E.J. Dionne: Meanies And Hypocrites

Meanies And Hypocrites
By E. J. Dionne

WASHINGTON -- Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost?

Frost is the 12-year-old from Baltimore who delivered the Democrats' reply to a radio address by President Bush in September. The seventh-grader pled -- in vain, it turned out -- that the president not veto Congress' $35 billion expansion of the children's health care program known as SCHIP. A car crash in December 2004 left two of Halsey and Bonnie Frost's children comatose, Graeme with a brain stem injury and Gemma, his sister, with a cranial fracture.

The kids were treated, thanks to SCHIP. The Frosts spoke out so the public would know that real people lie behind the acronym.

Their reward was to be trashed on right-wing blogs and talk radio as if they were multimillionaires ripping off the system. The assault on the Frosts apparently began on the Free Republic Web site and quickly spread to National Review Online, Power Line and Michelle Malkin's blog, as well as Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

And of what were the Frosts guilty? Well, they own their own home, which they bought for $55,000 in 1990 and is now worth about $260,000; they invested in a commercial property, valued at $160,000; Halsey Frost, a self-employed woodworker, once owned a small business that was dissolved in 1999; and Graeme attends a private school on scholarship. I rely here on facts reported this week in The Baltimore Sun and The New York Times, both of which set straight the more outlandish claims made by the Frosts' attackers.

The right is unapologetic. "The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a seventh-grader," wrote National Review's Mark Steyn. "If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job, then the boy is fair game."

OK, the Democrats are "fair game," but a 12-year-old? No wonder nobody talks about compassionate conservatism anymore.

more...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/why_did_they_attack_graeme_fro.html

next week.

They are all sick bastards and there isn't enough insurance and the cure hasn't been discovered that can stop the spread of their diseased pronouncements.