In modern politics it is cool for pundits to breathlessly claim "Both sides do it" because they are too lazy or dishonest to point out the very big obvious differences. Pundits love to throw their hands up in the air and say that Republicans and Democrats are the same, and people who are frustrated with a broken political system believe it. They are not the same. They are very different. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either intellectually lazy, uninformed or lying to you.
So here are a few of the very big differences.
Republicans are making it harder for American citizens to vote. Especially the kind of Americans who don't traditionally vote Republican. Because they believe in freedom and stuff. Why are Republicans trying to take away people's voting rights? Because of voter fraud, a non existent strawman based on lies you heard on Fox News. There is one reality for Fox Republicans and another one where everyone else lives.
Republicans want to make it harder for you to vote and easier for rich people to buy electoral influence. If you want to vote Republicans think you should have to jump through hoops showing your id, but if you want to buy an election for republicans than they don't think you should have to disclose anything at all.
Taking away your right to vote. Check.
Republicans want to take away women's rights. Workers rights. Consumer protections. Environmental protections. Republicans want to take all that away. Democrats fight for women's rights. We fight for workers rights and consumer protections. Republicans hate that, they think it is socialism.
Taking away women's rights, workers rights, consumer protections, environmental protections? Check, check, check and check.
More below the fold
There is no liberal equivalent of Sarah Palin. There is no liberal equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. There is no democratic equivalent to Michele Bachmann's lying conspiracy theories or Allan West's McCarthyistic witch hunts, there is no democrat consistently calling Republicans fascists or threatening to secede from the Union like idiot Texas Gov Rick Perry. We don't celebrate stupidity. We don't cheer cruelty. We have facts. They have Fox. Democrats came up with a plan to reform America's broken health care system. Fox Republicans called it a death panel. A lie told by Sarah Palin on Fox News.
Republicans want to raise taxes on the poor and working class so they can cut taxes for the rich and corporations. Republicans want to make your health care more expensive, they want to make your education more expensive, they want to make sure less of your tax dollars go to you and more of your tax dollars go to funding the wars and cutting taxes for the rich. This is a huge difference, please take note of it.
There isn't a single Republican who is against the wars or the war spending except for Ron Paul, and Ron Paul doesn't count because he has secret meetings with Nazi's.
There isn't a single Republican who thinks pollution affects the climate. Doesn't matter if your state is burning to the ground during another epic heatwave, Republicans who watch Fox News have bigger problems on their mind, like the threat happy gay married couples pose to the institution of holy matrimony.
Republicans believe that socialism and the government are destroying America and only big corporations and the free market can save us. Wall Street was just an innocent victim in all this and its' all the fault of lazy poor people.
Republicans believe that booing a gay soldier and cheering the death of an uninsured 30 year old man is patriotism and paying taxes so we can have a thriving First World democracy is tyranny.
Republicans think zygotes and corporations are people.
The short version is this, there is a vast, massive difference between the kind of world envisioned by the Republican party and the kind of world envisioned by the Democratic Party. One vision is a full repeal of every advance we have fought for during the 20th century and a return to the gilded age of robber-barons. The other vision involves investing in education, infrastructure and alternative forms of energy, investing in health care and students, as well as preserving programs that made the working class thrive and allowed a middle class to pull itself out of poverty, programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Democrats are about building the future, Republicans are about destroying their opponents no matter what the cost, even if it hurts America, and taking us back to a broken past. There is a BIG difference. Hell, one side refuses to admit that the Confederacy lost the Civil War. One side believes in trickle down economics and if you don't totally agree they believe you are a socialist. There is no breathing space in between for logic or facts to exist. One side believes every damn lie they hear on Fox News, they are divorced from reality and should be kept as far away from places of power as possible.
So stop telling me "both sides do it". When you say that you are just giving cover to the obvious liars so they continue selling their obvious lies about death panels and climate change is a hoax and whatnot. One party fought to end the health care industries ability to deny you coverage based on pre-existing conditions, the other party wants to bring back exclusion based on pre-existing conditions, which will cause some Americans to die. That's a BFD.
The floor is now yours . . . .
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