Reason why I am not a Neo-Republican

[dazzleman]

Ann Coulter seems to say a lot of things for effect.  She is half comedian and half political commentator.  I can see the way she half-smiles when she says things that she finds them amusing.

She is definitely preaching to the converted.  I find that she oversimplifies things and sometimes overstates her case, but some of what she says is true and needs to be said.

Elections are not about unity, and a democracy will never have true unity.  There will always be issues that divide people.  I wish we had better unity on the foreign threats that we face, but disunity on domestic issues is unavoidable and even healthy.

I sometimes think about how close our elections are, even the "landslides."  A vote of 60% is considered a landslide, but that still leaves a sizeable number of people voting for the other side, and presumably unhappy with the elected leader.  Only in dictatorships with fake elections will the results so heavily favor one side.

[dazzleman]

Dazzleman, Thanks for your insight. I really enjoyed it.

I'm glad to help.

I actually find Ann Coulter pretty funny, even if some of what she says goes too far.  Sometimes, I laugh out loud when I read her columns.  I love her line about how there hasn't been a documented rabbit attack against a US citizen since Carter left office.

I remember the infamous "rabbit attack" on Carter, and how he was ridiculed for it.  He was already considered a weak president, and now he couldn't even fight off a rabbit, and animal not known for attacking humans!  It was a defining moment for Carter, if unfairly so.  Of course his problems as president had nothing to do with the rabbit attack, but it was symbolic for a lot of people.  If he couldn't defend himself against a usually docile animal, how could he protect us from the Russians and against Iranian terrorism.  The answer is that he couldn't.

I don't take Ann Coulter too seriously though.  As I said, she is at least half an entertainer as opposed to a serious commentator, and she is looking for attention.

[dazzleman]

I'm sorry that in your insignifigant world the Democrats do no wrong. It's both, as long as it's not the Dems right? The vile sh*t coming out of the liberal spin machine is a lot worse than what the Republicans are dishing out. Nobody on the conservative side is saying they hate John Kerry. We don't make personal attacks against him. We don't call him evil. The Republicans have surprisingly kept it to the issues in this election, I just wish the Democrats would do the same.

OH COME ON! That's b/c Kerry is an insignificant person! You do say that he is dangerous to the country. It appears to me that there's a lot more hate for Democrats among Republicans than the other way around, which has to do with the fact that the GOP is more ideological and more extremist, whereas the Democratic party is more of a big compromise.

Gustaf, I respect your opinions but if you believe that you are dead wrong.  There is a huge amount of hate among the Democrats.  I daresay that many Democrats hate George Bush more than they hate Usama bin Laden and the Islamic terrorists, and would rather see the terrorists be successful than Bush.

Republican hatred for Clinton generally stopped at the water's edge.  Republicans supported Clinton on his foreign policy, even when he was committing troops to superfluous missions, like Kosovo, which the Europeans should have handled themselves if they such great pretensions to being a world power.

But in their usual fashion, the Democrats have sought to blame the president for foreign policy failures to which the previous Democratic administration contributed.

[dazzleman]

I really don't think you're right, Gustaf.  I deal with Democrats on a daily basis, and I find that while they hate Republicans, they are usually unable to come up with a coherent reason why.

They hate Bush but are usually unable to really explain why.  In some ways, it's like the Republican hatred for Clinton.

Democrats tend to have a "blame American first" philosophy, so their hatred of Bush jibes well with that, and they love to blame him for inciting a terrorist attack that was fully planned before he even became president.