VPOD 111: Regarding Eric Cantor and Red State
By JR Hoeft | Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 | Podcasts, PolicyListen to/Download the podcast
“Facts are stubborn things,” said President John Adams. “whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Unfortunately, in a post written late yesterday on Red State about House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), facts about him were widely ignored, distorted, and taken out of context.
In a screed by Michael Hammond called “The Passion Deficit”, he takes Cantor to task for a perception that somehow Cantor is weak on spending cuts, weak on defunding ObamaCare, and weak on defunding Planned Parenthood.
What is the basis for Hammond’s remarks?
Taken out of context, he interprets this statement by Cantor to demonstrate the potential for compromise, and, in Hammond’s view, to capitulate on the more controversial aspects of H.R. 1 – the Continuing Resolution to fund the government for the next seven months:
“I think that we are trying to demonstrate right now that we don’t want to see a shutdown and there will be no policy changes in the temporary CR that we will proffer this week,” Cantor said. “However, in the long term, again, for the remainder of the fiscal year, it is up to Harry Reid to answer to the members of his body and then thus their constituents as to where they stand. And why he is fearful of holding a vote on some of these issues is really the question to be asked.”
How much of that statement did Hammond actually use to justify his post for Cantor:
“…we’re trying to demonstrate right now that we don’t want to see a [government] shutdown…”
That’s all Hammond used. Really?
In this week’s CR, yes, the Pence Amendment and defunding of Obamacare were not included, but they STILL EXIST in HR 1.
Hammond completely missed Cantor’s point about Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid abject refusal to even vote on HR 1, forcing us into this discussion of a two week extension in the first place.
While Hammond continues to ignore facts and arbitrarily come to conclusions about Cantor, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R.-Ohio), he completely misses Republican’s leadership’s point. For example, he misses Boehner’s insistence that the Senate still take up HR 1.
Speaking about Planned Parenthood, Cantor’s office makes it plain where he stands in this statement to Bearing Drift:
“The House has already made it very clear that we do not support tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood funding. The Pence amendment to accomplish this limitation was approved with bipartisan support in the 7-month CR. We now need to see where the Senate stands.”
Additionally, Cantor over the past several days has said consistently and often that we will continue to cut spending and that this first extension is only the first step in cutting that spending.
Speaking about this $4 billion cut in this two week extension, Cantor says:
“Now that Congressional Democrats and the Administration have recognized the need for spending cuts – and agreed with our math on the level of the cuts – I am hopeful that Leader Reid will join us on a long-term measure that contains serious spending reductions, or offer a plan of his own. We need to act responsibly and put together a measure that will fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year instead of short-term bandaids. The sooner we can find agreement for cutting spending while funding the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, the sooner we can focus on additional pro-growth measures to jump start the economy and create jobs in the private sector.”
That doesn’t sound like someone who is capitulating on cutting spending; who is capitulating on defunding Obamacare; who is capitulating on the Pence Amednment!
But Cantor goes further. He talks about the short-term continuing resolution and cutting spending on Bloomberg’s “Inside Track”:
“The American people won round one, because Washington is now taking the first steps toward doing what most people are doing right now, which is tightening our belt and learning how to do more with less. This initial interim step to cut spending is exactly where we need to be headed for the rest of the year, because we need to get our fiscal house in order, to create an economy where jobs are going to grow. That is really the intention here, to get the economy growing and get more people back to work.”
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, he talks about Republicans Leading On The Economy, Tax Reform, and Entitlement Reform:
“We have an economy that is still ailing with too many people out of work. Our focus is to try and jump start this economy. What we continue to hear when we talk to small and large businesses is – if you want to fix the economy fix the deficit. If you want to provide the kind of environment for long term economic growth make sure you get your fiscal house is in order. Republicans are taking the small steps this week and we will continue to do that for this fiscal year, but everyone knows that the uncertainty hanging over the economy is caused by the entitlement future of this country. We just can’t keep going like we are going. That is why Republicans have said, when we produce our budget … we are going to include entitlement reform in that budget.”
On CNN’s “Situation Room” he discusses how Republicans are taking action, while Democrats talk about talking:
“Meetings are great and talk is great, but we need to see action. The American people elected us to cut spending so we can create an environment for jobs in America. The House has acted. We have demonstrated that we want to see discretionary spending brought down to levels of 2008. We’ve seen no counteraction, we’ve seen no position that has been expressed by the other side at all. The President has not laid out what his vision is, and frankly Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate have not for once even posited what their position is. The American people expect us to do what they are doing, its tightening the belt, its learning how to do more with less. That’s a reality today, and we’ve got to do that in order to get the private sector growing.”
Does this sound like a man not committed to taking on spending on principle? Not committed to doing what he and his fellow Republicans campaigned on?
Absolutely not.
The reality is that Hammond and Red State seem to have an agenda and they are engaged in what amounts to irresponsible blogging. At a time when the focus clearly should be focused on the administration and Senator Harry Reid and the Democratic Senate’s failed leadership – including Virginia Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner, Hammond chose to make up fairy tales and hear things that simply aren’t being said; he has chosen to read between the lines when everything is being clearly said and clearly written in black and white.
Red State, you’re better than this.
Finally, and this is a sidebar comment, I was struck that in this week before Lent in Christianity, Hammond used the title “The Passion Deficit”, an allusion to Christ’s passion, and compared the number of abortions conducted to a “Schindler’s List” for a post that is primarily critical of our first Jewish Majority Leader. I am willing to give Hammond the benefit of the doubt and that this was just gross ignorance – especially given how wrong he is on other aspects of his post. However, words have meaning. While it is likely he meant no harm, this kind of rhetoric is not helpful to the cause of conservatism and fiscal responsibility.
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Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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9 Responses to "VPOD 111: Regarding Eric Cantor and Red State"
I, like you, am getting tired of the selective quotations and edited pictures that seem to be increasing rather than decreasing. The leftists and their media are the most relentless and vicious purveyors of these techniques so it is sad when people on the right do it too.
Remember in 2009 that picture of a man holding a rifle near an Obama rally that the left and MSNBC said was evidence of Tea Party violence? What puzzled me was the odd cropping of the picture when I first saw it – only the rifle and the man’s leg was shown. Then the full picture came to light – it was a black man holding the rifle and it turned out he was demonstrating on some gun rights issue that the police had cleared. Of course the leftist Dems were never shown the full picture and they probably never visited any news site revealing the hoax. They believe to this day I’m sure that there are Tea Party guys stalking Obama with rifles.
I think we all know where this kind of nonsense leads.
Yow! Good work, JR!
[...] J.R. Hoeft at Bearing Drift has the full story: Regarding Eric Cantor and Red State [...]
Taken out of context like that Perriello quote, “If you don’t tie our hands we will keep stealing” that was used ad nauseum by the right? Point i’m making is that it isn’t just the left that does this kind of stuff.
For Reference: “If there’s one thing i’ve learned up here, and i didn’t really need to come up here to learn it, is the only way to get Congress to balance the budget is to give them no choice,” he said. ” The only way to keep them out of the cookie jar is to give them no choice. Which is why, whether its balanced budget acts or pay as you go legislation or any of that–it’s the only thing. If you don’t tie our hands, we’ll keep stealing.”-Tom Perriello
I’m not saying that what was done to Perriello was right, but at least it’s justifiable – it was right v. left, etc.
That’s why I say “Red State” has an agenda – it’s right on right – friendly fire. And completely unnecessary.
Effectively, “Reagan’s 11th” was violated.
J.R.:
The hardest thing to do is to call out our own when they fall short on principles, but sometimes it is necessary.
We are in a federal budget crisis, at this time the thing we are in most need of is good leadership. Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor have shown that so far they are willing to uphold the oaths that they took. The last thing we need right now is party infighting.
In this case it is irresponsible and harms the cause overall. I would expect more from a prominent national blog such as Red State.
[...] I be accused of “irresponsible blogging”, I refer you to a responsive post by JR Hoeft at Bearing Drift: Unfortunately, in a post written late yesterday on Red State about House Majority Leader Eric [...]
JR-the Red State commentary was certainly stupid and, by using only a fraction of what Cantor said, certainly dishonest. Anti-semitic? That might be a reach. It would never have occured to me to link the “passion” part to the passion of Christ (which may well be because I’m a heathen) and the comparison between the Holocaust and abortion is pretty common on the pro-life side. I don’t think that was specifically targeted at Cantor.
JR,
I agree with Steve Vaughan. I’m a practicing Roman Catholic (maybe I’ll get it right one of these days) and I didn’t make a connection between “passion” and Lent, esp. since we don’t commemorate Good Friday for another six weeks. And he is correct that the pro-life crowd constantly draw comparisons between abortion and the Holocaust, something that I personally find abhorrent since the Church has expended enormous energy over the years condemning abortion while the Vatican was strangely silent about the mass deportations of the “untermenschen” during WWII.
Bigotry and racism are charges that are thrown around far too easily and, often, with little or no proof.
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