Quote for the Day: The Lies We Tell Ourselves edition.

 

Although a surfeit of numbers are being bandied, a pertinent one is missing — the number of legislators who have pledged to Norquist not to raise taxes. The number is: Zero. All pledges have been to voters.

George Will

There are lies that are petty. There are lies that are outrageous. But some lies are just perplexing. Conservative commentator George Will’s laughable claim that Republican legislators who signed Grover Norquist’s pledge not to raise taxes, were not actually signing a pledge to Norquist not to raise taxes, falls into the latter category. Who is the audience for this disingenuous nugget of sophistical nonsense?  Surely Will cannot expect that there’s a single progressive reading his column who’ll buy the silly claim. Surely he doesn’t expect to convince recalcitrant Republican Senators and Congressmen who are publicly repudiating the pledge they made to Norquist, and insisting that it is to the voters in their district to whom they owe their allegiance. The Zombie army of Teabaggers? They need no convincing, whether the pledge was signed to Norquist, the voters, or the Dali Lama, it’s all the same to them. So one can only conclude that, stunned by the results of the last election that saw voters rejecting even a “moderate” GOP candidate by a significant margin, our addle-brained, shell-shocked protagonist is simply lying to himself these days.

10 Comments

The funny part is that it’s NOT the Typical Teabagger’s taxes going up, it’s only the 1-2%’s.

Ever wonder why Teabaggers vote against their own interests? I don’t.

@ManchuCandidate:

Like that’s ever stopped the teahadis from whining about it. They were dead-sure that their taxes had gone up during the big “keep the gubmint outta my Medicare” rallies, despite the exact opposite being true.

Plus, there’s a pretty strong contingent that believe they’re just in a holding pattern until Sky Jeebus recognizes how fervently they hate all the right people and makes them a millionaire.

Sen DimWitt (R) S Carolina is stepping down to run the Heritage Foundation

@Mistress Cynica: Not that it will matter. The denizens of SC will replace him in kind.

When all else fails, wank – as the actress said to the bishop. Or even just cause it’s Thursday. Peggy can do it with her legs crossed under the ‘desk’ from Stephanopulous. Never mind ‘where there’s a will there’s away’ George is never sure he can achieve critical mass – if you know what I mean – which leaves him open to bullying by the big boys. Hence his certainty of The Romney Landslide. There’s a reason you never see Republican pundits in the shower at Gold’s.

Dick Armey got discharged. His kiss-off requires a total suspension of disbelief. That he’ll live 20 years to collect. I’m sure when he loooks in the mirror every morning to sluice out his pinkeye with Opcon A he knows that’s not gonna happen. To the Kochs, $40M over 20 years is about what they’d pay to garage their cars in NYC. One might speculate about ‘disgraced’ but the Republican brain lacks that function.

@DElurker: but without his seniority and committee assignments. You can’t ruin this moment for me.

@DElurker: I’m curious as to the timing. Demint is only two years into his second six-year term. Why quit now?

Had Alvin Greene not inexplicably won the Democratic primary, Demint was less likely to win reelection in 2010. Will whoever is appointed serve the rest of his term or will there be a special election at some point?

@mellbell: According to this WSJ article, the timing seems to be purely opportunistic.

This just made me laugh:

Mr. DeMint, who was a market researcher before he entered politics, said he plans to take the Heritage Foundation’s traditional research plus that of think tanks at the state level and “translate those policy papers into real-life demonstrations of things that work.” He said, “We want to figure out what works at the local and state level” and give those models national attention.

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