News: Some GOP Newspeak

It's weird how often you can perceive echoes of "1984" in political "debates." Here's some choice examples of doublethink from the GOP candidates: McCain supporting making Bush's tax cuts permanent even though he voted against them, Giuliani touting "a woman's right to choose" but insisting that abortions be minimized, and Romney declaring that he supports gun owners' rights under the Second Amendment even though he signed into law Massachusetts' "Assault Weapons" ban.

I'm not sure much needs to be said here. The three GOP frontrunners, much like the Democratic frontrunners (Clinton, Obama) will basically say anything necessary to get elected. I'm not sure what's scarier - that these people can flip on the issues, or that they might actually believe what they say. Let's go candidate by candidate...

McCain supposedly voted against the tax cuts since they weren't accompanied by spending cuts. This is the same McCain, mind you, that supports campaign finance regulation. Here's a hint - we can cut the size of the fed.gov quite a bit if we abolish the FEC and all the accompanying restrictions on political speech.

Giuliani is in even more hot water. If it's so important for a woman to be able to have an abortion (Giuliani has even argued for public funding of abortions in the past), why would we even try to minimize abortions? The other GOP hopefuls pounded Rudy on this issue, trying to get the ever-important pro-lifers on their side, and Rudy looked like a fish out of water.

Romney committed perhaps the most egregious example of doublethink of them all. In his mind, this is what he was doing when he signed Massachusetts' ban: "These guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people." (quote from the Mitt Romney encyclopedia).

First of all, the Second Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of "recreation." Second, there's very little distinction one can make between a weapon that is useful for self-defense and one that is supposedly made for "killing people." And finally, if you see a GLOCK with a 15-round mag as an "instrument of destruction," how is that same GLOCK with a 10-round mag any less destructive?

This election's just looking more and more awful...