by Thaddeus G. McCotter
Harry Reid’s false attack on Mitt Romney endures as the template for a progressive movement that wins by bending language, ignoring truth, and blaming others when its policies fail.
During the presidential election of 2012, then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the floor of that august body and gravely inveighed against GOP nominee Mitt Romney: “So the word is out that he has not paid any taxes for ten years. Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.”
The one who should have been compelled to prove something was Sen. Reid, because he was lying through his teeth. Nonetheless, the media repeated the accusation—after all, it had been entered in the official Senate record, where no one would ever dissemble. The Romney campaign never really recovered from it, as incumbent President Barack Obama coasted to re-election.
In 2015, long after Romney’s candidacy had been safely dispatched, retiring Sen. Reid was asked if he regretted what had since been proven to be a deliberate falsehood. He waxed practical: “Well, they can call it whatever they want. Romney didn’t win, did he?”
This sordid vignette of an unrepentant, successful Senate smear merchant is instructive as to the current rise of postmodern progressive socialism.
Postmodernism holds that there is no objective truth, nor any systemic moral code providing guidance and, ergo, deserving of observance. Well, except for postmodernism. Further, the ideology believes that the control of language—usage, words, and definitions—will change the social and political landscape of a nation.
As there is nothing new under the sun, this is little more than new lipstick on the pig of the Greek school of Sophistry, in which winning an argument and attaining one’s goal is all that matters—just ask Harry Reid and progressives. For their ilk, conversing and debating to divine the truth and “the good” remains for suckers and losers, like Mitt Romney and Republicans.
In the netherworld of progressive practical amorality, their “trifecta of deception” is premised on appealing to:
- Those who first need to believe it;
- Those who want to believe it; and
- Those whose economic conditions render them desperate enough to believe it.
That their lies constitute pulverized equine manure is irrelevant. What matters is accomplishing this trifecta of deception and accumulating more power. Sen. Reid’s practical amorality continues to inspire the latest batch of progressive senators. Remember the virtue-signaling progressive politicians who meretriciously titled their trillion-dollar green energy bill the “Inflation Reduction Act?”
A gaggle of progressive senators is hoping you do not.
Layered atop blue state statutes and regulations hindering energy production and raising its costs, the proponents of the “Inflation Reduction Act” virtue-signaled and vowed to reduce inflation by, in part, dolloping roughly $369 billion of taxpayers’ dollars over the coming decade for “energy security and climate change programs” and offering sundry tax credits and other “incentives” (i.e., “cha-ching!”) for wind, solar, electric cars, and other “green technologies.” Proffering a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and the promotion of “green collar jobs,” the progressive backers of this budget-busting bill may not have always expressly promised lower energy costs, but they certainly implied it.
When, as anticipated, the bill did not reduce the costs of energy to Americans, the progressives went to a full-blown “Reid Alert!,” loosened their lips, and lied to lay the blame elsewhere—namely on President Trump.
As FedScoop and the Daily Signal reported, on November 10, five progressive senators sent a missive to the administration, accusing President Trump of nefarious dealings with Big Tech to siphon energy from the electric grid to power AI data centers at the expense of American families. The following is a sampling of the senatorial smearing of the president:
“As American families face soaring electricity bills caused by the Trump Administration’s sweetheart deals with Big Tech companies, we write to demand information about the failure of the Administration to prevent consumers from being forced to subsidize the cost of data centers—costs compounded by the Administration’s reckless abandonment and assault on new, clean energy sources. Since his second inauguration, President Trump has cozied up to Meta, Google, Oracle, OpenAI, and other Big Tech companies, fast-tracking and pushing for the buildout of power-hungry data centers across the country… As a result, everyday Americans are already being forced into bidding wars with trillion-dollar companies to keep the lights on at home.”
Responding to Virginia Allen in the Daily Signal, an administration official correctly countered this latest smear by “pointing to the ‘clean energy’ policies in the Biden administration’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act [that they argued] weakened the U.S. energy supply by increasing demand on the energy supply and simultaneously placing a great focus on ‘unreliable,’ ‘clean energy’ fuel sources.”
The administration official conclusively drove the point home to all who had a remotely open mind:
“Democrats’ baseless claims serve only to distract from this administration’s proven record of making energy more affordable for Americans… For four years, they pushed unsustainable, costly policies rather than leveraging our nation’s vast natural resources to unleash energy dominance and secure affordable, reliable power…
“The Democrats are attempting to blame data centers for the rise in energy prices when in reality Biden’s reckless rush to unreliable green energy solutions is the true cause… Ironically, the outcomes they blame this administration for were actually created by a partisan green energy push that lined the pockets of Democrat donors and allies.”
But those who had a remotely open mind were not the target audience of the five progressive senators’ Reid Alert! and its trifecta of deception’s latest smear—specifically, those who need to believe, those who want to believe, and those whose economic conditions render them desperate enough to believe it, regardless of its risibility. And, of course, during a “Reid Alert!”, practical amoral progressives’ only concern remains: “We won, didn’t we?”
***
Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional District from 2003-2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/11/22/the-progressives-practical-amorality-reid-alert/
No comments:
Post a Comment