Mitt Romney and his campaign staff (whom the NY Daily News calls a band of clowns) don’t seem to know when to shut up.
And Liz Cheney tries to blast Barack Obama, but ends up shooting herself in the foot (at least it wasn’t the face like her dad):
We’ve now had three and a half years of Obama policy and it looks an awful lot like — whether you’re talking about the Mexico City speech in 2009, the Cairo Speech in 2009, the extent to which he’s been apologizing for America, he’s abandoned some of our key allies like Israel, Poland, Czechoslovakia.
Not only have fact checkers declared false the assertion that Obama has been apologizing for America, but someone really needs to tell Cheney that Czechoslovakia stopped being a country in 1992, 16 years before Obama was elected president.
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Who was it, early in the presidential race of 2008, who was talking about the “Soviet Union”? Was it Fred Thompson? I think it was. It’s mystifying to me how some of these political thinkers can be taken so seriously and be front and center on a national forum.
Mary Matalin even headed up his campaign for the presidency.
He didn’t last long.
Yup, Fred Thompson. http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-501203_162-3328872.html But that seems more like a slip of the tongue. Why anyone would assert that Obama abandoned Czechoslovakia is beyond me. Not to mention that we have hardly abandoned anyone else, including Israel and Poland. Abandoned? Like we are their parent who is supposed to take care of them? It is just one of those Republican statements that sounds bad to the base, but in reality makes no sense at all. Isn’t it the Republicans (in the Republican platform and also statements from Paul Ryan) who want sweeping cuts to foreign aid?
Leaving Romney out of this for a minute, (he’s got to dissagree and claim he can do better) Obama regualrly criticized Bush foreign policies and attempted to use events for political gain. Remember him criticizing the “surge” saying its doomed for failure and then later agreed it was a success and used it in Afghanistan? Or, when Obama criticized Bush for adding 4 trillion to the debt calling it “unpatriotic” and also “irresponsible” to saddle future generations with such a large national debt. And then adds his own 4 trillion to the debt.
Every candidate says whatever will get them elected and satisfy the base. Every President has to deal with reality and needs to do what is best in their mind, even if it means using an ex opponents idea. The left is using W against the right and trying to brand Romney as “W the 3rd” (Mcain was “W the 2nd”). The right is using the slow recovery to paint Obama as incompetent. What candidate would stand a chance if they said of an incumbant ” I agree with quite a few of my opponents policies, but feel we need to change a few to improve the outcomes”.
Who cares what the non-involved pundits say, they say whatever gets them a headline and more hits on their web pages. I say lets wait for the debates and carefully listen to what each candidate says ro doesn’t say and pick the person with the best ideas on getting us moving forward.
The only problem is that Bush tacked on that debt without much a need (excusing early Afghanistan but he made that more expensive than it needed to be too). Obama had the worst financial crisis in decades to deal with plus Bush’s mismanaged wars.
Thatguy – I understand your sentiment, but during Bush’s 8 years he dealt with some significant national events as well, although I’ll say that the wars could possibly have been conducted differently. 9/11, the creation of Homeland Security and Katrina come to mind as other drains on the Bush budget along with the tax cuts. Obama has had his challenges as well, the economy, the surge in Afghanistan and several natural disasters as well. I think both Presidents could have done better. Obama is outpacing Bush in deficit spending, Bush closed his eyes to the pending financial crisis. IMO we can’t spend our way out of this problem and can we cut our way out there needs to be balance. But more then managing spending if we can cheer the eonomy to improvement then jobs will follow and te deficit will shrink. We should as a country get out of the deficit war spending and use citizen financed war bonds or war tax in the future perhaps, and ther will be a future war at some point.
Psgt: I want to make sure to lead with the statement that your observation about both parties is spot on, they will exaggerate and posture to win and to paint the other guys as the devil no matter how far they have to stretch the truth to do it.
So I agree with you on that.
However, the comparison between Bush’s $4T in debt and Obama’s is a false equivalence. Bush and the Republicans CREATED $8T of that by slashing taxes to put us in deficit spending, starting wars on a credit card, passing legislation that required hundreds of millions in uncompensated spending, etc. OBAMA didn’t drive the country another $6T in debt – we was unable to STOP the REPUBLICAN spending fast enough. And the economic meltdown (and lost revenues from that) he also inherited and its amazing we were able to recover as much as we did.
Bottom line – Obama’s not a big spender, not the one that created the debt problem, and he WAS the only one really pushing for a solution (the grand bargain).
As for politicians stretching the truth until it screams – that’s normal, although highly distasteful. What is relatively knew (and virtually 100% Republican) is taking the truth and then drawing and quartering it. The unabashed lies, the constant hammering of talking points they KNOW to be COMPLETELY FALSE is beyond distasteful – it deserves the ultimate punishment at the voting booth.