If you recall, right before the November elections, Nancy Pelosi was interviewed by Leslie Stahl for a piece on 60 Minutes. The very first questions by Stahl were about Pelosi's call for civility in D.C., followed by all the seemingly uncivil things Nancy Pelosi had been saying about the Administration.
Nancy's response? "Actually, I was being kind."
Remember that in the weeks immediately preceeding the November elections, the President of the United States was going from city to city, basically telling the American people that a vote for Democrats is the same thing as a vote for the Terrorists. That there's no difference between Democrats and those who killed 3,000 people five years ago. "A vote for Democrats means the Terrorists win," the President said (read: vote Republican or you're gonna die).
Where's the 60 Minutes piece on that, Ms. Stahl?
Where's the piece on a Republican Congress spending the past six years calling Americans traitors for committing the unforgivable sin of questioning their elected leaders? Where's the piece about being called treasonous for disagreeing with the President and saying so in public?
President Bush has spent the past several years repeating the phrase "The terrorists hate us for our freedoms." How can the terrorists hate us for our freedoms but be emboldened by the exercise of those freedoms? I imagine if someone had spent the past five years equating Ms. Stahl with terrorists and questioning per patriotism for having the nerve to hold an opposing position she would better understand what Democrats mean by their cry for the Return of Civility to Washington.
Republicans and conservatives however are allowed to recite the most viral things imaginable about significant portions of America every day and never be called on it while Democrats are expected to clean up the Republicans' mess each and every time, with a permanent smile on their face all the while. The double-standard is palpable at best. Thankfully, it's starting to balance itself back out, CNN being the most recent example.
Republicans didn't care about civility from their elected officials for the first six years of the Bush presidency. They cared about results. Republicans will always try to control the definition of civility by raising the bar so high, Democrats can't help but fail. The voters however care about results more than anything else (save for the fundies of course). The Democratic majority will never be civil enough in the eyes of the Right-Wing Spin Machine; if they produce an impressive list of accomplishments however, it won't matter one bit.