I agree that the left hasn’t forgotten Bush at all. He is brought up quite a bit now, actually, but it’s in a particular way that shows how very successful the attacks on him have been—he’s added to a speech or an article almost as an aside, to counter any possible criticism of Obama in an “of course, Bush was worse” manner. The idea is that that is so well-proven, so completely obvious and accepted, that it’s a tautology that no longer has to be argued or supported, merely accepted by all thinking persons.

In other words, it has become a given, and still a very useful tool.

Molly NH Says:

Today a great new term’s been coined for all of us to use as needed Benghazi Deniers !
it ll work as well as *climate deniers*
use it to shut them up folks.

Problem is, Global Warming Climate Change Global Climate Disruption is fake, a redistribution of wealth scam on a planetary scale. Benghazi was real, with real Americans murdered thanks to the fecklessness of both a sitting President and a Secretary of State.

I’m proud to be a denier of whatever they are calling the so-called warming of the planet today. So the Dems may be just as proud of being a Benghazi denier as I am of being a glowbull worming denier, that is to say, throwing out the ‘Benghazi denier’ charge will have no effect, even though being a denier of Benghazi is like being a denier of climate (it’s called ‘weather’). But no one ever accuses the left of being consistent in their arguments but rather consistent in their rank hypocrisy.

The Left only reacts to propaganda once the triggers are activated. The idea that they are free thinkers, Matt, is evidence of your education on this matter.

That’s why they win.

I also disagree with the need to do so. Bush is no longer mentioned as the béªte noir of the left; he seems to have disappeared. If Bush derangement syndrome were a real thing, this would be impossible.
My take? The left’s pollsters informed the party that they were starting to look kooky to the voters. The left then dropped this particular strawman and started looking for another.
Bush has been “memory-holed” and completely forgotten because it is useful for the left to do so. If it ever becomes useful to demonize him again, he will be resurrected from the ashes, as if he’d never been gone. This is classic Orwell stuff.

Bush is no more or less useful (or hated) than any other convenient scapegoat of the left. They really have no shame or intellectual integrity.

And I will not gloss over the man’s failings for the sake of some theoretical egghead exercise. In other words, I don’t WANT to rehabilitate Bush…no matter how many times you ask.

That’s not enough. The narrative needs to include a sufficiently compelling explanation for why the Democrats lied, and also why that lie was not justified in context.

Right now, the Republicans and the Right are pushing ahead on the Benghazi controversy with an incomplete narrative, which is opening the door for the Democrats’ defense.

Remember, as I’ve explained, the Democrats rely on a pegging (like currency evaluation) defense strategy based, as Neo has explained, on Alinsky’s Rule 12.

No matter how bad the Democrats may look on foreign policy, the Democrats’ defense strategy is to make the Republicans automatically look worse in comparison by citing to strawman-Bush. While looking good on foreign policy is preferred, looking comparatively less bad than your straw-man opponent works just as well for a binary choice.

When there is “a pox on both your houses”, We The People collectively must still pick one house or the other. We The People will collectively choose the less poxy house. Making themselves out to be the less poxy house is the basis of the Democrats’ Alinsky Rule 12, pegging defense strategy.

Matt_SE, your underlying algorithmic flaw in judging this issue is the same algorithmic flaw you’ve shown in judging the Iraq enforcement as an “unnecessary foreign adventure”. You don’t adequately account for the realistic alternatives. That’s fine when supporting a favored theory in academic isolation, but your algorithm falls short when choosing from a limited set of options in practice. Such as the limited set of options Bush had with the Saddam problem. Such as the limited, binary political options for We the People.

The way to counter the Democrats’ pegging defense is switching off the pegging of Republicans as automatically comparatively worse.

The way to do that for the Benghazi controversy is the counter-narrative that Bush was right on Saddam specifically and the War on Terror generally.

The binary political choice in this case boils down to Bush on Iraq v Obama on Libya. The proper counter-narrative is that Bush was right and the Benghazi controversy is about protecting the Democrats nation-harming lies about Bush’s foreign affairs for partisan gain with the upcoming election.

Narrative: The Democrats and Obama lied about Benghazi. Why? Because they wanted to protect Obama’s Libya policy. Why? Because of the upcoming US election. Why would Obama’s Libya policy affect the US election? Because Obama’s Libya policy was deliberately designed and represented as the superior/moral/smarter alternative to Bush’s bad/evil/stupid Iraq policy.

Then, drawing the conclusion is simple:
If Bush was justified on Iraq, then Obama is wrong on Libya. If Bush was wrong on Iraq, then Obama is justified on Libya.

If Bush was right on Iraq, then the Benghazi controversy threatened to shine a highly critical spotlight on the Democrats and Obama on the eve of the 2012 election, because the Democrats’ central platform that drove Obama to the Presidency was the false claim that Bush was categorically wrong on Iraq.

Simply, given that the Democrats and Obama were all-in on the false narrative against the Iraq mission, if the Democrats and Obama were actually wrong on Bush and Iraq, then – just maybe – they are actually wrong, and worse than the Republicans, on everything.

That’s what the Democrats feared. That’s why the Democrats lied about Benghazi: Lies to protect the fundamental lie at the foundation of their political victory over the Republicans.

If Bush was right on Iraq, then that means Obama lied about Bush for partisan gain, and Obama’s foreign policy is metastasized from his lies about Bush, and his lies have harmed us and aided our enemies.

The Democrats were scared of the domino effect exposing the fundamental lie on Bush and Iraq holding up their whole power structure. If that narrative had been programmed into the zeitgeist on the eve of the 2012 election, it might have flipped the script, damned the Democrats, and vindicated Bush and the Republicans.

In sum, it’s insufficient for the Right to accuse Obama of lying about Benghazi and leave it at that. In the context of America’s binary political choice and the backdrop of the Iraq mission, it also falls short to accuse Obama of lying to deter criticism of his Libya policy.

Laying a proper contextual foundation requires answering why Obama lied to deter criticism of his Libya policy. To achieve the desired larger social-political effect, answering that narrative question requires establishing Bush was justified on Iraq.

Without laying a proper contextual foundation, then your narrative is incomplete. If your narrative remains incomplete, then the Democrats’ defense that the Republicans are ‘inflating a tragedy into a scandal’ will be effective.

If the contextual frame is lacking, even if the Republicans successfully prove their case on the merits within the scope of the Stevens et al killings, the larger social-political effect will fall short of re-ordering the binary social-political balance in the zeitgeist’s ‘court of public opinion’.

Again: Right now, the narrative is incomplete and insufficient to change the zeitgeist. A contextual re-frame is necessary for the Benghazi controversy to have the larger effect you want. And the foundation of the contextual re-frame requires establishing in the popular narrative that Bush was right on Iraq.

Some people call that broken cover as cover. Meaning, using the evidence of one’s own guilt, as proof that one is innocent.

Or, stalking horse.

The person that is said to have leaked the information to the 2 jour tools, was the same FBI guy that ordered break ins of Weatherunderground homes, causing the release of Ayers and Bernadine Dohr. Coincidence?

They had this planned, one way or another. A combination of revenge on Nixon, a Leftist coup for US power, Democrat vote buying covering, and so on.