Wednesday, September 13, 2006

This is better?

A recent news report is about someone, not associated with the national Republican party, supporting the Republicans by holding Catch an Immigrant party.
Republicans on Tuesday distanced themselves from campaign activities that encourage college students to "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" and shoot cardboard cutouts of leading Democrats with a BB gun or paintball gun.

I'm not sure where the responsible discourse is in this. The article goes with one Republican comparing these actions to the democrats calling the Republican Party 'a white, Christian party'. I just don't get this sort of name calling, but certainly calling each other names is a different level than putting up targets of prominent politicians and shooting at them.

I seem to remember a time when there was a discussion of issues. In fact I was raised by a member of the Republican party and a member of the Democratic party. One year they both got asked to attend the statewide caucuse for their respective political parties, though neither attended nor ran for office. I'd like to see something that isn't a child's display of "You're soft on terrorism" "No, I'm not." "Yes, you are." "No, I'm not." repeated until one person is called home by their parent.

This rhetoric is from both sides. I don't care whether it's the aforementioned shooting at a democrat or Sean Penn calling Bush a Beelsebul. I'm just tired of it and would like to go back to at least some discussion.

Of course this is nothing new. There's been smear campaigns in more than a few elections. One of my favorite historical examples is when opponents sang "Ma, ma where's my pa. Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha." about another of our presidents. It's much more amusing when it's in the past. Today, liveing with it, just isn't quite as nice. Maybe if they started singing songs instead of yelling at each other I'd feel better, but probably not.

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