Brain Fertilizer

Dub and his boys criticized US Senator Max Cleland of being non-patriotic even though Cleland served in Vietnam and lost limbs.

Dub and his boys hammered US Senator Mary Landrieu as not patriotic.

Dub and his boys have hammered US Senator John Kerry as not patriotic even though he served in Vietnam while Dub and his boys did not.

Hell, Dub's boy Hastert even hammered John McCain as unpatriotic. And Hastert is Dub's stalking boy in the House.

So you can say that Dub has tried to stay above the fray and be a uniter rather than a divider, but that doesn't make it true. Action speaks louder than words. On this, I think Dub and his boys have spoken loud and clear!

I have no idea who Mary Landrieu is. The rest is pure fiction.
President Bush never said any of the things you accuse him of. "His boys" is a really vague nomenclature, as well, but that is the only basis for your attacks, since you don't have a single name to reference for any of those smears.
No one of any stature anywhere in the party ever called McCain, Kerry or Cleland unpatriotic. Their voting records were criticized, yes, but that does not begin to approach an accusation of being "unpatriotic". I can call you ill-informed, willfully distortive, and a partisan shill repeating Democrat lies and smears (and in this case, I do!), but that doesn't mean I am calling you unpatriotic.

Vague slander without any reference only diminishes you, Martin.

If you can provide quotes, I'll retract. I have never heard President Bush, Dick Cheney, or any elected Republican official or pundit call *any* Democrat unpatriotic. And I'm sure it's not just me, because had they actually done anything like you insist, the New York Times would have put it on their front page for more than a week.

Try again.

Whatever, Nathan, whatever...

I guess you and I live in two very different, parallel worlds with differing realities.

I guess the question is which of us is in the "Bizarro World?"

Heh. Marty, just based on geography alone, I have to think it's you. :-)

But I live in Massachusetts, so who am I to talk?

Marty,
Now that's a valid point one can sink one's teeth into:
What do you consider a trustworthy source?

I wouldn't expect you to lend any credence if I quoted Rush Limbaugh's collection of statistics...heck, I don't trust him myself.

And yet, Paul Krugman, Molly Ivens, Maureen O'Dowd, Michael Moore, Al Franken, et al, have demonstrated an equal willingness to play fast and loose with numbers to attempt to persuade...

If President Bush has ever used the word "unpatriotic" in direct reference to any one of the people you mentioned, it should be easy to find a quote in some newspaper somewhere. I've looked and can't find one. You'd think the New York Times, at the very least, would have something like that easily accessible, if not trumpeted on their headlines.

So now we have "his boys". Again, if any significant member of the administration had made any such accusation, it would have been all over the news in the same way Trent Lott's comments were. Even if the media didn't make a big deal about it (as they sometimes don't), if it had been said, someone in the blogosphere would have noted it, cited it, and linked it, and someone of opposite ideology would have responded to it, and there's a good chance we would have encountered it. So, again, got a link to a direct quote? No?

In the same way, there are other significant figures who are perhaps not in the administration who are still important enough to be considered important Conservatives, like Senator Frist or Tom DeLay or even conservative writers like Michelle Malkin or William Safire. But the less connection they have with the administration, the less valid are any connections you try to draw to the administration.

And then you have "attack dogs". There are allegations of a "push poll" conducted in South Carolina to smear McCain. To tell the truth, I've seen zero evidence it ever even happened. If it did, there are people who might have wanted badly enough to see President Bush get the nomination to go so far as doing that "push poll" on their own. You would have to do a great deal of investigation to lay the blame for that on President Bush. And if it happened, the trail is there to be followed. There's always a trail. You could go investigate it, or you can hang around making unproved, baseless allegations. Your choice.

So what's your point? Mine is that President Bush has actually made the attempt to take the high road, and has not stooped to making the low attacks you accuse him of. Unfortunately, people who oppose him (like you), blame President Bush by assocation. Anything any conservative individual does or says will be interpreted by you as being "one of Bush's boys". I reject that sort of guilt-by-association as being small-minded and adolescent. If President Bush or significant members of his administration have done any such thing, prove it. If they did it, the evidence will be there. If you can't prove it, it probably didn't happen, and you need to stop and think a moment of the agenda of the people you are listening to. What do they have to gain if they convince you of a lie that happens to make President Bush bad/worse?

Deb! Is that you? You're probably right - I most likely am in the "Bizarro World." But I can return to the real world if only Nathan will say the word "KLTPZYXM."

Nathan, I haven't seen evidence that Dub EVER tried to take the high road. He talked the talk, but never walked the walk.

And maybe you're right - it is a matter of perception. In general, the right has cast opponents in an "unpatriotic" light and then disingenuously tried to claim that because the word patriotism wasn't used, they were just questioning "voting records" and not patriotism. I say "A rose by any other name is still a rose" and "Denial is not a river in Egypt."

Fair enough. Harder to resolve, but probably an accurate assessment.