Patrick's post on the main site basically urging the right not to attack Obama on the Blagojovich scandal has kicked up a lot of comments from, quite frankly, good-old-fashioned hypocrits.
Now, to use a favorite phrase of the President Elect's, let me be clear. I've got no problem--personally--with honest progressives who recognize the fact that what's good for me and what's good for thee are the same. I don't think every Progressive is a shallow-thinking political hack and I have no problem being civil over an honest disagreement. What I cannot stand is faux moderates, faux bipartisans and others who were happy to pile onto Bush and the Republicans in congress but quite frankly feel it is their place to wine when a blog concerned with strategy and tactics suggests...strategy and tactics. According to such people, Bush deserves every sneering snide criticism, every deeply personal insult, every single disgusting Nazi comparison, but to even intimate that someone connected to Obama might have known something about Blago's corruption, or argue that Obama has been too passive in his dealings with the dirty governor, is tantamount to treason.
Are you serious? Can you possibly even equate these teppid criticisms with the "general Betray us" add from MoveOn, the constant invocation of Hitler in relation to Bush, the visit of Democrat congressman James McDermott of Washington to Saddam's Iraq just before the war where he publically gave aid and comfort to a man which the previous Democratic president slated for regime change? Can Ruffini's argument that attacking congress is a better tactical idea than attacking Obama possibly be in the same league as Don Fouler's chortling comment that Hurricane Gustav was going to hurt the Republicans over their convention? Is this the honest opinion of even a tiny fragment of the internet-reading public?
Obviously there are lines which should not be crossed, and people on both sides cross them. Like some conservatives, I think Anne Coulter's comments very frequently cross the line into abhorrent (racial slurs on Arabs, homosexual slurs on John Edwards and claims that the Democratic party since the fifties has been "functionally treasonable" are examples), and Jerry Fallwell comparing Hillary Clinton to Lucifer was equally beyond the pale. I think the Obama birth certificate issue is a non-issue and an embarrassing distraction from things which actually matter, and claims that he's a Muslim are justproposterus. It's not that I'm reticent to criticize people on the right who go too far. It's not even that I disagree with a general comment made on the thread that "we win when we're on offense" and not when we're negative. But politics is a rough game in this country, it's always been a rough game, and trying to weaken the other guy's hold on the government is what an opposition does. There are exceptions certainly, there are attacks which are beyond the pale, but Patrick's isn't one of them, and arguing that it is shows a basic lack of mateurity on the part of hypocrits who can dish it out but can't take it. Or put another way; wouldn't a claim that investigating Jack Abramof and any potential ties he had to the Bush administration was unpatriotic have been laughable? So why isn't this equally ludicrous claim that even discussing how the Blagojovich scandal might be used by the GOP doesn't put the country first being laughed off? Did the Democrats use the Abramof scandal? Yep. Was it unpatriotic? Nope. Would it be unpatriotic for the Republicans to use the Blagojovich scandal? Nope. The answer, of course, whether one is Republican or Democrat, is to not pull these corrupt stunts in the first place; it is corrupt officials, not those of the opposition from either party who use their mistakes against them, who are "revolting" "unpatriotic" "more of the same" and, my personal favorite, "don't give a damn about the country".
