Presidential campaigns seemingly exist for a single purpose: so talking heads can talk. If there isn't a big scandal going on for them to pontificate about, then they'll take anything you say and generate one, usually by distorting what you really said into something that they can attack, e.g. they'll straw man you. Today, they did it to John Edwards.
The heads aren't happy that the manufactured blogger controversy is already dead and buried, so now they're making a big stink over what I think is a very reasonable and historically accurate assessment of just how unstable the Middle East is right now. As is to be expected, someone desperate for attention and ready to say anything so long as it is sensationalist will come out of the woodwork to claim that "situation x" has just cost "candidate x" the "party x" nomination. Cue wonkette.com.
Handsome boy John Edwards blew it by mentioning Israel in a possibly not-100% flattering light at a Hollywood talent agency meet & greet last month. Peter Bart mentioned the incident in a January 19 column on Variety.com, but it took the brave Israel defenders at National Review Online to blog it up today.
Imagine that, a minor statement made over a month ago was dug up by red-staters and blown up into a thing, when has that ever happened?
Consider for a moment that while the Jewish lobby is incredibly powerful in the United States, they only account for less than 2.5% of the electorate. A statement like this isn't going to matter to people who aren't artificially hypersensitive about all things Israel, and by that measure the general electorate just won't care. That isn't to say it isn't important, or inflammatory, but there is basically zero chance that something this small is going to end anybody's campaign.
You can tell pretty easily because the only place that picked this up in over a month is a red site that is notorious for generating scandal where there is none. There's no story here.
What would you have done to cause Saddam to dismantle and give up the WMD, once and for all?
A realistic, concrete answer is called for — especially because Mr. Edwards implicitly, if not explicitly, has criticized Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) for not stating she made a “mistake” in voting for the resolution. (Sen. Obama, it must be said, has not taken any shots directly at Sen. Clinton on this issue — as contrasted to John Edwards, although he reminds audiences that he was opposed to the war resolution, albeit while he was an Illinois state, not U.S., Senator.)
There is little point in posing such a question since you're now trying to judge someone on a fictional scenario that never happened, and it's pointless. John Edwards made a mistake when he voted to authorize the war, as did everyone in the Senate. There were a lot of people that knew the intelligence could only be described as weak -- even in the best light -- and knew better than to trust an administration whose chief evidence was "trust us."
I knew the intelligence was weak and any war based on it was wrong, and I never had the benefit of seeing the faked evidence that they did. How could I possibly accept excuses from them when even I knew better?
The realistic concrete answer has been given. President Bush faked the intelligence to get the war he wanted to execute for personal reasons, and all the suckers in Congress bought it. One of them has said he was wrong, and that his vote was wrong, and that man is John Edwards. There is nothing else out there to wring out of it. We were all lied to, and the focus today should be two fold: holding "the decider" responsible for lying to America, and electing an honest and responsible person to be our next President so that this never happens again.
A right-wing rag called gopusa.com is slandering an entire swath of the political spectrum, making me wonder just what limits -- if any -- these people have on who they will viciously attack and Swift Boat. Talk about wallowing in the mud, this is pathetic.
But what Edwards' hesitancy does demonstrate, says Bauer, is that Democratic presidential candidates are "scared to death" of left-wing activists operating websites like MoveOn.org and the Democratic Underground.
"On these sites you'll find an unbelievable hatred of Christians, of Evangelicals, of Jews, of conservatives in general, of the president," he explains. "And the people who go to these websites are often the volunteers, the doorbell-ringers, the envelope-stuffers, and the donors that unfortunately the National Democratic Party has come to rely on."
The truth is the GOP are the ones that are absolutely terrified of the grass roots Democratic activists, not for the reasons they lie about, but because we're not mindless drones they can control through spin and talking points. Nobody on this side hates or discriminates against any religious faith, but we do take it personally when people of faith start trying to replace real law with religious law and dogma. This group has become very powerful over the past five years, and they are scared to death of what it will do to them in the 2008 elections, and after what it did to them last year, who can blame them?
Well, I'll blame them, for slandering people whose only sin is being engaged in politics instead of standing idle why they are preached to, people who want to think for themselves and are willing to get off their rears and do something about it.
