When your side owns 90% of the media megaphone, you can
recall events any way you want to.
Conservatives' harsh rhetoric?
Gary Aldrich
February 18, 2004
What’s said about each opponent during a political campaign is important, but perhaps just as important is how the rhetoric is “remembered” by those keeping score.
There is nothing more irritating than a Liberal talking head who whines about how easily the Bush campaign and supporters “go negative.” They make it sound like the GOP invented meanness and criticism, when just the opposite is true. When your side owns 90% of the media megaphone, you can recall events any way you want to. Who’s going to stop you?
Certainly not the timid and polite Conservatives. We go out of our way to be liked, polite and fair. Only after we’ve been pelted by more than the usual number of ripe tomatoes do we muster up the courage to fight back.
Anyone who has followed politics closely since Bill Clinton won the Presidency knows exactly what I’m talking about. When I worked in the White House, I was amazed by the graceful acceptance of the first Bush Administration when it was clear George H.W. Bush would lose to Bill Clinton. Nobody I know had a harsh word to say about Bill Clinton, and the idea that anybody in the genteel Bush Administration would use the word “hate”, or any such harsh rhetoric to describe their feelings, was ridiculous.
But when the Clintons and their followers took over the White House, they could not stop talking about how much they hated George Bush and his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. I was shocked at their level of hatred – I had never heard anything like it before.
Knowing as much as he knew about Bill Clinton and his lack of character, President Bush could only go so far as to call him and his running mate, Al Gore, a couple of “Bozos.”
Of course, Bozo was a loveable, silly clown. Based on Clinton’s true character, I’d say George H.W. Bush was fairly generous. But when he called these guys Bozos at one of his last campaign stops, you’d have thought he had called Clinton and Gore a couple of Nazis, by the reaction from the outraged Liberal Mainstream Media.
Bush said “Bozo”, but they heard “Nazi” – and that’s the style in which they reported it.
Turns out, Clinton was not a Bozo, but more like a Chuckie the Clown. But, who’s keeping score? The biased Mainstream Media. They write the history.
Meanwhile, those on the Left are calling the current president a liar, a deserter and a moron; using over-the-top vicious rhetoric to vent their hatred at this decent man and his supporters.
And that’s OK, if you’re an emotional Democrat. But let a Conservative say the least negative thing about one of their candidates, and suddenly it’s as if the world has been turned inside out.
Take John Kerry, for example. The Democrats are gleeful to trot out Kerry’s war record and point to his decorations, conveniently ignoring the fact that Kerry lobbed those metals over the White House fence when he returned to the U.S. Moreover, he rushed to join Jane Fonda’s crusade to crucify the United States of America for having the nerve to try to stop the spread of deadly Communism.
Not satisfied with air-brushing Kerry’s weird reversals, including his bizarre testimony before Congress, when he accused U.S. soldiers of the most terrible war atrocities – without any supporting evidence – the Democrats then attacked President Bush’s National Guard service.
It does not matter that George Bush trained to fly a sophisticated jet fighter aircraft and committed to respond at a moment’s notice to engage in aerial dogfights or drop bombs over enemy territory. None of that matters to Hard-Left Democrats. They are determined to sully Bush’s military service record, even as they praise Kerry’s courage in becoming an anti-war leader.
However, when the GOP or their Conservative base begins to fight back, finally weary of being used as the Hard-Left’s punching bag, the Liberal Mainstream Media gets spitting mad.
When I find myself in the company of Liberals, I always hold my fire until I am targeted or accused. It has been my experience that during such meetings, while minding my own business – I am indeed attacked with little or no warning. It’s almost as if the Liberals believe it is their exclusive right to engage in vicious, emotional, and often unfair verbal abuse.
But when my response is to counter-attack, laying their nonsensical, emotional positions to waste with facts and good arguments, their predictable reply is, “Why are you Conservatives so mean?” Liberals truly are sore losers.
You cannot win with these people. They will never agree with our logic, and they will never like us, no matter how hard we try to compromise with them. There is only one way to deal with Hard-Left Democrats if you wish to protect this country during a time of war.
You must do everything reasonable to keep them out of power. They will hate you for that, too. But they’ll hate you either way. Good advice to my polite, Conservative friends is to get over it, and get on with the business of winning.
Gary Aldrich is president and founder of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a Townhall.com member group.
©2003 Gary W. Aldrich
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