Damn Right They're Being 'Swiftboated'

The left is claiming that Graeme Frost is being 'swiftboated'.

Frost was trotted out by the Democrats as their 12-year-old poster boy for SCHIP, which is the new hot potato on Capitol Hill. The Democrats claimed that Frost represented 'working class families' but . . . it turns out that the kid goes to a $20,000 a year private school, and his dad is not a 'woodworker' but a well-to-do construction entrepreneur.

Funny how the left's definition of 'swiftboating' differs from that of the right's. I wonder why the left tries to use the term swiftboating at all - after all, many of the charges the swifties made against John Kerry turned out to be true. So much so, that Kerry was forced to recant his little 'Christmas in Cambodia' fable. So apparently the real defintion of swiftboating means to "use facts to prove a falsehood" and that being proven a liar constitutes an unfair smear. It's as if they are propounding the "we're liberals" defense: they can lie about anything they like and it is okay . . . because they are liberals and they have a right to claim the moon is made of green cheese if it suits them and how dare you suggest otherwise.

Well the right isn't swiftboating Graeme - he is only twelve years old and he actually is innocent in all this, but the Democrats unfairly "sent out a boy to do a man's job" as Mark Steyn put it. The right is swiftboating, i.e., pointing out the blatant dishonesty, of Graeme's parents and his Democrat handlers. The Democrats' modus operandi of late, from smearing Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, to calling General Petraeus a traitor before he had even opened his mouth, is so shot through with dishonesty that they must think it is working. It is time to put a stop to it, and if the Republicans can show how dishonest Frost's parents and the Democrats are on this, no amount of claiming that the Republicans are 'mean-spirited' is going to work. They are set up for yet another Betray Us backfire on this. Sure the American people are sympathetic to the healthcare needs of working families, but they are not at all sympathetic to a campaign of lies to gin up support for it. This is why this Republican 'attack' is not at all a diversion from the SCHIP debate, but rather is exactly on point: should the federal government be in the business of insuring folks that can actually afford it themselves? The Frost family is actually an argument for the Republican side of the debate, and this is why the left is so anxious to shield them from any scrutiny.

Sorry, sending out a kid and putting words in his mouth does not automatically shut down debate in this country. The Democrats, however, are naturally acting as if that is exactly how policy should be conducted. Just have a child deliver the address and watch the give and take of politics just magically disappear. It reminds me of Hillary Clinton's claim that health care is an issue that is 'beyond politics', meaning that all debate needs to cease immediately. The Democrats would have emotion trump the democratic process.