While Edwards obfuscated,
misdirected, distorted, and lied throughout the hour-long affair, his biggest
departures from the facts occurred early in the affair, and showed his considerable
range in torturing reality. Right off the bat, on a question addressing Syrian
refugees, Vitter gigged Edwards on the shifting sand under the latter’s
position, pointing out that in Facebook posts Edwards first enunciated a policy
to “accommodate” federal government plans to resettle refugees, then changed it
to the more independent-sounding “assist,” and finally issued a statement that
he would do neither and wanted those resettlement plans to stop.
Brazening it out, Edwards denied that
he had changed his mind, but problematically for him the enterprising website The Hayride busted him hours earlier on
that. Of course, he likely figured the typical viewer probably had no
knowledge of his record on this so he could get away with it.
Shortly thereafter, in a question
about policy differences between the candidates, Edwards repeated what become
his biggest whopper of the campaign, that by not expanding Medicaid the state
forfeits $1.6 billion a year in taxes from its citizenry, implying these bucks
would be returned here. As
explained before, that is an outright fabrication: regardless of whether
Louisiana expands it, it is other states’ decisions to expand that causes that
extraction independently of any decision in the Bayou State, and none of the
money would come back with expansion. Shamefully, the mainstream media continue,
through ignorance or willfulness, to allow his to repeat this lie without
calling him on it.
He alluded again to that falsehood not
long after, in a question about whether forging a balanced budget would require
tax increases, to which he said he had not and would not do any such thing.
When it was pointed out that Edwards had supported a few hundred million
dollars in tax increases this past session alone through the paring of tax exceptions,
he declared that what he voted for only concerned “giveaways” to business.
That may come as a surprise to
businesses, as a result of the successful vote of Edwards
as part of majorities in both the House and Senate for HCR 8 that
suspended the exemption of one cent of the four in utilities taxes paid by
businesses for about a year. Pure and simple, it raises sales taxes on business;
pure and simple, Edwards lied that he had not, with many other legislators, voted
to raise taxes.
This transitioned into questions
and answers about revenue generation by shedding tax exceptions, where Edwards
insisted that as governor he would emulate the strategy of the spring by getting
rid of unproductive exceptions. Except, of course, he, with the Legislature,
did no such thing: the cuts they made were arbitrary
and indiscriminant, with no effort to conduct cost-benefit analyses, just their
lopping off portions they felt large enough to support the amount they wished
to spend, constituting yet another Edwards fib.
Other smaller departures from the
truth occurred, but you get the picture. It all remains consistent with the
deceptive campaign run by the House minority leader, where he tries to present
himself as something other than what he is in order to gloss over his hard left
voting record and thereby fool people into thinking his policy preferences
going forward would have him advocate any differently. (And he even might have exaggerated on his military service
in order to make himself seem more valorous to voters.)
To those knowledgeable about
politics, the debate clearly showed Edwards had a very shaky performance. But of
the few who viewed it, far fewer are that knowledgeable about Louisiana politics,
and the mainstream media certainly will not convey to the small attentive
audience the necessary context to make Edwards’ mendacity obvious. Edwards
insists to voters that he never will forfeit their trust, yet by his own words
gives the electorate every reason to expect the opposite.
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