Deemed duped

The Democrats are adept at squandering every advantage, going so far as to eat their young -- that's not exactly a news flash -- but I've also noticed that the Republicans are especially good at bleeding off credibility they can't spare.

Let's review.

Sen. John McCain, while campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination, repeatedly criticized Democratic Party frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama for being unacceptably young and inexperienced -- and then he chose Caribou Barbie as his vice-presidential running mate.

Pfft.

Speaking of the former Mayor of Wasilla, during a public appearance in which she sneered about Pres. Obama's use of a TelePrompTer, we caught her peeking at crib notes scribbled on the palm of her hand.

Pfft.

And now the minority party is shame-shaming the Dems for using something called "deem and pass" -- a procedural maneuver that relieves legislators of the burden of casting yea-nay votes on controversial measures -- to aid passage of health-care reform. Looking past Republicans' camera-ready displays of righteous populism, however, we see that the GOP has, over the years, employed "deeming" nearly three times as often as Democrats have.

Pfft.

All this from the party that lost one election and now deems the result "tyranny."

Sssssss...

Republicans deploy their smoke screens daily, intent on distracting the People from substantive issues -- and yet so many of us buy what they're selling, the whole vaporous bill of goods.

Look, I don't respect any elected official who dives for cover at the first sign of political difficulty, but that's not the point here -- it's not even part of the point. If it were, we'd get just as riled if deeming were used to help pass, say, gun-rights legislation.

You know damned well we wouldn't. Whatever it takes, right?

When distractions are introduced into a debate, both the message and the messenger lose credibility. And when we adopt an irrelevant party line to validate our own position, we've been had.

We admit to being the soft-headed fools they think we are.

The way I see it, the only plausible explanation for Republicans constantly trying to divert our attention with chaff like "scheme and deem" and "socialized medicine" is that they don't have enough juice to win on substance -- and that's no news flash, either.

It's not about deeming. The process isn't corrupt -- the messengers are corrupt and, whenever we allow them to dupe us, so are we.