Democrats have a tendency to excoriate Republicans for doing the very things they have done, blithely ignoring the hypocrisy in their accusations. Let’s take a look at some of these accusations and consider whether there is basis for complaint.
- “I refuse to acknowledge as my president a man who lies.”
Hmm. There are some attendant problems here. First of all, like it or not, the man who was elected and sits in the Oval Office is every American’s president whether we choose to acknowledge him as such or not.
Second, if we wish to denounce presidents who lie, we could begin with President Bill Clinton who forcefully claimed he had not had sex in the White House with Monica Lewinsky, which we later found out he had. A lie. Then, more recently, we have Obama’s claim that if we liked our doctors and our insurance plans we could keep them, even though he knew at the time that we would not be able to. Another lie. Or even more egregious, his repeated lie that the Bengazi attack was motivated by a scurrilous anti-Muslim video, rather than by an Islamic extremist group that had risen to power in the failed state that his defeat of Lybian leader Gaddafi had created. And then there is President Obama’s public declaration that his administration was going to work closely with the Trump team to ease the transition from the Obama to the Trump administration. But instead, while he smiled and chatted with president-elect Trump, Susan Rice was collecting and disseminating confidential information about Trump’s team including who they were considering for cabinet posts. But, of course, these two lying president were both Democrats, so Democrats simply ignore their peccadilloes.
Third, and most important, the “lie” to which they refer is Trump’s tweet that Obama had “wiretapped” him. There was no wiretapping, the media argues. That takes a warrant or else it would be illegal. But of course, as President Nixon proved, presidents are not always above breaking the law. But that aside, whether Trump Towers were wired tapped is moot, since it is now evident that Trump and his team were surveilled and their names, political strategies, and even personal information was widely disseminated throughout the Obama administration. So, not a lie at all. To suggest that the use of the word “wiretapped” makes it a lie is disingenuous and grossly unfair.
- “Republicans just want to take peoples’ rights away from them.”
Hmm. What rights are we referring to? The right of Americans to believe in God and practice their religious beliefs without interference by the government? The right to bear arms? The right to free speech? No, it is the Democrats who are denying Americans those rights. Obama’s administration attempted to force the Little Sisters of the poor, whose religious beliefs teach against birth control, to offer birth control as part of the health care plan they had to give their employees. Every time there is a killing involving guns, Democrats rush immediately to call for a stricter ban on firearms, despite the Second Amendment. And conservative speakers are routinely prevented from speaking on college campuses and elsewhere by left-leaning crowds who forget that their right to peaceful assembly ends when it prevents another individual’s right to free speech. Republicans, on the other hand, want to protect peoples’ rights, including the right of an unborn child to be born.
- “It was unfair for Merrick Garland not to have been considered for the Supreme Court vacancy during the final year of President Obama’s administration.”
Uh huh. That’s what they say now. But what did they say before? As a senator, “Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued that President George Bush should delay filling a Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, until the presidential election was over, and that it was ‘essential’ that the Senate refuse to confirm a nominee to the court until then” ( Davis, Julie HIrschfeld. New York Times. Feb. 22, 2016.). In 2007, Senator Chuck Schumer encouraged Democrats to reject any Supreme Court nominee Bush might make in the last year of his presidency. In 2005, Senator Russ Feingold said he wouldn’t dismiss filibustering any Bush nominee, and then Senator Barak Obama voted to filibuster Justice Alito, a filibuster which eventually failed. Finally, according to CBN News, “Democrats in (the) Senate passed a resolution in 1960 against election-year Supreme Court appointments when Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president. Hypocrisy is an art form in the Democratic Party.
- “Republicans have destroyed the Senate forever by invoking the nuclear option for Supreme Court Justices.”
Well, no, the Democrats actually started this. The Constitution does not set down rules by which the Senate operates. Those rules are decided by the Senators themselves and can be changed at any time that a majority desires to change them. Harry Reid started us down this road in 2013 when he led the Senate Democrats to invoke the “nuclear option,” using a parliamentary procedure to change the rules to allow judicial nominees to be confirmed by a simple majority rather than the 60 votes previously required. Reid justified his move by asserting “It’s time to change the Senate before this institution becomes obsolete.” The news media applauded the move. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called it “an affirmative win for democracy,” the Los Angeles Times called it “a victory not just for the Democrats but for good government,” and Ron Brownstein of CNN said “The idea of requiring a super majority for the president to appoint his nominees just is anachronistic” (Politico). So, when Democrats threatened to use a filibuster to try to block a vote on Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, Republican Mitch McConnell simply followed Harry Reid’s example and held a vote to change the rules. Unprecedented? Disastrous? No, just a continuation of what the Democrats themselves began.
- “Republicans wage a war against women, in part not wanting them to earn as much as men.”
Nationally, women earn about 76.5 cents to every dollar earned by men. On Elizabeth Warren’s staff, however, women who worked for her the entire year of 2016 earned only 71 cents to every dollar earned by men on her staff–$20,000 per year less (Fox News and Huffington Post). The Huffington Post explains, however, that several women who only worked for her part of the year, having left then for other positions, earned higher salaries which would have raised the average. That doesn’t really change the facts. Those women who worked all year for Ms. Warren earned less than their male counterparts. Period. In the Obama White House, the gap in wages between male staffers and female staffers was 13 percent.
Once again, the Democrats don’t do well at practicing what they preach.