Offense vs defense

[phantom power]

In reading over the tweets and posts from last night's GOP debate I realized that one distinctive difference between the two parties is how their base reacts to criticism.

For instance, I see many people reacting to the right's dishonest attacks on Obama by saying "that's not true, he didn't really do that. Here are the facts, I'll prove it to you." Progressives are very concerned that the right isn't out there misinforming the rest of the public and go to great lengths to "set the record straight."

By contrast, during the Bush years, when liberals criticized the president, the other side would say "Yeah. So what? He did the right thing." They'd stage a symbolic hissy fit every once in a while to prove their moral/patriotic bonafides, usually over a perceived slight from a hippie somewhere, but they really didn't care if the left "understood" what they were doing or if they approved. In fact, they consciously try to offend them.

...

The best real life example is torture. When we accused the Bush administration of torture, and the Bush administration denied it saying "America doesn't torture", the right flat out said "we think torture of all kinds is a-ok, and anyone who disagrees with us is unAmerican. Thank God Bush protected us by torturing people." They just don't care if the left approves of what they do, and they'd rather have them upset over something that didn't happen than set the record straight and validate the left's beliefs in any way.

Judging from the reaction to last night's cheering for the death of the uninsured, that holds up very well today. They truly believe that people who are "irresponsible" should die (assuming, of course, that decent people like themselves could never be considered "irresponsible.") And they are happy to own anything that upsets liberals.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/offense-vs-defense.html