Hyperbole, Hypocrisy and Leftist Race Baiting

Monday was an interesting day; I learned a lot. If you ask a question, you’re making an assertion. If you make a statement but are later found out to be ridiculous, you get to palm it off on someone else. AND … If all else fails, you can always resort to calling your opponents “racist”.

This is how to try winning an argument if you are from the left.

My day started off by posing a question – Can the Sotomayor nomination be blocked? The conventional wisdom is that it can’t. I posed the question because of a seldom used Senate rule that I found out about. None the less, I posed a question. While any regular reader would know that I don’t agree with Judge Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, I don’t really agree with Chief Justice Robert’s either (IMO he is a right wing version of an activist judge).

Lo and behold, I’m made aware of a post over at my old friend TwoSentz’s blog:

On his site, Delmarva Dealings, G.A. Harrison postulates how great it would be to block the most qualified nominee to the Supreme Court that we have seen in the last 100 years. The reason? Politics as usual. Does this really surprise anyone?

What G.A. doesn't understand is that he is continuing to move to the extreme right where the hardliner, fringe elements of his party loiter. Fortunately, the GOP Senators on the judiciary committee do not suffer from ideological narrow-mindedness the way Mr. Harrison does. We will see strong bi-partisan support for her nomination, if we haven't already.

Typically, I would argue that any fool has a right to his or her opinion no matter how ill informed. The problem is that I never considered TwoSentz to be a fool. Admittedly, I was a tad perturbed by Two’s claim that Sotomayor is “the most qualified nominee to the Supreme Court that we have seen in the last 100 years.” Is she qualified? Yes. Will she faithfully interpret the constitution? Probably not. In any event, she certainly isn’t “the most qualified…”. She isn’t even the “the most qualified left-wing nominee.

That said, I was then made aware of something far more disturbing than Two’s understanding of questions versus statements:

Why does the Eastern Shore have so many racists and why do they feel the need to display there ignorant attitudes here on this blog? And when they proudly engage in such racism, why do they always cry foul (reverse racism) when the tables are turned on them? Please explain your views, anonymous racist commenters.

I seriously hope that someone (perhaps Two’s buddy Chuck) stole the user name and password to TwoSentz’s account over at SbyNEWS. That (or an emotional meltdown) are about the only logical explanations for such a post.

Why does the Eastern Shore have so many racists? What is the basis for such a statement? This sounds like typical left wing race baiting to me. You don’t agree with someone’s statements about something; a party involved is a “minority”. Call them a racist.

There are few problems with this guys. First of all, doing so destroys any credibility you may have once enjoyed. At some point you then begin to lose all of your audience except for your own inner circle of like minded individuals. Case in point – Jonathan Taylor. Taylor loves to claim a HUGE audience, yet objective measurements (such as those provided by Alexa) demonstrate that not only is his audience miniscule, it has actually fallen 60% over the last three months.

What do Taylor and some of TwoSentz’s authors have in common? A propensity to make outrageous statements of fact or opinion that are either provably false or lack a shred of evidence to back them up.

Second, this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Call people RACIST without the any evidence. At some point, people become de-sensitized to the charge. Then you may begin to see statements and behavior that truly have no place in the public square. Of course, these guys won’t take any of the blame. The fault lies with us evil Republicans.

Third, this could come back to bite them, HARD. We need only look back a few months to the Salisbury municipal elections. While Jim Ireton was always going to win (Barrie Tilghman fatigue took care of that) his margin of victory was driven by several other factors, including backlash against a disgustingly negative campaign waged by councilman Gary Comegys through is Barrie Comegys party surrogates.

I can only assume that Jim doesn’t want to be a one term wonder. Therefore, people who were so actively involved in Ireton’s campaign would be wise not to call a portion of Ireton’s constituents bad names AND risk de-sensitizing some of those same people who voted for Jim because they were disgusted with attacks made on him by the Barrie Comegys party.

For purposes of disclosure, I’ve been know to throw the race card a few times. I’ll also state here that I will probably do it again. However, I have done it rarely, done it for affect, done so narrowly, and provided evidence to back up my claim.

Case on point – Klan for Kratovil. With some of the same parties mentioned above calling Maryland Sen. Andy Harris a racist, I pointed out that some vocal Kratovil supporters were guilty of worse statements than Harris supporters were accused of. Of course, the Dems screamed bloody murder. It’s OK to demonize Republicans, but having the tables turned just isn’t fair. It’s also not fair to actually quote the source.

Now, before anyone goes screaming for Two’s, or even Chuck’s (who appears to be the most guilty party) head, I want you to stop and take a deep breath. They are entitled to their opinions. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes. However, we should all learn a little lesson about the blogosphere. As long as people are allowed (as they should be) to post statements (often anonymously) that range from well thought out to outrageous to disgusting, this is the price we pay. I, for one, am willing to pay it. However, we can all learn a little from the Golden Rule.