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The Third Estate
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Resolved: Ridicule Conservatives

Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Happy New Year, one and all (unless you operate on a Lunar calendar, in which case you have to wait another month). As part of my personal package of New Year's Resolutions, I am going to attempt to return to one of my original purposes for this blog - to rebut conservatives. This is harder than it sounds, given the frequency of the Theocons to either a) just post a link, b) obsess about how bad Muslims are, or c) Go on and on and on and on.

Today's entry is from Dean's World. It's short enough (and funny enough) to be worth quoting in its entirety:

If George W. Bush were a Democrat, his policies and methods of governing would be not appreciably different, but at least half his current critics would love him to death and say he's a wonderful President, and at least half his current defenders would hate his guts.

Such is the ironic nature of partisan politics, eh?


This ludicrous screed is a good example of conservative projection and false equivalence - they assume that everyone is guilty of the same sins they are. The first proposition, that Gore or Kerry's policies would be the same as Bush's, is demonstrably absurd. A quick list...

No Iraq War
No torture
No domestic spying
No packing of courts with right-wing judges
No huge tax cuts for the wealthy
No big deficits
No environmental de-regulation

I could go on for days, but you get the point. Dean's point only makes ANY sense if he is ignoring domestic policy (which the Theocons do all the time) and focuses exclusively on foreign policy - and just the War on Terror at that. I'll leave aside the strange argument that Gore/Kerry would have been as contemptuous of the international community as Bush. If we exclude the Iraq War from the War on Terror, then Dean's point is simply wrong and not absurd. But this move in effect concedes that Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terror - something I hesitate to believe he would accept.

As for half Bush's supporters turning critical if it were a Democrat - well, that's probably true. These guys are proto-fascists, after all. Party loyalty is everything to them. As for half of Bush's critics turning supporters, I suggest they look at all the flak that Clinton took for not being liberal enough.

I'd argue that these people have short memories, except their version of the past is so malleable that I wonder if you can even call it memory. Retrospective rationalization might be a better description.
Posted by Arbitrista @ 8:09 PM
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