In Politics, Two Negatives Don't Make a Positive
Marty Kaplan
HuffPost
A riddle: What piece of political wisdom is always wrong -- but its opposite is also always wrong?
Okay, here's a hint: Willie Horton. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. John Boehner.
The Boehner illustration was on full display last week. Ever since President Obama's first 100 days in office, when House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said his bills "make me want to throw up," Boehner has been attacking the president on every front from terrorism ("no plan to keep America safe") to health care ("Hell no, you can't!"). And for nearly two years, Obama has refused to dignify Boehner's charges with a response, instead using surrogates like Joe Biden to counter-punch.
A few weeks ago, Boehner gave a speech in Ohio demanding an extension of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires, calling on Obama to fire his entire economic team (not, by the way, a terrible idea), and asking Americans to elect a Republican Congress because "it's time to put grown-ups in charge." Someone in the White House must have finally decided that if Boehner's charges went unanswered, they would stick -- just as Lee Atwater's smear of Michael Dukakis (he'll pardon black men so they can rape and kill white women) stuck, and just as the Swift Boaters' smear of John Kerry (the guy with a Purple Heart was actually a coward in Vietnam) stuck, when the objects of their slanders didn't deign to fight back.
(More here.)
HuffPost
A riddle: What piece of political wisdom is always wrong -- but its opposite is also always wrong?
Okay, here's a hint: Willie Horton. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. John Boehner.
The Boehner illustration was on full display last week. Ever since President Obama's first 100 days in office, when House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said his bills "make me want to throw up," Boehner has been attacking the president on every front from terrorism ("no plan to keep America safe") to health care ("Hell no, you can't!"). And for nearly two years, Obama has refused to dignify Boehner's charges with a response, instead using surrogates like Joe Biden to counter-punch.
A few weeks ago, Boehner gave a speech in Ohio demanding an extension of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires, calling on Obama to fire his entire economic team (not, by the way, a terrible idea), and asking Americans to elect a Republican Congress because "it's time to put grown-ups in charge." Someone in the White House must have finally decided that if Boehner's charges went unanswered, they would stick -- just as Lee Atwater's smear of Michael Dukakis (he'll pardon black men so they can rape and kill white women) stuck, and just as the Swift Boaters' smear of John Kerry (the guy with a Purple Heart was actually a coward in Vietnam) stuck, when the objects of their slanders didn't deign to fight back.
(More here.)
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