#NewTone: Union leader James Hoffa says GOP are “like Pol Pot” on erasing history

Via The Detroit News:

Washington — Teamsters President James Hoffa on Thursday compared the recent Republican Party convention’s downplaying of the Bush administration to Cambodian leader Pol Pot, who infamously wiped from history books anything that happened before he rose to power.

In remarks before the National Press Club, the fiery Detroit-born union leader, in his fourth term running the 1.4-million member organization, also likened the tea party to the anti-Communist John Birch Society.

He said the GOP at its national convention in Tampa, Fla., two weeks ago didn’t talk about “what they really believe in” or highlight former leaders such as President George W. Bush.

“The Republicans are rewriting history,” Hoffa said, saying the party is ignoring Bush’s eight years in office. “There was no recession. There were no wars. Nothing ever happened during those eight years,” he said.

The GOP wants to suggest “history began” with President Barack Obama and ignores all of the problems before 2009.”

“And none of the things that George Bush did during his time — with (financial bailout), Lehman Brothers, and the collapse of Wall Street — that never happened,” Hoffa said “It’s like Pol Pot — basically start (from) the Day One, the new calendars.”

Despot Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. Under his rule, he forced city dwellers to work in the countryside under a program to restart the country’s history at “Year Zero,” according to the New World Encyclopedia. His policies led to the deaths of about 2 million Cambodians.

The insane and hateful rhetoric coming from the far left – especially from Big Labor circles – continues to increase at an alarming rate, especially as we get closer to the election and they get more desperate to keep power where they have it and add to it where they don’t.

Let’s keep in mind how ridiculous and hypocritical this sounds coming from a group of left wing zealots who tried to pin the entire blame for the financial meltdown that started happening in the latter two years of President Bush’s time in the WH on the GOP, when it was the stubborn and defiant resistance of Democrats when it came to oversight reform, as well as their decades-old push to force lenders into approving loans for people who couldn’t afford them (all in the name of “diversity”), that greatly enabled this country’s economic downturn. These are policies that to this day Democrats not only do NOT take responsibility for in terms of their harmful effects on the economy but in fact continue to push even in the face of their obvious failure!

When President Bush took office there was also the little matter of Osama bin Laden and the deadly threat of his Al Qaeda outfit left unfinished courtesy of President Clinton, which had to be dealt with.

I could go on and on but you get the point.

(One of the) big differences between President Bush and President Obama is that Bush didn’t come out of the gate blaming his predecessor for all of his problems. In fact, it wasn’t until his second term that you saw a significant pushback from the Bush administration, including Cheney and others, on acknowledgement that some of the issues they were dealing with were as a direct result of failed Democrat policies of the past that continued to create headaches for the administration – the financial crisis was a glaring example of exactly that type of problem.

President Obama, on the other hand, is STILL blaming the poor economy on Bush.

To get directly to Hoffa’s “blame Bush” point: No one in their right mind would argue that President Obama didn’t “inherit” issues from the Bush administration. But guess what? ALL presidents “inherit” little and big problems from previous administrations, and in fact many presidential candidates campaign on being the one who can “fix” said problems, as Obama did over and over when he ran for the Oval Office. But after a certain point in your presidency you OWN IT and you can’t continue to blame “the other guy” for the messes you’ve created. You also can’t blame them when the policies you push repeatedly FAIL to solve the problems you claimed you could fix!

So no, Mr. Hoffa, this isn’t about the GOP being like Pol Pot and wanting to “erase presidential history” – it’s about you and the big guy in the WH whose strings you control not being able to man up and take the ‘buck stops here mentality” that mature leaders typically do at this point in their respective presidencies. And until he (and you) do so, you will continue to get slammed for your detrimental contributions to the floundering economy as well as your refusal to admit that your big government, pro-statism ideas do not work.

Get used to it. And grow up while you’re at it.

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