Bipartisan flexibility of argument and honesty
by
Archae86
08/31/2008, 3:06 PM #
Kinsley lampoons the change in Republican choice of talking points with choice references to the U.S. Communist party of the 1930s. He appears not to have noticed another elephant in the room--the even more rapid conversion of supporters of the Democrats to a full-throated embrace of the importance of experience. I think the record will show that the response time for official Obama campaign attack in this vein was minutes, and not many.
We should expect a political campaign, and its supporters, to make the arguments they think most likely to persuade to their case. Switching arguments with circumstances is not itself dishonesty. We seem to have reached a pass where merely favoring the wrong side, or speaking against a favored argument of the favored side, is loudly proclaimed dishonesty, without reference to more traditional definitions calling for actual untruth, or intentional deception.
Though a Republican, I'm a New Republic subscriber and reader. I think this casting of all conservative and Republican arguments and writings as dishonest surged in the wake of the (actually dishonest) public false statements of one William Jefferson Clinton. At first I thought they meant to diffuse public disdain for President Clinton on this failing by making the case that the other side did it. Even if that helped the launch, it has its own power now.
Mr. Kinsley's imbalance of criticism on this simple display of re-ordering of marketing points by both sides makes clear his own partisanship--not that there is much news in that.
