Republicans been arguing on the internet too much?

[Name Lips]

This is regarding whole flap about Reid making potentially racist remarks about Obama back during the Presidential primaries. He said he was "light skinned" and "had no discernible Negro accent, except when he wants to."

Whether or not this is offensive isn't the topic of this thread.

The front page of MSNBC had this snippet under the headline:

Democrats wouldn’t have accepted apology from a Republican, GOP chairman Steele says.

Now, I don't even really feel like reading the article because I'm not that interested in this issue. But this quote caught my eye. We've all been using this faux-argument for YEARS on the internet.

"Hey, *your party* did the same thing back in XXXXX"
"You'd do the same thing if it was *your party* in power."
"Where were your moral objections back when *president* did the same thing?"

And so on.

We know they're stupid when we say them, but we say them anyway because they seem, at the moment, like a perfect "ZING!" retort that proves our opponent is a hypocrite.

But I don't recall seeing this argument in actual politics until now, at least not in the completely hypothetical version -- where the opposing party didn't actually do the action, but is argued that it would have done it.

[Harry]

This "controversy" annoys the crap out of me, and in a large measure because Reid's remarks were made in private and I've seen nothing so far about why his remarks were recorded, to whom they were directed, or the entirety of the remarks. And the endless comparison to Lott is apples-to-oranges. It also seems like the only network really harping on this is Fox, oddly enough.

[The Winslow]

Damn, I hoped this thread would be about people using lolspeak in Congress or something like that.

Like, imagine releasing snowy owls to punctuate your opponent's points.

[Old Fart]

But I don't recall seeing this argument in actual politics until now, at least not in the completely hypothetical version -- where the opposing party didn't actually do the action, but is argued that it would have done it.You do realize it's not a hypothetical, but based on past actions in recent history right?

It is yet another, "youse guys gotta a splinter in yur eye!1! " argument. The latest verse from these great political hits:
ZOMG! Someone in Congress had sex outside of marriage!
Clinton got a BJ!
Nixon/Clinton/Bush lied!
TR/Wilson/FDR/Truman/JFK/Bush got us into a war we don't agree with, and Americans died!

They're all off the album "Pay attention to our arguing, and not to the fact that we gave all your tax money to bankers and insurance execs"

[The Theocrat of Poon-Tang]

This "controversy" annoys the crap out of me, and in a large measure because Reid's remarks were made in private and I've seen nothing so far about why his remarks were recorded, to whom they were directed, or the entirety of the remarks. And the endless comparison to Lott is apples-to-oranges. It also seems like the only network really harping on this is Fox, oddly enough.

This post sponsored by the Huffington Post. :rolleyes:

Remember when Cheney pulled Bush aside for a private comment on a reporter, calling him an asshole, only to have a mike pick it up? Funny how the press didn't seem to let that go, did they? I wonder which networks made the biggest stink about that?

[Varaj]

This post sponsored by the Huffington Post. :rolleyes:

Remember when Cheney pulled Bush aside for a private comment on a reporter, calling him an asshole, only to have a mike pick it up? Funny how the press didn't seem to let that go, did they? I wonder which networks made the biggest stink about that?

:lol:
Remember when somebody started a thread about folks saying "but you do it too" and then somebody came in and said "but you do it too".

[Harry]

This post sponsored by the Huffington Post. :rolleyes:

Remember when Cheney pulled Bush aside for a private comment on a reporter, calling him an asshole, only to have a mike pick it up? Funny how the press didn't seem to let that go, did they? I wonder which networks made the biggest stink about that?

Yeah. That he said INTO A MICROPHONE.

Btw:

A new account of the 2008 presidential campaign claims a sometimes “icy” relationship between Democratic Party nominees Joe Biden and Barack Obama, details reportedly erratic behavior from a “paranoid” Elizabeth Edwards, and accuses the McCain campaign of holding a conference call to discuss Sarah Palin's mental health.

"Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime," by New York magazine’s Joe Heilemann and Time magazine’s John Halperin, has roiled Washington and stunned political observers since excerpts were released this weekend.

The authors’ report of comment made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about Obama’s race has dominated media coverage of the book, prompting Republican calls for the senator's ouster.

In a private conversation reported in the book, Reid described Obama as a "light-skinned" African-American "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Reid apologized to Obama on Saturday, and the president issued a statement accepting the apology and saying the matter was closed.

The 447-page volume also outlines a strained relationship between the nation’s first black president and the running mate he chose to accompany him to the White House.

According to its authors, Obama and his pick for vice president, then-Sen. Joe Biden, clashed with enough frequency that aides deliberately excluded Biden from some internal meetings.

Biden grumbled about the campaign’s ad strategy and what he perceived to be its thin policy proposals, while top Obama aides were irked by the Delaware lawmaker’s propensity for verbal gaffes.

When a road-weary Biden told guests at a Seattle fundraiser that the young presidential candidate would be “tested” in his early days as president, the authors write, Obama “hit the ceiling.”

Obama reportedly seethed on a conference call with staff: “How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?”

But according to the book, tensions between Obama and Biden paled in comparison to concerns voiced by John McCain’s top advisers about the GOP nominee’s running mate, Sarah Palin.

Some staff members believed that Palin, who had stopped eating and sleeping normally as her much-anticipated debate with Biden approached, might be suffering from post-partum depression.

Palin is not the only female political figure whose stability is questioned by the insider sources — most of them anonymous — who are quoted in “Game Change.”

The book contrasts the public and private personae of Elizabeth Edwards –whose popularity with voters was considered one of Democratic candidate John Edwards’ most indispensible strengths during the primary.

Where the public saw a down-to-earth, resilient spouse, campaign insiders complained about enduring the unpredictable outbursts of “an abusive, intrusive, paranoid, condescending crazywoman,” according to the book.

Detailing the lurid spiral that led to the disclosure of Edwards’ affair with an aide, Halperin and Heilemann point to an emotional confrontation between Edwards and his wife that was reportedly observed by aides at an airport tarmac.

According to the book, Elizabeth Edwards “tore off her blouse, exposing herself. ‘Look at me!’ she wailed at John and then staggered, nearly falling to the ground.”

The oft-discussed marriage of Hillary and Bill Clinton does not escape the book’s microscope, either.

The authors of “Game Change” write that concerns about Clinton’s sexual indiscretions led three top aides to form a “war room within a war room inside Hillaryland, dedicated to managing the threat posed by Bill’s libido.”

As the campaign wore on, however, it was Clinton's comments to other Democrats that proved most damaging to his wife's campaign

In one episode, the duo reports, Sen. Ted Kennedy was incensed that the former president — even as he courted Kennedy’s endorsement for his wife — belittled Obama, saying that “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34807016/ns/politics/

[cnath.rm]

It also seems like the only network really harping on this is Fox, oddly enough.Now if you want to say that Fox is harping the most, then I will take your word for it HJ as I haven't had them on for awhile, but the only network? I'll call Bullshit. I had MSNBC on for a good long while the other day and they were talking about it rather a lot. (and when they weren't talking about it, they were playing video of other people talking about it)

[tleilaxu]

well reid is a mormon, and we know that they're prejudiced: every last one of them :tongue:

in celebration of reid's idiocy, politico posted some recent hits from other senators... http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31429.html

Senators and their macaca moments

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stepped in it when he told reporters that Barack Obama could be elected president because he’s “light skinned” and lacks a “Negro dialect.”

But it’s hardly the first time a senator has made an outrageous or offensive remark. In spite of their high-brow, cooling-saucer reputation, members of the Greatest Deliberative Body in the World sometimes seem preprogrammed to say really dumb things at really inopportune times.

It’s almost impossible to keep up a comprehensive list — but it’s certainly fun trying.

Here’s Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) in 2004: “Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now, think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that’s happened to us?”

Coburn, a medical doctor, also said that women who had received silicone breast implants were better off than women who hadn’t. “If you have them, you’re healthier than if you don’t,” Coburn said during a Judiciary Committee hearing.

Former Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) thought a 2006 fundraiser for then-first lady Laura Bush would be a good time to declare that the United States was up against a “faceless enemy” of terrorists who “drive taxicabs in the daytime and kill at night.”

Burns, a walking insult machine, once accused Virginia firefighters who traveled to Montana to fight wildfires of doing a “piss-poor job”; joked about a “nice little Guatemalan man” of unknown immigration status who did repair work on his home; referred to Arabs as “ragheads”; asked a woman with a nose ring what “tribe” she belonged to; and told a female flight attendant who was about to be laid off that she could just stay home and be a mom.

“He’s still living in the ’50s,” the exasperated flight attendant told the Great Falls Tribune.

The living-in-the-past charge might explain a lot of comments from senators, whose average age is just shy of 64. But it doesn’t explain everything.

Then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) wasn’t yet 50 when he compared consensual sex between gay people to bigamy, adultery, incest and bestiality. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery,” Santorum said in 2003.

Santorum also said that poor citizens of New Orleans who didn’t flee Hurricane Katrina in 2005 should be fined.

“I mean, you have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings,” Santorum said. “There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”

Santorum later apologized.

At a 1998 GOP fundraiser, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took an ill-advised jab at Bill Clinton’s teenage daughter. “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno,” McCain joked. (my note: this is funny, but so wrong)

McCain later apologized to the Clintons.

Just last month, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called a flight attendant a “bitch” after she asked him to get off his cell phone before takeoff.

“It’s Harry Reid calling,” POLITICO quoted Schumer as saying. “I guess health care will have to wait until we land.”

Schumer also publicly expressed his regret over the incident.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) suggested executives of failed insurance giant American International Group should kill themselves.

“The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese model and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, ‘I’m sorry’ and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide,” Grassley said. (my note: maybe japan is on to something with the whole seppuku thing)

Then-Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) lost the majority leader’s job after saying that the country would have been better off if segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond had won the White House in 1948.

Lesson learned? Then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) used the word “macaca” to describe an Indian-American campaign volunteer for his opponent, Democrat Jim Webb, and it helped cost him the election.

But as Reid is learning — so far, at least — the use of racially charged language doesn’t always have serious consequences.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) used the term “white n-----s” in 2001 during an interview with Fox News, but it didn’t end up costing him anything. Byrd, who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in his 20s, apologized for his comments, and he was reelected handily in 2006. He said the phrase “dates back to my boyhood and has no place in today’s society.”

Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University who served as a fellow in Reid’s office, said that senatorial gaffes are oftentimes “the product of tired people” who are working under “a terrific amount of pressure,” in a place that imposes strict rules on decorum.

“There is sometimes this overwhelming urge to say something blunt and even impolitic,” Baker said.

That may not explain Reid’s anachronistic talk of Obama’s lack of a “Negro dialect.”

And nothing, really, can explain the verbal handiwork of the late Sen. Roman Lee Hruska (R-Neb.).

In a 1970 floor speech, Hruska pushed back against critics who complained that Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell had been a mediocre judge.

“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers,” Hruska said in his floor speech. “They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they? And a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

The Democrats turned Hruska’s comments into a mocking slogan: “What’s wrong with a little mediocrity?”