"Cindy" Christie's Bogus Attack on Rand Paul - Reason.com

Chris Christie's Bogus Attack on Rand Paul - Reason.com

Cindy Christie

Christie gets in touch with his inner Maureen Dowd.

A. Barton Hinkle | July 31, 2013

Back in 2005, a woman named Cindy Sheehan was camping outside President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Sheehan’s son Casey had died in the  Iraq War that Bush had started, and Sheehan’s vigil turned her into a heroine for many of the war’s opponents, including Dowd.  “The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq,” wrote the New York Times columnist, “is absolute.”

Unfortunately for Dowd, other parents also had lost children in Iraq, and some of them stepped forward to say they still continued to support the war, which had a rather complicating effect on Dowd’s overall point. But that is a logical consideration, and Dowd was not trying to make any logical arguments. She was trying to overwhelm them with sentiment.

Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, did the same last week when he tore into civil libertarians concerned about domestic spying. The House had then just finished debating legislation sponsored by libertarian Republican Rep. Justin Amash to rein in the National Security Agency. Speaking “as a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001,” Christie said he wanted “us to be really cautious, because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought.”

-go to link-