Better Know Your Adversary: Introduction

I have a Republican friend, with whom I argue constantly over email. I enjoy this, because it keeps my arguments sharp and allows me to hear all sorts of laughable Republican talking points and false choices (my favorite is still when he angrily demanded how, had he been elected in 2000, President Gore would have handled the Iraq War. Um…).

Anyway, I received an email from him a couple of weeks ago, ostensibly about the shortcomings of the DNC’s website, but really a metaphor for how the Democrats don’t stand for anything and the Republicans are strong and resolute and blah blah blah. This contained a great comparison of how all the DNC site had were platitudes, while the RNC site “has an Issues section that says what the Republicans have done, and bullets what they plan to do.”

You hear a lot of this, and it’s pretty well hardened into conventional wisdom. I figured it may even be true, so I went to the Issues section of RNC.com to see for myself (I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Stay tuned…). I tried responding to him, but it was too long and complex for an email. This, however, is a much better venue for that discussion.

There are 9 subsections of the Issues section, each discussing a different topic. Every day (okay, most days), I’ll examine one of them and find out if the Republicans have really been as forthright as my friend claims about their accomplishments and intentions. I can’t be completely sure what I’ll find yet, but it’s likely that we’ll also get into many of the myths, straw men, and false choices that represent pretty much the entirety of Republican thinking and argument these days.

Tomorrow: Issue 1, Social Security.