David

Karki

Read Davids bio and previous columns here

October 22, 2007

God Help Us if the Democrats Actually Believe the Things They Say

President Bush's veto of a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was upheld in a House vote last week, and the reaction to it as well as the tactics and rhetoric used during the fight illustrate the extent to which Democrats are unable to simply state what they are for and defend it on the merits. Outright lies and the exploitation of children for emotional manipulation is all the Democrats have to offer anymore, it seems.

SCHIP. Democrats continue to lie even after President Bush's veto of the program was upheld, portraying a health care program for which 25-year-olds and families making $82,000 a year are eligible as for "poor children." (In my home state of Minnesota, the vast majority of the program participants are able-bodied childless adults. One estimate pegged the total at 87 percent!)

Then they insist that these fictional "poor children" will go without due to the veto, when the program still exists and was always going to. The only thing stopped was a funding increase. And to top it off, they exploit a young boy, traipsing him out in front of TV cameras to read a statement he couldn't possibly have written himself blaming Bush for his "suffering" – never mind that this "poor" child got his care covered by taxpayers through the program while his parents owned properties worth six figures each and three SUVs, and that the outcome of this vote would not have affected him in the slightest.

School referenda. Not a November election day goes by without public school districts trying to manipulate more money out of taxpayers. They always threaten, often in near-apocalyptic tones, to cut programs unless funding is increased. But if those programs' existence is dependent on increased funds, how can they exist right now – when those proposed funds do not yet? Because they're not dependent at all. Teachers’ unions are just blackmailing people, using a scary-sounding lie of "poverty" and hiding behind children-as-victims once more. Give us more of your money, or we'll terminate a program that otherwise is operating just fine on current funds.

Iraq. Democrats have offered resolution after resolution and made one despicable remark after another denigrating the troops and their commander-in-chief, all in hopes of placating their far-left base. Yet they have not changed the substance one iota. They have the power to cut off funding if they really want, but are too afraid to exercise that option. Full funding thus remains intact, and the situation continues on as it otherwise would. Democrats are trying to pull off a double-whammy of dishonesty here: Fool their rabid base into thinking they've done something to end the war when they have not so as to keep them onboard (and giving campaign cash), while fooling the citizenry into thinking Iraq was just fine and dandy before we got involved and will instantly revert to that condition if we just leave.

Perhaps the epitome of this delusion was uttered by Rep. Pete Stark on the House floor recently during the SCHIP debate: "You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." Putting aside for the moment his calumny of the president by saying he finds soldiers making the ultimate sacrifice amusing, does Stark really think that Iraq is full of nothing but innocent people? If so, he's been nipping at that Bay Area hippie weed a little too long.  

I'm not sure which possibility is more disturbing: That a party is capable of going to the pathetically desperate length of using children as political human shields, or that a party has become so pathological it actually believes its own fiction. And logically, one of these must be the case. Democrats say this stuff either as a con job, or because they actually think it the truth.

In some respects, I hope it's the former. Democrats know they can't get elected if they just come out and say they want government-run health care and education and to cut and run from Iraq. So they bury that truth in an avalanche of phony propaganda, making their opposition "evil" and providing "victims" ready-made for TV cameras. That's just typical politics, albeit of the gutter.

If it's the latter, and Democrats actually believe their own talking points – then the stakes are far higher. For we are then faced with a party that lacks the basic grasp of reality that is a fundamental prerequisite for holding power. It's the equivalent of jumping of a cliff while denying it exists. No matter how well-meaning the leap, the consequences are inevitably lethal. And until the mind is open to at least the possibility of a cliff being real, one should not and indeed cannot be let anywhere near the mountain.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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