It's interesting that Bob Kerry can consider himself a hypocrite only when he believes he is on the winning side. How wonderful and big of him. I wonder if he will this magnanimous if he loses? I wonder if he will admit that he and other Democrats are willing to change their core values at anytime to advance their agendas. As Kerry mentions in this article, he hopes the public will have a bad memory when it comes to the next election and the Democrats do the same thing all over again.
From what I've seen, the general public doesn't care how corrupt and underhanded the Democrats are, they will blindly vote they way they always have. As a local pundit stated in our 'Marxist rag' daily, he will vote for a monkey if the Democrats put him up for election. Doesn't say much for the Democrat mentality does it, but it's who they are.
Unfortunately for the common person, but fortunate for the liberal, this has been the case for decades in the Democrat party. Weather it's immigration, security, foreign policy or even religion, the Democrats are hypocrites on just about every issues that faces this great country, because it's not about the issues, it's about them and their rise to power.
Anything goes. Everything and everyone is subject to change to meet the goal of absolute power.
Keep the faith and vote the socialists out on Tuesday - vote for our country and the American dream that so many have sacrificed everything for. Freedom and Democracy are our destiny and it must remain our legacy. To accept socialism as our new destiny is to accept surrender and defeat at the hands of our enemies, domestic and foreign. This decision will follow us for decades to come and our offspring will curse us for doing so.
lDEMS' CAMPAIGN-FINANCE HYPOCRISY
By BOB KERREY October 28, 2008
ON the question of public funding of presidential campaigns, we Democrats who strongly support Sen. Barack Obama 's candidacy and who previously supported limits on campaign spending and who haven't objected to Obama's opting out of the presidential funding system face an awkward fact: Either we are hypocrites, or we were wrong to support such limitations in the first place. http://www.nypost.com/news/p/obama_barack/obama_barack.htm
The next time we speak of the virtue of level playing fields or state our strong belief that democracy can't survive in the modern age unless big money is taken out of campaigns, we'll be counting on our audience's forgetting our silence this year, when the free market was flowing in our direction.
A hypocrite is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue - who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. And that, it seems to me, is what we're doing now.
Former Sen. Wendell Ford once gave me good advice about public issues and votes: "If it takes you more than 10 minutes to explain why you voted a particular way, you probably voted wrong." It would take me a /lot/ longer than those 10 minutes to explain why I'm not outraged by Obama's decision to opt out of funding - which has given him a decisive spending advantage over Sen. John McCain http://www.nypost.com/news/p/mccain_john/mccain_john.htm.
Actually, I could keep my answer under 10 minutes if I were willing to answer that it's now to my advantage to act in contradiction to my previously stated beliefs. All I would need to say is that, on the issue of public funding in 2008, I was a hyprocrite.Of course, there's another option: Admit I was wrong on such limitations in the first place. And that's exactly what I'm likely to do.
For the facts in evidence seem to make the case that this presidential campaign is the most exciting, most closely watched and most expensive in my lifetime. That is, there seems to be no correlation between the amount of money spent and disillusionment among the voters. Indeed, the contrary appears to be true.
The argument that money is corrupting our democratic system is as old as our first election. And it is an argument usually made by liberals, who have proposed various interventions in the marketplace of political ideas.The bedrock federal law here was enacted in 1971 and has been challenged time and again by individuals and groups who view such limits as a violation of the First Amendment.
On each of the several occasions when the Supreme Court has ruled against the law, Congress came back with further modifications to the statute.The most recent effort was in 2002, when Sen. McCain led a bipartisan effort to "clean up the system."
Last year, the high court overturned the key provision of that law, which restricted individuals and groups from engaging in issue campaigns.There is great irony here, since the key vote in that 5-4 decision was Justice Sam Alito - just the kind of "nonactivist" judge that Sen. McCain has promised to nominate. So maybe I was simply wrong about placing limits on spending and providing public monies in exchange for adhering to these limits.
Of course, it's possible that I'm making a virtue out of a necessity - since my candidate is now winning in part because, by opting out of the system, he has more money to spend.
In the short term, I'm sad to report that hypocrite is a more accurate label. In the long term, perhaps this will be the moment that causes me to change my views. It certainly feels better than remaining a hypocrite forever./
Bob Kerrey, president of the New School, served as a US senator and governor of Nebraska./
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment