[paft.livejournal.com]

No. I'm judging the tea party movement from the tea parties I attended, along with the statements from tea party websites, comments from self-identified tea-partiers, youtube videos, and the signs I see waved at tea party protests.

You earlier claimed that I did not seem to have an interest in engaging with people who disagree with me. God knows what you based that on. I post my essays here for the very reason that I expect to get some level of push-back on them that I won't get on the liberal blog where they are first published. If I were not interested in debating people with differing political viewpoints, I'd spend all my time at Daily Kos or Democratic Underground.

The fact is, I do make a point of speaking with people who disagree with me, either offline or on. (Something which, as you may have noticed, bothers the H*ll out of people like Gunsinger.) That's why I went to both of the Tea Parties I've seen here in San Francisco -- to see or myself. That's why I read right wing blogs -- and sometimes comment on them, and frequently debate the people there.

So no, my view of the tea party movement, and the right wing in general, does not come from merely reading liberal websites or watching news coverage. It's from talking to people. People who disagree with me.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

You don't bother me. I laugh at you, that you think merely talking to someone who disagrees with you, when you don't absorb any of the information they present to you or even consider their disagreements to be valid.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Suuuuure, gunslinger. That's why you flutter around the threads I participate in, burping out meaningless phrases and waving your hands ineffectually.