Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press notices “Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches” (via Scott Shields).
And it only took ’em five years. Well, more, probably; he no doubt used some straw men during the 2000 campaign.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
Thanks for linking to the miracle from AP’s Jennifer Loven. Her examples from Bush speeches provide a great exercise in understanding the props [straw men] in Bush propaganda.
Isn’t the whole right wing agenda built on staw men? Just like they made the case for Clinton being a bad president by setting him up in a perjury trap. Or how they executed a disaster in Iraq and call anyone who doesn’t support the war cowards or unAmerican. Or how they love to use “abortion supporters” as opposed to pro-choice. Or how they believe something as unscientific as intelligent design should be taught in school because evolution hasn’t been ‘proven’.
Republicans are making themselves a scourge on our nation because they need strawmen in order to make themselves right on whatever subject they choose.
What took five years was teaching the moron how to give speeches. I mean in understandable english.
What kind of a rhetorical device or arguement describes Bush’s use of the phrase ” cut and run” to imply cowardice for anyone opposing Bush’s agenda?
Since Bush and his cohorts aggressively started deceiving the American people, their use of language in the art of deception has been a remarkable experience to behold. Even though I was annoyed at being played for a stooge, I think the line about not wanting the smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud was a rather clever deception. I bet they all recognized it immediately as a killer phrase to deceive people with, and Condi was given the honors of its debut while Cheney got to play second fiddle.