I Told You So: TeaPublican Talking Points Revisited

Last week I wrote a long (at least for me) blog post about Three Rules to guide you in understanding how TeaPublicans deflect attention from their own unpopular agenda by obfuscation and lying. Over the past few days, we have been treated to three prime examples of this process in action.

Here in my adopted home state of Louisiana, we have a true class act in Senator "Diaper" Dave Vitter. This weekend, Vitter has taken up the charge that President Obama has been engaged in "crony capitalism" in the thoroughly bogus Solyndra scandal. The charge is that the Obama administration gave undue, if not illegal, preference to campaign contributors whose government-backed company failed. The problem is, Diaper Dave has been urging the Department of Energy to provide loans to companies owned by his campaign contributors. To make him even more of hypocrite, the companies he was shilling for offer old technologies in competition with the green solutions that Solyndra was unsuccessfully working toward. Remember rule #3: Project your weakness unto your enemy.

Two more examples from the national stage. Mitt "The Flipper" Romney has blathered on about his business savvy as opposed to the career politician and community organizer in the White House. Romney opined that the jobs plan announced today by Obama would not create jobs, but actually lose jobs. Well, The Flipper has a slight problem since his most successful private sector job as head of Bain Capital had the Mittster responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs as his venture capital firm oversaw the demise of numerous business to benefit his shareholders. Combination of rule #3 and rule #2: Obfuscate the simple.

Finally, we have Paul Ryan, aka Ayn Rand's love child, crying that Obama's jobs plan is "class warfare." What gall. Here is the guy who has proposed gutting most of the major government programs to help the poor and the middle class whining that millionaires being asked to pay more taxes (which are at an all-time low in that tax bracket) is an attack. On whom? Even billionaire Warren Buffett has called for more fairness in the tax code. We are even calling it the Buffett rule: CEOs should be taxed at least at the same tax rate as their employees. Name calling certainly comes under rule #1: Vilify your enemy, with rules #2 and #3 thrown in for good measure.

There you have it, playing out right before your eyes. At the same time, just remember the real TeaPublican slogan: Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain.