inter-party differences

Submitted by Diane (United States), Jul 11, 2011 at 10:32

You should distinguish between different movements within parties. In the Democratic party, I think it is fair to say there's no debate between hawks and doves -- they are all doves. The same is not true of the Republican party. So when you criticize Republicans for giving Bush a pass on drawing down forces in Iraq, or trying diplomacy with Iran, you are really talking about a very real ideological division within the GOP that would naturally dim such criticism. Internationalists or isolationists within the GOP would have been perfectly OK with these approaches, just as not all Republicans are fiscal conservatives, and it is not inconsistent for them to be OK with Bush's massive spending increases on social programs.

Such intra-party ideological distinctions don't exist in the current Democratic party (since Lieberman bolted, anyway). It gives Democrats' silence vis a vis Obama of a character than Republicans' silence vis a vis Bush (not that I remember them all being silent – his low poll numbers toward the end made Bush a punching bag for everyone.

I would also add that chronology matters. Bush's attempted diplomacy with Iran made sense in that it could have worked -- why not try? Obama didn't have that excuse. In fact, during the campaign he pretended that diplomacy had not been tried, when it had! This doubling down on a failed policy made no sense then, and has continued to fail since, with no acknowledgement from either the Democratic Party or the White House. That's hypocrisy.

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