Fact Check: 2012 — January Edition

I get all kinds of these newsletters, and I have to wonder which of the candidates read the ones that they release. Not Ron Paul bashing— just sayin’.

Here’s a few excerpts from a newsletter that I received from the Obama campaign— with a link to donate, of course.

The extremist Tea Party agenda won a clear victory. No matter who the Republicans nominate, we’ll be running against someone who has embraced that agenda in order to win.

I’m not going to waste any space comparing the “extremism” of the Tea Party vs. the #Occupy movement. What I would like to point out is that, as far as libertarians go, the Tea Party tends to be a bit moderate. I just think it’s a bit telling when someone who thinks that it would be appropriate to have certain limitations on our government would be described as “extremism.”

But as for other budget hawks, such as the Peter G. Peterson Foundation or the Simpson-Bowles Commission, such concerns over public expenditures are actually fairly mainstream.

This is from Tom Van Dyke at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, a libertarian-oriented site:

As for the parties, they too embody the principle of consensus and the virtue of prudence. It’s far more common to fault not the extremism of either party, but their “mushy middleness.”

So if the Tea Party or #Occupy become internal forces for a bit or radicalization, a bit of anti-mugwumperry, that’s a good thing. If they win, they have a mandate for progress. If the party goes too far in accommodating such change, the electorate at large gives them a bath, like the Goldwater meltdown of 1964 or the McGovern swamping in 1972, and it’s back to the center for the next election.

If a party can’t come to consensus about its own center, how can it offer itself as the center of the nation at large? The general election is about claiming the American center; in fact, winning elections is about defining it.

More from the Obama campaign:

vowing to let Wall Street write its own rules

Really? Can you say, “Wall Street bailout?”

end Medicare as we know it

This is one of those “entitlements” with runaway spending that everyone keeps talking about, and needed reforms are long past due.

roll back gay rights

I don’t think anyone is calling for actively discriminating against gays. A person’s sexual orientation should be a matter of their private lives, and not open to the public sphere.

I remember a few years back when some fellow was telling me, “I don’t want to take my kids to a ball game and have to see some gay couple over there making out.”

I told him, “I wouldn’t want to have to take my kids to a ball game and see some straight couple over there making out either.” The ballpark isn’t the place to be doing that. Get a room, for crying out loud.

Our standards for public decency have been in decline for so long, there is a level of mistrust on allowing more sexuality into the public sphere. The licentiousness of what passes for “decency” these days leaves many of us aghast— and rightfully so.

I don’t have to agree or disagree. I’m just saying that there are other issues that we, as conservatives, need to address before we can even begin to think of compromise on this issue; considerations for religious organizations, for example.

leave the troops in Iraq indefinitely

You mean like we left the troops in Germany and Korea, et al?

restrict a woman’s right to choose

I get tired of hearing this one.

The fact of the matter is that the United States has some of the most permissive “restrictions” on abortion of all the developed nations— right up there with Russia, far more permissive than the UK.

and gut Social Security

This is what you call “the logical fallacy of the emotional appeal,” aka “loaded language,” as the parameters of the term “gut” have yet to be defined.

Reforms are needed; there is general agreement about this. What manner of reforms will be enacted are a matter of public debate. But we can’t really engage in an honest debate when the opposition is unprepared to deal in specifics.

to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.

I hope these aren’t economic development grants he’s talking about here. Repatriation allowances maybe.

Granted, taken together, the total of instances of corporate welfare are a far greater sum than the total of instances of individual welfare, and we can’t deny the degenerating effects of both. Likewise, we cannot deny that the capacity of people to act as a group empower them to a greater extent than through acting alone.

Self-determination can only carry you so far until you need to go make a few friends.

We’ll be facing an onslaught of unprecedented spending from outside groups funded by corporations and anonymous donors.

Each election cycle brings “unprecedented” spending, but it looks to me like they’re more concerned with the Obama base.

In Iowa alone, so-called “super PACs” spent $12.9 million on almost exclusively negative ads.

Actually, that’s what these groups do. They are prohibited from endorsing any candidate.

These groups will turn their fire even more directly on us in the weeks ahead to prove that their candidate is the most anti-Obama.

Obama is the one that they’re running against, you moron! So stop your sniveling.

More from the Obama campaign:

Many observers still think Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. If he is, we will be prepared. But it’s curious that no one can really explain how, when or why the 70-plus percent of Republicans saying in polls and in Iowa that Mitt Romney’s not their candidate will suddenly come around.

I’ll let Tom Van Dyke answer that one:

Each party finds its own center, then takes it out on the campaign road in the general election. In the presidential primaries, each candidate offers himself to his party as its center, and more often than not, the wheels fall off. The first concern of the parties is to keep out of the ditch, the first concern of the electorate is to keep our country out of the ditch.

Well said, Tom.

More from the non-stop Obama campaign:

So the path ahead for Romney — or whichever of the Republican candidates is going to emerge from this process — is sadly and starkly very clear: to run even further to the extreme right, and make even more dangerous promises that threaten not only the progress we’ve made but the fundamental fabric of American society.

That’s the sort of thing that makes me want to tear this guy apart, but that would take a whole other piece just dedicated to this one statement.

For now, let me point out that there is profound disagreement as to what might constitute “the fundamental fabric of American society.”

We also know that candidates who take these extreme positions can, in the right circumstances, win not only a primary but also a general election in just about any state.

Just ask the Tea Party senators from Pennsylvania and Kentucky, and the Tea Party governors in Florida and Wisconsin.

Did I read that correctly?

If I remember right, that Senator from Kentucky (Rand Paul) and that Governor in Wisconsin (Scott Walker) are what a lot of us here would call “National heroes.” They came along to do the hard work that needed done that nobody else was willing to do.

I don’t know so much about Kentucky; but Wisconsin is something of a divided state. You have the liberals in Madison (Frisco of the Midwest) with Milwaukee being a stronghold for conservatives. The liberals in Madison have had their way for too long, and someone needed to rein them in.

So stop whining about someone who is willing to work hard to curtail the excesses of a runaway government. Were it not for those said excesses, they might not have ever needed Scott Walker in the first place. You can’t fault someone for putting out the fire when their house is ablaze.

Fact check conclusions:
I have to wonder if this is actually a fund-raising effort or a cover-up.

Leave a Comment

If you would like to make a comment, please register to do so. I hate to do that but there are so many spam-bots out there that deleting spam comments would be a full time job if I were to just open it up for anyone without asking them to jump through a few hoops first.

You must be registered and logged in to post a comment. Anyone can register. No registrant's information is kept, used, or sold. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER