Dad, you're like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny combined... you're just as charming, and just as fake

The Republican Party has clearly mastered the art of tugging at human emotion. Version 2004 of the Republican convention was a textbook case of energizing its voting base, ultimately leading to a huge swing of the pendulum in favor of the current administration.

Because the goal of an election is to win, in some ways the GOP performance at the convention is admirable, but mostly it further illustrates that politics is more marketing than substance or the aim to elect the individual that best serves the desires of the public as a whole.

There were dozens of examples in which speakers at the convention made claims that either don’t support Bush policy (such as an endless stream of moderate Republican speakers to divert the public from the president’s actual views) or that attacked Kerry using logic that can be deemed twisted and even outright deceitful.

The following was my favorite:

Over the past several months, and several times within the convention, Republicans have stated that John Kerry is weak on national security because he’s repeatedly voted in the past to kill funding for weapons systems, such as the M-1 tank, the Apache helicopter and several versions of the F-series jet fighter, among others.

This is just a completely non-sensical claim, especially when considering the fact that our current vice president, Dick Cheney, was the secretary of defense at the time of the vote by Kerry, occurring shortly after the fall of the Eastern bloc. Here’s what Secretary Cheney said at that time:

“Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.

Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've (referring to the Democrats) squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M1s, F14s, and F16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.”

Can you believe, first, that the Republicans have the kahunas to say Kerry was interested in dismantling the defense budget when Cheney and the first Bush administration wanted deeper cuts, but even worse, is that they’re getting away with it! I find particularly funny how he refers to the cuts as the “peace dividend”. I should point out that ED isn’t disagreeing with the cuts. It was clearly the prudent thing to do at the time. My issue is with the administration criticizing Kerry for when they were the party pushing forward the cuts.

http://slate.com/id/2106119/

Headline Quote Movie of Origin: Big Fish
Character: Will Bloom
Setting: Upon returning home to spend time with his dying father, Will Bloom is interested in finding out the truth of his father’s life. Upon confronting his father, and being denied the answers he was seeking, Will tells his father that he’s like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny combined, just as charming, and just as fake.
The quote is relevant to this story how?: President Bush is charming. He comes across as much more sincere than Kerry, and despite coming from a privileged background, he’s able to connect on a personal level with many. Unfortunately, his election is based on words that make people feel good, like “resolute” and “will”, and not on results or on his own policy. If it were based on results, you would’ve heard terms like Afghanistan, Iraq, economy, education and healthcare, all the major policy areas that have resulted from the administration but barely got mentions at the convention.

Contact El Duderino at jaipf@hotmail.com.