Donald Trump stuck a stick into a hornets nest when he made his disgraceful comments about Senator John Mc Cain’s service to America.
The first people to call Trump out were Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. There is, if Twitter is to be believed, considerable support for Trump’s remarks among the far right wing of the party.
Democrats and Progressives have considerable experience being on the receiving end of GOP slanders and name calling, which is what GOPers do in the absence of facts or rational suggestions.
We don’t much like it.
John McCain is quite able to defend himself, squatting comfortably if not too safely in the Senate. After an indecently long interval, the GOP elite (represented by the Klown Kar, except Ted Cruz) rose up in protest as well.
There is a supreme irony here, in that even the GOP elite really doesn’t seem to like the use of the Swift Boat Beatdown, at least when applied to one of their own.
The “base” doesn’t see it that way: deliberately dumbed down by 40 years GOP policy telling them
–that the world is simple, that truth is only in black and white (applicable to print, not people)
–given the power, through gerrymandered districts, to command the Republican primaries, made a force to be reckoned with
It thinks this counts as reasonable political commentary.
John Kerry and Max Cleland are properly cited as victims of swift-boating. There is one more “swift-boated” Democrat, smeared by a Republican, and not usually mentioned in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s comments on Senator John McCain.
Tammy Duckworth, Democratic Congress critter from Illinois.
Ms. Duckworth apparently rang every contemptible cowardly bell in the heads of the GOP hierarchy:
1. Female (good only in their minds as a semen depository, or a forced incubator)
2. Born in Thailand (though of an American father, to a birther that makes her somehow “not American”)
3. Asian American (yellow menace threatening the purity of the white race)
4. Fluent in Thai, Bahassa, and Indonesian (uppity educated broad, plus she has a phD)
5. Combat veteran (makes the yeah-rah neo-cons who never served look bad)
6. Former Illinois Dept of Veterans Affairs appointee, specializing in working to improve benefits to disabled veterans, something the neo-cons would prefer we not even think about.
The conservative Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald both endorsed her.
The utterly odious, vile incumbent, Joe Walsh decided that swift boating was a great idea. I might add that this cretin was a radio personality who suggested we secure the Mexican border with a moat and alligators.
He tried to lower the boom on Duckworth in July 2012, at a campaign event, when he accused Duckworth of politicizing her military service and injuries, saying “my God, that’s all she talks about. Our true heroes, the men and women who served us, it’s the last thing in the world they talk about.”
The woman missing two legs and one arm. It’s pretty hard not to notice. Even for a TeaPublican.
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
