Blogs For Victory

Bob Beckel, taking a page right out of Barack Obama’s strategy book (the chapter on playing the victim card at every turn) whines about angry readers who wrote to him in response to a poorly written post at The Fox Forum about the “arrogance” of George Bush. He opined,

Is it my imagination, or are many of you angry? If I were a Republican and facing the rejection of conservatism on an unprecedented scale this coming November, I suppose I’d be angry as well. Perhaps I can help you understand why your political philosophy is about to be rejected by the American people.

Yeah, we heard the same “you’re going to lose big time in November” line before back in 2004. But, Beckel’s wishful thinking is combined with a lack of understanding of what is really going on. Conservatism is not being rejected. Far from it. The truth is conservatives are frustrated when Republicans they elected stray from conservative principles. If conservatism was being rejected, as Beckel wants to believe, then Barack Obama wouldn’t be trying to win votes shifting his positions towards the center, and taking more conservative positions on the Second Amendment, tax cuts, even abortion.

1. Conservatives are supposed to be fiscally responsible yet when your crowd inherited a trillion-dollar surplus from Bill Clinton, Bush/Cheney and a Republican Congress turned it into a $3-trillion-dollar deficit.

You certainly won’t find fiscal conservatives justifying the increases in spending, but Beckel is absolutely ignoring the impact of the 2000-2001 Recession and 9/11. It is also worth noting that two key economic achievements of the 1990s, welfare reform and the balanced budget, while signed by Bill Clinton, came to be because of the efforts of the Republican Congress.

2. Conservatives strongly support the war in Iraq but won’t help pay for it. Never has our country been at war without asking and getting our citizens to help bear the financial burden…until this war. Conservatives don’t want to give up Bush’s tax cuts for the top 5% of wage earners to help pay for this war. Why?

I guess I must be in the top 5% of wage earners, because how else can I explain the tax cut that I received? But, I’m not in the top 5%, so, enough with that argument. Also, Beckel is either choosing to ignore the record economic growth that resulted from Bush’s tax cuts. And of course, Beckel’s argument loses all credibility when you consider government tax receipts went up as a result of those tax cuts.

3. The American people got tired of being lectured on “family values” by conservative clergy and Republican members of Congress, e.g. Larry Craig, who didn’t practice what they preached.

I’m sure the American people are tired of being lecture about the rich paying “their fair share” of taxes by rich Democrats in Congression who keep large chunks of their personal wealth in off-shore tax shelters to avoid paying taxes on it. I also can’t help mentioning Democrat governor Eliot Spitzer, who built his career on breaking up prostitution rings, only to be involved in one himself. Though, it may be true that conservatives are more likely to punish the hypocrites in their party than liberals are to punish the hypocrites in their party.

4. Or maybe the voters got tired of Republicans controlling the US House of Representatives for 12 years during which they handed out more wasteful pork projects than all the pork handed out by Democrats in the 42 years preceding the GOP takeover.

And what have Democrats done to control spending and cut pork since returning to the majority? Oh yeah, nothing.

5. Or maybe voters got angry when they learned the Vice President of the United States manipulated intelligence and misled the American people on why war with Iraq was in our national security interests.

Despite several investigations by various bipartisan and independent commissions and committees, all concluded that there was no manipulation of intelligence, and that statements made by the administration were supported by the intelligence available at the time.

6. Or maybe the public didn’t like George Bush vetoing legislation to provide health insurance for millions of kids.

Another ridiculous point predicated on the belief that health insurance should be funded by the government regardless of whether federal assistance is necessary. The Democrats’ proposed expansion of SCHIP would have provided taxpayer funded health insurance to children in families who didn’t need such government assistance – but also would have left many who needed it, with no such assistence.

7. Or maybe the public got embarrassed by Republicans in the Bush Administration who refused, in the face of overwhelming evidence, to accept the reality of global warming, aka “The Flat Earth Society”.

No, what’s more embarrassing are Democrats who think global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, and who are afraid to debate skeptics of global warming.

Beckel then concludes his poorly written list with a self-righteous rant filled with feigned resignation about his alleged experience with conservatives. If the situation were reversed, and a conservative pundit attempted to generalize liberals based on experiences with a select few, Beckel might have written something about how you can’t judge an entire party or ideology, based on an angry, vocal minority.

I expect Beckel to look at things through a partisan lens, but now I think he’s just blind. As a liberal, he certainly finds it in his best interest to talk about elections with an attitude of inevitability of the eventual positive for his party, but doing so really destroy’s his credibility as a political strategist and pundit.