The rules of the Game
I’ve commented before on how Gops want “real policy questions off the table”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2006/10/27/simple-answers-wanted/ during election season; Maha, I think, “is near the formula”:http://www.mahablog.com/2006/11/04/how-low-can-they-go-how-dumb-can-they-get/:
bq. I see that much of the Right Blogosphere is still rampaging over the Kerry joke flub. Like that wasn’t ginned up just to distract voters from issues. It’s OK to try to swing the election by stirring up a phony crisis about someone who isn’t even running, but discussing a real issue critical to the nation is outside the pale.
Since the Gops haven’t let the Democrats participate in policy-making or oversight for twelve years, the Gops can’t criticize the Democrats on substantive issues. And since all of the Gops policy failures are directly attributable to them, criticism of policy also seems downright partisan.
Anyone who complains about the _timing_ or _discussion_ of the effects of policy thinks politics is a game. Politics is not a game. Especially now, politics has a great deal to do with who lives and who dies.
(Incidentally, for anyone wondering what “outside the pale” or (more commonly) “beyond the pale” means, “here’s a good explanation”:http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pal2.htm.)