A lesson in Hannityism

Ever wonder what ad hominem attacks and Hannityism looks like?

Take a peek....by a woman, none the less.

Is it true that Ann Coulter and Arianna Huffington are polar twins?


When Paul O’Neill Sounds Like Tip O’Neill

Filed January 14, 2004

Struggling to reconcile the ever-widening gulf between what the Bush administration claims to be true and what is actually true is getting harder by the day. Fortunately, Paul O'Neill has a timely, if disturbing, diagnosis, backed up by some 19,000 pages of lab results: the country is being governed not by the genial figurehead now running toward the center in hopes of re-election but by a band of out and out fanatics.

On the administration's two defining issues, Iraq and taxes, the former Treasury Secretary paints a scathing portrait of a cabal of closed-minded zealots steadfastly refusing to allow anything as piddling as fact, evidence, or truth to get in the way of their unshakable beliefs and forgone conclusions.

According to O'Neill, invading Iraq was a Bush goal before he had even learned where the Oval office supply closet was. It came up just ten days after the inauguration, at the new president’s first National Security Council meeting. "It was all about finding a way to do it," he says. "That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'"

Of course, All the President's Men (and Condi, too!) did just that, gathering a collection of dubious facts, half-truths, quarter-truths, and--the House Specialty--no-truths (what "unpatriotic" people would call lies) to match the desired outcome. A slice of Nigerian yellowcake, anyone?

But hey, why let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a perfectly good war?

The picture of a White House teeming with fanatics gets even clearer with O'Neill's depiction of the Bush brain trust's dogged devotion to cutting taxes for the wealthy.

And, before I go any further, one word of advice to the White House attack dogs now unleashed on O'Neill: If you want to belittle his bona fides, you've got to come up with something better than saying "We didn't listen to him when he was here. Why should we now?" Let's get real. Is there anyone more central to developing economic policy than the Treasury Secretary? To be any more inside, O'Neill would have to have been George Bush's proctologist.

Now, of course, they're painting him out to be a cross between Jerry Garcia, Karl Marx and the disgruntled former employee who just shot up your local post office. Yeah, what an anti-establishment wackjob: Former CEO of Alcoa, and a friend of Don Rumsfeld's since the sixties.

Anyway, whether or not the cabinet choir of the church of tax cuts listened to him, O'Neill certainly listened to them, and now he's doing what this administration makes a fetish of not doing: telling the American people what their government is really up to. To hear O'Neill tell it, the true believers surrounding the president, headed by Karl Rove and O'Neill's one-time patron Dick Cheney, are all devout disciples of the first commandment of Bush Republicans: thou shalt cut taxes for the wealthy, no matter what the cost to the greater good. They have all drunk the supply-side Kool-Aid -- and simply don't care to hear any debate on this subject. Or on any other for that matter. According to O'Neill, "That store is closed". To disagree with the Bush clan is according to their vast, self-serving post 9/11 definition of patriotism, to hate America.

What's more, in classic fanatical fashion, the inner circle in the Oval Office displays an utter intolerance of dissent.

When O'Neill, who had the gall to be concerned about the looming fiscal crisis triggered by the growing budget deficit, argued against a second round of tax cuts, he was quickly put in his place by Cheney. "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter," growled the Vice President, blithely ignoring the nearly 20 years it took to undo the fiscal damage Reagan's budget-busting had wrought. Besides, added Cheney, sounding less like the most powerful #2 in history than a kid cajoling his parents into giving him ice cream because he has cleaned his plate, "We won the mid-term elections, this is our due." An over-stuffed gift bag for the president’s prosperous donor corps is our due? Is it actually possible to so badly misread what this country--or, indeed, democracy--is about?

It's a measure of how effectively the GOP radicals have framed the political debate, with taxes as the root of all evil, that Paul O’Neill, a bedrock-ribbed establishment Republican, comes across like Tip O’Neill.

Hell, it turns out even President Bush had his doubts about the virtue of following his first round of serve-the-rich tax cuts with a heaping second helping. "Haven't we already given money to rich people?" Bush asks at a 2002 meeting of his economic team. "Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?"

This momentary bout of presidential scruples was quickly cured by Karl Rove. "Stick to principle. Stick to principle. Don't waver," he urged Bush repeatedly. The principle, I suppose, being: "If we wanna win in 2004 we gotta keep our Pioneers and Rangers happy!" Boy Genius, indeed.

The most alarming thing that emerges from O'Neill's revelations is the total lack of leadership on Bush's part. Just as the president was finally outgrowing the long-standing rumors that he was a cheerful pawn in a game he was too dumb to understand, O’Neill applies the paddles to the “Bush as clown” image, turns on the juice, and yells, “Clear!”

At the very moment that Rove and the Bush re-election team are gearing up to sell us the president as the macho, heroic cowboy from Crawford who is going to keep us all safe from terrorists, despots, and Mad Cow meat, here comes his former Treasury Secretary with his devastating assessment of Bush as "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people".

Will this be the wakeup call that finally opens the American public's eyes to the deadly consequences of being governed by a disengaged dolt in the hands of a gang of brazen fanatics?

 

So Rogue is your position on Iraq the following: "Saddam was just killing thousands of fellow sand niggers so why should Americans be concerned. The desire of Iraqui's to live in a peaceful non dictatorship is less important than what white people in Yugoslavia strived for."

 

My position is as follows:

Saddam was not a benevolent dictator.

The world, and Iraq is likely better off without him.

Bush wasn't honest with the American people, and presented trumped up evidence to win the support of the American people for his personal decision to go to war.

The end doesn't justify the means in this case, nor in any case where trust and laws are broken. An end justifies the means mentality is against the principle of law and our constitution.

Bush and company are using 911 to manipulate the system for their own personal agendas.

Those who justify wrong action because they agree with the end result are lacking principles and personal integrity.

 

Agreed. I wish Bush had the charisma/confidence to lay his case/agenda out on the line. He ain't no Reagan. Sometimes it's amazing what candor and a logical argument can achieve. Leadership is about building consensus not the abject use of power. Reagan was able to make a phone call from the Sara Lee bakery in Chicago and come within yards of taking out Quadafi while killing the Libyan's young daughter. The country applauded the Gipper's decisiveness. Whether you agreed with him or not, and I adored him, you knew where he stood. After Clinton Americans want a President they can trust. Just show the people the light and they will follow.

 

Although I agree with him many times, Sean Hannity is definitely philosophically flawed.