This is being spread by the Left as their most recent attack on Palin. Apparently it is about her ghostwriter’s relationship with American Spectator writer Robert McCain.

I wonder, where does he fall on your continuum? Is he someone we would rather not have in the movement or someone you approve of?

It would be fair to mock the GOP plans, oppose the GOP plans, use those plans in the next election in vulnerable districts, but it is not fair and goes beyond loutishness to say that they don’t exist. You don’t get to airbrush submitted legislation that has had its first reading and been sent to committee even if it is a foregone conclusion that the Democrat chairman is going to bury the bill and never bring it up for debate and markup.

The problem isn’t the neanderthal comment. That’s uncivil but certainly in bounds in the rough and tumble world of politics. What’s out of bounds is to say that the GOP wants you, yes you, to die and die quickly if you get sick.

There is no reasonable policy hook to attach to this “wants you to die” meme. It is not hyperbole but a flat out lie and it is a dehumanizing lie meant to shame people into not associating with the GOP. It was done from the well of the House. That’s not acceptable in normal political discourse but to Nancy Pelosi it is acceptable.

I hope it stops here with Grayson and Schultz (who said it first and on MSNBC). If it spreads, the republic is in serious trouble.

Of course, it takes two to tango here, and I find some encounters with the other persuasion impossible to keep within reasonable bounds, simply because really filthy, in-your-face motor-mouths override everything else, including my feeble attempts at being polite. It seems that some leftwingers have developed the “skill” to shout their opinions at full volume without taking pause for a breath, and they do not listen to your side on principle. Try calling these louts out!

In calling out people for being rude louts, you may achieve a bit of startled quiet for a short time, but on the rebound, louts will be louts. Activist louts of either political persuasion are professional at it, and will see being called out to be a goad to ever nastier invective and higher volume. Some of these professional louts are paid agitators in the first place.

If you can control the venue, control the audience or membership, and have the right and capability to gavel down or even expel the louts, you may be able to maintain comity. Otherwise, you are in for more and more loutish behavior.

Were so polarized, the Middle has practically disappeared.

My fundamental question is this - how is it possible that a viable 3rd-party has not emerged? How much longer will this country tolerate these parties? Have we truly become so lazy in this country that the most we are willing to do is scream and yell, but not willing to pick up the mantle of change and revolution anymore?

The game is well and truly rigged against any 3rd party emerging. Ballot access is the number one control used by both parties but beyond that, the media is a huge problem as well. Since they refuse to recognize any third parties as viable, they are dismissed.

The institutional barriers are formidable. Organizational problems abound (look at Perot’s 3rd party that fell apart after he left). No viable 3rd party can truly emerge and if it tries, it is usually viable for only an election cycle or two before it is absorbed into one or the other party. That’s the history. I have no idea how to change it.

ed.

“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together.
Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as ‘empty,’ ‘meaningless,’ or ‘dishonest,’ and scorn to use them. No matter how ‘pure’ their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.”
– Robert Heinlein