Presumption of Guilt
The campaign to paint Republicans as not only wrong but evil and dangerous keeps reaching new heights. The latest is an effort to falsely accuse the Republican Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee of corruption.
This points to a wider problem in politics. There is a strong and persistent movement to literally blame the Republicans for everything. When the Republicans are in charge, everything that happens is their fault in the name of “accountability.” When the Republicans are not in charge, everything that goes wrong is the Republicans’ fault because they are “obstructionist.” When, as now, Republicans are in charge of only one part of the government, Republicans are at fault for everything that goes wrong on both basis.
No matter what the combination of actual control, Democrats get a pass.
The whole sorry kerfuffle is reminscient of the pseudo-scandals that pervaded the Clinton and Bush presidencies from both left and right. There was literally no story or conspiracy theory so implausible that anti-Clinton and anti-Bush zealots wouldn’t buy it. Clinton killed Vince Foster! Bush engineered 9/11! Now it has moved down the institutional food chain, applied to every second-tier Republican leader in the continuing effort to not only defeat individual Republicans, but to attempt to force the entire party out of the political game. (Some people are surprisingly honest about their desire that the United States become a single-party state.)
This would just be run-of-the-mill partisan hackery except for one problem: Giving Democrats a pass for everything and pursuing a jihad against Republicans to the point of assuming motives and even making stuff up destroys real accountability and reduces literally everything to mere partisanship.
It also leaves readers with literally no where they can go to get non-partisan reporting and analysis. Even combining partisan sources won’t work any more when the partisan sources literally provide incompatible facts in addition to incompatible perspectives. In the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a prominent Democratic Party figure of the last generation (and before the time where wisdom was almost universally thought to be a single-party monopoly), we may each be entitled to our own opinion, but we are not entitled to our own set of facts.
Perhaps the deeper problem is the deepening habit in some quarters, especially among the angry left, of simply presuming that everyone who disagrees with them has bad motives. Such instinctive belief that those who disagree are not only wrong, but are actually bad people seems a prerequisite to believing the kind of wild stories and made-up scandals that absolutely pervade the partisan elements of the commentariat. Anyone who is a member of the Hated Party (around here, that is Republicans, but there are plenty of sites where it is the Democrats) is presumed guilty even before the charge is made.
That’s a really dangerous road. It leads to politics being escalated to the hyperbolic levels of existential crisis, where any victory by the Hated Party is no longer merely grounds for dissent, but also for violent opposition and calls for revolution followed by show trials and the related accoutrements of single-party rule.
And that is a road we seem increasingly to be on, driven by extremists who will tolerate no disagreement in peace.
59 Responses to “Presumption of Guilt”
It’s aaaaa beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighbor, would you be mine? Could you be mine? . . . .
You don’t seem to understand Republican Bridge-Building is Made in China
Republicans are on record in regards to their bridge building techniques… Thanks for the reminder!
Speaking of a good offense…
“House Republicans questioned Wednesday whether the White House rushed approval of a half-billion-dollar loan guarantee for a now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer once cited as the kind of renewable energy company worthy of federal stimulus money.”
I wonder how long they have been saving this one?
CO, the rules, as you know, are to not make projections/ speculations about what you think about other commenters’ personal lives, projecting what you think they do or dont do in their private lives. Stick to the topic of the post in a civil manner and all will be well.
Thanks.
SteveK-
Made in China. Thats a good point.
I new that would mean trouble for us when Nixon started kissing Mao’s butt. I bought his little red book. Craziest bunch of Confucianist adapted horse crap I ever read.
Build a bridge and they will come. And, yes you will be shoveling S___ against the tide. Figure four years filing impact/EPA/etc. reports. Speaking of SSATT, a lot of it here. Both parties when in control have done some good and some harm and some frittered away their control recently. The apple is rotten and there are many good Reps and Dems that hesitate to take a bite.
P.S. All should cool down, the system is the true enemy.
Have you considered that Republicans are just plain EVIL?
Case in point: The GOP’s Genius Plan to Beat Obama in 2012
No respect for any rules, if they can’t win under the rules as they currently exist, they will change them until they can win and as long as they are losing they will burn the place down to prevent the Opponents from enjoying the fruits of victory.
Could Pennsylvania Republicans end the electoral college as we know it?
It’s legal and if they can get away with it, they’ll do it.
QF, WTF, plain evil, wow. Then I guess you don’t mind plain dumb and inefficient for the Dems.
You forgot spineless, cowardly, totally lacking in vision and disrespectful and disloyal to their supporters.
Obambi, being the perfect example of all that is wrong with the Democrats, that being said he is head and shoulders above his opponents…