INDCJournal: Democratic Congressmen Say the Darndest Things

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February 21, 2005

Democratic Congressmen Say the Darndest Things

Posted by Bill

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) made some eyebrow-raising comments at a community forum in Ithaca, New York, on The Future Of Social Security:

They�ve (The Bush ADministration) had a very very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media, and the way it�s handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they � and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only � what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They � the people there � they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had �em. They didn�t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.

Read the rest of the transcript and hear the audio at LGF. Powerline puts it best:

It's easy to write off this kind of thing as limited to the moonbat wing of the Democratic Party, but here's the thing: when is the last time you heard any Democrat criticize this kind of nonsense, or try to distance himself from it?

The Democratic Party's far left elected officials in the lower chamber are consistent sources of embarrassing soundbites, actions and proposals. From unpunished racist comments, to obsequious letters to Fidel Castro, to routine conspiracy theories, they've got all the paranoia and zesty panache of the DKos message boards - and a vote on legislation.

UPDATE: As counterbalance, what about wacky soundbites from Republican elected officials? Off the top of my head, I can only name Trent Lott's comments regarding Thurmond (a sentiment ironically mirrored by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd), Sen. Rick Santorum's wild leap of logic from incest and bigamy to homosexuality, and just about anything that's come out of Alan Keyes' mouth in the past year.

And note that two of the three offending parties faced harsh criticism from within their own ranks, and I opened up the balloting to both chambers and a notable wannabee (admittedly tapped for a Senate run by the GOP).

Feel free to add your favorite examples of political stupidity (right and left) in the comments.

UPDATE: Myopic Zeal has a great blog round-up on Hinchey's statements.

Posted by Bill at February 21, 2005 05:25 AM | TrackBack (7)

Comments

I thought of another one on the right - newly elected Republican S. Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said that "homosexuals and unmarried, pregnant women should not teach in public schools" prior to the election.

That about taps me out.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at February 21, 2005 07:28 AM

I'll agree with you on DeMint -- that's just silly. (And, of course, the kind of thing that traditional-values people should probably be against -- because, "If you get pregnant, you'll lose your job," really does translate into, "if you have an abortion, you won't get fired.")

Of course, the boost the court decision gave to the polygamy- and cousin-love-advocacy groups (which do exist, stronger in some parts of the country than others, but aren't trendy enough, big enough outside their regions, or scary enough (read: Nambla) to make the news) would seem to indicate that Santorum wasn't all that far off. Then again, those groups were just as offended by being lumped in with "immoral" homosexuality as homosexuality-advocacy groups were by being lumped in with them....

Posted by: Adrianne Truett at February 21, 2005 08:42 AM

Sorry, forgot to put this link -- to one of the better-known non-Mormon polygamy-advocacy groups, which makes it quite clear that they agree with Santorum -- in a positive way!

(For first-cousin marriages, which are considered acceptable in most of the western world and only considered incest in about half of US states -- but are considered as obviously incest by most people I come across and all the people who make jokes about rednecks, try here.)

(just giving the links because people keep saying, "there aren't any groups like that!")

Posted by: Adrianne Truett at February 21, 2005 08:51 AM

Wanna guess which moonbat congressman happens to be mine? I sent email to Hinchey late last night/early this morning (posted on my blog) and specified that I wanted a written explantion.

We'll see how many months it takes to get a response.

Posted by: C.Y. at February 21, 2005 09:52 AM

I think Adrienne put it much better than I ever could, but I also wanted to give credence to what Rick Santorum said.

It may have seemed much at the time, but I think his point may ring truer than any of the others you mentioned. That decision by the Supreme Court is going to snowball into much worse down the road, in my opinion.

Posted by: FireForce at February 22, 2005 07:23 PM