REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES AVOID DEALING WITH THE TRUTH

…Dr. Carson is a master at avoiding to answer a direct question.

 

The conservative have found a new way to avoid dealing with serious questions.

 

A couple of events occurred this week that require repeating.

 

The first one is that I have to give a call out to the Washington Post’s fact checker who found no evidence to support Donald Trump’s claim of Jersey City Muslims celebrating on 9/11 as the Twin Towers were falling.  The fact checker gave Trump “Four Pinocchio’s, which are reserved for the most bald-faced lies”.  Also a  high-five for PolitiFact that gave Trump a “Pants-on-Fire” rating for the same lie, which is their highest level of rating falsehoods.

 

But the other event that we are hearing more and more about is when a Republican gets challenged over something they stated that was either incorrect or just plain stupid.  That’s when they use the old “Well, I just was just being “politically correct” to avoid a subject that no one wants to discuss.”

 

As a good example, When Dr. Ben Carson was challenged on his statement that a Muslim should not be a US president, his response was, “Political correctness is imposed by the secular progressives and those who wish to fundamentally change our society,” he said. “Therefore, they make things off-limits to talk about, but you know what? I’m going to talk about it anyway.”  This of course has nothing to do with the fact he didn’t answer the question and that the US Constitution explicitly states there can be no “religious test” for running or holding a national political office.

 

The Post’s columnist Eugene Robinson really made this point when he wrote the following about Dr. Carson, “In other words, he [Carson] considers the framers of the Constitution a bunch of “secular progressives,” since they’re the ones who put a candidate’s faith off-limits. That’s not the loopiest thing Carson has said, but it’s in the top 10.”

 

But there is more…..

 

When Governor Chris Christie was asked about his view that the United States should accept no Syrian refugees, Christie said, “We should not bow to the ‘political correctness’ of the elites in Washington or the editorial pages of major newspapers.”  This time it worked for Christie to avoid actually answering the question about his refusal of Syrian refugees.

 

Former Governor Mike Huckabee, after making an offensive joke about transgender people, he responded to reporter’s questions with: “…everybody wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left and loved by the elitists.”  Once again, Huckabee used the ‘political correctness’ issue to avoided questions on his negative comments about transgender Americans.

 

The columnist Robinson has also mentioned that many conservative commentators have been quick to condemn the “politically correct” Princeton University students who demand that the school remove their symbols that honor Woodrow Wilson.  This 28^th US President in office from 1913 to 1921 was also a onetime Princeton president.  The students want these university honors removed  because of Wilson’s absolute racism.

 

Per Robinson, “These [political correctness] critics ignore the historical fact that Wilson was racist not just by today’s standards but by those of his time. He wrote that African Americans were an ‘ignorant and inferior race.’ He lavishly praised the Ku Klux Klan and pined for the Confederacy. As president of the United States, he ordered that integrated federal government workplaces be segregated; NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois wrote of one black clerk who “had a cage built around him to separate him from his white companions.”

 

But then we have Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), who was asked this summer whether he thought the term “anchor baby” was offensive, which many people do feel it is offensive.  But Cruz told reporters “we need to stop this ‘politically correct’ nonsense.”  There it is again, an avoidance of the original question.

 

As per Mr. Robinson’s comment about the Princeton students versus the GOP candidates, at least with the students, their claim of this so called “political correctness”, it was the truth.  The Republican candidates use the ‘political correctness’ issue, to avoid dealing with the truth.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2015