Monday, June 29, 2009

"Supporting the Troops"

Back when a Republican was president and kept funding his wars with “special” bills in Congress, the Republicans would target Democrats who voted against those bills as “unpatriotic” and as “voting against the troops.”

The persons voting against those bills often were not voting against the war funding at all, but against some pork that the Republican majority had tacked onto those bills, but that didn’t stop the Republicans from their “voting against the troops” attack ads. Often there would be two versions of the same bill and a Democrat would vote for the one without the pork and against the one with it; that Democrat would still be cited for voting against the second bill and attacked for “voting against the troops.”

The practice was widely decried by the Democrats as ridiculous, dirty, and “unfair,” and I fully agreed with all of those descriptors. The campaign ads and sound bites rather seriously annoyed me.

Now that we have a Democratic president funding his wars with “special” bills in Congress, we get this from Think Progress last Friday,

Now, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) plans to run ads on the July 4 holiday criticizing several vulnerable Republican members for their votes against the supplemental last week. As Glenn Thrush reports, “A series of 60-second radio ads will run during drive time from July 1 through July 8, according to a script provided to POLITICO — and they have the support-our-troops ring of GOP spots.”

Do I think this is acceptable now that Democrats are doing it rather than Republicans? No, I do not. It was deceptive at best when Republicans did it, and it is deceptive now when Democrats are doing it. I do not like politicians deliberately distorting facts in order to mislead people into supporting their politics, no matter who those politicians are.

The end does not justify the means.

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