Brendan Nyhan of Spinsanity.com has done an in-depth look at the Republican complaint that Democratic criticism of Bush and his policies amounts to "hate speech."
Kevin Drum (aka CalPundit) is kind of sick of hearing Republicans whine about this. He finds a silver lining though: at least it seems that everyone can "agree on who started this."
I participate in an online discussion group in which people started bringing this up. So I declared my own be-nice-to-Bush week on that group. Every time I would mention his name, I would include some appropriate title like, Our Glorious President, George Bush, Merciful of Heart and Mighty of Sword. It was kind of fun actually.
Everyone seems to think the country is getting more partisan. When you see the Senators ragging on each other like they did in their marathon session this week, it's easy to imagine the country must be going down the tubes.
But I'm not so sure that's the right way to look at it. With the absolutely reckless fiscal policies the national Administration is pursuing, and a foreign policy that's already left the United States more isolated internationally than at any time since before the Second World War, having the Democrats start playing nicey-nice and not be partisan would be a disaster.
Meanwhile, the Republicans plan to show how nice they are by focusing next year's Presidential campaign on trying to "convince voters that Democrats are too indecisive and faint-hearted -- and perhaps unpatriotic -- to protect US interests."
Yeah, that's really going to raise the level of mannerly conduct in politics! If the Democrats are ready to ram that back down their throats that's definitely a good thing. Because that's generally the only way a candidate can deal effectively with that kind of attack.
1 comment:
I agree. Yes, the Republicans started it with their maniacal assaults on Clinton. Nothing he did was good enough, or if it was good enough, he must have had ulterior motives. And I never understood it. Clinton was a Republican-lite Democrat. Yes, he talked about gays in the military and national health care, but backed down. He didn't back down on NAFTA, welfare reform, and balancing the budget -- conservative issues.
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