It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true

After focus grouping, poll testing and media vetting, it should come as no surprise that political rhetoric tends toward the banal. When even the politicians uttering the lines seem unconvinced, how are we supposed to be?

(The apex example: The lame-at-birth line about how drivers must select “D” to move forward, but “R” moves backward. Never was this line uttered more listlessly than when then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman tossed it out in 2000 at a rally at UNLV, chuckling the whole time at the absurdity of it.)

The best lines, of course, are the ones based in truth, and I scribbled down a few of these this week. Here’s a roundup:

• President Barack Obama during the second presidential debate: If the deficit and debt really are moral issues, then high income earners should be asked to pay the same rates they paid under former President Bill Clinton. No, this will not solve the deficit problem. But it will contribute to a solution.

And when that solution was proposed in the U.S. Senate in July – in a clean bill that gave lawmakers an opportunity to lower taxes for those earning less than $250,000, but would have allowed tax cuts to expire for higher-income earners – Republicans flatly rejected the idea. (That includes our own Sen. Dean Heller, who voted for a bill that would extend all tax cuts, but not one that would have done so exclusively for the middle-class.)

So now, when those same Republicans now say they’re concerned about the middle class, they should be asked why they abandoned their general anti-tax ideas when they had a chance to help.

• Fran Lebowitz, in a “State of the Union” conversation with Frank Rich at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts Wednesday: There should be a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists.

“It’s corrupt. It’s a criminal enterprise,” Lebowitz said. “I really wish that Democrats would use the word ‘unpatriotic.’ It’s unpatriotic to use the tools of the U.S. government to enrich yourself.”

Indeed. But if they do use that word, they’d have to use it against some in their own ranks who have done just that.

And Lebowitz might be surprised to find she has an ally in former superlobbyist and staunch Republican Jack Abramoff, whose own congressional reform plan included a lifetime ban on members of Congress lobbying. (He’s since modified that idea to a 10-year cooling off period because the lifetime ban would never pass the Congress.)

• Vice President Joe Biden, at a campaign rally at the Culinary Training Center on Thursday: “The president had to act. Republicans would not act on the DREAM Act.”

Indeed, Republicans have consistently opposed the DREAM Act, although they have found their voices to criticize him for not passing it early in his term when Democrats had congressional majorities.

Then again, they also criticized him for passing health-care reform with only a congressional majority, so there’s that.

But even today, Republicans say they won’t pass the DREAM Act, even if they agree with parts of it. So Biden is correct: Obama could have either done nothing, or do the next best thing to passing the bill: Order immigration authorities to stop deporting DREAM Act-eligible kids. And while many – including this writer — would have preferred the matter be legislated, Obama had to make a choice, and he did.

• More Biden: Republicans defended Mitt Romney’s jobs record while he had the helm of Bain Capital. They said, “there is a real difference between outsourcing and off-shoring. Whoa. Tell that to the guy who doesn’t have a job.”

You know, there actually is a difference between outsourcing and off-shoring. But for all those who don’t have a job as a result of either, does that distinction really matter?

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.