Two recent events—the Benghazi coverup and the IRS scandal—provide an object lesson in how liberals and conservatives view “politicization.” Conservatives’ definition of politicization is: liberals treating them unfairly for partisan reasons. Liberals’ definition of politicization is: conservatives pointing out something they did wrong.
Consider: When conservatives highlighted the Obama administration’s incompetent, deceitful, disastrous handling of the attack on our Benghazi embassy, Democrats called the affair no big deal and accused Republicans of politicizing it.
Actually, politicizing Benghazi would have involved a Presidential candidate who pressed the issue during his foreign policy debate with Obama, or who mentioned it in campaign commercials before the election for instance. Instead, Romney decided it would be more presidential to never, ever mention the subject.
When the evidence of their malfeasance becomes too overwhelming, liberals simply switch tactics and claim that the other side politicizes things, too.
The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd recently confessed, “Obama aides wanted to promote the mythology that the president who killed Osama was vanquishing terror. So they deemed it problematic to mention any possible Qaeda involvement.”
Nonetheless, Dowd ludicrously titled her piece, “When Myths Collide in the Capital,” and claimed that both sides are politicizing: “Welcome to a glorious spring weekend of accusation and obfuscation as Hillaryland goes up against Foxworld … truth is the first casualty here when competing fiefs protect their mythologies.”
Except that it’s not a mythology if it’s the truth. Exactly which part of the Republicans’ Benghazi charges has proven unworthy of investigation?
The New Yorker’s Alex Koppelman recently admitted, “It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the [administration’s] talking points went through … the mere existence of the edits seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue.”
Yet Koppelman felt compelled to add, “For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.” No—there always was something to it; the left was too blinded by partisanship to see it. It’s not a case of both sides being partisan when liberals finally start admitting what conservatives have been saying all along.
Meanwhile conservatives actually are the objects of politicization. Witness the IRS’s recent admission that it targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny in 2012 for having words like “patriot” in their names. Numerous Tea Party groups had their tax-exempt status delayed for months or years and many had their requests granted only because the American Center for Law and Justice stepped in. Some groups are still waiting.
Naturally liberals’ response to these charges has been to accuse Republicans of—politicizing them.
Conservatives know what it’s like to have their actions politicized; they live with it every day. Politicization means a constant stream of harassment from supposedly neutral organizations like the IRS and the mainstream media. It means being in the center of an endless maelstrom of invective and facing staggering odds against ever getting their message out.
If media-coddled liberals ever faced any actual politicization, it would crush them.
