The 'Swiftboatng' Dogwhistle

In response to HIllary won’t be the only one knifing Obama in the back over Bergdahl:

As John noted, according to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, White House aides are now accusing members of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s unit of “swift-boating” Bergdahl.

“I’ve had a few aides describe it to me as ‘we didn’t know that they were going to swift-boat Bergdahl,'” Todd said Wednesday.

The term was thrown out there to evoke an emotional response from Democrats who remember how the men who served with John Kerry capsized his campaign in 2004.

Democrats like to accuse the right of using  “dogwhistles” for racism, sexism – or whatever type of H8 they want to accuse us of. But they’re projecting as always because they’re the ones who use dog whistles to excite their followers. 

The Obama administration actively uses dog-whistles in this way, as former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner noted in his memoir. He told the story about how he had objected to some talking points given to him in preparation for some appearances on the Sunday talk shows.

 I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit. It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute. Pfeiffer said the line was a “dog whistle” to the Left, a phrase I had never heard before. He had to explain that the phrase was code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security.

Swiftboating has a very negative connotation to people on the left. To them, it means “unfairly smearing someone on our team.” You know you’ve landed some punches, if you’ve been accused of swiftboating.

On the right, we understand it to mean, telling the truth about a Democrat – more specifically in the Kerry and Bergdahl cases – men who served with honor telling inconvenient truths about a guy who didn’t, who is useful to Democrats.

John calls the Regime’s attack on the vets who served with Bergdahl,  an “incandescently stupid blunder, guaranteed to stoke the anger of military families.”

Yet, they did it anyway in a desperate attempt to rally the base. We’ll see how much success they have.

The reason the Regime is so surprised that the reaction from military personnel has been so uniformly negative, is because they forced Bergdahl’s platoon mates to sign non-disclosure agreements about what happened. This wasn’t supposed to come out. The Obama administration clearly wanted to portray Bergdahl as a long-suffering hero who had served his country well, and through their outstanding efforts, will soon be home with his family. 

But the men who served with Bergdahl, who have been simmering with rage for years over comrades killed looking for the deserter, exploded like a geyser as soon as he was released, because at that point, they felt they were free to talk.

The Obama administration is now deploying the swift-boat dog-whistle to combat this.

Tuesday, State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf picked the short straw, taking Jen Psaki’s place in the briefing room.

Harf tangled with the same Fox News reporter who has been giving Psaki grief lately, telling him “we don’t know the facts of what happened to him (Sgt. Bergdahl) on that day,” dismissing the accounts given by Bergdahl’s platoon mates. She said there would be an investigation to find out what happened (five years after the fact.) 

It should be noted that the Army conducted an investigation into Bergdahl’s disappearance in 2009, but shocker — it’s classified. I guess that’s why we need a new investigation. Because no one can see the old investigation.

In the meantime, don’t listen to all those guys who served with Bergdahl give their first hand accounts about what happened. According to Harf, they don’t know what they’re talking about. The State Dept is going to find out if Bowe Bergdahl deserted his post by asking —  Bowe Bergdahl if he deserted his post.
When Fox News reporter Lucas Tomlinson asked, “Does the State Department consider Sergeant Bergdahl to be a deserter?” Harf replied, “The State Department — no, Lucas. Look, what we’ve said is we are going to learn the facts about what happened here.”
She added, “he’s been in captivity, Lucas. I think he’s probably the person who knows best what happened on that night,” Harf said.
Tomlinson shot back, “Well, I think his squad mates have the best indication what happened that night.”

“I don’t think that that’s the case,” Harf responded.

The accounts I’ve seen from Bergdahl’s platoon mates have all been strikingly similar. The only one that differs is the account by Bergdahl himself in the Haqqani propaganda video, in which he said he was captured when he lagged behind his patrol.

The Obama administration’s target audience at this point are either ideologues who are still willing to believe their lies, or folks who are disengaged from what’s going on and only hear a few soundbites.  The Regime’s dog-whistles are meant for them.

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