SOME CONGRESSMEN WILL BELIEVE ANYTHING - EVEN ABOUT THE CBS MEMOS
TKS [jim geraghty reporting]
[02/21 02:05 PM]
Suppose you were a member of Congress, and you wanted to make sure no one ever took you seriously, other than a hard-core group of true believers who bought into conspiracy theories?
Could you come up with a better plan to accomplish that goal than this?
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Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Democrat of New York, speaking at a community forum in Ithaca, New York:
Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilities in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.
A member of the audience asked Hinchey had any evidence to back up that charge. He said, ‘that’s my belief.’
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UPDATE: The Powerline guys raise a good point:
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It's easy to write off this kind of thing as limited to the moonbat wing of the Democratic Party, but here's the thing: when is the last time you heard any Democrat criticize this kind of nonsense, or try to distance himself from it?
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In the course of research for a book proposal, I've been looking at the reaction of the far left of the Democratic party to 9/11. You probably remember a lot of it - Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, etc. The "well, we had it coming" voices were not that numerous in the fall of 2001... but what was interesting was how few mainstream or centrist Democrats were willing to denounce their ideological brethren.
Perhaps the most extraordinary change in American politics over the last few years is how comments that once would have seemed ridiculous, or silly, or way out there have now become fairly common sentiments in what was once mainstream circles.
nationalreview.com |
