I have to think Senator Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) is a smart fellow. He is highly educated, and he is, after all, Assistant Majority Leader in the Senate. One does not ascend to such a post by being empty-headed, even if it is in the Democratic caucus. He would also have to be, one would think, a pretty decent politician. Yet, he lobs some of the softest pitches right down the middle of the plate when debating Republicans, more than any other senator or congressman/woman I can think of.
I remember an appearance he made on CNN's Crossfire in 2001. He was on opposite former Senator Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) debating President Bush's tax cut proposal. Naturally, like all redistributionist's, he was whining about how unfair it was, how it was a "tax cut for the rich". Leave aside, for a moment, how obtuse of an argument that is (in an across-the-board cut, wouldn't those who pay the most save the most in taxes??). Senator Santorum broke it down in a perfectly simple way. If 4 people paid $40, $30, $20 and $10, respectively, to go to a ball game that ended up being rained out, if the Democrats were in charge of the refunds, they'd give all 4 a $20 refund, plus $20 for a guy walking past the ballpark who wasn't even going to the game. You have to hand that debate to Senator Santorum. Durbin just got beat.
It wasn't too smart of him, however, to compare treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo a couple years ago to treatment received by the those in Soviet gulags and Nazi concentration camps. Seriously, I understand pandering to the base, but don't such claims have to be tethered at least a little bit, perhaps by a hair, to truth? How do you compare 100s of enemy combatants to, by most accounts, 1000000s of innocents, including women and children? We feed these people probably more than they were eating on the battlefield. Did he seriously think not 1 of the 55 Republican senators at the time would stand up to debate him on that subject? The way Senator McConnell rose and asked "Is the Senator aware that millions died under Pol Pot?", for example, was entertaining. On the other hand, it was baffling, because it was still sinking in that Durbin made it so easy for Republicans to score political points.
Then a couple weeks ago came a debate on the Fairness Doctrine. Senator Durbin believes "that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better position to make a decision." Here was yet another hanging curve for someone to knock out of the park! How stupid does he think we are?? Every time a new issue comes to the fore, be it net neutrality, private equity taxation, the troop surge in Iraq, etc., I read both sides of the argument. I'd feel dishonest, disingenuous arguing or debating my point with someone if I didn't know all sides. I'd also feel kinda vulnerable not knowing the other side's argument. We don't get this information from only talk radio. When he asked "What is (sic) the marketplace does not provide opportunities to hear both points of view?" during a recent floor debate, Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota reminded him, as if he or we needed it, of the 1000s of "opportunities for stations and satellite, where you have cable, you have blogs, you have a whole range of information." I'm sure Senator Durbin has heard, for example, of The Daily Kos, or the Huffington Post, or The New York Times, although he probably thinks they have no slant. Funny thing about The Times. I used to read their columnists as regularly as I read conservative columnists. I miss Paul Krugman, yet they don't offer up their columnists for the kind of public balance that Senator Durbin et al seek.
Sometimes, his statements simply prey on the ignorance and fear of the population. One of the Democratic goals this Congress was to assume negotiating power on behalf of Medicare prescription drugs. If Congress takes that power from insurance companies, they will achieve monopsony power. Monopsony is the inverse of monopoly. Whereas a monopoly is the sole supplier of a good, a monopsony is the sole buyer. Think of a coal mining company in a small, mountain town. If that were allowed to occur, pharmaceutical companies would be brow-beaten into selling their product at a price determined by government bureaucrats, not by competing insurance companies. Watch R&D and the number of new drugs developed dwindle. This would be just another step in the government creep to take over the health care industry.
When I see Senator Durbin, I always kind of wonder if he knows there are smart people watching him, when there isn't a smart person sitting next to him to soundly refute what he says.
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