Boxer vs. Rice - A Textbook Example of GOP Expertise at Manipulating a Discussion

[stevenleser]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_070115_boxer_vs__rice__96_a_t.htm

January 15, 2007 at 10:54:53

Boxer vs. Rice – A Textbook Example of GOP Expertise at Manipulating a Discussion

by Steven Leser

I frequently tell Progressives who criticize Democrats, you have no idea how expert these Republicans are at cynically changing the subject and as a result how careful you have to be at framing an argument. The topic being discussed at a congressional hearing was the conduct of the Iraq war. Obviously, Rice and the Bush administration do not want to discuss the Iraq war and they do not want to be accountable for the Iraq war. See the bottom of this article for a link to and excerpt from the piece in the New York Times that discusses the exchange.

Right wing pundits and the conservative blogosphere jumped all over this. To illustrate how silly all of this is, Rush Limbaugh, who was fired from ESPN for making racially insensitive remarks about an African American NFL Quarterback had this to say as quoted in the below NY Times article "Here you have a rich white chick with a huge, big mouth, trying to lynch this, an African-American woman, right before Martin Luther King Day, hitting below the ovaries here,"

I guess Limbaugh was taking a break from making fun of Parkinson's patients.

Progressives who frequently comment on the online News site for which I write, OpEd News, frequently criticize Democrats for not 'charging the machine gun nests' as it were. What we have in this situation is evidence of exactly how challenging it is even just to frame what appears to be a straightforward argument. Ms Rice has no close relatives in Iraq, neither does Senator Boxer, so they need to try to be more compassionate when discussing whether more troops should be sent to Iraq or when the ones already there should be brought home. That to me sounds obvious or straightforward.

However, since Republicans are desperate to have the attention for failures in Iraq focused elsewhere, any opening they think they can use will be exploited to its fullest possible extent.

This tactic of Rice, Limbaugh, Tony Snow and the rest of the Conservative world is politics at its worst. The American people deserve a solid, hard-hitting look at everything regarding the Iraq war. Republicans are determined to deny the American People this investigative examination of Iraq and will use any means necessary to manipulate the discussion into anything else other than Iraq.

The rest of the Democratic world deserves some criticism as well for not coming immediately and more forcefully to Senator Boxer's defense. Senator Boxer did not say or do anything that was inappropriate. I read her statement several times with an eye to trying to see something that might be wrong.

As Gertrude Stein would have said, "There is no there, there."

Honest journalists, famous and otherwise, need to step up to the plate and help expose the Republican tactics for what they are, desperate, cynical and manipulative attempts to avoid accountability on Iraq.

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From Passing Exchange Becomes Political Flashpoint http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/world/americas/13rice.html :

In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Ms. Rice suggested that Ms. Boxer had set back feminism by suggesting during the hearing that the childless Ms. Rice had paid no price in the Iraq war.

"I thought it was O.K. to be single," Ms. Rice said. "I thought it was O.K. to not have children, and I thought you could still make good decisions on behalf of the country if you were single and didn't have children."

During the Thursday hearing, Senator Boxer told Ms. Rice: "Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families. And I just want to bring us back to that fact."

[procopia]

1. Another textbook example

was the ridiculous hoopla over Kerry's botched joke.

[rock]

2. I thought it was O.K. to be single"

So she admits it then. She has no children thus she has no children in bush*s war.

[ixion]

3. framing the debate is key to restoring the republic... it all starts there

if the dems continue to allow these (bogus) logic reversals -- rather than just calling them what they are -- as long as they allow crap like that to enter the debate and allow the MSM to enable it by not refuting an obvious rhetorical statement that is factually void, they'll continue to 'lose' the debate. guaranteed.

The way to stop these is to simply call it what it is and not allow it to hijack the debate.

[agincourt]

4. American soldiers dying and wounded in a Bushler quagmire,

And all Condi can do is spin someone's words into an insult that isn't even there. These are spoiled children running this country who need to be shown the rod. All of Bushler's people.

[Cleita]

5. Boxer said:

My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family.

She should have said:

My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price either.

This was a case where you don't say it but let the listener or reader mentally fill in the blanks. She gets the point across yet there are no words to parse here from the opposition.

Barbara is usually on her toes with these exchanges but this time that little bit of too much information gave the RW pundits a wedge to open the debate with.