GUTTER POLITICS: The Common Man’s Guide to Election 2016
Here’s how it usually works: Our candidate, Candidate X, says or does something unconscionable or indefensible. He is roundly excoriated in the press by the opposition candidate and her minions, by the liberal media, and by the deplorable establishment hacks on our own “team”.
When it was first reported, we cringed. We exclaimed to the wife, “What the Hell was he thinking? Doesn’t he have handlers for this? Who’s advising him on this, a team of monkeys?”
We may even throw our TV remote against the wall and privately vent to like-minded buddies our frustration for the incompetence or sheer stupidity of “our candidate.” And then the trolls on the internet join in on the blanket party of Candidate X and it pushes us over the edge.
We begin to fight back by pointing out double standards in the press and how their candidate, Candidate Y, is even more degraded and duplicitous. And finally, we begin to argue in behalf of the unconscionable. We begin to defend the defenseless. And now we too are complicit.
Like a dog who has returned to his vomit, like a sow returning to the mire.
The solution to media bias from the Left is not media bias from the Right. The counter to media bias is truth. The remedy for Chris Matthews is not Sean Hannity, it’s Mark Levin.
Men and women of consequence can tell the truth without defiling themselves. We must have a higher allegiance than a mere partisan spirit. Our character is infinitely more important than any candidate’s reputation.
Mrs. Clinton has been hemorrhaging over her treatment of the Benghazi Gold Star parents. She not only lied to the country about their deaths, she lied to the face of their parents. And when some of the parents and the surviving heroes of Benghazi brought it up, she called them liars. How very Trump of her. So how does she extricate herself from this? She sets a trap for The Stupid Party.
At last week’s Democrat Convention, a Muslim father spoke of the loss of his son who served in the US military and died in the Iraq War. It was one in a continued series of Democrat attempts to demagogue an issue via the pleas of an emotional, sympathetic victim.
It need not have become an issue, but the trap was set and the shoot-first-ask-questions-never newbie walked right into it, and Donald Trump is still urinating down his pant leg by attacking, not the Democrats and their duplicity to victimize and humiliate, but the Gold Star parents themselves.
And countless decent people, some of them professing Christians, are joining him in the mire. And many more are sharing the vomit around the internet as damage control. It’s not helping, folks. You look cruel, and small, and petty.
To the vets, politicos, and apologists who are directly engaging the father of a dead soldier, you’re doing exactly what the Alinsky Democrats expected. Khizr Khan isn’t running for president. The Gold Star dad isn’t the issue any more than the worm on the end of a hook is the issue.
The issue is the hook and the Large-Mouth Ass that’s about to indulge it.
Hillary Clinton is on fire but the press won’t report it. Her handlers set a fire and blame it on Donald Trump and Republicans come out of the woodwork to put out the fire with gasoline. Which narrative will the press report, the Benghazi Gold Star parents or the poor Muslim father whose hero son died putting himself between his men and a truck bomb?
Barack Obama normally ignores the deaths of American heroes but I imagine there will be a medal ceremony in the Rose Garden for Captain Khan, not because of the soldier’s valor and sacrifice, but the predictable, obdurate stupidity of Republicans.
Don’t be stuck on stupid.
“We can afford to differ on the currency, the tariff, and foreign policy,” said Teddy Roosevelt, “but we cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we respect our Republic to endure. Honesty is an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life, it matters not how brilliant his capacity.”
Those of you who have followed my column or my radio show for any length of time know that I was no fan of George W. Bush. And while there was a lot that was objectionable about George W. Bush, his treatment of Gold Star parents, including the likes of Cindy Sheehan, was golden.
Cindy Sheehan, with the help and funding of Leftist organizations, haunted and taunted George W. Bush at every turn, including setting up camp with upwards of 1,000 protesters outside of his ranch in Texas.
Here is how George W. Bush answered a question about her, (posted by the way by an anti-Bush protester): George W. Bush Takes a Question About Cindy Sheehan.
National Review just shared an excerpt from a book by Dana Perino in which she shared a story of a mother of a dying soldier yelling at George W. Bush when he came to visit her son at Walter Reed. Perino stated that most, but not all of the parents felt joy and relief at the sight of the president.
But there were exceptions. One mom and dad of a dying soldier from the Caribbean were devastated, the mom beside herself with grief. She yelled at the president, wanting to know why it was her child and not his who lay in that hospital bed.
Her husband tried to calm her and I noticed the president wasn’t in a hurry to leave—he tried offering comfort but then just stood and took it, like he expected and needed to hear the anguish, to try to soak up some of her suffering if he could. Later as we rode back on Marine One to the White House, no one spoke.
But as the helicopter took off, the president looked at me and said, “That mama sure was mad at me.”
Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter. “And I don’t blame her a bit.”
One tear slipped out the side of his eye and down his face. He didn’t wipe it away, and we flew back to the White House.
Must every death in America now be politicized? It pains me to see Christians and conservatives pawn their humanity to keep step with the Left.
Must we choose between a Democrat who lied to Gold Star parents and then called them liars and a Republican who publicly berates Gold Star parents? Whomever you plan on voting for or against, it is not wise to follow them into the gutter to justify your vote.
I have greater admiration for a man or woman who tells the truth even about the candidate that they are supporting than the puerile partisan hack who defends the indefensible. Our support of a flawed candidate should not drag us into the spin room. We must not become that which we deplore.
Whatever you may think of him, Donald J. Trump has been a two-edged sword in this campaign and I don’t mean that in a good way. Houses are divided. We are witnessing a reckoning from the eye of the storm. Those that retain their calm, their character, and a Heavenly perspective, will not sacrifice truth and dignity along the way.
Image: Screen Shot, ABC 15/Arizona; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z7lN7nQjG0
Is this Election Campaign heading to the gutter?