How low will Demorats go to win elections? Last week it was putting a 12-year old on the radio to moan and groan about President Bush’s threat to veto the S-CHIP children’s health insurance program. I ordinarily don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh – who I think is kind of a blowhard – but in this case, thanks to the good folks at Free Republic, he hits the nail square on the head:

RUSH: I had some rudimentary information on this two weeks ago, and it wasn’t enough for me to trust going with. But since then, it has been verified, and most of it’s been verified by a “Freeper” at Free Republic. Everybody is writing about this now, since the Freeper posted it over the weekend. This 12-year-old kid that the Democrats used in the Saturday radio address to whine and moan and cry to President Bush about the S-CHIP children’s health program, it turns out that the family of this kid sends its kids to “one of Baltimore’s expensive private schools.” This family owns a house in a neighborhood of homes valued in the $400,000 to $500,000 range. This family bought commercial property in 1999 for $160,000.

This is Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old, and Frost’s father is self-employed. He owns the building in which he works. His father makes about $45,000 a year while his mother is employed is at an unspecified salary by a medical publishing house that doesn’t provide health insurance coverage. Bottom line. This is from Mark Tapscott, who is an editorial page editor at the Washington Examiner, has been tracking all this on the blogs. “Two points. First, people make choices and it’s clear the Frosts have made choice to invest in property and a business, but not in private health insurance. The Maryland-administered version of the federal SCHIP program, by the way, does not impose an asset test on applicants.” It’s one of the states where you have no asset test, so anybody can be part of the program! What the Democrats did: “President Bush used his regular Saturday radio address yesterday to explain and defend his veto of the massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) approved last week by Congress. … An hour later on national radio, the Democrats’ response to Bush was delivered by Baltimore private middle school student Graeme Frost, who along with his sister was seriously injured in an auto accident three years ago.

His response to Bush was actually recorded earlier in the week and Matthew Hay Brown, a reporter from The Baltimore Sun, interviewed the young man after he did his recording. Frost said his parents work hard to provide for him and his sister but one thing they can’t afford is private health insurance, so they have to depend upon the government program, Brown reported for The Sun. Perfect illustration of why the SCHIP program should be expanded, right? Actually, no, because the Sun only reported the Democratic version of the story and we can’t depend upon a mainstream media outlet like the Sun to get the rest of the story.” Well, the rest of the story is: “It turns out the Frost family sends its kids to one of Baltimore’s expensive private schools, owns a house in a neighborhood of homes valued in the $400,000-500,000 range and bought commercial property in 1999 for $160,000.” What’s the upshot of all this? This is nothing new. The Democrats lie! They have to in order to make their case. What was seductive to them was that this young man and his sister were severely injured in an auto accident, and they didn’t have private insurance. “That’s all we needed. That’s all. Just smear the president. That’s all we needed. We don’t need any other details, because we know that our buddies in the mainstream media are not going to uncover the details, and if they do uncover ’em, they’re not going to report ’em — and when they do get uncovered a couple weeks later, a day later, the story is already ours. We already own it.”

So the bottom line for me is: they can’t rely on truth to make their case for their cause. They have to lie. Be it about me, be it about their own voters (such as the Frosts) be it about President Bush, they must lie — and anybody who stands in the way of their succeeding with that lie becomes an enemy, becomes a target. That’s where I and my buddies in talk radio come in. We are a thorn in their side because we represent the truth they are trying to hide, the truth that they are lying about, and they have to do something about it — and they have to do that by lying. The truth will not help ’em. The truth is inconvenient to today’s Democrat Party and today’s left. “Fiction” is their byword. Make it up. Make sure people cry about it. Have a lot of emotion attached to the fiction, and have no guilt about it. “Once you get past the lying, the rest is easy,” is their philosophy. The kid, Graeme Frost, in one of his radio addresses, asked the question: “Why doesn’t President Bush want children to have health care?” They send the kid out to lie. They filled this kid’s head with lies just as they have some of these soldiers about me. Put lies in the kid’s head or put it on the script that he’s reading. He goes out and reads it. He’s 12 years old! They will use anybody! They’ll corrupt anybody, to get where they’re headed. That’s who they are, folks.

It’s pretty pathetic that Democrats are using children as a front to their to fight for this huge and unnecessary expanion of yet another federal program and a means to trash the President. It’s one thing for Charlie Rangel to accuse the Prez of “trying to kill children” (as he outrageously asserted on last Sunday’s “Face The Nation” program), it’s a whole ‘nuther thing to stick a kid in front of a microphone to do your dirty work. This is just another example of how Democrats will say and do anything to get elected. Every time you think they can’t go any lower in their efforts, they find a way to trump everything they’ve attempted before. To disingenuously use a 12-year old to carry their polluted water is both pathetic and irresponsible, but don’t expect anyone from the mainstream dino-media to call them on it.

Republicans might be incompetent, but they’re not beneath contempt like their Democrtaic counterparts are. Shame on them.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s a reasoned response to the proposed legislation by someone who ought to know – a Republican representative who knows his district! (Hat tip: Michelle)