The Ugly Democratic Primaries Were The Republicans' Fault

This kind of thing really irks me. Liberals are famous for rewriting history to their own advantage, and this presidential campaign has already seen quite a bit of that (mostly from the Obama campaign trying to keep up with his gaffes). Here, from Slate, is yet another liberal moaning about how Republicans have cornered the patriotism market, and engages in some ridiculous revisionism along the way:

The attacks on Dukakis—which tapped into nativist fears about his swarthy, beetle-browed looks, his ethnic last name, and his Jewish wife—stand alongside the Willie Horton ads from that year as prime exhibits in one of the sleaziest campaigns in presidential history. And this year we've already heard echoes of it, with the Republicans casting Barack Obama as un-American—an exotic foreigner raised partly in Indonesia with a Muslim middle name, married to a woman who said that only her husband's political achievements have made her "proud" of her country, a cosmopolitan elitist too snooty to wear a flag pin in his lapel or clasp his hand to his breast during the national anthem.

Clever. Liberal writers are desperately hoping that you will forget that the ugliness of the Democratic primary was instigated by . . . Democrats, and are trying to make you think that those emails castigating Obama as a muslim were really sent by Karl Rove. Quite reminiscent of Jay Carney blaming Republicans for rumors about the Michelle Obama 'whitey' video, a video chiefly promoted by Democratic clown blogger Larry Johnson.

This is another of those silly leftist conceits: that Democrats never play smashmouth politics, never lie about their opponents, and never engage in smear tactics. Of course the 2008 presidential primaries showed the world how nasty and savage the Dems' political instincts really are, which is why this revisionist campaign is now underway.

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