I watched some of J.D. Vance's speech tonight at the Republican convention, and it was full of all the usual red meat about Democrats and Joe Biden. That's pretty normal for a convention speech and nothing to get too riled up about. But there was one small bit that truly threw me for a loop.
Towards the end, Vance reeled off a list of terrible things Biden had done, and one of them was that he supported the Iraq War. This earned Biden a big round of boos. Boos! From Republicans! Does anyone remember this?
Back in the day, Republicans were the ones who drove us to war. They favored it by 84% to 14%, a net favorability of 70%. This was the era of freedom fries and aluminum tubes. It was gonna be shock and awe against Saddam Hussein, and it was fashionable among Republicans to accuse anyone who opposed the war of treason and soft-headedness.
Now, 20 years later, here is J.D. Vance at a Republican convention blaming it all on "Joe Biden and the elites." You'd think George W. Bush had never existed. I have to say, I was shocked and awed.
I even remember the Bush administration lying about the intelligence supporting the existence of a biological weapons program and setting up Colin Powell as a patsy to sell it to the United Nations.
Powell knowingly lied. His staff had told him the claim about the aluminum tubes was not credible and that wasn’t the only thing he claimed that he knew was false.
https://fair.org/home/the-medias-lies-about-colin-powells-lies/
The sainted Powell also lied when he denied telling Hillary Clinton to use a private email account for her official State Department business just as he had done. The Russians later hacked his account and released the email he had sent telling her exactly that. Powell was more about protecting his reputation than being honest. Powell also helped cover up the My Lai massacre.
i thought hillary was the head cheerleader for iraq 2.
at least, that's what bernie & trump said in 2016.
She was the conduit for the uranium.
i thought that was plutonium.
hulkery clinton, & all that.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
HIllary, like many Democrats, voted for the Iraq War resolution which gave Bush the power to go to war but only as a last resort. They were in a bind because had that resolution been defeated Saddam would have no incentive to cooperate with the weapons inspections — which he was doing, despite what the Bush administration claimed. Hillary’s floor speech given before that vote made it crystal clear that war must be a last resort. Looking back that may seem naive but at the time there was no reason to expect the Bush administration to be as dishonest as they were or to think they wanted war no matter what.
This. Although Lactating's post may have been sarcasm, laying down the facts is important because some people won't know.
Revisionism, the only thing conservatives do almost as good as being hypocrites. It's as if their collective memory has a 15 to 20 year lifespan.
Even that long?
JD Vance is a cheese eating surrender monkey who is pro Saddam Hussein and bin Laden.
W is one of a whole range of former gop stalwarts who'd have to sneak in the servants' entrance to get into a MAGAfied gop venue today. And wear a disguise too, and have bodyguards. Romney, anybody named Cheney, anybody else named Bush, and the list goes on.
Most in that audience tonight looked old enough to have been among that net 70% pro-war gop 20 years ago. But they seemed pretty sloshed (especially if they were in the Ohio section) and they recognize a boo-hiss line when they hear it, even if those same people would tell you one-on-one tomorrow that the war was justified. Classic willfully mindless crowd behavior.
I'm waiting for the beautifully ironic moment when somebody mentions a favored position that the sainted Ronald Reagan is identified with in exactly that kind of litany and gets the audience to boo it in the same way. Nobody in the hall will recognize the reference because people in crowds don't have the memory span of a fruit fly, but watchers at home and in tv studios will sure catch on. That's when we'll know for sure that trump has erased absolutely everything and everyone that came before him in their minds. "Lincoln? Lincoln who." It isn't far off, and the memory hole isn't just a literary image.
i wonder if w. feels silly for having plumped for kavanaugh during his confirmation cycle.
I doubt it.
george lincoln rockwell is the new gop lodestar.
Feels like we're living the Idiocracy.
It's becoming more like a documentary, or atleast a cautionary tale, by the day.
No fact can ever remain if getting rid of it is seen as helpful with these types, no matter if it is even something they were all for just five minutes ago. Nothing counts except the winning.
who was it that postulated russia under putin has been exporting a posttruth culture?
Who is this George W. Bush you're speaking of? Doesn't sound familiar.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
I have to say, I was shocked and awed.
Kevin, you forgot the /s tag! Republicans telling lies that not even Joseph Goebbels would attempt is about as shocking as a Taylor Swift concert selling out.
These are the people who don’t believe in science. How do you think they feel about history?
Ask the Dixie Chicks about the Rs.
That damned liberal cancel culture...
did fireorg exist when the chicks get silenced by big radio, & if so, did the fireorgistas say jackshit against it?
Good question. Apparently FIRE did exist then, but their site says they were mostly about college and university speech in those days. Wonder what they'd say if something like that happened now. And hoping we don't get the chance to find out
I always assumed many legislators and officials with private reservations about W's Iraq insanity publically supported it to save their careers, anticipating it might haunt them in some later election or position. Colin Powell was one such, Hillary another, although she may have been a true believer. Legislators from unsafe seats supported it en bloc.
Incredibly, many were genuine in their support. Biden seems to be among them.
Funny: Nancy Pelosi, the Great Satan of the U.S. progressive movement, voted against the war.
If Biden is the nominee, this should be the last time I ever have to vote for anyone who supported that stupid war of choice.
trump also supported it.
we have the stern tapes from that era.
Of course than he said he didn't and never did. The only constant thing about Donald Trump is his pathological dishonesty.
Narcissism, adulation of dictators.
Being a hose-pipe of lies is not actually his worst trait.
Yes it is.
Bush claimed that voting for the Authorization for Use of Military Force was the best way to avoid war, because it would indicate that the United States was serious enough that it would use military force if necessary. Both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden accepted this argument and voted for the AUMF. After the AUMF passed, Saddam agreed to inspections, very plausibly because of the AUMF. But when the inspectors didn’t find WMD, Bush invaded anyway.
Characterizing support for the AUMF as support for the war elides a bit of nuance. In my view, Biden’s fundamental mistake was to view George W. Bush as a normal president.
To me that's a cover story. Had the war gone well, Hillary and Biden would not have said "I voted for it but in fact opposed it and thought Bush was wrong to go in without trying to do more negotiations, and was just voting to give Bush more leverage". The whole plan was to go "rah rah patriotism USA yeah war!" if the war had gone well and to fall back on the cover story if it went poorly.
Obviously politicians are reading the room and trying to preserve future political viability, but I think Hillary and Biden and Edwards and all the rest of them get what they deserve for this. All of them voted to support an absolutely terrible idea and they knew darned well that Bush was going to war and were trying to capitalize on it if we won the war.
I'm pretty sure the Democrats blew up the Maine as well.
It’s kind of amazing to see republicans pull this off. Union friendly. Peace loving.
And now this!
At the convention on Monday, the entertainer Amber Rose, who is multiracial, said that in the past she believed “left-wing propaganda that Donald Trump was a racist,” but after doing her “research,” she “realized Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you are Black, white, gay or straight. It’s all love.”
The base of the Democratic Party is beginning to flee!
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/opinion/trump-republican-minority-outreach.html
Don’t feed this monster.
who, amber, justin, or tffg?
I agree with your sentiment re: Justin, but in this case everything he said is correct except the last sentence, and even that was what CNN was saying.
Well, ok, also Amber Rose is not multi-racial “Her father is of Irish and Italian descent[4] and her mother is of Cape Verdean and maternal Scottish descent from Ayrshire.” (Wikipedia)
there is some truth in that, in that donald trump doesn't care about other people.
This season's Omarosa, I guess.
Except it's all a lie. They are no less anti union than they ever were or will be. Nor are they for peace. If a union member voted Republican they are voting against their own interests. As for Democrats fleeing, that's a lie as well.
And get ready for John Yoo as attorney general.
IIRC, Yoo actually criticized Trump earlier for J6 and his shennanigans with the DOJ towards the end of his term, so I don't think he'll be making an appearance in Trump 2 Electric Bugaloo. Yoo is insane, of course, but I don't think he's MAGA.
plus, trump already has his asian-american barrister -- "korean barry scheck" robert hur.
To be fair to the Republicans, GW Bush is persona non grata at the Republican convention and Biden is running for president. Biden's stance on Iraq is more relevant, and the Republican Party has sincerely disavowed that war. At the end of Trump's term, Ukraine may belong to Russia and Taiwan to China, but Trump and the Republicans have a genuine aversion to US wars, at least those involving US troops. (Offer not valid in Palestine.)
No, we do not under any circumstances have to be fair to Republicans. Their war fever killed and maimed thousands of US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians, and now they just get to walk away like nothing ever happened.
And if you think that Russia will stop at "just" Ukraine and China at "just" Taiwan, I think you're in for a pair of nasty shocks.
they only disavowed iraq after barry hussein osama assumed the role of prosecuting it in 2009.
you really think post-bush gop would have gone pantywaist peacenik in sw asia had Mc cain won?
"Republican party has sincerely disavowed that war" is a funny way of phrasing that they pretend they had nothing to do with it because they f'ed it up.
The Republican aversion to war is entirely made up. I'm so old that I remember when W, who campaigned on not getting into wars, was asked in a debate which past US conflicts he would have refrained from getting involved in, and he couldn't name any. And then he started two of them while in office.
And no Republican has "sincerely" disavowed the Iraq war. They've mush mouthed around the execution of the war, but that's it.
No, Trumpist Republicans aren't for peace; they are just allergic to challenging authoritarian states on the world stage because they *admire* thugs like Putin, Kim, and Xi and want to see them succeed in spreading violent kleptocracy around the globe.
Aversion to war, while putting troops and shooting more missiles?
Uhh... that seems not like an aversion.
If Joe Biden had invented a cure for all disease they'd have booed that, too.
Tonight's plan: boo trickledown economics, cheer the return of the Cold War, and complain about the Dems constantly trying to privatize Social Security.
it's scoop jackson's party now.
The cognitive dissonance on display at their convention is monumental. They cheered a union leaders speech at a convention of a political party dead set against unions. Trump himself was sued for hiring non union workers to demolish the building that would become Trump tower.
https://time.com/5039109/donald-trump-undocumented-polish-trump-tower-bonwit-teller/
Matt Gaetz suddenly looks like a clone fresh out of the tube whose forehead was smashed up against the glass during the gestation period,
https://www.rawstory.com/matt-gaetz-botox/
Or like an alien on Star Trek who had cosmetic surgery to disguise his skull ridges so he can blend in with humanity, but it's fooling no one.
lol. He is a grade A creep isn't he. Thanks for my morning laugh.
was the plastic surgery a last ditch effort to get the vp nod, not unlike tim scott's heteronormative engagement?
Those 17 year olds he's trying to "date" hate wrinkles.
It was and remains a political, strategic, and moral mistake for any Democrat to have supported the Iraq war.
It's incontrovertible evidence that someone is too stupid to govern.
I'm not sure it's a matter of being stupid, it's more of a matter of courage or the lack there of. Republicans use patriotism like a weapon and the Democrats cower almost everytime they do. They are too cowardly to govern.
Most Democratic politicians in congress openly opposed the war. Famously, Obama opposed the war from the beginning and won big.
algore was the rare democrat on the right side of both Iraq wars.
They're all into diversity. In case you missed this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/18/republican-national-convention-prayer-harmeet-dhillon
it's as if the GOP has no idea just how xenophobic and intolerant their base is. They should know. They've been conditioning them for decades to feel exactly as they do. Perhaps it's an appeal to moderates. If that's the case they could have passed out index cards with their message to the handful of moderates left in their party. You can guarantee there weren't many at the convention.
Nixon's southern strategy opened the GOP to the former Dixiecrats and that's pretty much who's running the show now. Bunch of klansmen who've traded their white hoods for MAGA hats, White Citizens Council rejects, and grifty Baptist preachers. Quite a stew and one that will probably destroy the country before it's all over.
????
I was all in favor of G.W. Bush and Cheney being relegated to the dustbin of history, but by their own party? What a weird, strange trip it's been.
Inconvenient truths are best ignored or denied. There's a lot of denial and ignoring going on at the Republican convention. Hate Trumps all. Autocorrect capitalized the T. lol. Go figure.
Conservative solutions are always an accommodation with wrongness rather than a plan to act against it.
J.D. Vance on abortion,
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jd-vance-national-abortion-ban-soros-1235062748/
every accusation a confession.
jimbo admitting the gop will do eugenics.
In one of the Republican debates when Trump was running in 2016, he declared that GWB did not protect us from 9/11 and that the Iraq war was a complete waste. He was roundly booed by the audience of Republican stalwarts, but Trump minions knew it was the truth, and now it has become the new GOP orthodoxy.
It's about the only thing I've ever agreed with him on.
Democrats have let Trump get out too far to the "left" of them. He's able to do that because nobody expects him to tell the truth.
Here you are agreeing with him when Trump personally couldn't give a rat's ass about Iraq. He's just in attack mode.
shut your mouth, ryan lizza/chris hayes/brian beuter/jeet her.
"Left"
The quotes are important. Because he's not to the left. On anything.
Not only do I still remember the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US military I still suffer from the PTSD this imperial war affected. Sen. Biden was a member of those 7% of Democrats who supported the invasion.
Was. He's also the guy who ended it.
How many times do I need to tell you that the Republican Party of today is not that of 2000?
It’s not just stupid to try to understand their politics or their appeal using the ideas of 2000, it’s just as stupid to imagine that the polity have much in common with the Republicans of 2000.
You think mocking a Democrat in 1976 that 20 years earlier their party supported Segregation was a useful tactic? Either in changing anyone’s mind, or in charting the future?
Come on, Kevin! Your value-add is that you are supposed to understand this stuff better than a random idiot!
How about instead you think about less obvious and less reported things? Like how the RNC opened with an Indian Prayer. Or that Richard Spence (yes, THAT Richard Spence) has renounced any affiliation with the Trump GOP and endorsed Biden (2020 and now)… Don’t believe me? Look it up.
What they say wasn't what they did in 2000.
What they say and that they did were similarly different in 2016.
What they say and do are still contrary, so...
...why do you think your argument is informative?
Candidate George W. Bush promised us a “humble” foreign policy. In office, he brought us the Iraq war, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Candidate Donald Trump promised to build the wall. In office he didn’t build the wall, but he did pass tax cuts for the wealthy. Both are authoritarians. I’m seeing more similarities than differences between the two.
I think one main difference is Bush didn't want to appear to be an authoritarian. Trump on the other hand revels in the idea of it. He would like nothing more than complete control like he has with his businesses.
They are, almost without fail, stupid people who are easily led.