Acid King wrote:I think the difference is that Obama has had a harder time assuaging electoral concerns of legislators in contentious districts and Bush had more receptive Democrats than Obama has receptive Republicans.
Like you I haven't performed any in-depth analysis of previous administrations and obviously can't predict the future, but if I had to make a bet I'd be more than willing to wager that Republican Presidents, especially since Reagan, have ALWAYS had "more receptive Democrats" to work with than any Dem President has ever had "receptive" Reps (off the cuff, did ANY conservative have to deal with a fraction of the petty crap Clinton did, and Obama does?). Again, time will tell for certain, but I've seen hints (to say the least) of a trend that goes far beyond the most recent pair of administrations.
Additionally, the electoral situations are not the same and the concerns of voters this year are not the same as they were during the early years of the Bush administration when national security was the primary concern. A Republican who voted for an expansion of government spending may have been able to skate at election time because of the perception of being better on national security but a Democrat voting now for expanding government and increased spending doesn't have that luxury.
The situation is different, certainly, but the context simply has not changed - just to stick with the "national security" angle, look at how much Bush did to WEAKEN national security, but was rarely called out on, and never held accountable for. The aforementioned upper-end tax cuts (which have done and will do FAR more deficit damage than anything Obama's done so far...seriously, fabricated war and mollycoddling the rich are acceptable excuse for deficit spending, but stimulating the overall economy isn't?), the failure to adequately equip troops and spreading them too thin to complete any one task, turning the emphasis away from capturing bin Laden, handing over combat operations to contractors and mercenaries with zero accountability, alienating both foreign and local allies, further radicalizing rogue states, refusing to reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil, refusing to make the Pentagon account for the truckloads of money that simply disappeared on its watch, preferring to enlist felons instead of gays, and the list goes on.
If Obama had screwed up HALF this royally on ANY front, he'd have already been impeached - Bush, on the other hand, still proudly gets to wear the "war President" label, and his party is still the one that's "serious about national security". And debt reduction. And reducing the size of government. And accountability. And "standing up for the little guy." And everything else that it has abjectly failed to accomplish, and actively works to prevent anyone else from doing. Liberals, as you say, don't have that luxury...I'd take it one step further than you, however, and assert that these days they NEVER have that luxury.
I think that factions exist in the party because a national party in a country with more than 300 million people spread over 3 and a half million square miles with distinct cities, states, and political cultures has to accommodate diversity in order to elect enough people to gain a majority in the legislature.
I would agree, except that, again, the same standard doesn't appear to apply to conservatives - they've unmistakably shifted farther and farther to the right for decades now, becoming ever more exclusive of those who don't tow the line (as
this article states, neither Reagan nor Bush 43 would come close to passing the ideological "purity test" that some higher-ups are insisting be applied to any major conservative candidate, and other recent Republican Presidents are even farther from that ideal), but they just keep being painted as the party "willing to stick to its principles", and that, of course, "is what really appeals to the voters" (never mind gerrymandering and faulty election machines and whatnot, of course - ACORN is the real villain!). If the Dems had moved as far left in recent years as the Reps have moved right, the headlines would, to say the least, be VERY different.
Ganelon wrote:Please point out where in the Constitution the government is required to hand out health care insurance at public expense.
Nobody (and I mean nobody) is claiming that national health care is a constitutional requirement, but considering that every other "advanced" nation in the world does it, at lower cost than we do and almost always while providing comparable or superior care to ours, an
option to that end would have at least been nice, rather than seeing it decried as "Socialism" and immediately taken off the table.
If he had let the banks rot, then the magic hand would've spun properly, even if more folks may ultimately be adversely affected.
If he hadn't listened to the banks' "just leave us alone and we'll be good, honest" garbage in the first place and demanded that they follow certain rules when playing with other people's money, such dramatic action wouldn't have been needed in the first place. Say whatever you want about FDR and how he ruined everything, but his reforms managed to at least keep the economy from tanking on a grand scale until the neo-Hooverites began systematically dismantling them.
The media scoffed at the weak stand from the radical right in Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, just as the media years earlier implied that the left preventing Alito from reaching a vote was silly.
One might quibble at the comparable (or incomparable) intensity of this compared to other incidents, but in the interest of fairness I'll give you that one. This hardly stands as an equivalent to the scads of stuff I've been mentioning, though, at least not on its own.
It sounds like you've been listening to too much radical radio propaganda with their unbridled hate and insults, which I agree will quickly make you despise conservatism. If you pay attention to what actual Congressmen say and consider which side they represent, you'll see both sides are pretty active in bashing the other. Just as Democrats are portrayed as big spenders and non-patriotic, Republicans are portrayed as evil and selfish.
I honestly didn't know radical liberal radio propaganda even existed (and for the record, I don't watch Olbermann, Maddow, or any of those types on TV either), and yeah, I'm aware that both sides say nasty things, but again, in terms of intensity and frequency, methinks that the garbage hurled at liberals has far outweighed what conservatives have had to put up with (the Bush monkey pictures are bad enough, but then there are the Obama/Hitler posters and Chelsea Clinton being labeled the "White House dog", not to mention the scads of unmentionables hurled at Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and others). I don't know if there's any way to "decisively" prove this, but I just don't see any left-wing equivalent of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage or Ann Coulter, or even Dick Cheney (and moreover wouldn't want to).
Obama ran as a visionary above the rabble; maybe you should start holding him more accountable for his promises as well.
Believe me, as much of an improvement over Bush that he is, he's not nearly what he should be, and no one will shout that louder than me. If he doesn't shape up by 2012 he's lost my vote, frankly - I've had more than my fill of mealy mouthed pseudo-liberals who exist only to cower before the constant bellyaching of the GOP.
And please, split your text to paragraphs if you intend anyone to read your comments.
I'll try to make smaller sections of stuff, though I doubt too many people will read any of it either way.
