When Confronted With Reality, Amnesia Sets In

A story within the story of the Cordoba House in Manhattan is that the Muslim priest wanting to build the YMCA House was a delegate of the Bush administration.  He has strong ties to Republicans and the right wing.  Again, it goes to show how good of a job Bush did at keeping a lid on the crazies.  If Barack Obama used this same cleric, Abdul Rauf, to clean his toilets Fox News and the right wing would be up in arms claiming this proves Obama hates America and is secretly planning to destroy it and enforce Sharia law.  But when Bush sends him out as a representative of the United States, it's all good.

Anyway, the point of this post is to show that when someone brings up the fact that Abdul Rauf worked for the Bush administration and worked side by side with Bush cabinet member Karen Hughes, they quickly come down with a case of amnesia.  They intentionally forget any of it ever happened.  This is a common mode of operation by Republicans.

For instance, when confronted with facts that President Obama's stimulus helped the Commonwealth of Virginia create a surplus, the Republican governor goes silent never mentioning the very generous federal funds.  In their world, the surplus happened because of "fiscal prudence and conservative budgeting."  Any other version of that story, especially one that might mention the $2.5 billion in stimulus injected into Virginia never happened.

Or when you point out complete lies by Republicans that Obama has not tripled the deficit and that it was George Bush who ran up the $1.4 trillion deficit, all goes quiet.  In their world 2008 never happened.  The bailouts took place after Obama took office and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suddenly became a crisis.  Not to mention, the budget finally became a talking point.  Bring up the fact that 2008 did happen and it was a Republican that socialized this country and redistributed more than a trillion dollars of wealth to Iraq and Afghanistan and Republicans act like it's the first time they've ever heard such nonsense and shrug it off to liberal terrorist supporters.

Even more proof is today we see Karen Hughes, the former Bush cabinet member that worked hand in hand with Rauf doing the exact same thing.  She tells Greg Sargent she has no "specific recollection" of ever working with him.   It didn't happen.  But it did happen and it's well documented.

Their line of defense is always ignore reality and it will go away.