11/16 - Bryan: Taliban labels flying thick and fast

One might assume that after the events of September 11, labeling one's political opponents "Taliban" or other related slurs would be too far over the line for even the most aggressive of pundits. Sadly, and perhaps not surprisingly, one would be wrong.

Taliban labels had a long pedigree before September 11. Notably, Julian Bond of the NAACP repeatedly accused the Bush administration of "select[ing] nominees from the Taliban wing of the Republican party" for Cabinet positions. An older example comes courtesy of Harold Myerson, currently Executive Editor of the American Prospect, who in 1998 called California Assemblywoman Barbara Alby "a primitive out of the GOP's Taliban wing."

In the wake of September 11, few have used such labels - until this week. On Wednesday, Newsweek columnist Harold Fineman described a confrontation between Bush and Republican Congressmen Dick Armey and Tom DeLay over a bill on airport security. Fineman represents Armey and Delay's position this way: "To these conservative mullahs on the Hill, the idea [of federalizing airport security] was an iniquitous expansion of the federal payroll and power." That same day on "Hardball," Fineman told Chris Matthews, "[Bush] doesn't want to get in a firefight with the mullahs on the hill, namely the conservative Republicans who are loath to expand the federal work force." The term "mullah," which denotes a male Islamic religious teacher, has taken on an incredibly negative connotation since September 11; Fineman's use of the word to describe people he doesn't agree with is an abuse of a loaded term.

On the other side of the aisle, Thomas Sowell's syndicated column of November 16 concludes with this gem: "Even if the academic Talibans of the left were correct in all their beliefs about all current issues, it would still be dangerous to leave [college] students unable to weigh and analyze alternatives for themselves, because the issues in the years ahead of them are almost certain to be different."

Perhaps more disturbing than Sowell and Fineman's cheap shots are how such labels are circulating throughout popular political discourse - and even in the halls of Congress. According to US News and World Report's Margaret Mannix in her "Washington Whispers" column, a "prominent Democrat" referred to conservative Republican leaders as "the Republican Taliban". This prompted an outraged response from Armey. While Democrats are, of course, free to say what they want behind closed doors, anonymously dropping such tidbits to gossip columnists is an easy way to take a cheap shot at Republicans. It should be noted that, to his credit, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe denounced such labels on the Fox News show "Hannity and Colmes" on Wednesday when questioned directly about Mannix's report.

Meanwhile, partisan web sites such as Media Whores Online have picked up Taliban labels and run with them. On Wednesday, reporting on the quote in Mannix's column, the site headlined a story "Unpatriotic Fundamentalists Howl When Exposed: G.O.P. Taliban Continues War on America." At the conservative site FreeRepublic.com, posters have begun to refer to Bill Clinton as "Osama Bill Clinton," among other less tasteful names.

At all levels of political discourse, labeling one's opponent's with such loaded terms serves only to undermine constructive debate.

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Related links:
-Limbaugh hypocrisy and ethnic slurs (Brendan Nyhan, 9/25)
-Julian Bond crosses the line again (Brendan Nyhan, 7/10)

11/16/2001 10:59:42 AM EST |

11/14 Brendan: Limbaugh deception on recount and Hillary Clinton

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh is back with more misleading and false attacks - this time on the media consortium recount of the vote in Florida and Hillary Clinton.

First, Limbaugh twisted Florida voting standards on Monday (Windows Media Player audio - quote below begins at 0:23 in clip; text article based on comments at RushLimbaugh.com):

Now, these [the undervotes and overvotes studied in the media consortium recount] are illegal votes! An undervote and an overvote, they're called that because they're illegal! So Al Gore wins if all the fraudulent votes were counted.

In fact, however, the legal standard used in Florida is the intent of the voter. There is broad agreement that when the intent of the voter is discernible, then the vote should be counted. Overvotes and undervotes in which the intent of the voter is clearly discernible are neither "illegal" nor "fraudulent", which is why the consortium recount focused on ballots that potentially met this definition.

Of course, the standards by which intent should be determined are extremely controversial, as we saw last year, particularly for undervotes. Limbaugh's intent here is to cast doubt on the legally valid overvotes found on optical scan ballots. While the consortium found that Bush would have probably won the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, it also discovered a relatively large number of optical scan ballots in which voters filled in the bubble for Gore and also wrote his name in, meeting the legal standard of clear voter intent. These ballots are the reason the consortium found that Gore would have probably won a hypothetical statewide recount of over- and undervotes.

Later in Monday's show, Limbaugh lied about a statement made by Senator Hillary Clinton (Windows Media Player audio - quote below begins at 2:25 in clip):

Hillary Clinton blamed the Bush tax cuts for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Oh yes. Oh yes. She actually said it. I mean, I'm not expanding, I'm not exaggerating, I'm not interpolating - or [interpreting]. She actually said these massive tax cuts caused the terrorist attacks because it took away money from our preparedness budget.

This is a blatant misrepresentation of what Clinton said. The CNN transcript of the statement in question shows that Clinton is explaining her opinion on the debate over economic stimulus proposals:

My view on this, though, is pretty simple. We had eight years of prosperity because we paid down our debt and we got rid of our deficit. We hit a rough spot, and it was turned into a terrible bump because of the attacks of September 11.

If we hadn't passed the big tax cut last spring, that I believe undermined our fiscal responsibility and our ability to deal with this new threat of terrorism, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in today. But the fact is, we are.

And now we've got to figure out what's the best way out of it.

It is totally unreasonable to interpret a statement that the tax cut "undermined ... our ability to deal with this new threat of terrorism" as an allegation that the terrorist attacks were "caused" by the lack of resources from the tax cut.

First, a lack of resources logically cannot cause a terrorist attack. But, more importantly, Clinton's statement is made in the context of the current, post-attack debate on economic stimulus. That's why she says "this new threat of terrorism" and "the fix we're in today". Congress is debating how to allocate resources between economic stimulus, counter-terrorism efforts and other needs without significantly harming the government's fiscal health. My co-editor Ben Fritz has argued that Clinton's statement is a cheap shot, but that doesn't excuse Limbaugh's lying.

Update 11/15 6:05 PM EST: I should have noted above that the consortium recount was a statistical tie, as an alert reader pointed out. Also, while I accurately described the hypothetical Gore/Bush victory scenarios as the judgments of the media, I neglected to point out that not every consortium member drew such conclusions. See Jack Shafer's Slate story on this for more.

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Related links:
-New tax cut dissembling from Bush administration (Ben Fritz, 11/13)
-Limbaugh whitewashes his Jennings misquotes (Brendan Nyhan, 11/09)
-Limbaugh smears Clinton with hypothetical (Brendan Nyhan, 10/02)
-Limbaugh hypocrisy and ethnic slurs (Brendan Nyhan, 9/25)
-The Evolving Jargon of "Clintonization" (Brendan Nyhan, 9/4)
-Limbaugh's Daschle "devil" analogy (Brendan Nyhan, 7/21)
-Limbaugh deceptive on Social Security (Brendan Nyhan, 7/10)

11/14/2001 10:57:59 AM EST |

11/13 Ben: New tax cut dissembling from Bush administration

Six months after its passage and in the midst of a war, the Bush administration continues to dissemble about its tax cut.

Senator Hillary Clinton attacked the tax cut last week, saying that it "undermined our fiscal responsibility and our ability to deal with this new threat of terrorism," according to a Friday article in the Washington Times. This is a cheap shot: even if the decline in revenue from the tax cut causes the federal budget to slip into deficit, the government can borrow money to fund the war on terrorism, albeit not without some economic costs.

The response of a Bush spokesperson, however, is nothing less than blatant dissembling. The White House's Scott Stanzel told the Washington Times that "[a]lmost every leading economist believes the tax cut was the best way to stimulate growth in the slow economy that the president inherited."

In fact, however, just a cursory search reveals that a large number of economists, many of them "leading", were on record opposing the Bush tax cut. For instance, over 100 economists, including eight Nobel Prize winners, signed a statement saying that the Bush tax cut is "is too large, too skewed to the wealthy, and arrives too late to head off a recession."

Another example: In a January article, Larry Kudlow of the National Review observed that "all the liberal economists oppose George W. Bush's tax cut," noting such prominent names as Paul Krugman, Laura Tyson and Alan Blinder.

Senator Clinton's statement overstates the impact of potential budget deficits on government's ability to deal with the threat of terrorism. But that doesn't excuse a complete misrepresentation of reality by the White House. The administration should be able to defend its economic policy without lying about its support amongst experts.

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Related links:
-Wilentz's tax illogic (Brendan Nyhan, 9/2)
-Bush tax cut costs $1.35 trillion ... no, $1.8 trillion (Ben Fritz, 6/21)
-Recycling Rhetoric: Media Coverage of the Bush Tax Cut (Ben Fritz, 5/29)

11/13/2001 12:46:48 AM EST |

11/12 column: Pre-empting Debate on Economic Stimulus

By Ben Fritz

Although Congress has yet to take to the floor to debate economic stimulus proposals, the talking points of each side are already being defined in the media. Regrettably, some of the most aggressive rhetoric threatens to preclude substantive arguments over how best to revive the struggling economy. (read the whole column)

11/12/2001 06:12:15 AM EST |

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