Flash Cards and Hand Puppets for Laslo Boyd
Laslo Boyd is burning straw men again.
This time, Boyd’s pyromania is featured at that corporatist rag, Center Maryland, the allegedly straight news site run by a group of rent seeking, O’Malley stooges. You remember them, the folks who brought you the gas tax, speed cameras, gambling expansion, and those lovely boondoggles at Harbor Point and State Center. Getting their friends in government to give taxpayer money to their corporate clients—that’s the Center Maryland way.
Boyd’s latest conflagration is titled, Why are you still a Republican?
Interesting piece for the editors of an avowed centrist site purporting to provide news “straight down the middle,” but I digress.
Boyd’s unoriginal piece of agitprop—it’s essentially the same fire he’s set twicebefore— is chock full of dishonest arguments and every worn out trope about Republicans, conservatives, and the Tea Party, which he tries to tie around the necks of Maryland Republican candidates.
Hey, Allan Kittleman and David Craig, when are going to stop beating your wives?
But let’s sift through the smoldering embers of Boyd’s straw man, as it is instructive, from time, to show just how gimpy this all too tired liberal argument is.
The Republican Party is dead. Sometime in the recent past, the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan morphed into an ideological movement…
To believe Boyd’s, ahem, argument here you’d have to take the untenable position that Lincoln, an opponent of slavery, and Roosevelt a progressive Republican were not driven by ideology. But that’s Laslo Boyd—never letting historical facts get in the way flipping open that Zippo. I could go into the myriad reasons Lincoln and Roosevelt were indeed ideologues, but I don’t want to make Laslo’s head hurt.
Notice how Boyd put Reagan in with the alleged non-ideologues. That’s curious because not too long ago Boyd lumped Reagan in with the rest of the ideological fringe:
The modern Republican Party, exemplified by the hyper-partisanship of Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay and Bob Ehrlich, the Ronald Reagan and George Bush philosophy that government regulation is always the problem and the private sector is always the solution
Confused? Don’t be, Boyd is merely continuing the liberal tradition of propping up dead conservatives—who they hated while alive—to cast living conservatives as unreasonable, hateful ideologues.
For Boyd’s un-clever conceit to work, you would have to forget the torrent of scorn and smears heaped upon Reagan by liberals and the media for his conservative policies and positions.
Remember the only good conservative is a dead conservative.
Set aside that particular inconsistency in Boyd’s argument for a moment. The real bait and switch is casting conservative Republicans as extremist ideologues and liberal Democrats as pragmatists that just want to do what works. As if Barack Obama and Martin O’Malley are not ideologues.
How is Obamacare—a massive government intervention into the nation’s healthcare system—not ideological?
How is moving to defund school choice for poor families in Washington D.C. not ideological?
How are the infringements upon the second amendment, embodied in Maryland’s new gun laws not ideological?
How are Maryland’s environmental and energy policies—developed by environmental special interest groups—not ideological?
How is increasing state spending by 30 percent (while lying about it) and hiking taxes by $9.5 billion not ideological?
Any liberal that tells you they are not ideological, is lying to you and themselves.
Next, Boyd goes on to buildup the stereotype of the fringe Tea Party Republican.
Instead, Republicans seem primarily concerned with imposing their narrow values-driven agenda on everyone else …That their views do not command majority support, whether measured by the last election or by public opinion polls, is brushed aside as irrelevant…
Today, Republican politics seems defined by a virulent opposition to Obamacare. But there’s more. Even when it costs the party the opportunity to win Congressional seats, Republicans have demonstrated an obsession about abortion, contraception, and gay marriage…
Republicans have been eager to pass legislation that mandates invasive procedures for women seeking abortions; that values gun ownership over public safety; that creates barriers to voting under a fallacious claim of preventing voter fraud; that takes away food stamps and health care for the poor and disadvantaged; and that opposes creating opportunities for immigrants.
Where to begin?
“Virulent opposition to Obamacare.”
It must be a national contagion because, even the Huffington Post reported “the Affordable Care Act is more unpopular than ever.”
You know brushing aside public opinion polling and all that.
I disagree with the congressional Republican tactic of tying Obamacare to the budget, as do many other, but that’s a very real distinction Boyd is either too dishonest to address or too blinkered to see.
“Republicans have demonstrated an obsession about abortion, contraception, and gay marriage”
I don’t deny the idiocy of the Todd Aikin’s of the world, but to paint them as representative of the Tea Party is like saying, Sharknado is representative of all cable television fare.
The Tea Party’s raison d’etre (that means reason for being, Laslo) lies in economic and limited government issues. The movement’s roots are distinctly libertarian, tracing its genesis to opposition to the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailouts.
Connecting the Tea Party to the religious right is either massive ignorance or willful deceit on Laslo’s part.
“values Gun ownership over public safety”
But Republicans are anti-science or something…
“a fallacious claim of preventing voter fraud”
Laslo Boyd meet Wendy Rosen
“takes away food stamps and health care for the poor and disadvantaged”
Damn those heartless bastards increasing SNAP spending by $263 billion—57 percent—over the next 10 years! 
“opposes creating opportunities for immigrants.”
Really? Tell that to Tea Party fav and known immigrant basher Rand Paul. I’ll be sure to draft his expulsion papers after watching this.
If Laslo Boyd want’s to stop hiding behind straw men and argue the merits of unsustainable state and federal spending, debt, ruinous environmental policies, consigning poor kids to failing schools, and a unworkable healthcare law—then he can put on his big boy pants and call in to The Broadside tonight at 8pm, 760-259-2711.
