I agree that accusations against those who oppose the war that they somehow support Saddam is ridiculous, though I suppose I can see how sometimes hyperbole can get away from folks in a heated debate…sometimes posters just want to lash out. No excuse really, but it happens. If you looked hard enough and dug deep enough, and looked at it in a certain way, I’m sure you could even find some asinine posts by me that could be construed as saying something like that. I don’t THINK I have, but I know I get pissed off just like everyone else…its my latino temper at work there.
I wouldn’t characterize Brutus though as a ‘reasonable’ conservative pro-war supporter by and large. Amusing sometimes but not really very ‘reasonable’ generally speaking. John Mace though certainly IS what I’d consider both reasonable and thoughtful generally speaking. I’d say that if he crossed the line it was temper, not conviction that got the better of him. Just MHO of course. I’m actually not that familiar with Bill H. so can’t really say as far as that poster goes.
What are you on about? I just posted a message describing Republican dissatisfaction with the President and the party, and you’re portraying me as…what?
The fact is, the public is not extremely right or extremely left. It’s somewhere in the middle on most issues. All I’m saying is that the Republicans have made enough mistakes that there is an opening for the Democrats, but they’ll have to move to the center to take it. The same goes for Republicans. For example, the Republicans are WAY out of step with the people on stem cells. So what’s your problem? I thought my post was quite reasonable.
Your post was reasonable, Sam. But some of them have the same problem with you that they do with Moto. If you don’t drink all your Kool-aid then you are a bad boy.
As always, we Democrats are so happy to have a conservative Republican advise us on how best to run a progressive party. As shocking as it is to find your advice to be, “Be more conservative!” we understand that you have only our best interests at heart, and will take your advice for all it’s worth.
I mean, here I thought that the Democratic party has been devoid of vision for the past four years, had been running alternately on a “We’re conservative, too!” and “We hate Bush!” non-platform, and that the very lack of a vision for the party is what had caused us problems. But here I find out that it’s just that we’re not sufficiently like the Republicans that’s been costing us all our votes.
:shrugs: Guilty as charged. No doubt you could find a few nasty cracks about Hilary too, if you cared to look. I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, even my own.
As you mentioned earlier, it is difficult to be on the receiving end of so much mud slinging without occasionally slinging back. On a board like the SDMB, the outrage that “you called a President other than Bush an unflattering nickname” rings more than a little holllow.
I’ll probably lose patience and do it again eventually. If it detracts from my point instead of emphasizing it, I might listen to a warning about it from a member of the “partisan but not a complete lunatic” society that wring mentions sometimes.
But from one of the “no insults for anyone except that cock-sucking Shrub asshole” society? Not so much.
You’ll find that I (a necessary component of “you guys” when addressed to me) spend very little time at all talking about “what’s wrong with Republicans.” I’ll talk about what’s wrong with the current Administration, or what’s wrong with Rick Santorum, or what’s wrong with the pro-life position, or what’s wrong with the Speaker of the House; but I’ll spent precious little time painting with a broad brush.
THat’s because I think it’s petty, inaccurate, misleading, and counterproductive to talk about “what’s wrong with Republicans.” Discuss specifics, and you’re doing great. If all I can do is talk as if one party has a monopoly on integrity, intelligence, compassion, or realism, then I’m frankly not worth talking to.
There are others who talk about “what’s wrong with Republicans.” I think they’re wasting their time every bit as much as you are when you talk about what’s wrong with Democrats.
Of course, I will note that those Republican bashers on this board don’t spend their time telling Republicans what positions they need to take in order to win elections; that’s entirely because the Republican bashers are bastions of morality and respect for the opposition ;).
And in a country like the United States, surely you have an equal tolerance for liberals who occasionally sling back, being on the receiving end of so much mudslinging, yes? If it’s so difficult for you to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misnomers on a messageboard, imagine how it is to suffer these slings and arrows from the White House.
I’d rather let simple ones slide (I don’t think I’ve ever objected to your use of “Slick Willie” or the like, because you usually have meaty arguments), and come down equally hard on idiots on all sides of the table who substitute “poopyhead” for actual arguments.
I’d like to see you and Bricker challenge idiots like duffer, incidentally, when they say really stupid shit; but if you don’t catch it, no big deal.
No, it’s because we already know how to win them. Count on the fact that the base will vote for us anyway and try to appeal to the middle. Discussing the unwillingness of the Democrats to do that is just discussing political reality, not playing ideological “gotcha”.
I haven’t seen that my objections to it have made much difference, either with idiots like Howard Dean or hereabouts on the SDMB, which is what I was talking about. But you are right, “he hit me back first” is a game any number may play, and most do at one time or other, and from both sides of the aisle.
But if you want to frame every mindless insult aimed at Bush as an entirely justified reaction to the horrors of his administration, knock yourself out. I would only point out that [list=A][li]that kind of reflexively knuckle-headed ranting started before the 2000 election, so it is going to be a little difficult to explain why it is justified in terms of the deadly insults emanating from the White House if it started before Bush ever made it there, and [*]if you are going to say “no, no, it’s fine to insult a President based on his record in the White House”, then you might consider not objecting to insults aimed at Clinton, who after all spent eight years there getting his brass polished by the hired help and lying about everything he could think of. [/list][/li]
You seem reluctant to accept advice from the winning side, so I won’t trouble you with much more. Although it is a little hard to see why you don’t object to this kind of mindless anti-Bushery, when you characterize your party’s marked lack of success over the last eight years as being due to a " we hate Bush non-platform" which seems to be made up (at least on the SDMB) of nothing else but.
Shodan, I believe that if you reread my last several posts in this thread, you’ll find that I DO object to mindless insults aimed at Bush, and you’ll also find that I do NOT object to record-based insults of Clinton. If that’s not what you find, then I can’t help you.
This is one argument that really annoys me. Since the Democrats clearly have a broad platform that even a cursory glance through DNC materials reveals, the only charitable way to interpret this argument is: judging from liberal doper’s rhetoric, they don’t have a platform. But even this charitable interpretation is wrong. Opposition to the way the war was conducted, for example, *is *a position on the way wars ought to be conducted (more planning, fewer no-bid contracts, actually listening to the advice given to you about the potential for civil war). Pro-choice is another Democratic position found even in the contemporary rhetoric.
The reason a lot of this may appear as a “hate-bush” platform is not because of a pre-concieved hatred (at least from most), but because his actions contradict nearly all of the Democratic platform (contrary to his charade as a moderate during the 2000 election). Criticism of Bush’s actions reveals the Democratic platform very clearly. Sure, Democrats could frame things differently; instead of couching their platform within critical rhetoric, they could state is positively. But fewer people would listen because it is less contextual and more abstract.
The difference between “George Bush’s environmental policies are disastrous because they give too much lenience to big corporations” and “a good environmental policy must be prepared to punish big polluters” is one of style, not content.
Not in my perception, and especially not on the SDMB. There were several attempts, by me and by others, to actually try to debate Kerry and the Dems’ positions before the late election. With a few exceptions (BobLibDem was one, IIRC), repeated attempts to get the Usual Suspects to explain in detail what was attractive about Kerry failed. Like a dog to its vomit, the threads were dragged back, willy-nilly, to the constant mantra that apparently constitutes the sum total of political thinking for far too many Dopers - BushLiedBushSuxBushLiedBushSux…
Some Dopers were quite straightforward - they would vote for literally anybody who wasn’t Bush. And once they said, “I hate Bush”, they had apparently said all that they had to say.
I really got the feeling that this is all there was to it, in a good number of cases.
There is a reason why the term “knee-jerk” exists.
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