Redstate

Nethercutt uses her own words. She can't deny those. She praised a man who killed thousands of Americans. She can't deny that.

Swift Boat, Willy Horton, and the ads against Max Cleland all worked because they had a ring of truth. The anti-Patty ad is a frigging platinum band.

I don't know if the GOP can give Nethercutt enough money to make him win, but this will help Rossi and other Republicans in tight races. The entire Democrat Party can be hung out to dry based on this ad.

Patty is no Hillary. Hillary controls the media and the Democrat Party. Patty is just a dim bulb senator who lucks out every 6 years.

I'm going to pick this new Murray post to bring up something from the last one, and which is still germane to this diary entry.  Kevdawg, I think, did have a point in his comment when he asked if the statements were false.  

Before the knees jerk, take a look at my diary or my blog and you'll know I'm no liberal or moderate.  However, being a conservative, I believe, means calling a spade a spade even if it makes my side look bad.  (I'd argue that's why a more conservative influence at Fox News makes them more fair and balanced.  But I digress.)  Therefore, let's look at this honestly.

Murray gave her opinion as to why the people in the Middle East support bin Laden.  She was not speaking for herself.  That's pretty clear to me in a reading of the comment in context.  So using this quote to make her look like a bin Laden supporter is dishonest.  The irony is, there are other ways that it does speak badly of her that could be used instead.  Examples:

• Bin Laden's building roads and hospitals, etc., and we should do more of that?  Sounds to me like Ms. Murray thinks the War on Terror will be won by whoever spends the most money on public works project in the Mideast.  Imagine the first paragraph of a NY Time article the day we win the war:
  

  With cost overruns plaguing the recent construction of "Bin Laden High School" in suburban Baghdad, and al Qaeda's commitment to avoid deficit spending, Mr. bin Laden himself came out of his cave in Pakistan to turn himself in to authorities and stand trial for crimes against humanity.  When asked what finally broke him, he replied, "Let's see you try to beat the evil Americans in charitable contributions!  We're broke!"  Bin Laden and the remaining al Qaeda members will be tried for, among other things, over 3,000 counts of first-degree murder and 32 counts of writing bad checks.

  
  
  Yeah, right.
  

• A free and liberated Iraq will has already, and will continue to, bring to the Iraqis more (working) hospitals, more (usable) schools, and more private enterprise allowing more road-building.  In short, instead of imposing better roads on the Iraqi people (in a manner of speaking), Bush is making it possible for the economy of Iraq to prosper, which will result in the very things Murray says we ought to be doing.  Victory over terrorists first, followed by rebuilding, is the plan.  She should be supporting Dubya in this endeavor if she really believes this is where bin Laden's support comes from.  If she doesn't, her remarks are nothing but partisan blather against the President; something we don't need in wartime.
  

And there's probably more disconnects.  Kevdawg, if you're reading this, you did have a point, but only to a point.  Beyond that, I hope you'll reconsider your vote.

If you just READ the text of what Murray said, and know the audience and discussion topic at hand, then it is easy to explain away.  But when you WATCH and LISTEN to her, it comes across very differently.  

She truly appears to be PRAISING Bin Laden.  She is not saying: "Look folks, the Afghans think Bin Laden is ok, because he's been doing X and Y, but let's look at their lives under HIM".  She is truly crediting him for improving the lives of people who were clearly ENSLAVED under him, while decrying the United States.  

I agree with the statements that we should do more...like we're trying to do in Iraq.  But praising Bin Laden as though he was/is some altruistic "man of the people", as she was clearly doing, is way worse than foolish.  Having driven (too fast) on the Autobahn in Germany I would still not be tempted to praise Hitler for getting it built.  

Again, the text and the video tell a much different tale.

I go into this more at my blog, but the fact is that Nethercutt needed to do this.  He is well behind in the polls, and Murray is a blue state incumbent.  If he doesn't do this, he has no shot.

Yes, it could backfire--but it could also work, and right now, Nethercutt's got nothing to lose.  I don't think the polls until this point mean anything, and in the next poll he will be either catching up to Murray or farther behind.  But he needed to make this move.  

Well dpayton, it would take a lot to get me to reconsider my vote.  And it probably will come as no surprise that I don't agree with your two bullet points, as they depend on assumptions about the best way to prosecute the war on terror and how to achieve progress in Iraq.  

However, I think your viewpoints are legitimate, and I think our disagreement on those points gets at the root of the differences between our political opinions.  An argument over what the best ends are, and what means should be used to reach them.  

As I stated earlier, and vociferously so, I think the implication of that anti-Murray ad is dishonest and patently so.  And in defending the kind of analysis of other people's motivations she was doing, I used an example where I think that analysis was lacking -- the planning of the Iraq war.  Which I think has sidetracked that discussion away from the original point of contention.  Which is that I think that ad embodies all that is distasteful about how politics is done these days.  With nasty, maliciously dishonest smears that obfuscate real issues.

I understand that you think I carried my point too far.  But thanks for supporting that honest, good faith interpretations of people's quotes aren't a strictly partisan concern.  And before anyone attacks me -- there are Dem ads that are just as bad.  Their authors should be ashamed of those as well.

Nethercut is trailing steadily, the media are generally on Murray's side, and all the years of mockery about her intelligence -- see, thereof, lack -- have failed to diminish her.

A congressional campaign I had passing familiarity with was once trailing steadily by 6 to 8. Nothing moved the numbers.

At the end, the candidate, a Republican challenger, went full blast on abortion, which in the conservative state was unpopular.

Party regulars complained, complained, complained, but I thought he made the right choice. If behind, take a risk. (Or, for Democrats, if behind, commit voter fraud.)

So George made the right call. He spoke truth to power.

I'll respond here.

Yes, the statements were half false, other half utter ignorance.  Call it Marge Schott dementia--take a low IQ and toss in a public platform.

   "Osama bin Laden has been very, very effective being we've got to ask, why is this man so popular around the world?  Why are people so supportive of him in many countries?"

She should have stopped here.  A question well worth asking to people not in high school and not an obviously halfwitted Senator.

    "He has been in many countries that are riddled with poverty."

And the slide begins.

    "People don't have phones, no sewers, no roads, no schools, no health care, no facilities just to make sure their daily lives are OK."

And they still did not have those things after the benevolent Osama left.

    "He's been out in these countries for decades building roads, building schools, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful."

Building paths is more accurate.  And most of that was to facilitate movement of weapons not for commerce.  More accurately he helped build Wahhabi madrassas for himself and Deobandi madrassas for the Taliban to spread Murray's utopian idealism I suppose.  Day care facilities is laughable.  But since widows were forbidden to work maybe the idiot Murray is referring to how those kids without a male parent were cared for in drumroll please madrassas.  In exchange for something Murray can no doubt appreciate--renting a brain for the jihad.

    "It made their lives better.  We have not done that. We haven't been out in many of these countries helping them build infrastructure."

Another absolutely stupid remark.  Does she not know how to navigate the USAID resources?  Absolute morons should not speak in absolutes.  Ever.

    "How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?"

She did NOT simply spit out reasons why Muslims might prefer bin Laden to us she made QUALITATIVE judgements using unrealistic, hyperbolic praise for OBL and downplaying the U.S.  "He helped.  We didn't.  People needed X, Y, Z.  Osama gave them X, Y, Z.  We gave them war."  Not only does she state it but she then reasserts it at the end when she ties it all together with the WoT.  Anyone who says she was simply playing the rhetorical device is, I think, less intelligent than Murray.  If that is at all possible.

But I'll give Murray one thing.  She hasn't voted against any funding for our troops unlike some other prominent politician I won't mention.

On her website, she is accusing George of attacking her "patriotism":

On Wednesday, George Nethercutt launched a desperate attack ad that questions Patty Murray's patriotism. Once again, he is not telling the truth.

then what was George attacking?  In so far as the ad was trying to show that Patty Murray was unfit to be a US Senator (or at least that she's not as fit as Nethercutt), it would appear to be criticizing her for something.  

How would you describe the quality for which she is being criticized in this ad?

The ad said something like "we don't need to be making excuses for terrorists..." Nowhere was patriotism mentioned. The "Mom, he's attacking my patriotism again" is the current invention of most Dems when they get criticized these days. I'm sure you are as tired of that whiny response as anybody else.

Sort of like the Zell Miller speech. He says he questions Kerry's judgement. Next day, "Zell attacked my patriotism...wah wah wah"

Maybe this will help inform our debate -- from merriam-webster:

Patriotism -- love for or devotion to one's country

So what is the charge?

• Aiding and abetting terrorists through advancing their political goals?
• Providing comfort to the enemy?
• Or just being soft in the war on terror?

I'd say the first two surely fall under the umbrella of attempting to attack your love or devotion to your country.  The third wouldn't be a good attack, because it doesn't point out any actual actions she took that show her being 'soft on terror'

So one more time -- What was the ad attacking if not her patriotism?  

The charge was that she is making excuses for the terrorists, not that she doesn't love her country? Again, you prove that the only way to support that joke of a response is to insert extra words into his mouth. Remember, this is not fantasy land, you can't accuse someone of attacking your patriotism through fanciful logic. At least he had the decency to quote her in the ad, even if as you claim it was taken out of context. She doesn't even have that much decency.