The Disingenuity is Palpable

David Bernstein, who’s posts at the Volokh Conspiracy are the most stridently partisan in favor of McCain, has reached a new level of disingenuousness in this post.

First things first, I will do you the courtesy, Professor Bernstein, that you don’t think Obama is an extremist or has extremist views.

But this statement is beyond the pale:

the only actual implicit criticism in the post is, “By the way, does the famously open-minded Sen. Obama, who by his own account has learned a great deal from his friendships with anti-American radicals such as Khalidi* and Jeremiah Wright, have any conservative friends?”

First, that is the only explicit criticism.  Second the explicit point of any and all such posts by you and other McCain-Palin water carriers is to create a link in the collective voter consciousness between radicals of various strips and Obama. To claim that the only “actual” criticism in the post was that Obama doesn’t have any conservative friends doesn’t pass what countless law students refer to as “the laugh test.”  There is an implicit criticism inherent in your calling attention to the links.

Your professed reasons for attempting to create that link are irrelevant at this juncture, because of what you have done.  You closed off comments, supposedly due to “vitriol.”  That may be so, but then you need to make a post explaining away the fact that an organization that McCain chaired gave money to that same anti-American radical.  To simply respond as you did in the comments, that you haven’t seen any proof that McCain knew about it, isn’t enough.  McCain was at the very least complicit in funding an individual you are attempting to associate with Obama in a negative light.  To say that McCain was only complicit and didn’t know about it is to say that he was completely unaware of the goings on that were happening during his watch and with his prestige attached.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it is this kind of behavior that has driven countless people away from McCain.  So, on second thought, don’t explain it.  Keep up that kind of behavior.

ETA: One sentence and change “do” to “due.” D’Oh!

Posted in Ramblings
Tags: Politics, Ramblings