Sunday, September 21, 2014

How Republicans Blow Opportunities

Very often Democrats throw Republicans hug, fat softballs right over the heart of the plate – and Republicans fail to hit the home run.  They have forgotten how to punch hard – not necessarily in ads, but in doing mano a mano.  Here are just three examples from the last several years of how Republicans have blown tremendous opportunities that were virtually handed to them gift-wrapped by various agents of the Democrat Party:
  

1.     The arm of the Democrat Party known as the media, or the press, referred to Obama as both a “Professor of Constitutional Law” and a “Constitutional Scholar” endlessly during his presidential campaigns (more so during the 2008 campaign, but the inaccuracy still popped up in 2012 frequently). 
As is well known, he was not a professor at all at the University of Chicago but an instructor, so that outright lie is easily debunked.  However, this “Constitutional Scholar” stuff…Look – a farmer farms land, a baseball pitcher pitchess the ball, and a scholar…a scholar…a scholar produces scholarship!  Duh!
I could be wrong, but in two presidential campaigns I cannot recall a single conservative commentator or politician asking to see evidence of Obama’s scholarship.
Had I been advising either McCain or Romney for their debates with Obama I would have insisted this question be worked in somehow: “You’re often described as a Constitutional Scholar – can you please direct us to your scholarly articles and publications?  Your essays and papers that you’ve published in refereed journals (like every other scholar has been required to do since the dawn of creation)?  Where can we go to see your original legal research?”  And then listen to the crickets chirp with 100 million people watching. 


2.     Linda McMahon ran against Richard Blumenthal for the US Senate in 2010 in Connecticut. A Democrat operative named Christiane Amanpour interviewed McMahon on ABC News.   I can’t really improve on this link with video in terms of relating the story, but I will comment on what McMahon should have said instead of what she actually did say at the critical juncture:
Amanpour chose to play what is admittedly a particularly distasteful clip from the entertainment show McMahon formerly ran, the WWE, without really noting that it’s acting, fiction, lowbrow entertainment. 

After being asked if this type of thing is appropriate, McMahon missed a golden opportunity to slay the dragon; what she did do was give Amanpour an opportunity to put her on the defensive with a bloviating answer that only hardcore WWE fans would understand or care about.  It failed miserably.  What she should have said was something like this:
          “You know Christiane, a lot of Democrat politicians take contributions from Hollywood and I was just wondering – when was the last time you interrogated a Democrat about accepting money from filmmakers who put out pictures with excessive sex and violence?  Hmmm?"

3. This next incident took place during the early 2010 televised summit on Obamacare between the President and members of Congress.  Congressman Eric Cantor pulled out a copy of the behemoth 2000 page law and laid it on the desk in front of himself as he was about to speak.  President Obama quickly pounced, saying Cantor had resorted to using ‘props’.  Yet not long before this, in the Rose Garden, Obama himself helped his staffers hand out white smocks to doctors gathered for a photo op.  Talk about using props!  Yet Cantor completely missed the opportunity to bring up the old adage that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and refer to the smock photo op – instead he meekly let Obama bulldoze right over him. 





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