Fine Whine
Sam Rosenfeld at TAPPED makes a good argument that phony sanctimony is part of the modern political playbook and it's important that we play along or they'll get their destructive talking points out there unrebutted. I agree. It's distasteful but it must be done.
WHINING IS EVERYTHING. This is a minor point, but I take exception to one particular item in the two-party compare-and-contrast list compiled by The Note that Garance linked to on Friday:
One party never apologizes and never shows weakness; one party is on its fourth day of cry-babyish "defense" of its Senate Leader, after a run- of-the-mill GOP "attack."
...In the modern rules of partisan warfare -- which the Republicans largely wrote -- complaining incessently about the illegitimacy of the other side's attacks is as crucial a component as the actual attacks one's own side lobs. When the Democrats close ranks behind Reid and condemn Republican efforts to smear him, they don't really expect George W. Bush to heed their complaints and tell his party to call the dogs off. What they're doing, instead, is making sure that the Republicans' vilification campaign is recognized for what it is and discussed explicitly at the very outset. The mistake the party made with the Republicans' campaign against Tom Daschle -- which, let's recall, really began in earnest in the winter of 2001 -- was ignoring it for too long rather than making it an issue worthy of discussion (and press coverage) in and of itself. Thus the Republicans' attacks had a cumulative effect, over the course of three years, of transforming popular perceptions of the Democratic leader without there being any popular awareness that a concerted campaign even existed.
It becomes more and more obvious that the "analysts" in the press are just clueless about the game they analyze. The Republican weeping and whining about "political hate speech" alone is enough to cause informed people to stick ice picks in their ears just to shut out the pain. You don't have to be a highly paid insider to understand what game they are playing.
One of the main differences between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans simply don't pay any attention to what the press says about them. They don't care to be "understood" or "rational" by an institution that they consider tools. We are fools if we do not adopt that attitude. The media is not part of our coalition, it is not a bastion of rationality or objective truth. We have to tough out the kind of catty insults that The Note spits out as small arms fire in a much bigger battle. Caring whether the media respects us is part of why the other side is able to muster a majority in a country that doesn't want its policies. We have to play them not pander to them.
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