Do conservative Republicans really believe....?

[TCPluto]

Do conservative Republicans really believe that anyone who disagrees with their politics is:

1. ignorant
and/or
2. unAmerican
and/or
3. bamboozled by the liberal media elite
????

I guess I'm just fed up with with an attitude I sense from the Right that implies that every seat in Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency should, if life were just, be in the hands of Republicans. It's as if no one but a right-winger can hold an intelligent, reasoned opinion or be a patriotic American.

As far as I am concerned, compromise and consensus-building are the life-blood of a democracy, not a threat. Even though I am one, I wouldn't want to live in a country forever and only controlled by Democrats, and I sure as heck don't want to live in one ruled by people who seem incapable of believing there is any other worthwhile opinion other than the conservative ones they hold.

Nixon, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush

Democrats have held the White House for only 12 of the last 40 years. Is it so threatening to entertain the notion that a Democratic administration might be good for the country at this point, or at least neutral?

Conservative Republicans...bottom line...are Democrats enemies who have to be crushed or just fellow Americans who have different (possibly even reasonable) points of view?

You're saying you don't see it from the other side???

If the answer is yes, you might want to edit your OP.

If the answer is no, you don't see it from some dems, you're just not paying attention. Or, you're seeing only what you want to see.

Any political thread right here on the DIS wll show you both.

 

[studentmom]

In all fairness, there are Democrats that give that same demeaning attitude towards those that do not see things the same as they do.

It is really hard to look on the other side of the coin and think about why anyone would take that stance, much easier to just assume they are less smart then us.

Even if I try to see issues from their side, sometimes it is hard to understand and I assume that they have a hard time rationalizing our stance on some issues.

Well said. I agree.

 

["Got Disney"]

In all fairness, there are Democrats that give that same demeaning attitude towards those that do not see things the same as they do.

It is really hard to look on the other side of the coin and think about why anyone would take that stance, much easier to just assume they are less smart then us.

Even if I try to see issues from their side, sometimes it is hard to understand and I assume that they have a hard time rationalizing our stance on some issues.

you are correct...it takes 2 to tango

 

[wdw4life]

I think it's human nature to think that people who disagree with you are crazy. Not in the literal sense but in the what the hell are they thinking sense. It is hard to understand how someone can look at the same thing you do and see something completely different.

On a personal note I do try to look at things from the other side. When looking at an issue that involves the Dems I ask myself if it was a Rep saying/doing this would I still feel the same way and vice-versa. It's very easy to fall into the trap of knee jerk reactions based on party lines when the majority of the time people would have a different opinion if the shoe was on the other foot.

 

[wdw4life]

Do liberal Democrats really believe that anyone who disagrees with their politics is:

1. ignorant
and/or
2. Racist/Redneck
and/or
3. bamboozled by Fox news
????

I guess I'm just fed up with with an attitude I sense from the Left that implies that every seat in Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency should, if life were just, be in the hands of Democrats. It's as if no one but a left-winger can hold an intelligent, reasoned opinion or be a patriotic American.

As far as I am concerned, compromise and consensus-building are the life-blood of a democracy, not a threat. Even though I am one, I wouldn't want to live in a country forever and only controlled by Democrats, and I sure as heck don't want to live in one ruled by people who seem incapable of believing there is any other worthwhile opinion other than the liberal ones they hold.

Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush

Democrats have held the White House for 39 of the last 75 years. Is it so threatening to entertain the notion that a Republican administration might be good for the country at this point, or at least neutral?

Liberal Democrats...bottom line...are Republicans enemies who have to be crushed or just fellow Americans who have different (possibly even reasonable) points of view?

Here OP. I fixed it for ya.

 

[MossMan]

Well said, very well said.

What is frightening for many on the right isn't that we believe those on the left are what the OP listed, but that the leadership from the left is all of the above. Think of the Democratic National Chair walking through the streets of New Orleans on a rampage saying how this was all the Republicans fault and they were going to pay in 2006 (and the Republicans did because the press was so quick to place the blame on Republicans - i.e. "How Bush Blew It" in Newsweek when it should have been "How Blanco Blew It"). Come forward to 2008 and a bi-partisan committee comes up with a plan to bail out Wall Street and Nancy Pelosi placing all of the blame for the problem on Republicans, placing her views ahead of the "most dire situation in our lifetime". Or Barney Frank saying he did nothing wrong while working on the committee that oversaw Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, while having a lover from one of the institutions. He did nothing wrong when he said they were strong (about 6 months before they tanked) under his oversight. Or how about Harry Reid declaring the war lost 2 years ago, and we should have got out then and left it to Al Queda?

Yes, there are crazies on the right as well, but they won't be in power after November. The problem is, it won't be the Centrists from the left who will be in power come November 5th, it will be the crazies from the far left - including Barack Obama. He has voted 97% with Harry Reid - the other 3% was when it was even further left than Reid wanted to go. Obama/Pelosi/Reid scares the hell out of me.

Who will he have in his cabinet? Murtha as Secretary of Defense? This is frightening. A 25% reduction in military funding as proposed by Barney Frank is extremely frightening.

The year is 2000 and someone on a message board like this speculates what will happen if Bush is elected:

• Bush and the Republicans will redefine torture so that the things the Nazis, KGB and North Vietnamese used to do will no longer be considered torture. That way the Republican administration will be legally free to torture it's own prisoners.
• Bush will come up with a brand new doctrine that says America can invade any country it wants as long as America thinks this country might pose a threat to America. Then America will test out this new doctrine and with the help of sheer incompetence get bogged down in a costly war it didn't have to fight.
• The Republicans will set records in how much money they will spend. Instead of practicing fiscal responsibility, they will borrow billions from the Chinese to pay for a massive growth in the federal government. To pay for this increase in the size of government, Bush will give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Unfortunately these tax breaks will fail to properly motivate the wealthy to increase their productivity enough to pay for the money the Chinese lend us.
• There will be an economic meltdown of the kind not seen in decades. But Bush and the Republicans will attempt to solve the problem by steadfastly refusing to accept any blame for any financial crisis.

Had anyone made such a post you (like me) would have called such ramblings the fantasies of a paranoid liberal. Now here we are eight years later and the paranoid liberal was right.

So it would be unfair to dismiss the fantasies currently emanating from conservatives. Your speculation about what will happen if Obama is elected may be right. It seems a little farfetched Obama would go to the extremes you detail. All these terrible things Obama is going to do sound like the fears of a Republican who really wants their candidate to win. But if the Republicans under Bush could veer so far off course, I suppose the Democrats under Obama could do the same.

But here's what is at the core of this election (as it was in 2006). Independents are worried that the Democrats might do everything you speculate they might do. They are nervous the Democrats might be as extreme as you believe they will be. But they know Republicans will be this extreme. The last 8 years have shown just how far the Republicans are willing to go in their pursuit of the extreme.

Independents aren't saying they trust the Democrats, they are saying they don't trust the Republicans. When Republicans prattle on about how Obama is some scary socialist, Indepents are thinking two things:

1. I don't believe anything the Republicans have to say.
2. Even if the fear-mongers on the right are correct about Obama, how much worse can Obama be than what we've had for the last 8 years?