The wrong mailing list.

This week I got one of those fervent emails that pop up in my inbox from time to time:

Republican Family Values

On this page I will be exposing the hypocrisy of the Republican Party when it comes to family values. Theyclaim to be the party of family values, but in reality often have reprehensibly low standards when it comes to family values. This is not to say that Democrats are perfect whn it comes to family values...

I hate things like this - aside from the horrible spelling errors of which there were a few.

See, while I can’t admit to loving the job the current admin has done, I don’t like when things descend to this level.

I must confess to being a bit of a swing voter. I rarely if ever vote strictly along party lines. Voting along party lines just never seemed to make much sense to me. You vote for the person, not the party. You vote for someone who is going to do a job. Party affiliations are all fine and good but, at the end of the day it’s people who make up the government and people are a lot more complex than what is put down on a party platform.

Just the title of the email made me cringe.

I’ve admitted to being a registered Republican before and this seemed like another one of those very broad based attacks. Something along the lines of making one party the party of the white hats and one party the party of the black hats. If that is as simple as your world is, a world so starkly black and white, I have to profess to being a little amazed. Amazed and at the same time I find my opinion of anyone who views the world in such a simplistic way is immediately lowered a great deal.

After the election in 2000, I lost a friend over an email like this. It was a histrionic email about how the country couldn’t survive the results of the 2000 election, how we were facing the end of days. It was just so incredibly aggravating and demeaning in tone I responded to it in an equally sarcastic manner. The unfortunate thing is when you’re dealing with someone who is caught up in that kind of emotional frenzy, you’re probably not going to have much luck in having any kind of dialogue with the person so, that was that.

Here we are, 6 years into the Junior legacy and we’re all still alive. Imagine that.

We’ll survive another two years too. Why? Because we’ve suffered through worse and made it through, that’s what we do, what our nation does, survive the good as well as the bad.

Now, let’s sit up shall we? All those forward thinking and intelligent people out there who really are unhappy.

The current admin... they’ve done a horrible job! They have failed to lead this country into any kind of positive direction. They have wasted the nation’s resources and money. They have shown themselves to be devoid of any kind of inventiveness when it comes to dealing with the nation’s poverty, they have spent money and squandered one of the largest surpluses on record, they at times have found themselves at odds internally over a disjointed and ill prepared foreign policy. We’re not talking about people who are necessarily doing a good job, they’re not.

My point is, why is it necessary to frame the argument for a change in the context of ‘family values?’ There is a wealth of missteps the administration has made through six years, it’s there all for the listing.

Hello?!?!

In a word, Katrina?

How about the latest slap in the face with the misallocation of funds regarding ‘Homeland Security’ (don’t even get me started on how even having a branch of the government called Homeland Security immediately makes me think about Germany in the 30’s).

All I’m saying is this, people in this country aren’t stupid - look at the president’s approval rating. People look around and can tell when things aren’t going right. Let’s try to focus on substantiative arguments rather than simplistic attacks. The reason I’m asking for this is because when you get right down to it, none of these guys are all that appealing - be they R or D. They’ve all got they’re own foibles and if you’re going to base your argument in a simplistic fashion, you’re more than likely to wind up offending the very same people you want to convince.