Karl Rove's "Straw Man Watch" page

Karl Rove is one of the smartest political guys out there. So it's a good idea to take note of what he says, whether or not you agree with him on a majority of issues or whether or not you like him. I found this great page on his web site. It's a collection of President Obama's attacks on "straw men". It's worth reading through to become accustomed to just how often he constructs these non-existent enemies and bases a large portion of the support for his policies on the necessity of toppling them.

Now I'll admit that showing your opponents views is the most negative light possible is a time-tried and well accepted rhetorical device. And I would never claim that Obama is alone as a user of the straw man fallacy in American politics. But I do think it's worthy of noting the quantity of uses and how their use has a way of giving a confrontational color to his speech. Check out this one from a press conference on 2/9/09:

As I said, the one concern I've got on the stimulus package in terms of the debate and listening to some of what's been said in Congress is that there seems to be a set of folks who—I don't doubt their sincerity—who just believe that we should do nothing. Now, if that's their opening position or their closing position in negotiations, then we're probably not going to make much progress, because I don't think that's economically sound and I don't think that's what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.

This kind of thing is maddening to conservatives. Every conservative pundit I was listening to at the time was suggesting that making the Bush taxes permanent would strengthen the economy. And that's just one example. Up higher on the page there's a link to a good post on Newsbusters exposing the myth that the GOP has no plans for health care.

But people miss the fallacious nature of the argument; many of them obviously agree with the caricature of conservatives which he draws. Besides, this sort of fighting against an imaginary opponent seems to be working pretty good for the President. It's much easier to attack FOX news and Rush Limbaugh than confront, say, House Minority Leader John Boehner as an entity with opposing views. People rightly point out that Obama "inflates" FOX and Rush when he attacks them, but who cares? From his point of view, it's much better than inflating Boehner or Mitch McConnell or Joe Lieberman—elected officials who can and do oppose the President on some or all of his policies.

So the best thing to do is to take note on how many times and to what degree Barack Obama relies on the straw man fallacy in his rhetoric to get his points across. Rove's collection is a good starting point.