Blanked Out

Reading the Chairman’s address made me realize something: Republican’s do have good ideas.

Winning the war on terrorism? Who wouldn’t want that? Check.
Promote job growth in the US? Check
Alternative energy? (Yes, that’s in there too). Check.

Barring Mehlman’s position on abortion, I agree with the ideas in there. Those are all goals we should shoot for - the problem is that Republicans have no plan to get us there.

Mehlman advocates for the same solutions that have not been working: more war, less taxes and more drilling for oil. Mehlman goes beyond his issue framing ’shell game” to play hard and loose with facts and figures.

More under the fold.

Direct quote:

Because the headlines tell the story every single day.

We see it in the 4,000 missiles launched at Israel by terrorists who hide among the civilian population in Lebanon.

We see it in the 180 civilians murdered in India last month as they were on their way to work in the morning.

We see it in the 12 children and young adults killed this week while playing soccer in Baghdad

Did you catch that? Did you see what he did there? By citing figures that decline in numerical severity he invokes the idea that the issues also decline in importance. 4000>180>12 so Israel-Lebanon is a bigger problem then terrorism in Indian which is obviously a bigger problem then the war in Iraq.

Fact check: over 3,000 civilians died in Iraq during the month of June. Ken wants to ignore that number because it tells the story of the greatest failure in the history of the Republican Party.

Ken also misuses figures when describing the Democrats. Quote:

And here’s the biggest whopper of them all: the Democrats claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility, but their solution to every problem is the same: You pay more taxes and the government spends more money.

How much in new taxes?

If they had their way, 2.4 trillion – yes, trillion – dollars.

What for? Not to reduce the deficit.

Senate Democrats have fought to add nearly 2.3 trillion dollars in new government spending to the last five budgets.

Slow down Ken - first it’s 2.4 trillion, then it’s nearly 2.3 trillion? So something like 2.25 trillion you mean? I’ve never seen someone misplace 150 billion dollars so quickly.

Kennedy’s remarks should be as straight forward.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Iraq War, RNC, Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.