Between the Lines
by Anthony Asadullah Samad

The Republican Party's Politics of Deflection: Everything's Relative
but Not Necessarily Correct

With the Republican Party’s latest policy boondoggle, the failure of the proposed Same-Sex Marriage Ban, in the toilet, it’s time to call the GOP’s politics what they really are, divisive ideologue-policy—not pragmatism. Try to make sense of their policy intents or get to the integrity of the policy question, you get deflected with some “relative spin” that makes no sense. Just when you think Republicans have taken relativism to its upper limits, they come with a more outrageous policy proposal to take it to the outer limits. Relativism is when you take that position that “all opinions are equal and equally valid. While (some) policy “opinions” are relative, they’re not all right. At what point does one say, “Stop it.” While the answer may come in November, damage is being done now. Many policies are supported by no more than politics of deflection.

Michael Moore’s film Farenheit 911, has heightened the level of scrutiny associated with the Bush Administration using national tragedy and public uncertainty to push the country into a war with a country disassociated with the terrorist act. A country the Bushes just happened to have a beef with. President Bush continues to try to deflect criticism of his manufactured war, even in the face of the 9/11 Commission’s report that there were intelligence flaws that the administration relied on and nothing has surfaced to indicate that Iraq and Al-Quida had a relationship. Many think this connection was a figment of the imagination of Vice President, Dick Cheney, who it is rumored that he’s about to be dumped off the re-election ticket, the ultimate “war-hawk” who is inside of Bush’s head knowing that it wouldn’t take much to push him over the edge—serving his family revenge motive and Cheney’s business trust interests at Haliburton. It broke last week that these very same “Neo-Cons” that were pushing for the war, are procuring many of the Iraq reconstruction contracts. When pressed on it, Cheney offered the ultimate response in the politics of defection, by telling a U.S. Senator, f**k you—a typical response from an administration that never has the right answer, but plenty of spin, responding to “calls for accountability” as “just election year politics.” That’s the answer the Republicans plan to use from now until November.

The Republican’s “spin machine” has been in full effect for some time when they deflected attacks on affirmative action as others “playing the race card.” Republicans offer “relative” responses to initiatives that most can see aren’t well-intentioned. From the proposal to invade Iraq with “A coalition of the willing” (which was really a coalition the U.S. could leverage, or bully into Iraq), to “Leave No Child Behind” (which essentially leaves every poor child behind by punishing poor performing schools that are most under-resourced and most in need), the GOP couch their relative intents in a relative ideology, which in turn, bring relative responses that are just wrong. When they are caught wrong, they deflect attention from the source until the heat cools down. You haven't Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, since he flubbed his appearance before the 9/11 Commission. He’s about as invisible as Osama Bin Laden now, but the President still expresses the utmost confidence in him (and Cheney), no matter how wrong their “relative” responses are.

It’s time we recognize that these explanations for continuous policy failures are really no explanations at all. They’re just poor excuses for the politics of war-hawking, race-baiting and homophobia, framed as explanations. Let’s call them what they really are. They’re simply “relative responses,” “ideological “spin,” to cover and deflect attention away from government gone wrong.

About Anthony Asadullah Samad .

Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, author and managing director of the Urban Issues Forum. His upcoming book, 50 Years After Brown: The State of Black Equality In America is due out in 2004. He can be reached at www.AnthonySamad.com