March 25, 2016: Political Hypocrisy Hits New Low

A Brief History

With the presidential campaign in full swing we have been subjected not only to derisive comments back and forth between candidates during debates and to reporters or during speeches, but also the inevitable television attack ads. This campaign season we also get “treated” to the same sort of mudslinging on the internet via Twitter and YouTube. Among all this dirt are hypocritical attacks by candidates and their parties against each other that amounts to the pot calling the kettle black, so to speak.

Digging Deeper

Candidate for President Donald Trump is accused of calling people names and leveling attacks on other candidates’ (or anyone opposed to him) political record or physical attributes, and yet the attacks against him are virtually unprecedented in primary campaign history. Trump calls Rafael Eduardo Cruz (aka “Ted” Cruz) “Lyin’ Ted” and points out Cruz’s apparent personal interest over the good order of the nation.

Cruz in turn hypocritically reacted with anger and outrage when Trump published an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife alongside a photo of Trump’s beautiful former model wife. Cruz emotionally condemned “bringing wives and kids into it” when in fact it was a PAC supporting Cruz that started the wife attack campaign by publishing an old model shot of Trump’s wife in the buff. Where was the Cruz outrage over that? Does he not expect some sort of retaliation for such a low tactic? Well, maybe he was too busy being a comedian…

Seriously, can someone look less presidential? No, a president need not be humorless, but come on!

Cruz and other Republicans are quick to condemn Trump’s derogatory comments about other persons’ personal appearance, and yet none of them have spoken with any outrage condemning the frequent comparisons between Donald Trump and an Orangutan or any other of the “orange” related swipes at “The Donald.” On top of it, when Senator Marc Rubio made fun of the size of Donald Trump’s hands and implied Trump was afflicted with an undersized penis (and made some pants wetting jibe, too), Ted Cruz did not immediately condemn Rubio’s outlandish and boorish behavior.

Apparently personal attacks are fine as long as they are against someone you do not support.

Republican hypocrisy in general also enters into the family realm, with the candidates of that party staking a claim to being the party of family values. Donald Trump has been married 3 times, and Ted Cruz’s mother and father are on their second marriages, with Ted’s mother having had a child out of wedlock between marriages. Republicans also claim to have some sort of religious high ground, when in fact many of the prominent Republican leaders have played musical chairs with their religion, such as George W. and “Jeb” Bush, Marco Rubio, Newt Gingrich and others. Ted Cruz was born Catholic, but switched to Evangelical Christian along with his mother shortly after his father made the switch. Did we mention Cruz’s father had run out on the family for several months in 1974?

Republican Ohio Senator Rob Portman is facing former Governor Ted Strickland for his Senate seat, and anti-Strickland ads complain that Ohio had lost 400,000 jobs while Strickland was Governor, conveniently not mentioning the fact that this economic debacle happened during a Republican administration that had seen the biggest financial collapse in US history outside of the Great Depression. In fact, it turns out Strickland had done a remarkable job preventing even more catastrophic loss of jobs, something that came out in neutral analysis after John Kasich beat Strickland to take the Governorship. The icing on this cake is that Portman was the US Trade Representative and then Budget Director under George W. Bush and is culpable for the enormous economic crash that resulted from that administration’s failures. Top that off with Kasich, who claims credit for generating new Ohio jobs, being a highly paid (over $600,000 in 2008, his last year) employee of Lehman Brothers, one of the financial companies responsible for that 2008 economic disaster.

For some unknown reason Republican candidates have been getting away with constantly referring to President Obama’s alleged bailout of the banking and financial Wall Street thugs that wrecked the economy, when in fact it was President GW Bush’s plan. Plus, blaming Obama and Hillary Clinton for messing up the situation in Libya and Syria/Iraq is laughable since Republicans stridently demanded that action be taken to support the Syrian rebels and Libyan rebels, which of course only really helped ISIS, not to mention the disastrous invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein, creating the power vacuum that spawned the mess we have now. On the other hand, Obama was first elected on a platform against military intervention and he allowed himself to get suckered into it by these Republicans. You have to think those that bestowed Obama with a Nobel Peace Prize would like to take it back!

Of course, the Democrats have dived into the pool of hypocrisy as well, as evidenced by Hillary Clinton’s biting question to Bernie Sanders asking where was Sanders in the 1990’s when Hillary was trying to get health care reform passed. Within a few minutes Sanders’s campaign had aired a video of Hillary thanking Sanders (then a congressman) for his valuable support. Speaking of Sanders’s “record”…

When Democrats expressed outrage that Republican Senators would not consider President Obama’s nomination for the Supreme Court, Republicans showed a old (1992) video of then Senator Joe Biden saying it was wrong to nominate a Supreme Court justice during an election campaign. Of course, it should be noted that Biden’s advice was not successful and no precedent actually exists that would preclude such a nomination and confirmation despite disingenuous Republican reference to “The Biden Rule.” Plus, no blockage of such a nomination was ever encouraged by Biden.

The icing on the political cake of hypocrisy has to be failed Presidential Candidate Willard “Mitt” Romney attacking Donald Trump over the failure to release tax records, claiming that Trump must therefore be “hiding something.” Seriously, this hypocrite is the same Mitt Romney that refused to release back tax records himself, largely believed to be because HE was hiding something! On top of it, Romney keeps his millions and millions of dollars in Swiss and Caribbean banks instead of American banks, the only real reason for which it to hide money from the tax man. Romney craved Donald Trump’s support and endorsement when Romney ran for President, and is seen on video thanking Trump profusely and lauding “The Donald” up and down. Question for students (and subscribers): Was he lying then, and telling us the truth about Trump now? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.

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