Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Just a reminder...

...which I sincerely hope will not be required by my side of the aisle: Andy Levy's To-Don't list. An excerpt:

DON’T make it personal. We don’t need another Derangement Syndrome. We don’t need people doing things like emphasizing Obama’s middle name in a derogatory fashion. How anyone would think that’s beneficial to their cause, or to the country as a whole, is beyond me. Also, it’s not even clever. Neither are smushwords like BusHitler, or sillywords like Rethuglicans and Dhimmicrats.
...

DON’T use the word “divisive.” At this point, all that word means is “You disagree with me,” and the English language gets mangled enough these days.
...[and finally:]...

And finally, DON’T use the fact that many on the left behaved abominably for the past eight years as an excuse to behave the same way. America needs adults. And if it bothered you when they did it, it’s a good sign that you shouldn’t do it.


The husband and I got into quite an argument last night about the outgoing administration, I maintaining that Bush had been treated so abominably by the "loyal opposition" and its enablers in the media that it was impossible to tell what the American public's independent opinion of his policies and actions at the end of his tenure would have been, and my husband correctly, but infuriatingly, pointing out that BDS, ridiculous and unjustified as it is, was nonetheless the card the Bush administration was dealt and that it would live forever in infamy for not having done better against it. In other words, my husband believes that the Republican party over the last eight years managed to lose everything - House, Senate, White House, conservatives, moderates, everybody but the quixotic such as myself - because Bush didn't effectively get the party's message out. I believe that no Republican could have done so. He believes that a reincarnated Reagan could have. I don't know whether that's true; Reagan's time was two decades ago and lots has changed, not least the average age (and therefore era) of the media folk who run the 24-hour news cycle (another difference between our time and Reagan's).

But Levy's point, and it's a better one than either mine or my husband's, is that all of it now is history, and that Republicans must remember to act like the grownups they are, no matter how much we'd like to give in to our inner child as the other side has been doing for eight years.

And that's all I have to say about that. Phthththbthh.

2 comments:

Gahrie said...

I'm actually having this arguement with my parents. They want to "pay back the Left" for the last eight years while I am telling them we need to set a better example and show by our actions why we are better than the immature Left.

It is a work in progress.

Jamie said...

We can't do what they did and expect any better results. Right? So even if the "come on, Mom and Dad, let's be the grownups here - as usual" argument doesn't work all that well, try the practicality argument: paybacks are a bitch but not very productive.