Hunter Biden tells House GOP I'm going lower when you go lowBy Hal Brown
Left, DonkeyHotey caricature, right my adaptation
It was was impossible to miss this article on The Washington Post website this morning: It has since moved further down the opening page.
When I looked it was just below articles about Ukraine:
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| As often happens an article featured prominently either on the New York Times or the Post isn't on the other papers main page at all. The Times main page had nothing about Hunter Biden today. |
When Michelle Obama first used the phrase "when they go low, we go high" it garnered a lot of publicity. During her speech supporting Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention she said:
“When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: ‘When they go low, we go high’.
Her subsequent explanation went deeper than just a catchy meme. This is how she described it shortly thereafter:
In a new interview with Stephen Colbert that aired on Monday night (14 November), the author and attorney was asked if people “really have to go ‘high’” when politicians “go low”.
The Late Show host said: “I totally understand going high when somebody goes low, but the bar is so low that staying at your own altitude still means higher. Do I actually have to go up here or can I just be normal? Do I have to be a saint? Because down here, I’m pissed off!”
Obama replied: “For me, going high is not losing the urgency or the passion or the rage, especially when you are justified in it.
“Going high means finding the purpose in your rage. Rage without reason, without a plan, without direction is just more rage. And we’ve been living in a lot of rage.”
She added that going low is “unsustainable” and explained: “If going low worked, we’d do it. It might be a ‘quick fix’ but it doesn’t fix anything over the long term.
“I’m trying to push us to think about solutions that will actually unite us and get us focused on the real problem. That’s what I mean when I say, ‘go high’. So yes, go high. America, please go high.” From YahooNews
The Republicans are downright drooling over their plan to investigate Hunter Biden and try to tie him to then vice president Joe Biden and make the case that the vice president somehow colluded with his son in what amounted to treason against the United States.The fly in this ointment is that all this all comes down to is that like with Benghazi there's no there there.
The more one looks at Hunter Biden's past behavior the more an objective observer with a modicum of empathy who is not blinded by a zealous quest to hurt President Biden the more they will feel sorry for the president.
The Washington Post article by Matt Viser begins:
Hunter Biden’s lawyers, in a newly aggressive strategy, sent a series of blistering letters Wednesday to state and federal prosecutors urging criminal investigations into those who accessed and disseminated his personal data — and sent a separate letter threatening Fox News host Tucker Carlson with a defamation lawsuit.
The string of letters, which included criminal referrals and cease-and-desist missives aimed at critics and detractors, marked the start of a new and far more hard-hitting phase for the president’s son just as House Republicans prepare their own investigations into him.
- threatening Fox News host Tucker Carlson with a defamation lawsuit.
- challenging the nonprofit status of Marco Polo, a group that is run by conservative activist Garrett M. Ziegler
- asking state and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate individuals who came into possession of the (laptop) data
- request investigations into former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was given the material from Mac Isaac and later distributed it; Robert Costello, who is Giuliani’s lawyer and also received the material; and Stephen K. Bannon, who has also had the material and helped facilitate initial news stories about it.
Taken together, the actions represent the boldest and most aggressive moves to date from Biden, who has often heeded the advice of those who urged him not to make public waves. Those close to President Biden and the White House have preferred a more conservative approach, but some individuals around Hunter Biden have wanted to be more assertive in telling his side of the story and going more directly after his opponents.
“This marks a new approach by Hunter Biden and his team,” said one person familiar with his strategy, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private plans. “He is not going to sit quietly by as questionable characters continue to violate his rights and media organizations peddling in lies try to defame him.”
The new strategy marks a calculated risk that it is better to forge a combative path and take on Biden’s longtime critics, even if it means inviting more news coverage of a dark chapter in his life and draws additional attention to the trove of personal and embarrassing material included on a laptop that has been disseminated by his detractors.
One could say that this approach isn't an example of going lower when your opponents themselves go low. You could say it is taking a page out of their playbook, but then analyzing their "plays" and not merely trying to devise defenses against them but to take an idiom which originated in sports and apply it here:
The best defense is a good offense.
The idea is that if you attack them while they are attacking you it will distract them and cause them to mount their own defense and derail their strategy.
More than distracting them all of these legal machinations are likely to shape the media coverage of the various hearings which the House GOP is hoping will cast Hunter Biden as a felon and somehow implicate the president as an enabler or worse.
The next, and as I see it, crucial decision Hunter Biden and his lawyers have to decide on is how he presents himself when facing Jim Jordan and other inquisitors in hearings. Should he let the lawyers be the aggressors and he take a more passive or measured approach trying to come across as a sympathetic figure?
I will have to do more thinking on this.
As I finish this blog this story was just being covered on MSNBC.
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