WASHINGTON, January 17, 2012 – Election Year 2012 begins in dead earnest this week. Congress has been in continuous session, more or less, since the Christmas holidays, the Obama Administration’s violation of the separation of powers notwithstanding. The Administration itself has been busily at work stimulating its campaign coffers, the continuing jobless rate notwithstanding. And the Supremes—well, they continue to do what it is that they do.
But it’s really the election that counts this year. The unwritten question on November’s ballots is this: does America want to go down the failed path of Euro-socialism or not? A vote for the incumbent this fall will ratify that disastrous notion. A vote against—assuming no third-party lunacy—may alter America’s decline and fall, or at least slow it to a crawl.
Online satirical poster of Harry Reid. Origin, unknown, but verbiage pertinent to today's definitions.
Economics and, oddly, political philosophy in its fullest sense are now on the plate for all to see. So our next few columns will devote themselves to defining and re-defining terms, setting the stage, and offering our own predictions for what’s likely to go down in this momentous year as well as our prescriptions for real economic recovery—most of which will never see the light of day if voters keep the Luddites, flat-earthers, deadbeats, and crony capitalists of either party in power.
What you get mostly in politics today is rhetoric, not fact; slanders and smears, not sober assessments; and demagoguery and lies, never truth. “Politics is personal” was a 1960s catch phrase. It seemed silly at the time. But over the past 40+ years, we’ve learned to our dismay that the then-New Left was totally serious about the notion.
Nothing embodies “personal” politics like the overheated rhetoric we’re about to get poured on our hapless heads like a never-ending series of foul-smelling, brimming chamber pots. Not surprisingly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—he who has not bothered to pass a National budget in three fiscal years running—fired the opening salvo at the start of the week. The American Thinker summarizes his helpful remarks quite succinctly:
“On Sunday's ‘Meet the Press,’ in his usual ingratiating tone of voice, Sen. Harry Reid urged Republican lawmakers to abandon their partisanship and join him in passing everything Democrats could dream of. The GOP House, he said, had been ‘led over a cliff’ by Tea Party ‘extremists’ and thus misled into supporting unpopular positions such as their temporary opposition to a 2% payroll tax cut. As a final gesture of goodwill, the Democratic leader said that he hoped Republicans had learned their lesson and would not repeat their mistakes in the future.”
Note the extreme, yet hackneyed rhetoric unloaded by the Majority Leader, a literal ex-pugilist, not surprisingly. Hewing to the Alinskyite line, Tea Party “extremists” are the Enemy of the People here, not Reid’s Socialist Party, aka the Democrats. (Tea Partiers, 99% polite and law-abiding are the precise opposite of extreme, of course.)
And under these “extremists” the hapless and usually compliant Republican Party in the House has been, like a herd of lemmings, “led over the cliff,” when, in fact, it’s Reid’s own President and party who’ve led our bad but once fixable economy “over the cliff.”
This calls to mind an old 1950s schoolyard taunt that may or may not still be current. When someone badmouthed you in the playground, the standard defense was to shout back, “Everything you say sticks back on to you.” And so it is with Reid’s obnoxious, condescending rhetoric. What he’s accusing the Tea Party and the Republicans of doing, his own party has been doing all along. Whenever a Republican is accused of some nefarious deed, you can be sure the Democrats have already perpetrated it and continue to do so.
One of the classic examples of this little game is the current usage of the terms “partisan” and “non-partisan.” Let’s examine a pair of (hopefully) non-ideological standard definitions here. Mirriam-Webster.com defines the adjectival version of “partisan” as:
“a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance.”
The same source defines “nonpartisan” as:
“not partisan; especially : free from party affiliation, bias, or designation <nonpartisan ballot> <a nonpartisan board>”
It’s clear from Reid’s Sunday diatribe, however, that the left has, once again, quietly altered the actual meaning of both words—an alteration that, in fact, probably first gained traction here when the Clintonistas, those master wordsmiths, moved into town in 1993.
The New Devil’s Dictionary, which we’re serially assembling in this column, thus offers you a new pair of definitions. Memorize them. It will help you cut through all the political fecal material that’s headed your way over the next nine months of 2012.
New Devil’s Dictionary definition of “partisan”:
Adjective, pejorative tense. Modifier that describes any thought, word, deed, opinion, or legislation uttered by, written by, or otherwise offered by a Republican.
As for “nonpartisan,” the New Devil’s Dictionary defines it thusly:
Adjective, connoting praiseworthiness. Modifier that describes any thought, word, deed, opinion, or legislation uttered by, written by, or otherwise offered by a Democrat.
Oh, and let’s not forget another important adjective that encompasses both the above, “bipartisan.” As the New Devil defineth:
Adjective, connoting praiseworthiness. Short definition: Word used to describe legislation in which the Democrats get everything that they want.
Full definition: Modifier that describes any thought, word, deed, opinion, or legislation uttered by, written by, or otherwise offered by a Democrat, with particular reference to left-liberal laws supported by Democrats as well as coerced or bamboozled Republicans who are said, in such instances, as to acting in a “bipartisan spirit.”
An allied adjective often associated with the above usages is “mean-spirited”:
Adjective, pejorative. Anything whatsoever that is proposed by a Republican, as in “mean-spirited, highly partisan legislation that’s backed by Tea Party extremists.”
Just thought you’d like to know. More to come.
Read more of Terry's news and reviews at Curtain Up! in the Entertain Us neighborhood of the Washington Times Communities. For Terry's investing insights, visit his WT Communities column, The Prudent Man in Politics.
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