brickbats, I counsel young people coming into the Movement that public
policy/politics isn't beanbag. If you choose to go into the public
arena, be forewarned that the anti-life crowd's stock in trade is
playing fast and loose with the truth. As I anticipated this only makes
the next generations of pro-life leadership even more eager to compete
in the public square.
What has to do with anything, you ask politely? Well, even knowing that
pro-abortion Democrats will now say anything (facing an electoral
backlash), President Obama's latest smear still makes me mad.
I grant you, it's not directed at us, but that's beside the point. You
and I and every American ought to be appalled by Obama's cynical and
calculated determination to inject the rankest kind of demagoguery into
the political bloodstream less than a month out from the mid-term elections.
Obama's TelePrompter now routinely includes an evidence-free attack on
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce based on a made-up-out-of-whole-cloth
report from a partisan Democratic "think-tank." The charges are so bogus
even the New York Times, CBS's Bob Schieffer, and NBC's Chuck Todd are
appalled.
The specifics need not detain us long. They have to do with Obama's
snarky charge that certain companies that do business overseas are using
"huge sums" of "foreign money" allegedly "to influence American elections."
However, "a closer examination shows that there is little evidence that
what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even
unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers
and campaign finance documents," writes the New York Times' Eric
Lichtblau. "In fact, the controversy over the Chamber of Commerce
financing may say more about the Washington spin cycle -- where an
Internet blog posting can be quickly picked up by like-minded groups and
become political fodder for the president himself -- than it does about
the vagaries of campaign finance."
Schieffer confronted White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod on his
"Face the Nation" program yesterday. "I guess I would put it this way.
If the only charge, three weeks [from] the election that the Democrats
can make is that somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming
into the campaign, is that the best you can do?"
According to the Heritage Foundation "Morning Bell" blog, "Axelrod went
on to contend that it is the responsibility of those the White House
accuses to prove they aren't breaking the law." This is so irresponsible
that on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" this morning, "NBC's Chuck Todd
described Axelrod's answer as 'McCarthy-esque.'"
And for good measure there is this from Baltimore Sun columnist David
Zurawik, who may have put it best. "So much for hope and change; this
is the politics of fear, slander and divisiveness on the eve of an
election that looks as if it could deliver a damning verdict on the
first two years of the Obama administration."
[And just so there's no confusion, "White House officials acknowledged
Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber
had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads,"
Lichtblau reported.]
Let me make two concluding points, both obvious, but both worth
repeating. First, Obama and his band of pro-abortion Democrats are
scared silly. There are layers on top of layers of reasons the
electorate is unhappy. But what initiated the chain-reaction is when
Americans began to gag at having the abortion-laden, rationing-promoting
ObamaCare stuffed down our collective throat.
Second, you will hear that there is a kind of "return to the norm"--that
the fortunes of pro-abortion Democrats, while grim, are getting better.
Not so. How can you tell?
For one thing, the political class that once embraced Obama to its bosom
is attacking his with as much frenzy as it once showered him with praise.
TIME Magazines' Mark Halperin is so angry his column slipped off the
tracks. While dutifully blaming Obama's opponents for not "compromising"
(as if that has ever been a part of Obama's M.O.), Halperin wrote,
"With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most
politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White
House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless
about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media,
the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox
News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets,
reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican
congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and
lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of
the Administration just beyond the inner circle."
That was his second paragraph. It gets worse from there.
And as for the predictable slew of "comeback stories" we can anticipate,
several bloggers inclined to be sympathetic to Democrats reminded us in
the past week that this is the same narrative we heard in 1994 just
before pro-abortion President Bill Clinton and the pro-abortion
leadership of the House and Senate had their heads handed to them in the
first mid-term election of Clinton's first term. In fact 1994 was a
complete wipeout for Democrats.
Let me end where with the same cautionary note I finish every story.
None of the good things that can come to pass will come to pass if
anyone let's down their guard.
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: NLRC
Publish Date: October 11, 2010
--
Illinois Federation for Right to Life
2600 State Street, Suite. E
Alton, IL 62002
Phone: 618.466.4122
Fax: 618.466.4134
Web: www.ifrl.org
E-mail: mail@ifrl.org
