Wednesday, June 30, 2010

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO PARTIES, IN A NUTSHELL

From CNN:

Democrats are apparently doing everything they can to ensure Rep. John Boehner's recent comments to a conservative-leaning paper in Pittsburgh aren't soon forgotten.

The Democratic National Committee is out with a web video Wednesday taking aim at the portion of the interview in which the House minority leader blasts the Obama-backed financial reform bill, saying of the measure, "This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." ...


Now, here's the Democratic video:



Notice what you don't see as the narrator talks about the financial crisis? Unemployed people. People who've lost their homes to foreclosure. You don't see actual victims of the financial crisis.

Notice what else you don't see? Fat cats. Wheeler-dealers. The people who actually profited from the financial crisis.

So there are your two major parties, ladies and gentlemen. One looks at an economic cataclysm and isn't concerned at all. The other is concerned, but only theoretically, and doesn't want you to think of the cataclysm in terms of who gained and who lost, and certainly not in terms of (ick) class warfare. And, unfortunately, that means there's still a significant difference between the Bad Party and the Less-Bad Party, because at least the Less-Bad Party thinks the economic cataclysm is a bad thing, and not just a cleansing act of nature, or of the free market, which the Bad Party thinks is the same thing as nature.

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UPDATE: Rhetorically, at least, the president does a lot better:

... He compared the financial crisis to an ant. The same financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly eight million jobs. The same crisis that cost people their homes and their lives savings.

Well if the Republican leader is that out of touch with the struggles facing the American people, he should come here to Racine and ask people if they think the financial crisis was an ant. He should ask the men and women who've been out of work for months at a time. He should ask the Americans who send me letters every night that talk about how they're barely hanging on.

These Americans don't believe the financial crisis was an ant. They know that it's what led to the worst recession since the Great Depression. And they expect their leaders in Washington to do whatever it takes to make sure a crisis like this never happens again.


I fear the FinReg bill is a lot more like the video than like the speech, but at least the president talks the talk. If the party overall can't talk the talk in attack ads, that's a problem.

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