The former president said, “I will never forget the parents of children with autism and other serious conditions who told me on the campaign trail that they couldn’t afford health care and couldn’t qualify their children for Medicaid unless they quit work and starved or got a divorce. Are these the family values the Republicans are so proud of?”
Yeah, yeah, they’re the family values we’re so proud of — how right you are, Billy J.
That was the cheapest shot of Clinton’s speech, and one of the cheapest shots of the convention (which is saying something). And we need no lectures on family values from the likes of Bill Clinton.
He said, “What about the assault on science and the defense of torture?” Well, there has been no assault on science, unless he means that the Bush administration has not marched to Al Gore’s tune. As for “the defense of torture” — waterboarding and mass-murdering terrorists is a fairly complicated issue, and Clinton knows it.
“What about the war on unions and the unlimited favors for the well-connected?” A war on unions? And did he really mean “unlimited”? And weren’t the Clinton years a bonanza for the well-connected, including big-money-men from the East?
“What about Katrina and cronyism?” he said. Yeah, what about them? And is Bill Clinton going on about other people’s cronyism? Shouldn’t President Lippo keep somewhat mum about that?
And get this: “On the two great questions of this election — how to rebuild the American dream and how to restore America’s leadership in the world — [McCain] still embraces the extreme philosophy that has defined his party for more than 25 years.”
In other words, he dates this “extreme philosophy” to Reagan, and he considers Reaganism extreme. Well, then we must be an extreme nation: because we elected Reagan twice, by very, very wide margins. I’m a Reaganite. You might well be a Reaganite — and Bill Clinton considers us “extremists.” And we say, Nuts to that.
Clinton further said, “It’s a philosophy the American people never actually had a chance to see in action fully until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and the Congress.”
This brings up a point I have long made: the gap between conservative perceptions of Bush and liberal perceptions of Bush. Conservatives I talk with think that Bush has been a big-spending, amnesty-granting squish. And liberals think he’s Goldwater at his purest.
What a screwy country.
Clinton said, “It [whatever] didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it will not work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.” What does the “right side of history” mean? It is Marxian claptrap, as far as I’m concerned. All it means is, “I think I’m right.”
Clinton gave a superb speech, from a political point of view. But from the point of view of truth and light — cripe.