Myths That Must Die: There is no difference between the Dems & the GOP

[ColbertWatcher]

This one is easy.

Everyone knows there is a difference, yet the GOP-controlled media perpetuates this one.

But, only when it is convenient for them.

Naturally, when it suits the GOP, they co-opt liberal ideas, while reserving the right to play victim of a party, that apparently, is simultaneously: has fewer supporters, but more power, is more corrupt, more immoral, but whose ideas are worth stealing, all the while having no ideas.

And on and on.

This one's been going on for a while. So, how do we combat it?

How do we convince our neighbors and family and friends who have been so taken with the GOP-controlled media lies about reality? Specifically, the reality that there is a difference between the party they do not support (Dems) and the party they do support (GOP), but which tells them there is no difference between the two?

[lifesbeautifulmagic]

1. yes, I agree with you. Generally, after rolling my eyes and sighing

and stating that the greatest myth ever perpetrated by the right wing is that there is no difference between the parties, I then encourage and make them promise to read their voters guide. Sometimes it even works!

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. It's a myth that the GOP started that. Ralph Nader, Green Party and all those....

who, in order to hurt the Dems, manipulated the elections so that the GOP would win, are the ones that started and perpetuate that erroneous idea. The GOP no more want to be compared to us, than we want to compare ourselves to them.

[ColbertWatcher]

9. True, but the GOP does something very curious...

...when it suits them, they are a unified party. But, when it doesn't, they are individuals.

Take for instance, the Bush Administration.

They would not have been able to do half of what they did if it were not for the GOP congress and their GOP judges.

But, if you hear them tell it, each member acted independent of every other.

The was is not the GOP's, but Bush's.

DeLay's corruption is his and his alone, not the party's.

The judges rule on issues which coincide with the party's "values" but without any input from the party whatsoever.

This helps when they compare themselves with liberals. it's individuals who are similar, but the party is different.

And people have been fooled for far too long and have little incentive to learn anything new or change their preconceptions.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

10. True nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Wrong, the there is no difference started

back in 96 or so... when they needed the media consolidation act

By the way... there are points and areas of the Democratic Party (see DLC) that share more in common with moderate Republicans than traditional Democratic values, all the way to anti labor stands, and pro corporate stands. That was the point Nader was making btw...

But that didn't start with Nader... but with the triangulation efforts of the Clinton Administration (which for the record was intelligent politics, but opened that door up)

[Sarah Ibarruri]

15. Perhaps because I wasn't born here, I see things in a slightly different way from you

You're angry because Democrats have joined Republicans in passing bills that are clearly anti-lib, anti-people, pro-fascist and pro-wealth for the richest of all. I agree. I'm angry too. You want to throw the Dems away. Like an actor in an action movie, you just look at the instances in which the Dems and the Repukes have behaved in anti-people ways, and you want to destroy them both. However, you don't bother to examine what got everything to that state.

Decades ago the Republican Party put together a pretty well-designed plan to take over this country. It's not my imagination. It was a multi-pronged plan involving everything from sophisticated marketing ploys, such as making evangelicals feel important for the first time in their lives by making anti-abortion and anti-evolution ideas Republican "issues," to creating false ideas such as that Jimmy Carter was "weak" when he was not, to funding tens of thousands of right wing website owners on the Internet and training right wing radio hosts, and getting every possible right winger to run for every kind of office, from local library associations in tiny towns, all the way up to president, no office was too small or too large. The propaganda machine was massive.

What were we libs doing while this was going on? Nothing. Did we defend our Dems in office? Hell no. In fact, when that asshole Reagan ran for office, many of us thought he was an a-okay guy. Pretty soon it became embarrassing for Dems to admit they were Dems. And of course, the more ignorant in the population, they thought it was all okay because those of us who knew better were SILENT and doing nothing.

Then some of us started whining. We'd done nothing for years, but we wanted politicians (who by now were facing an ever more brainwashed population) to make things better, to put things right, to fix what we had broken by doing absolutely nothing.

Well you know what? Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is just retarded. If we're going to change things, we have to be vocal, not stupid. We have to know our history, how we let things get out of control, how we let the fascist take over and did nothing, and of course how we're going to change things back and teach the least instructed among us, what is truth and what is lie.

You know, even if Nader had not been and would not be accepting money from the GOP (which he was and is), he's still in my eyes an as much my enemy as a Republican is because he frankly doesn't give a shit how it all got to this point. He just wants to destroy everyone and get his satisfaction that way.

[Perry Logan]

3. Citing the record usually does the trick.

The people who say the parties are the same usually don't know doodley-squat about the parties' records--which are, of course, startlingly different.

[ColbertWatcher]

4. OK, how do you...

...combat crap like Goldberg's new book "Liberal Fascism"?

That book will one day be cited as source material in a school textbook.

[Demeter]

5. Impeachment Would Change Their Tune

But Nancy would have to get that table set first.

[ColbertWatcher]

7. That's another myth that must die.

The numbers aren't there.

The American people are too busy watching American Idol to realize that or care.

The GOP and their media are hoping America has impeachment fatigue. Or will see it as only revenge.

[Warpy]

6. The only people who say that are rabid anticorporatists

and equally rabid far leftists, especially the ones who are too young to have seen just how wide a chasm there is between the two parties.

Fortunately, they're a tiny minority. The Katrina aftermath and the Schiavo fiasco seem to have awakened everybody else.

[ulysses]

8. getting certain high-profile elements of the party

to quit embracing fool conservative ideas because it sounds good at the time would be a start.

[FarCenter]

12. James Carville and Mary Matalin

There is no difference.

[Lex Talionis]

13. How many "poor" Democrats compared to "poor" Republicans are there?

Its like lawyers, oh wait that's who runs the Government, they all sit down and say.. "How will we stay in power?" ( make more money for ourselves) My Brazilian Friends laugh at our two party system and they are right.

[ulysses]

14. you have a brazillion friends?

(Sorry - had to.)