Since the early days of 1998, when Paul Begala popped up everywhere to insist that his boss, Bill Clinton, was being victimized by a Republican hit squad, the guy has bugged me.
It's not just what he says. It's how he says it.
Begala's address to the first-ever Campus Progress National Student Conference cements my opinion.
The conference was designed to "provide campus liberals with the tools necessary to fight the conservative movement."
How crazy is that?
If one is looking for an environment that validates and promotes leftist ideology, one needs to go no further than the nearest college campus. These young libs certainly don't need strategies for fighting conservatives ON campus, since the libs dominate the system.
Undoubtedly, this conference set out to indoctrinate an army of activists to fight conservatives outside the sheltered liberal walls of academia.
In addition to Begala, Bill Clinton attended the event. He, of course, is a hero to these young liberals.
After all, as they were coming of age, Bill helped redefine sex for them with his "oral sex isn't sex" initiative.
I digress.
CNS News reports:
A panel discussion entitled "Winning the War of Ideas" centered on topics discussed in the book "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank and detailed the challenges that Democrats face in persuading voters in the American heartland and elsewhere to embrace their agenda and support their candidates.
Begala's presence on the panel created a stir when he declared that Republicans had "done a p***-poor job of defending" the U.S.
Republicans, he said, "want to kill us.
"I was driving past the Pentagon when that plane hit" on Sept. 11, 2001. "I had friends on that plane; this is deadly serious to me," Begala said.
"They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted -- that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit," Begala said. "That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that."
If Begala thinks that line is a good weapon in his arsenal to fight off conservatives, he's more out of touch with middle America than I realized.
The Clinton administration's national security efforts involved the right blend of "experience" and "strength," Begala said, an assertion with which the 9/11 Commission apparently disagreed.
In its report, the bipartisan commission stated that "each president considered or authorized covert actions, a process that consumed considerable time -- especially in the Clinton administration -- and achieved little success beyond the collection of intelligence."
Begala also included Republican domestic policies in his sweeping criticism. The GOP, he said, "ain't had a new idea since they opposed Social Security, and guess what, they still do. ... They are beginning to figure out that there is no Soviet Union, but they still want Star Wars to stop it," Begala said.
Remember, Begala is spewing this garbage to a group of impressionable young people. He is completely distorting the truth. The Dems are the ones without ANY ideas.
As far as "Star Wars" goes, recent statements from China about nuking the U.S. makes defensive measures look awfully good right now.
Only someone like Begala would say the Strategic Defense Initiative is intended to stop the Soviet Union.
Is Begala really that stupid? Or, is he really that desperate that he's willing to throw out the truth to advance his party?
"Okay, they are utterly and completely brain-dead," echoing comments earlier this year by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who accused Republicans of being "brain dead."
That really helps to set a more civil tone in political debate, doesn't it? Right...
Frank insisted that Republicans are not quite as tough on national security as many Americans think.
...Frank defended his point...claiming that Republicans didn't see Hitler as a threat to America until Pearl Harbor.
He repeated the Democratic criticism of America's invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein "was a horrible (sic), a dictator, a butcher, a tyrant, a mass murderer -- as evil as they come," Frank said, but he added: "I don't think he was a threat to the U.S. at the time."
This Frank guy sounds like a real piece of work.
In one breath he bashes Republicans on WWII in order to show that Dems are as tough as they are on defense. In the very next breath, he illustrates that he doesn't get the War on Terror, nor does he understand the necessity of spreading freedom to oppressed people as key to peace in the world.
Making the argument that the U.S. and its coalition should have left Saddam and his henchmen alone won't do much to fight conservatism. Frank obviously doesn't understand fly-over country.
Former Clinton administration Chief of Staff John Podesta told the students that "you can fight hard for what you believe without breaking the law, without cheating and certainly without checking your morals at the door."
Is that a reference to the young libs on campuses across the country that did cheat and break the law when they took part in the corrupt New Voters Project?
In terms of checking morals at the door, it sounds like the young libs in attendance needed to do that if they were to accept any of Begala's drivel.
The Campus Progress National Student Conference probably succeeded in giving some young liberals reinforcement to hate conservatives.
However, as an effort to provide them with tactics to lure Republican voters to the Democratic side, it failed miserably.
Radical left-wing, MoveOn style rhetoric does not fight conservatism.
It serves to recruit more conservatives.
