Last week, we were blessed with two solid examples of how the right-wing brain works. In the first, which garnered the most attention, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky spoke for thirteen hours on the Senate floor about a totally tangential issue. After having been assured that the president did not have the authority to launch missiles at U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, he complained about how difficult it was to get the administration to offer the assurance. Many longtime critics of the government’s drone program were happy to have some support from the Republican side of the aisle, but Senator Paul was focused on the wrong issue. The concern is, and had been, about U.S. citizens abroad, and about the effectiveness, morality and implications of the drone program in general.
The other example occurred on the Fox News program The O’Reilly Factor, when host Bill O’Reilly exploded in rage at his guest Alan Colmes, calling him a liar. He has since offered a halfhearted apology. The confrontation began when O’Reilly falsely accused the Obama administration of failing to offer cuts to specific programs as a way to entice the Republicans to make a budget deal. When Colmes pointed out that the administration had offered cuts to both Social Security and Medicare, O’Reilly said, “Not entitlements, one program!”
O’Reilly was confused. We do indeed have things we call “government programs.” The school lunch program is one example. But Medicare and Social Security are also government programs. They are, in fact, very big government programs. This fact is so undeniable that O’Reilly was compelled to apologize, but, in doing so, he rationalized his performance.
“Even though I’m sorry I said Alan was lying, I should not have used that word, I’m glad the exposition occurred,” O’Reilly said during his introductory monologue on the 8 p.m. show “Talking Points.”
…After apologizing Thursday night, O’Reilly added, “the truth is Mr. Obama has not put forth any specific federal spending cuts. It’s all a bunch of general nonsense,” adding that he raised his voice to “get everybody’s attention — I think I succeeded,” Politico reported.
The point, of course, is that Obama has put forth specific federal spending cuts, so O’Reilly was apologizing without admitting that he was wrong about the issue at hand. And then he asserted that making a stink about the wrong issue was successful because it got people’s attention.
Now, O’Reilly is more concerned about ratings than policy, but we can make the same charge against Rand Paul. After his filibuster was over, he wrote a column in the Washington Post about why he did it, but it was mostly about how much attention and support he had received from fellow lawmakers and the Twitterverse. He repeated his false claim that the administration hadn’t been clear that it agreed with him before he started his filibuster, and he rationalized making a bullshit off-target argument for 13 hours this way:
I hope my efforts help spur a national debate about the limits of executive power and the scope of every American’s natural right to be free. “Due process” is not just a phrase that can be ignored at the whim of the president; it is a right that belongs to every citizen in this great nation.
I believe the support I received this past week shows that Americans are looking for someone to really stand up and fight for them. And I’m prepared to do just that.
If he had spent his time talking about the kangaroo court military commissions or Guantanamo Bay or airstrikes against American citizens in Yemen or something real, then this summary would have made sense. There really wasn’t any reason for Rand Paul to base his entire protest on a false premise. I don’t think he got more attention because he was making a false argument. What he did was make his side of the argument look ridiculous, which is a disservice to the people who have legitimate and truthful concerns about the drone program and our civil liberties.
Now, he did spur a national debate, just as Bill O’Reilly created a lot of press stories about his rant, but in both cases the real point was to get attention for themselves. O’Reilly wants ratings. Rand Paul is running for president.
