I Used to Privately Snicker at the Dems

[Bricker]

@Fear Itself

Suppose I accept, for arguments sake, your claim that the Republicans are no worse than the Democrats. Do you see the hypocrisy when Republicans portray themselves as the party of morality, or at least as more morally upright than the other party? Surely they should be held to a higher standard, no?

This is an interesting question.

I support the Republicans because they generally seek to enact policies and laws that advance the goals I support. There’s nothing in that equation that requires I hold them to a higher standard merely because they claim to be more morally upright than their opponents. The question is what they actually do in office. In general, I’m happy with the Republican’s legislative efforts. So in general, I support them.

I do see the hypocrisy in an individual making these claims and then not living up to them, yes. But why should that dissuade me from supporting the party?

[Bricker]

@lissener

So . . . you would endorse imprisonment for someone who is sexually aroused by something that you personally find icky? Hmm . . . nope, no possibility of a slippery slope there.

I must have missed a couple of the connect-a-dots. How, in anything I’ve written, do you find support for the proposition that I would endorse imprisonment for someone who is sexually aroused by something that I personally find icky?

[MaxTheVool]

(I guess I’m continuing the debate-Bricker’s-genral-morality hijack here… well, sorry, I find it interesting…)

@Bricker

Of course. There is no absolute authority for morality that we can both agree upon.

True, but there are many moral principles that virtually all Americans DO agree upon. For one thing, we pretty much all oppose murder, theft, rape, etc. Democrats and Republicans agree on those things. More interestingly, I think we all respect, and view as “moral”, consistency with one’s positions. I am pro-choice, but I can respect, and view as “moral”, someone who is pro-life. However, someone who claims to be pro-life but gets, and hides, an abortion when he is the father, is not someone that anyone would view as moral. Sure, I can’t prove that any of the above (murder = bad, consistency-with-one’s-claimed-beliefs = good) are absolute universal perfect constants. But they are agreed upon by enough of a super-majority of Americans that they might as well be absolutes for purposes of discussions of this sort.

But the actual physical carnage in Iraq is not the result of a “sin” – that is, I don’t agree it was the wrong thing to do.

There are at least three paths I might go down to attempt to cause you to rethink your view of the morality of the situation, without questioning your belief that the war was at its root justified.

(1) Suppose you were privy to absolutely 100% damningly perfectly incontrovertible evidence that the Bush administration did consciously lie about the situation in Iraq. That is, they said to themselvesl “hey, the world, and America, would be a better place if Saddam weren’t in power. We realize it will cost lives and dollars, but we honestly and morally believe it is the correct thing to do. However, we won’t be able to convince the American public of the correctness of our belief. Thus, we will lie to them and claim that Saddam’s about to have the bomb. But it’s for a good cause, because America will honestly be better off with Saddam deposed”. How would that change your view of the war as a whole?

(2) From the beginning, it’s seemed to me that the administration has done a piss-poor job of planning and executing nearly every phase of the war. With the exception of the actual invade-Iraq-and-blow-up-their-army phase, which went fairly well, just about everything done in Iraq has been mismanaged, misdescribed, and mispredicted. Even if you think that invading Iraq, deposing Saddam, and trying to establish a democracy is a good idea, do you think we’ve done a good job it? And eventually, can doing a bad job of something become immoral in its own way? If I want to build a shelter for abused toddlers, and truly and honestly have the best of intentions, but have no idea how to build a building, and have no idea THAT I have no idea how to build a building, but barge right ahead, ignoring the advice of the actual expert building builders all around me, and my partially built building keeps falling over and killing people, and goes over budget, and so forth; isn’t that eventually something that should correctly be judged as immoral, even if my original motives were laudatory?

(3) I hate to sound callous, but it seems to me that part of the decision making process for any possible military action is the likely cost in lives. Would you think that the Iraq war was a good idea if you knew ahead of time that it would cost 50,000 American lives? 500,000? 5,000,000? Part of judging any potential action is its consequences, and it’s thus important that we know, to the best of our ability, what those consequences will be. I certainly don’t remember anyone saying, in 2002, that invading Iraq would cost 3,000+ American lives and take 4 years. A choice that has some good, positive, moral benefits can still be immoral if the costs outweigh the benefits. And if you don’t know what the costs of a decision are, you sure as hell shouldn’t just make go ahead and casually make it.

Finally, on the issue of pot… I have a 30-year-old cousin. She’s a doctor. In fact, she’s chief resident for psychiatry at a large urban hospital. She spends a lot of time working with veterans dealing with post-traumatic-stress issues and things of that sort. She’s extremely smart and competent and hard-working. She has a husband. He’s a teacher, who spent last year teaching learning-disabled kids, an incredibly hard and thankless job. (I think he’s moved to a different teaching job this year, not sure). The two of them are incredibly socially conscious. They went to Guatemala a few years back to help protect witnesses who were coming forward to testify in war crimes trials. They are also loving aunt and uncle to my baby cousin, and are soon planning to start a family themselves. These are absolutely wonderful people. America, and the world, needs more people like them. Now, sometimes on weekends, when they are relaxing, they like to smoke some pot. And while pot is currently illegal, it’s pretty clear that if they were somehow caught and arrested, they would receive a slap on the wrist of some sort for first time offenders who were clearly not dealers.

Tell me why we, as a society, would be better off if, were they to be caught smoking pot, they were instead locked up for a long period of time.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Bricker

No. But the Democrats’ approach has the effect of vitiating the punative effect of the laws. If the law provides for a prison sentence, I support the party that is more likely to implement policies that ensure the sentence is served, not the party that’s more likely to urge parole or probation or alternative sentencing. This is not saying that parole, probation, or alternative sentencing are illegal… it is to refer to the weakening of the punative effect of the law.

So I’m still trying to figure out what Democrats are the party of. Clearly they’re not suporting parole/probation/alternative sentencing because they’re seeking the votes of criminals–I think all of us except the very stupid can dismiss that conjecture (Ann Coulter, I’m looking at you).

They support these approaches, when they do support them, because they believe that these approaches ultimately lead to better results, that they ultimately reduce the amount of suffering, that they reduce recidivism, that they reduce injustice.

If Republicans are the party of law, would that make Democrats the party of justice?

Daniel

[Fear_Itself]

@Bricker

This is an interesting question.

I support the Republicans because they generally seek to enact policies and laws that advance the goals I support. There’s nothing in that equation that requires I hold them to a higher standard merely because they claim to be more morally upright than their opponents. The question is what they actually do in office. In general, I’m happy with the Republican’s legislative efforts. So in general, I support them.

I do see the hypocrisy in an individual making these claims and then not living up to them, yes. But why should that dissuade me from supporting the party?

It should dissuade those who are led to believe that the party asking for their vote will govern from a higher moral ground than their opponent. Since you are only interested in the policies and laws they succeed in enacting, with little regard for the means they use, or the behavior they engage in to achieve those ends, I would say no, you should not be dissuaded.

[RTFirefly]

@Bricker

But the actual physical carnage in Iraq is not the result of a “sin” – that is, I don’t agree it was the wrong thing to do.

I was actually trying to stay away from the decision to go to war, and simply stick with the costs of this Administration lying to us - and apparently itself as well - by claiming that things were really much better than they were throughout.

Post 74:

As just one example, consider the continual gap between the situation on the ground in Iraq as this Administration has described it over the past three years and five months, and how practically every other informed observer has described it during that time - and how much the Administration’s blindness has cost us (and the citizens of Iraq) due to its failure to deal with Iraq as it is, rather than Iraq as it has imagined it.

Bearing false witness on an elephantine scale about the major issue of the decade has nothing to do with “traditional platform elements of social and economic conservatism.”

Post 184:

You can claim, for instance, that staying the course in Iraq v. figuring out how to get out of there is a difference of opinion, and it is. But you cannot say that about the GOP’s perpetually rosy prognoses of the situation on the ground. That has been nothing but lies in service of an agenda.

To the extent that a politically expedient Panglossian view of the situation has been responsible for a failure to deal with the ways in which the occupation was failing, I would consider the resulting carnage to be the consequences of the moral failings of this Administration. This is the same whether or not one believes the invasion was justified.

The same holds true for this Administration’s unwillingness to set a course for the postwar in Iraq. To proceed with war despite having no such plan was a sin, pure and simple. If you believe the occupation would have been successful with good planning, but has spiraled downward to its present disastrous state due to the failure to plan for the postwar, then you must believe the consequences of this sin have been extreme.

Even if the plan for the postwar had been to hand over rule of Iraq to somebody within 30 days after the triumphant arrival of our armies in Baghdad, even that stub of a plan would have generated questions - like who we were planning to hand over the government to, what reasons we had to believe that they would have popular support, how we could know Iraq wouldn’t degenerate into chaos the moment we weren’t there to back them up with our military might, and so forth.

If you’re not concerned with sins like these, but the government response to pot-puffers is important to you, then we do not share a common moral code; there is no use us debating the right and wrong of anything ever again.

[Bricker]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

They support these approaches, when they do support them, because they believe that these approaches ultimately lead to better results, that they ultimately reduce the amount of suffering, that they reduce recidivism, that they reduce injustice.

Undoubtedly that’s exactly what they believe.

I don’t agree that their policies do those things, though. But that’s why this is an argument with no villains – they believe their approach is wisest; I believe it’s not. But both of us are operating in good faith, honestly trying to make the country better.

[Kimstu]

@Bricker

I do see the hypocrisy in an individual making these claims and then not living up to them, yes. But why should that dissuade me from supporting the party?

Depends on whether or not you object to hypocrisy. If you do, then you might prefer to withhold your vote from a hypocritical candidate. If you don’t, then I suppose it doesn’t matter.

But your OP seemed to suggest that you did object to the hypocrisy of “saying we stand for law and morality” and then not living up to it:

@Bricker's OP

Let’s find out who else screwed up, get them the fuck out of government, and then we can say we stand for law and morality again.

Or were you complaining not that the current Republican leadership is being hypocritical, but that its hypocrisy has lost credibility? Are you demanding an end to hypocrisy, or merely calling for some more plausible hypocrites?

[Excalibre]

@Shayna

@Bricker

I think, as between the Dems and the Repubs, the Republicans DO try to characterize themselves as the “law and morality” crowd. They paint the Dems as liberals soft on crime. And they certainly are the party that tries to identify with what much of the country would call “traditional” morality.

Yes?

NO! That’s just plain bullshit. You do not have a corner on morality! Get over yourself!

Um, are you smoking the crack? Because that was certainly a bizarre little non sequitur. You should quit the stuff, hon. It’s not doing you any favors.
On the other hand, I do have to say that censoring Toilet Man 6 because you find it unpleasant does not jibe well at all with what I would consider to be moral.

@Shodan

Although you are entirely correct that you are going to get more praise from the SDMB than I will. Conservatives don’t get praise here; they get piled on.

Playing martyr never gets old, does it? Poor, poor Shodan.

@Shodan

By asking Bricker a question as to what he means? This is “dropping a contemptuous shit” into a thread?

By the definitions of the Usual Suspects, no doubt. But anything that does not fit into their preconceived notions is that.

No, your tactics in every other political thread are “dropping a contemptuous shit”. I haven’t looked over your posts in this specific thread, yet, so I don’t know. Perhaps this time is the rare exception.

For your own sake, if only you had the self-insight to recognize that you epitomize exactly what you claim to hate about “the Usual Suspects”. And once again, you make it clear that the only tool in your political toolbox is the contemptuous insult. You’re not able to discuss actual issues of actual substance, so you engage in childish namecalling instead.

@Shodan

If it comforts you to tell yourself that…

Nothing to do with comfort. Not being a mindless shill for one party is simply better than being one. Maybe you’ll grow up one day. Maybe you’ll take it to heart when a lot of people much smarter than you tell you what a ridiculous self-parody you’ve become. Probably not, because you’re certainly not showing much capacity for insight or self-awareness. But just maybe.

@Shodan

If you mean what I thought, that anything besides “Republicans suck!” is being Coulter, then don’t bother.

Poor, poor Shodan.

@Shodan

IOW, if what you claim is true, then Democrats would also be putting politics over principle. This would make them any different - how?

Ooh! Another political tool! The mindless claims of equivalency between unlike things! The Democrats are different because they weren’t protecting a predator for political gains. If you weren’t a mindless partisan shill, you would recognize that not protecting sexual predators is better than protecting sexual predators, whatever one’s motives may be.

It’s really fucking sad, Shodan, when you’re trying to claim that turning in a sexual predator is the moral equivalent of not turning one in. When you’re trying to minimize what the house GOP leadership has done by trying to reduce protecting a sexual predator to a minor bit of political fighting, that should be a signal to you that your priorities have gone insane.

@Left Hand of Dorkness

When you constantly have to distort what people say (notice the adverbial phrase you added to the challenge in order to make it unmeetable) in order to fake a win, you’re a loser.

Sageitude.

@Shodan

And, as I said earlier, if all you mean is “nothing but Republican-bashing is acceptable”, don’t trouble yourself.

Poor, poor Shodan.

@Shodan

Gad, you people are dishonest ass holes.

Yeah, Leftie! It’s dishonest of us to not say what Shodan claims we say! I’m feeling really, really guilty about this. I think I’m going to buy poor, poor Shodan an ice cream cone as an apology.

@Little Plastic Ninja

Additionally. Your constant griping about how little you’re appreciated makes you sound like a teenager. Have you ever considered that maybe there’s more than one reason you do not find universal agreement here?

Poor, poor Shodan. Everyone’s so mean to him! I’m crying for him. Right now. Crying!
Seriously, Shodan. Are you really going to continue trying to pretend that not turning in a sexual predator is really not that bad a thing - that you can draw some sort of moral equivalency between one one hand protecting a predator and on the other hand turning him in? Because I didn’t have a real great opinion of you before. But if that’s the kind of morality you believe in, then Jesus. You should stop and think about what’s really important. That’s just frickin’ sick, dude. Granted, that’s the sort of amorality that characterized the house GOP leadership, but you don’t have to embrace it. Bricker didn’t. Bricker’s moral principles may be incorrect in many different ways (:)) but damn, he has the humanity to recognize that someone who takes advantage of his position of power to try to victimize teenage boys is not just a political problem but an example of real evil. I never thought I’d say that about someone because I never thought I’d run into someone so low that they don’t share that belief.

Damn, Shodan. Just . . . damn.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Bricker

Undoubtedly that’s exactly what they believe.

I don’t agree that their policies do those things, though. But that’s why this is an argument with no villains – they believe their approach is wisest; I believe it’s not. But both of us are operating in good faith, honestly trying to make the country better.

So, you seem to be okay with Republicans advancing themselves as the party of law–am I right? If so, are you okay with Democrats advancing themselves as the party of justice?

(Note that I’m just stipulating here that Democrats favor alternative sentences: to me, that just looks like nostalgia for the good old days when Democrats weren’t snapping at Republicans on scandal and chasing the Republicans’ tails on policy).

Daniel

[RTFirefly]

@Bricker

At the time the action was undertaken, the cause was to eliminate the threat of chemical or biological weaponry and to remove a brutal dictator from power.

Subsequent events have revealed that there was no real threat from chemical or biological weapons, but that wasn’t known at the time,

but so what - they made no plans to secure the prospective WMD sites from looters anyway.

[lissener]

@Bricker

I must have missed a couple of the connect-a-dots. How, in anything I’ve written, do you find support for the proposition that I would endorse imprisonment for someone who is sexually aroused by something that I personally find icky?

You hold yourself superior to democrats because they would be “soft” on the maker of TM6, who you would, presumably, prosecute for obscenity. Add the dot I quoted in my last post, and the conclusion seems, to me, that you support prison sentences for obscenity. Obscenity based entirely on your ick factor. Now, I too am monstrously icked by the mere thought of the content of TM6, but there are people who are just as monstrously icked by the thought of two men growing old together. You would, it seems, not acknowledge the slippery slope in that situation?

[Bricker]

@MaxTheVool

True, but there are many moral principles that virtually all Americans DO agree upon. For one thing, we pretty much all oppose murder, theft, rape, etc. Democrats and Republicans agree on those things. More interestingly, I think we all respect, and view as “moral”, consistency with one’s positions. I am pro-choice, but I can respect, and view as “moral”, someone who is pro-life. However, someone who claims to be pro-life but gets, and hides, an abortion when he is the father, is not someone that anyone would view as moral. Sure, I can’t prove that any of the above (murder = bad, consistency-with-one’s-claimed-beliefs = good) are absolute universal perfect constants. But they are agreed upon by enough of a super-majority of Americans that they might as well be absolutes for purposes of discussions of this sort.

With you 100%. I agree with everything you’ve said.

There are at least three paths I might go down to attempt to cause you to rethink your view of the morality of the situation, without questioning your belief that the war was at its root justified.

OK – again recognizing that this really is a substantial hijack.

(1) Suppose you were privy to absolutely 100% damningly perfectly incontrovertible evidence that the Bush administration did consciously lie about the situation in Iraq. That is, they said to themselvesl “hey, the world, and America, would be a better place if Saddam weren’t in power. We realize it will cost lives and dollars, but we honestly and morally believe it is the correct thing to do. However, we won’t be able to convince the American public of the correctness of our belief. Thus, we will lie to them and claim that Saddam’s about to have the bomb. But it’s for a good cause, because America will honestly be better off with Saddam deposed”. How would that change your view of the war as a whole?

I think a case can be made that a similar situation occurred in World War II. Roosevelt’s administration lied to the public, and illegally (prior to the Lend-Lease Act, anyway) supported the Brits with munitions and generous financial aid. Roosevelt faced precisely the dilemna you outline: convinced that Hitler’s Germany needed to be defeated, but unable to convince America of that belief.

Because I believe the real threat Hitler posed was orders of magnitude greater than the threat Saddam posed, I am correspondingly much more forgiving of the lies Roosevelt told to get us into World War II.

If I accepted your scenario as true, I’d be less likely to support or believe THIS ADMINSTRATION in the future. I would still believe, though, that ridding the Middle East of Saddam and trying to help establish an Arab democracy were worthy goals, so I would still not characterize the war as a useless cause or a waste.

(2) From the beginning, it’s seemed to me that the administration has done a piss-poor job of planning and executing nearly every phase of the war. With the exception of the actual invade-Iraq-and-blow-up-their-army phase, which went fairly well, just about everything done in Iraq has been mismanaged, misdescribed, and mispredicted. Even if you think that invading Iraq, deposing Saddam, and trying to establish a democracy is a good idea, do you think we’ve done a good job it? And eventually, can doing a bad job of something become immoral in its own way? If I want to build a shelter for abused toddlers, and truly and honestly have the best of intentions, but have no idea how to build a building, and have no idea THAT I have no idea how to build a building, but barge right ahead, ignoring the advice of the actual expert building builders all around me, and my partially built building keeps falling over and killing people, and goes over budget, and so forth; isn’t that eventually something that should correctly be judged as immoral, even if my original motives were laudatory?

I agree that aspects of this have been handled poorly, and I agree that there comes a point at which incompetence becomes its own evil. But i do NOT agree that we are at that point yet.

(3) I hate to sound callous, but it seems to me that part of the decision making process for any possible military action is the likely cost in lives. Would you think that the Iraq war was a good idea if you knew ahead of time that it would cost 50,000 American lives? 500,000? 5,000,000? Part of judging any potential action is its consequences, and it’s thus important that we know, to the best of our ability, what those consequences will be. I certainly don’t remember anyone saying, in 2002, that invading Iraq would cost 3,000+ American lives and take 4 years. A choice that has some good, positive, moral benefits can still be immoral if the costs outweigh the benefits. And if you don’t know what the costs of a decision are, you sure as hell shouldn’t just make go ahead and casually make it.

All anyone can ever do is act as the circumstances may appear at the time. It would have been extremely wise for me to dump every dollar I had into the silver market in 1977, looking back. But at the time, any rational observer would have said it was unwise to commit so much money to a single investment.

The problem with this hypothetical is the phrase “If you knew ahead of time…” No one can KNOW ahead of time. One can, and should, act prudently and reasonably with the information they have.

Tell me why we, as a society, would be better off if, were they to be caught smoking pot, they were instead locked up for a long period of time.

To deter others from doing so. It seems to me that your cousin is making a relatively rational risk-based decision. If she were caught, she’d receive a slap on the wrist. So she weighs the unlikeliness of getting caught and the small penalty if she did and continues to buy pot. Which continues to feed the demand for it. Your cousin alone does not create a huge demand, of course. But in the aggregate, plenty of people like her do. If your cousin were guaranteed being locked up for a long period of time… would she really risk smoking it just to relax?

[Bricker]

@Kimstu

Depends on whether or not you object to hypocrisy. If you do, then you might prefer to withhold your vote from a hypocritical candidate. If you don’t, then I suppose it doesn’t matter.

I do, and I would withhold my vote from a hypocritical candidate. But that doesn’t mean I should then vote for a forthright candidate who supports goals I don’t, either.

But your OP seemed to suggest that you did object to the hypocrisy of “saying we stand for law and morality” and then not living up to it:

Yes, I do.

Or were you complaining not that the current Republican leadership is being hypocritical, but that its hypocrisy has lost credibility? Are you demanding an end to hypocrisy, or merely calling for some more plausible hypocrites?

We’re switching focus here, I think, between individual candidates and the party as a whole. My support for a particular candidate is lost when his hypocrisy is seen. My support for the party he belongs to is not, because there is no showing of hypocrisy on the part of the party. So Hastert, if he knew, should resign. He no longer has my support. But the Republicans still do, becasuse they still support the goals I want them to support.

[Shayna]

@Bricker

At the time the action was undertaken, the cause was to eliminate the threat of chemical or biological weaponry and to remove a brutal dictator from power.

Subsequent events have revealed that there was no real threat from chemical or biological weapons, but that wasn’t known at the time, and even if it had been, the removal of Hussein from power was still a good cause.

@Bricker

I support the Republicans because they generally seek to enact policies and laws that advance the goals I support. There’s nothing in that equation that requires I hold them to a higher standard merely because they claim to be more morally upright than their opponents. The question is what they actually do in office. In general, I’m happy with the Republican’s legislative efforts. So in general, I support them.

I do see the hypocrisy in an individual making these claims and then not living up to them, yes. But why should that dissuade me from supporting the party?

Which brings us full circle back to what the hell the point of this OP was in the first place? Supposedly you came here to decry the “tactics” being used by your party in this latest scandal, apologizing to us all for not having believed before that your “party of morals” could ever have been capable of such behavior as “dodging,” “deflecting blame,” “changing the focus of an issue,” and “cover-ups.” Do you really expect us to buy that you were previously unaware of the fact that they were capable of such things? Really?

@Bricker

I apologize unreservedly to anyone to whom I ever suggested that my side wouldn’t do anything like that. Nope – as it turns out, we’ll do worse.

And yet, we’re right back to you defending the actual “worse” that they have done, including deceiving the entire nation as to the true motives of their desire to wage a war in Iraq. Unless or until you’re ready to admit that the fact you’re now so painfully aware of, that these guys would stoop to anything to achieve their own ends and cover their own asses, might just be evidence that they’re capable of those same “tactics” as regards any and every other issue we have taken them to task for over the past 6 years, then I, like eleanorigby, am not buying your “epiphany.”

[Dinsdale]

@Bricker

I would still believe, though, that ridding the Middle East of Saddam and trying to help establish an Arab democracy were worthy goals, so I would still not characterize the war as a useless cause or a waste.

For me it comes down to priorities. While I would agree, in the abstract, that getting rid of Saddam and supporting governments other than dictatorships and theocracies (not necessarily democratic) were worthy goals, when it came down to the costs associated with achieving them, both then and now I’d say they were mighty far down the list of where America should be expending its money, effort, and blood.

[Bricker]

@Left Hand of Dorkness

So, you seem to be okay with Republicans advancing themselves as the party of law–am I right? If so, are you okay with Democrats advancing themselves as the party of justice?

Sure.

Again, I don’t know that I’d agree with that claim. But it’s actually a very good posture for the Dems to take.

[Bricker]

@Dinsdale

For me it comes down to priorities. While I would agree, in the abstract, that getting rid of Saddam and supporting governments other than dictatorships and theocracies (not necessarily democratic) were worthy goals, when it came down to the costs associated with achieving them, both then and now I’d say they were mighty far down the list of where America should be expending its money, effort, and blood.

Fair enough. I absolutely can see that view.

But again – this is an argument without villains. Reasonable view on both sides. I don’t think you’re right, but I think your view is held in good faith and motivated by what’s best for the country.

[Miller]

@Bricker

We’re switching focus here, I think, between individual candidates and the party as a whole. My support for a particular candidate is lost when his hypocrisy is seen. My support for the party he belongs to is not, because there is no showing of hypocrisy on the part of the party. So Hastert, if he knew, should resign. He no longer has my support. But the Republicans still do, becasuse they still support the goals I want them to support.

But the point of your OP wasn’t about an individual: it was about the party as a whole, which is trying desperately to excuse, mitigate, or otherwise defer any sort of responsibility for or knowledge of Foley’s actions. Sure, Foley is easy enough to throw out, and so’s Hastert if he can be shown to have covered for Foley. But what about the myriad Republicans who are trying to spin this instead of cleaning house, as you decried in the OP? If the party as a whole had acted as you wanted them to, no one would fault you for your continued loyalty to the party. But that’s not what’s happening. The issue isn’t just about Foley, which is really a minor issue in a lot of ways, but about the way the GOP leadership handled the scandal. Shouldn’t the way other Republicans react to this issue raise questions about how they’ve reacted to other issues?

[Bricker]

@Shayna

Which brings us full circle back to what the hell the point of this OP was in the first place? Supposedly you came here to decry the “tactics” being used by your party in this latest scandal, apologizing to us all for not having believed before that your “party of morals” could ever have been capable of such behavior as “dodging,” “deflecting blame,” “changing the focus of an issue,” and “cover-ups.” Do you really expect us to buy that you were previously unaware of the fact that they were capable of such things? Really?

Well… yes. I certainly did not expect it. I expected a forthright admission and quick action to remove the problem. I did not expect to see efforts to distract, dodge, and defelct blame. When I saw it, I was appalled.

And yet, we’re right back to you defending the actual “worse” that they have done, including deceiving the entire nation as to the true motives of their desire to wage a war in Iraq. Unless or until you’re ready to admit that the fact you’re now so painfully aware of, that these guys would stoop to anything to achieve their own ends and cover their own asses, might just be evidence that they’re capable of those same “tactics” as regards any and every other issue we have taken them to task for over the past 6 years, then I, like eleanorigby, am not buying your “epiphany.”

Well, you seem to want me to impute to the entire party, in both the legislative and executive branches, the sins that I am now criticizing and decrying in some of them. Why should I do that? You want me to conclude that because Hastert covered up Foley’s sexual predation and conservative commentators have tried to distract the public with trial balloons about what the Dems knew, that Bush and the White House staff would “stoop to anything”. What is the logic in that? Should I assume that they were behind 9/11, too, because they would stoop to anything? Did they hire the school shooters in Colorado and Pennsylvania to get the nation’s attention off the Foley scandal because they would stoop to anything?

No. I posted this thread to criticize “my side” for something I saw the leadership and pundits doing, something that was done to my great surprise and dismay. But I cannot agree that this is somehow evidence that anyone with an R- in front of his name is a “stoop-to-anything” manipulator. There is no evidence of that. This scandal does not implicate Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, or Powell in any way. Why would I assume that because someone else had done wrong that they were then proved to be dirty dogs?

Wy would you WANT me to make decisions like that?