Tuesday, January 25, 2005
It's All About the Spin
In baseball, all great hitters will tell you that the secret to hitting is picking up the spin on the pitch. Likewise, all great pitchers will tell you that the secret to pitching is controlling the spin on the pitch. In today's political world, the conservatives are the pitchers and the liberals are the hitters. If we're going to regain any control in our government, we're going to have to do a better job of picking up the spin.
As I was working today, I had MSNBC on the television and they were discussing the Senate debate over Condescending Rice's confirmation. In keeping with the liberal media tradition, they were talking to a Republican congressman about the Democrat's attacks on the handling of the war in Iraq. His response was typical Republican spin, of course. I'm paraphrasing here, but it went something like this: The Democrats are using this opportunity to once again show that they would rather the Iraqi people were still living under the tyrannical boot of Saddam Hussein; or some similarly ridiculous statement. Now I was unable to see the debate today, but I'm willing to bet that there wasn't one Democrat who expressed anything remotely close to this sentiment. But the congressman was pitching hard. He was trying to control the spin.
Of course all of this comes from the "You're either with us or against us" school of thought. In a perfect conservative world there would be no dissent. Everyone would nod their head and smile and go about their business blissfully uninformed. (Unfortunately, this is already happening in some circles in this country.) But nothing is perfect. People make mistakes and it is the job of the opposition to capitalize on them. How many times has an error cost a baseball team a win? (You know what I'm talking about here, Red Sox fans. We all remember 1986.) Or how many times has a game been lost on a bad pitch? (Come on Phillies fans, can you say Mitch Williams?) The fact that Republicans are attacking Democrats for pointing out their mistakes is simply ludicrous. It's their job! Just because other Republicans are bending over and taking it from the Bush administration doesn't mean that everybody should.
Right now there are only a few Democrats that are picking up the spin and making contact with the ball. Barbara Boxer is clearly hitting clean-up for us. My advice to the other Democrats is this: Start swinging the damn bat! You can't hit the ball if you don't swing. When the Republicans throw you a big fat hanging curve like the one I heard today on MSNBC, hit it out of the park. At the very least, foul it off and live to see another pitch.
Of course nobody in the Democratic party would wish for the Iraqis to continue living under the tyrannical boot of Saddam Hussein. The only thing worse than that would be to allow the country to sink into a state of chaos and force them to live under the tyrannical boot of an insurgency.
As I was working today, I had MSNBC on the television and they were discussing the Senate debate over Condescending Rice's confirmation. In keeping with the liberal media tradition, they were talking to a Republican congressman about the Democrat's attacks on the handling of the war in Iraq. His response was typical Republican spin, of course. I'm paraphrasing here, but it went something like this: The Democrats are using this opportunity to once again show that they would rather the Iraqi people were still living under the tyrannical boot of Saddam Hussein; or some similarly ridiculous statement. Now I was unable to see the debate today, but I'm willing to bet that there wasn't one Democrat who expressed anything remotely close to this sentiment. But the congressman was pitching hard. He was trying to control the spin.
Of course all of this comes from the "You're either with us or against us" school of thought. In a perfect conservative world there would be no dissent. Everyone would nod their head and smile and go about their business blissfully uninformed. (Unfortunately, this is already happening in some circles in this country.) But nothing is perfect. People make mistakes and it is the job of the opposition to capitalize on them. How many times has an error cost a baseball team a win? (You know what I'm talking about here, Red Sox fans. We all remember 1986.) Or how many times has a game been lost on a bad pitch? (Come on Phillies fans, can you say Mitch Williams?) The fact that Republicans are attacking Democrats for pointing out their mistakes is simply ludicrous. It's their job! Just because other Republicans are bending over and taking it from the Bush administration doesn't mean that everybody should.
Right now there are only a few Democrats that are picking up the spin and making contact with the ball. Barbara Boxer is clearly hitting clean-up for us. My advice to the other Democrats is this: Start swinging the damn bat! You can't hit the ball if you don't swing. When the Republicans throw you a big fat hanging curve like the one I heard today on MSNBC, hit it out of the park. At the very least, foul it off and live to see another pitch.
Of course nobody in the Democratic party would wish for the Iraqis to continue living under the tyrannical boot of Saddam Hussein. The only thing worse than that would be to allow the country to sink into a state of chaos and force them to live under the tyrannical boot of an insurgency.
