Tuesday, December 11, 2007

 

I'm from the government and I'm here to help you

Soccer Dad, in a posting on Martin Peretz’s ongoing infatuation with Al Gore, concludes thusly:

“We can't know if things would have been different if Al Gore had been elected. But isn't it past time to stop claiming that the election was stolen from him?” Soccer Dad: Still giggling over gore

Yes! This is one of three leftist clichés that I hereby declare are proof positive that those who repeat them are either being disingenuous or simply ignorant of history. The other two are:

(1) President Bush lied about WMDs to get us into Iraq, and

(2) American lives would have been saved in Vietnam had George McGovern been elected President.

I’m open for suggestions on others.

Comments:
I'd prefer not to link to it because I have doubts that it's been copied legally, but Free Republic has a story from TNR up called Overtime (by Ryan Lizza) from the Nov 28, 2000 issue.

Lizza's thesis was that the Gore would win the election because the Democrats had better election law lawyers (and not necessarily that he had a better case). (It reminded me of the joke about St. Peter challenging the Devil to a baseball game.)

Peretz, of course, can claim that the Supreme Court denied Gore the Presidency (of course, at most one or two counts were shown to give Gore the vicotry), but his own magazine recorded the cynicism with which Gore's team went about challenging the election.
 
I believe that the WMD is reasonable conclusion, but the other two are garbage. Precisely, the Bush Administration appears to have used known lies formed by others (BS Italian intelligence info passed on to the Brits) and repeated them after they were known to be lies to sucker punch the country into getting done the decision that he, Cheney and his team had made. Had this lie not been available, I am sure that another one would have sufficed - useful without being critical.

It's also possible that if they had no lie to throw, they could have bluffed the country on the grounds of a mere "trust me." Would not put it past Bush, he's been playing poker all his life. Especially with supine Democrats in the minority, not that they've developed a backbone in the majority.

But I agree with you re Gore and McGovern.
 
And for the record, I have more respect for any honest conservative who states his ground and stands by it than I do for the reprehensible Marty Peretz. I would vote for Romney/Brownback for President before Peretz for anything.
 
My problem with the lying accusation is that to be intellectually honest about it, you'd have to also say that the Clinton administration also systematically lied on that very same subject. Few of those accusers will make that leap and yet will not reconcile the inconsistency.
 
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