Is it just me or do Republicans whine a lot?

[blackhole123]

Whenever I talk to a republican, everything is always someone else's fault and everyone is out to get them. I mean they control the presidency and the senate but for some reason the democrats are the ones to blame for all of the USA's problems. They have an excuse for everything. For example: the war is going badly and all the sudden its the democrats fault because the "liberal" media took away all their support.

 

Im not a democrat just out to bash republicans (im not anything ATM; too young to vote) but this is just my observation.

[Pangloss]

Yes, I think you're correct in pointing out a common thread in the current environment. I can also see how younger voters and pre-voters might see it as a "Republican" thing. The only thing you're missing, due to age, is that the Dems did the same thing when they had power. (That doesn't make it right for Republicans to do it, though.)

 

The point you're making in general is a truism about politics, IMO. It's systemic. That's "beltway politics" in a nutshell.

[Saryctos]

well actually they complain about people complaining the war is going badly, because we think it isn't going so bad, and everyone seems to think so due to the ""liberal" media".

 

Throw some more examples, I am realisticly interested in what Republicans are complaining about(seriously not sarcasm, I just don't really pay attention to what 'my people' are complaining about, nearly as much as what other people are complaining about).

[Pangloss]

If you're looking for a set of conservative talking points to ridicule, all you have to do is tune in Rush Limbaugh, afternoons from noon to 3pm Eastern (check your local listings). Similarly, Tony Snow's daily press conference for the White House is broadcast regularly in CSPAN, I believe.

 

For the liberal equivalent, which is every bit as pointless and laughable, try Air America. You'll never find a higher concentration of ignorant, hate-spewing vitriol than you will on AA.

 

Why anyone would see either of these POVs as actually useful, I'm not sure. They represent the extreme positions, and they're all about spin and deception. It's like getting a daily dose of Nancy Pelosi -- you know it's bad for you, but you feel mysteriously drawn to it by a sick feeling in your stomach. Kinda like finding turned milk in the fridge and making sure you get a good whiff.

 

It's something to rise above, not something to learn from. Just to give you some idea of how ludicrous the situation has become, we have two radio stations in town that cover AM talk radio, one for Air America and the other covering Rush, Sean Hannity, and similar conservatives. The irony is that both radio stations are owned and operated by the same corporation, and share newsrooms and weather and traffic services. No, really.

 

It's entertainment, not education. It's not even edutainment.

[Pangloss]

Actually I take part of that back. I can understand the value to newcomers to politics. My own interest in politics was sparked by talk radio host Neil Boortz, who I would listen to every day while sitting in a Fotomat booth many years ago. He made me think about things instead of just accepting what I was told. I can certainly see the value in that.

 

But it took a lot of years and a lot of reading to undo that damage. And there are a lot of ways (and one powerful way in particular) that young people today can bypass that whole derail.

[blackhole123]

Yeah, just listen to Rush Limbaugh. I've never heard so many adjectives used with the word liberal.

[bascule]

I think when it comes to politics, everyone spends most of their time whining or answering other people's whining, usually with angry denouncement.

 

I certainly agree about Republicans whining about the Democrats though... Democrats control nothing, yet in the Republicans eyes are somehow to blame for everything that goes wrong (Tom Tomorrow did a This Modern World about that very idea a year or two ago). Of course, you'd likely see similar behavior if the situation were reversed.

[Pangloss]

I certainly agree about Republicans whining about the Democrats though... Democrats control nothing, yet in the Republicans eyes are somehow to blame for everything that goes wrong (Tom Tomorrow did a This Modern World about that very idea a year or two ago). Of course, you'd likely see similar behavior if the situation were reversed.

 

No, not reversed -- it actually has nothing to do with which party is in control. The opposition party is just as guilty of it as the one in charge.

 

Democratic Senator Nancy Pelosi is a typical Democrat demogogue, seemingly incapable of going three sentences on *any* subject without injecting the words "Republican" or "Bush". Why just the other day I saw her on Martha Stewart's show talking about how important it was to understand Bush's failed Iraq policy when making her grandmother's chocolate chip cookies. (You think I'm joking....)

 

And don't even get me started on the lunatic fringe like Georgia House Representative Cynthia McKinney, who openly accuses the Bush administration of orchestrating 9/11! No. Really. Fortunately the voters of Dekalb County just threw her out of office (or will in November; she lost the Democratic primary last week).

 

I'm exempting, of course, Howard Dean, because it's actually his job to bash Republicans, just as Ken Melman bashes Demos for the Repoobs.

[Sisyphus]

And don't even get me started on the lunatic fringe like Georgia House Representative Cynthia McKinney' date=' who [b']openly accuses the Bush administration of orchestrating 9/11![/b] No. Really.

 

Hehe. I just saw a television ad equating Hillary Clinton with Osama Bin Laden. Neat!

[Pangloss]

That's a good one.

 

I was just perusing Brendan "All the President's Spin" Nyhan's blog, and he has a pic up from the official web site of the Republican party, showing Howard Dean (a "Defeatocrat") in an angry, podium-pounding pose, with a very light shadow on his upper lip. (chuckle)

 

I popped over to the GOP web site (here), but it's been replaced with a picture of George Soros ("The Defeatocrat Aristocrat" -- kind of a tongue twister!).

 

And of course the Democrats.org site isn't any better this evening, talking about how "the GOP has made America less safe".

 

Just glancing over the two sites, I'd have to say that the Democrat site is more focused on negative message, and the Republican site is more focused on making Bush look good.

 

Interesting... I just noticed that the Republican web site uses Microsoft's ASP.NET web app technology (all the pages end with .aspx). The Democrats are using LAMP (all the pages end with .php). What an amusing example of ideology-meeting-technology!

[budullewraagh]

Yeah, the GOP and Dem websites tend to show a whole lot of bad things about one another and are full of red, white and blue.

 

Interestingly, http://www.gp.org looks a whooole lot more inviting and really nice. Well, until you go to click the "take action" link.

[JohnB]

No, not reversed -- it actually has nothing to do with which party is in control. The opposition party is just as guilty of it as the one in charge.

Do you actually call them that over there? In Australia the Houses are literally divided into "The Government" and "The Opposition".

 

Blackhole I don't know how it's viewed in the US, but here the other role of the Opposition is as the "Alternative Government". It's part of their job to find as much fault in the actions of the Government's policies and decicions as possible. They will do this in almost any way they can, the idea being to present themselves to the voters in the best possible light and hopefully win the next election.

 

At the same time, it's part of the Government's job not to accept any blame for mistakes and to spin or deny any allegations made by the Opposition. Or simply complain about bias. For example, if the Dems gained control of the US Parliment at the next election, their standard response to anything that went wrong (climbing inflation, interest rates, unemployment, etc) would be to blame it on the "mess left by the previous administration".

 

It's called politics.

[Pangloss]

No, I use the term "opposition party" only on international discussion boards.