Joe Conason: The Right’s Twisted Blame Game

from Truthdig:



The Right’s Twisted Blame Game

Posted on Mar 26, 2009
By Joe Conason


As Barack Obama’s economic advisers confront choices that vary from bad to worse in their mission to revive the financial sector and the broader economy, it is worth remembering that those choices were in essence inherited by the president, who is still new to his office. Listening to his critics, especially on the right, it would be easy to believe that the president is personally responsible for ballooning deficits, gigantic bailouts, ridiculous bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but it’s entirely false—and merely the latest episode in an old political con game that is all too typical of Washington.

Ever since Election Day 2008, the usual suspects have been hard at work, deflecting responsibility from the Bush administration (and the Republicans in Congress) for the catastrophic effects of conservative policy enacted during the past eight years. Within days after Obama’s victory, as stock prices fell, radio host and ideological commissar Rush Limbaugh exclaimed that we were already in the “Obama recession.”

In fact, the economy had been shrinking for nearly a year by then, and the market was responding to bad economic news rather than the election result.

But facts are inconvenient for propaganda—especially when politicians and pundits are seeking to escape blame for policies that have failed.

Among the boldest perpetrators of this con game over the past few decades is Limbaugh, who shares with his fellow Republicans a peculiar method of timing the blame for economic woe. When he was flacking for the first President Bush back in 1992, he wrote: “The worst economic period in the last 50 years was under Jimmy Carter, which led to the 1981-82 recession, a recession more punishing than the current one.” But of course the president during the 1982 recession was not named Carter; that president was the sainted Ronald Reagan. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090325_the_con_game_of_blame/

going into the elections. his 'genius' is his ability to rationalize anything. he can take a argue with monumental certitude something that contradicts what he said with equal certitude the week before. from their lofty perches on the country's biggest soapbox the talk radio monopoly enables the republicans in monumental levels of denial and hypocrisy. without their talk radio monopoly they'd be lost and powerless. they would have to start thinking for themselves and wouldn't be able to blame liberals for everything anymore.