Smearing off the cuff

Eugene Volokh is outraged over Dennis Hastert's comments on FoxNews:

Here in this campaign, quote, unquote, "reform," you take party power away from the party, you take the philosophical ideas away from the party, and give them to these independent groups.

You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where -- if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from. And I...

WALLACE: Excuse me?

HASTERT: Well, that's what he's been for a number years -- George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there.

WALLACE: You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?

HASTERT: I'm saying I don't know where groups -- could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know. The fact is we don't know where this money comes from.

Volokh's response:

Hastert's substantive criticisms of campaign finance may be legitimate -- but the suggestion that Soros might be getting money from illegal drug distributors, even as a hypothetical example, is pretty reprehensible. (Imagine that, say, Ted Kennedy said "I don't know where Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are getting their money, if it comes from overseas or from neo-Nazis"; I take it that we'd be pretty appalled, even if Kennedy was just giving a hypothetical example.) And while "drug groups" may be slightly ambiguous in other contexts, where it might refer to pro-drug legalization groups, in this context it pretty clearly does suggest drug criminals, partly because Hastert didn't deny the connection when Wallace raised it and partly because the pro-legalization groups are funded by Soros, not the other way around.

But that's not the case at all. It was Wallace, not Hastert who used the term cartel. Hastert's phrase was drug groups, and he was careful to emphasize the point that the funding for independent groups is largely unknown. After Wallace asked whether he meant cartels, Hastert said it 'could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know.' Was this a calculated attempt to smear or a careless answer to a question?

And is it reprehensible? It seems to me too close a thing to appearance politics when a response to a question in a live interview is put under the microscope and evil machinations are imagined. If we want to begin calling such comments reprehensible we're soon ready to censure, and we reinforce the current climate in which every misstep pours outrage from all quarters and leaves only the bland and overly cautious on the stage.

The fallacious analogy doesn't hold either. The Swift Boat Vets are not to Naziism as the legalization advocates are to the drug industry, and that comparison could only have been chosen for high rhetorical effect.

Of course singling out George Soros was stupid, and of course Soros is right that criminalization does more harm than good. And it's clear that Hastert disagrees and sees him as a threat. But should he be roasted over this?

posted by Dennis on 08.31.04 at 07:03 AM





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Comments

Whether Hastert resorted to innuendo or not, it's hard to believe that any thinking person would conclude that illegal drug cartels would be interested in legalization of drugs!

Such a thing would put them out of business. Drug laws maintain high drug profits. (A form of subsidization by artificial interference with the market.)

Why, if I were a big drug kingpin, I'd want Soros shot!

Forgive my reprehensibility!

Eric Scheie   ·  August 31, 2004 08:57 AM

I'm trying to figure out George Soros. Why does he give his money to socialist causes? As far as I can figure it, it can only be either:

1) as Ayn Rand would see it, he is motivated by altruistic guilt. He apologizes for being rich and for being a Jew and finances his own destroyers, those who would rob him of his wealth in the name of "equality". He is the classic case of "the sanction of the victim" as Rand described so eloquently in "Atlas Shrugged". It is time for him to withdraw his sanction, to go on strike.

or:

2) as the John Birch Society sees it, he is one of the "Insiders" promoting more government controls and socialism, gun control and One World government, in order to eliminate competition and establish a monopoly of total control.

But, why then, does he advocate legalizing drugs, which means less government control? A "fuzzy" liberal of contradictory premises? Hmmm.... Dawn and Norma argue that drugs are part of the Communist conspiracy to dope us into submission and drain us of our precious bodily fluids, our sacred blood.

Interesting questions.... The _styles_ of the Right....



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