SocraticGadfly: The untruths and half-truths of Bill Flores

February 20, 2014

The untruths and half-truths of Bill Flores

Attending an area Republican Party event recently, Flores, Texas' District 17 Congressman, had plenty of red meat for his audience. Too bad a lot of it either directly was not true, or at a minimum, didn't tell the story behind what he presented.

To take a look at the top ones:

1. Claiming the post-2010 GOP House has shrunk the size of the budget. Yes, by cutting the safety net even for the white "tea party" types that vote GOP, cutting veterans' benefits and more.
2. Related to this, talking about the "dangerously skyrocketing deficit," even though everybody knows that the deficit has declined for multiple consecutive years AND that Flores, later in his speech, mentioned ... No. 1 above!
3. Calling the flat tax the "fair tax," as is normal for GOPers.
4. Calling for Social Security reform, without (related to No. 2) specifying that this "reform" would be from privatizing Social Security.
5. Calling for "restoring our military," without mentioning that GOP Congresscritters (albeit with fair Democratic support) and a GOP president whose name Flores only mentioned once "broke" the military.
6. Claiming that Edward Snowden's leaks set our military back centuries, because he leaked military secrets to Russia and China.
7. Blaming Obama for unemployment and underemployment, without mentioning that the GOP has fought every attempt to extend unemployment benefits, create new job training and more.
8. Saying "stupid cap and trade" led him to run for Congress in 2010. Yeah, it was stupid, instead of a carbon tax.
9. Talking about Reagan "winning the Cold War" (rather than Gorbachev) and "producing unprecedented economic growth."
10. Calling for "energy security" while not discussing how mythical that is, how wrong-headed his oil-and-gas approach to that is, and more.

And, last but not least:
Reading the names of the dead West first responders without mentioning that the hardcore anti-regulatory stance of today's GOP at the state level led directly to their deaths.

That right there makes him a hypocrite. A big fat hypocrite.

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