Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Vilsack = Shit-Sack
Digby makes the following intelligent remarks about "prospective 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Vilsack," who recently said about the illegal wiretaps, "If the president broke the law, that's unacceptable. But I think it's debateable whether he did....And I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap," he said. "Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe."
There are many things about this statement that are bullshit. I don't have to lay them all out for you. But I would like to expound on one aspect of this statement that drives me crazy: it's a process answer.
A process answer is saying what "we should say" instead of just saying it. Nothing drives me more nuts than a politician who talks process instead of engaging voters directly. In this instance it's a backstab equal to anything one of those run-at-the-mouth strategists says to the NY Times to boost his cool factor among the mediatarts. He's positioning hemself as a "reasonable" centrist on national security, but he clearly has nothing to offer on the subject at hand so he just talks about what "we should be doing" [i.e., what "we Democrats should be saying"]
...
If they think that we should be tougher on national security, they shouldn't say "we can't win elections until we reassure people that we can keep them safe." They should say, "here's how we'll keep you safe..." If Vilsack really thinks that Democrats will lose if we don't support unconstitutional domestic spying programs then he should just say, "I think the program is probably legal and I support it." A winning message is a winning messsage, right? Why all the navel gazing?
Scroll down for an earlier Digby post which makes the obvious but important point that if the Watergate break-in was about bugging the Dems, and if Karl Rove is on the record as saying--repeatedly--that the only lesson to be learned from Watergate was that would-be Republican criminals should be careful when committing crimes, then one would have to be a really stupid idiot not to know that the Republicans are right now using the "terrorist surveillance program" to listen in on phone calls at the DNC and the Senate Democratic Caucus.
One of the commenters to Digby's post reminds us of the case of Manuel Miranda, the Bill Frist "staffer" who was fired for hacking into the computers of Democratic senators and stealing reams of memoranda.
As if the Republicans even needed to steal that crap, or to "surveil" their Democratic opponents. Even Wolf Blitzer knows in advance what the retarded Dems are going to say before they try to say it.
Fuck all of this.
posted by speakingcorpse : 2/07/2006 08:26:00 AM
There are many things about this statement that are bullshit. I don't have to lay them all out for you. But I would like to expound on one aspect of this statement that drives me crazy: it's a process answer.
A process answer is saying what "we should say" instead of just saying it. Nothing drives me more nuts than a politician who talks process instead of engaging voters directly. In this instance it's a backstab equal to anything one of those run-at-the-mouth strategists says to the NY Times to boost his cool factor among the mediatarts. He's positioning hemself as a "reasonable" centrist on national security, but he clearly has nothing to offer on the subject at hand so he just talks about what "we should be doing" [i.e., what "we Democrats should be saying"]
...
If they think that we should be tougher on national security, they shouldn't say "we can't win elections until we reassure people that we can keep them safe." They should say, "here's how we'll keep you safe..." If Vilsack really thinks that Democrats will lose if we don't support unconstitutional domestic spying programs then he should just say, "I think the program is probably legal and I support it." A winning message is a winning messsage, right? Why all the navel gazing?
Scroll down for an earlier Digby post which makes the obvious but important point that if the Watergate break-in was about bugging the Dems, and if Karl Rove is on the record as saying--repeatedly--that the only lesson to be learned from Watergate was that would-be Republican criminals should be careful when committing crimes, then one would have to be a really stupid idiot not to know that the Republicans are right now using the "terrorist surveillance program" to listen in on phone calls at the DNC and the Senate Democratic Caucus.
One of the commenters to Digby's post reminds us of the case of Manuel Miranda, the Bill Frist "staffer" who was fired for hacking into the computers of Democratic senators and stealing reams of memoranda.
As if the Republicans even needed to steal that crap, or to "surveil" their Democratic opponents. Even Wolf Blitzer knows in advance what the retarded Dems are going to say before they try to say it.
Fuck all of this.
posted by speakingcorpse : 2/07/2006 08:26:00 AM
