“Not to be condescending, but let me give you a little tip,” he tells National Review Online outside a convention hall on Massachusetts’ south coast. “Never ask a candidate if he’s confident he’s going to win: because the answer will always be ‘yes.’”Shows you how little Barney knows about how reporters do their jobs.
Not to be condescending, but like lawyers, we frequently have to ask questions of politicians that we already know the answers to. We also know that politicians are built to spin, obfuscate, and avoid the truth when it is inconvenient. It is one of the things we enjoy most about them. And while we often admire their sheer brazeness to say things we can hardly believe we get a kick out of actually hearing the words come out of their mouths.
Like for instance WaPo's Dana Milbank listening to Democratic "confidence man" Chris Van Hollen tell reporters how "confident" he is that Democrats will retain their majority in the House of Representatives, when all indications are the party is in for the drubbing of its life.
When Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters last month that it was possible that Democrats would lose control of the House, he was blasted by his fellow Democrats for uttering such an obviously true statement. Such truths are seen as demoralizing to the party base and so dangerous of becoming self-fulfilling prophesies.
Better to ignore such political realities when riding into the Valley of Death, like the famous 600 from Lord Tennyson's poem.
Barney will probably survive but many of his colleagues will go down as victims to Democratic and Presidential condescension.
Obama urged them into this valley of Death on health care, cap and trade and stimulus spending. Now he's leading the Charge of the Fright Brigade, trying to scare Democratic voters into showing up at the polls Nov. 2. Only he's not actually leading the charge. He's ordered it from the safety of command headquarters in the rear. He won't be on the ballot for another two years.
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