Really, Shadegg. We Love Big Government

One of the truly amazing things about RedState isn't just that they can so consistently repeat the same disproven conservative cliches that the Limbaughs have been feeding them for all these years; but that they can actually attract real politicians who have nothing better to do than make the nuts at RedState feel important by signing their name to this same tired rhetoric.

Here we have Congressman John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican who came into office during the 1994 Gingrich revolution and apparently was never informed that the election was over and it's time for a new song. It's like these guys were trapped in a stasis field and continue to spout out the same nonsense, in spite of their record during the Bush Administration.

Shadegg's contribution is a post entitled Really??, in which the Congressman imagines he's got some really great factcheck on Obama:

Last night President Obama said, “I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan…Not because I believe in bigger government - I don’t.”

Really?

If that’s true, why was every single policy the President suggested last night…big
government?

And somehow, the concept seems to elude Shadegg that Obama's point was that he isn't asking for these because he likes big government, but rather because these are things that we need. And to suggest otherwise is absurd. Yet these bozos do it all the time. They honestly believe that the reason why liberals want a powerful government is because we like powerful government.

The Already Answered Question

And Shadegg is far from the only conservative who highlights that one line and imagines he's got the ultimate Orwellian gotcha on Obama. And what's pathetic is that, as Carpetbagger says, the entire point of that passage was to cut-off the conservative attacks that Obama wants Big Government. As Obama said two sentences later "I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships."

So this wasn't the double-speak lie conservatives imagine it was. Rather, they walked right into a jujitsu kick and didn't even realize it. He was directly addressing their concerns and deflecting their criticism. Yet they remain entirely oblivious to this and continue to rant about how Obama's government expansion only shows that he wants to expand government. And they imagine that if anyone doesn't call him on it, they must be koolaid drinking fools who aren't paying attention. It's like the sleepwalkers have taken over the sleep institute.

I suppose they imagine the purpose of using deodorant is to express our love of deodorant. And by this same logic, it can be deduced that anyone who wants America to torture terrorists only does so because they love torturing terrorists (ok, this one might be true). In other words, the only purpose of doing anything can be because you love doing that kind of thing. Some might say this is Taoist in its simplicity, while most others think it's moronic. I'll leave that decision to you.