Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Meme ho!

Yesterday one of the Left's new lines of attack started to really form up.

Dirty foreign-money threatening our lily-pure democratic process. And it's all being orchestrated by the sinister Chamber of Commerce and the (yes the) Gillespie.

That's right people, we have the CoC and their foreign hoard under the dark influence of Gillespie. A class 1 Gillespie threat.

Back to reality... Why yes, this was a charge being leveled by the same folks that consider that Arizona law as akin to a new apartheid.

Anyway, CNN was on this morning and Mien Gott, the sycophantic faux (maybe I hope too much) paranoia was in full display. They were gleefully pounding the meme of shadowy billionaires, foreigners, and fringe kooks spending millions to "influence elections". The perky blonde teleprompter-reader was breathless about how these organizations dared to claim the legal limit of privacy for their donors.

Towards the end they decided that their subtext was too subtle and spelled out their idea: "These scary Republican groups can spend millions in secret because the law allows them too." Gee...

And at the very end the fig leaf of impartiality. "We'll note that all the organizations we talked about today were republican ones, and that there are Democratic ones trying to fight their influence, but they don't have the millions the republicans do." Really.


I guess the Soros constipation or Organizing for America or the Obama Administration itself couldn't be reached. Then again Soros has taken his ball home for this round at least.

Gerghty looks at the mind-blowing hypocrisy of it all.

By one count, $63 million came to Obama from foreign sources. Even if that figure is exaggerated tenfold, this is still a big deal. It’s not only hypocritical for President Obama, of all figures, to suddenly thunder about the menace of sinister foreign money helping the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; in 2008, we had actual evidence of foreign money ending up in Obama campaign coffers.


He sums with: "This is like Al Capone accusing Eliot Ness of being a
bootlegger."

But as John Pitney points out, the Left has been searching for a new enemy to fill Bush's shoes all year.

It's been an amusing and increasingly inane list: Limbaugh, Roberts, Boehner, Fox, Rove, Gillespie, Koch, Hayek, Kosh, Ryan, Bonaparte, Hotchkiss, and the Chamber of Commerce. I may have embellished a bit towards the end.

Pitney nails is: "If the person next to you in the subway or
supermarket line is muttering about “the Gillespie threat,” avoid eye contact and step away quickly."

The phrase is so ludicrous I'm thinking of making "Gillespie threat" a term in this year's NaNoWM project.

At Ace of Spades there's a full list of scapegoats and bogymen. It's... impressive.

What can you expect from an administration that considers Doctors part of an organ harvesting cartel and the Chamber of Commerce a grave threat. Keep punching down chief.

Hugh Hewitt is gobsmacked that this, this is their October surprise (or at least one of them).

And today Gibbs doubles down calling the Chamber of Commerce a "“threat to the democracy we have in this country."

But it's the right wing that's the fear-mongers.

And Dana Perino questions the timing:

With all of the mudslinging at American corporations in the last several days (conveniently timed to be a bright shiny object to draw attention away from last Friday’s dismal jobs report), it’ll be fun to watch how the Democrats contort themselves to convince us that no, they really, really do support the businesses in America. Now this I gotta see.


Remember Friday?

Anyway... speaking of presidential enemies... A reader writes to Jay Nordlinger:

I didn’t vote for George W. Bush either time . . . But one thing seems to draw little comment: He was subjected to the most intense and odious opprobrium in my lifetime, substantially worse than that flung at Nixon. There were the most vicious and vile accusations. And I cannot recall one instance where Bush lashed back or replied in kind.


Nordlinger replies: "Well, that’s the belligerent, crude cowboy for you."

Nordlinger has a whole piece on our graceless Dear Leader.

I'll finish with Victor Davis Hanson:

When the history of this administration is written, a key theme will be the abyss between the hope-and-change, across-the-aisle rhetoric and the almost gratuitous way Obama has caricatured his supposed opponents. The current “don’t make me look bad”/“like a dog” psychodrama follows attacks of various sorts on Arizonans, Wall Street, opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, insurers, police, doctors, and anyone above the hated $250,000 income level."


Edit: One more bit. Ed Morrissey talks about David Zurawik's comments on the latest DNC ad which claims the Gillespie threat is "stealing democracy".

Zurawik is unimpressed and claims it's McCarthist, lacking in any evidence, and the "politics of fear".


Morrissey has more:

Zurawik, though, comes closer to the point.  It’s not just “Democrats” who are demanding that the Chamber of Commerce prove itself innocent.  It’s the executive branch of the American government demanding it, including its two top officers, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.  They have publicly accused the Chamber of illegal operations without a shred of evidence, basing their official actions on an unsubstantiated allegation from John Podesta at the Center for American Progress.  That is nothing short of an attempt by this administration to intimidate its political opponents into silence.

That is an unconscionable affront to the rule of law, and it reeks of the McCarthyism that the Left supposedly reviles. Without a public price paid for this attack on dissent from the highest offices in the government, this will become the norm and we will be less free as a result.


Bannnnnannaaaa Republic! Emphasis in original. Really do you expect any respect for the rule of law or limits to govermental power from this crowd?


Nice to see that the Left will throw all their values out the window when there's an election to save. Way to make the Stupid party look like they've got integrity .

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