Commentary by Michael Reagan

A New Low in Democrat Hypocrisy

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

This latest bit of Hollywood show business – sending former Senator and triple amputee Vietnam vet Max Cleland in his wheelchair to Texas to hand deliver a letter to President Bush demanding that he disavow the message of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and order them to stop their advertising – is a new low in Democrat hypocrisy.

To begin with, President Bush doesn’t have the power to stop the Swifties from running advertisements, a fact demonstrated by the veterans themselves when they said that they would not stop their campaign to show American voters John Kerry’s true nature even if ordered to do so by the President of the United States.

Kerry and his stooges are fully aware that the veterans’ are exercising their right to free speech and that the president has no power to repeal that Constitutional right.

They keep asking the president to disavow the veteran’s ads but in order for him to do that he would have to have all the information on everything that is talked about in the ads to learn what is true and what is not true, and what is factual and what is not factual. That’s not the president’s job because it’s not his ad. Nor has the president the power to stop these ads from running, and the Kerry campaign knows that.

Why don’t they ask the president to demand that the sleazy Moveon.org or any of the other 527s that are out there stop spewing their message of Bush hatred? But they wouldn’t do that because they want these ads to stay on the air. But instead the Kerry forces insist that Moveon.org and the others have every right to run their ads. It’s just the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who are to be denied their right to run ads critical of Senator Kerry.

The president has disavowed all the 527 ads, including the Swift Boat ads. He said they are bad for the system. But that answer isn’t good enough for the Democrats. It doesn’t really matter to them that he has already disavowed the ads. What they really want is to have the president repeal the right of free speech – for their opponents that is. With their supporters in the 527 category it’s a different matter.

The campaign finance law they all backed says the 527s can run their ads. That law, which stopped such groups as the Family Research Council or the NRA and other groups that have been around for a long time from running ads 60 days before an election, actually created a loophole to allow new organizations to do that. And the Swift Boat veterans are exercising their rights under the law the Democrats wholeheartedly supported.

The president isn’t responsible for the ads, they were created by an act of Congress. The 527s can lawfully do what they want.

Remember it was John Kerry who decided to pick up his medals from the other side of the fence where he threw them and put them back on his chest and run as a great Vietnam war hero.

Did he not recall that the war was divisive 35 years ago? Did he not realize that it is still divisive now?

He chooses to make his Vietnam War service the kingpin of his campaign because he couldn’t run on his record in the Senate. The president is talking about what he wants to do in the next four years. John Kerry brought this problem on by himself by making the war the centerpiece of his campaign and he doesn’t like the consequences of that decision, so he blames it on the president.

He can’t talk about his record as a senator. He spent 20 years in the Senate, but didn’t author or co-author any significant pieces of legislation. Here’s a man who claims he will do all sorts of important things as president who did nothing worthwhile as a senator over 20 years.

He’s learning that you really reap what you sow, and he doesn’t like it one little bit that what he sowed in Vietnam has come back to haunt him, so he blames it all on President Bush.

What a hypocrite.

Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Comments to mereagan@hotmail.com

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