Democrats' Smart, Nuanced, Civil Messaging: If You Disagree With Us About Spending, You're Terrorists You Guys

We've come a long way, haven't we?

"What we're not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest—we're not going to do that," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer recently told CNN's Jake Tapper. "I believe the House Republicans are entirely responsible."

“One hundred percent?” Tapper asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Pfeiffer responded. “Absolutely.”

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With suicide bombs going off daily around the world and funerals for the Washington Navy Yard victims still taking place, one might expect a modicum of rhetorical restraint from inside the White House. No such luck. For five years now, such metaphors have been the cudgel of choice for administration officials, along with their fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill and journalistic fellow travelers.

It all starts with President Obama, who routinely accuses Republicans trying to thwart his spending plans by putting “party ahead of country.” Last January, when talking—as Dan Pfeiffer was this week—about GOP insistence on trading spending cuts for agreeing to raise the nation’s debt limit—the president said he wouldn’t negotiate with those holding “a gun at the head of the American people.”

Joe Biden asserts Republicans are holding the country “hostage” with their spending stance, and in a 2011 meeting with congressional Democrats the vice president agreed with the suggestion that Tea Party groups were “terrorists.”

Among Democrats on Capitol Hill, it starts at the top, too.

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On the House side, such talk has long been a staple for Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose default argument on fiscal or economic policy is to impugn conservatives’ patriotism. In 2008, she said it was “very unpatriotic” for Republicans to balk at a big bank bailout. Two years later, she lashed out at those resisting raising the debt ceiling: “Are these people not patriotic?”

Fen's Law: "Progressives" believe in exactly none of the things they claim to believe.

posted by Ace at 01:42 PM

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