And you can ask about passes all day, Gadfly, I'm not going to get into that kind of game. No one gets a pass, but Reps get more criticism right now because frankly they need it. I don't want to see Dems running both houses of Congress for the next two decades, but if Reps don't get their act in gear, that's exactly what's going to happen.

But, of course, we're supposed to give it a pass because Democrats are Good Guys and Republicans are the Bad Guys, right?

When the Democrats did not need the blue dogs, the Democrats were quick to pass gun laws such as the “assault” weapons ban and Democrats tried to sue gun manufacturers. In the elections where the Democrats need suburban and rural whites, they stopped talking about gun control. Now that the Democrats are back to being the one, dominate party, they have started talking about gun control gain.

It is the same as giving the upper class white progressives the public transportation projects they want while ignoring the big truck culture of blue collar Hispanics and illegal immigrants.

In the end, the cost of the Democratic Party being the big tent party will be massive to the U.S. It also causes the Democrats to by hypocritical in that the leadership talks about spending will solve public education's problems while that same leadership all send their children to private schools.

Yeah, I know, that's unfair and illogical and an overgeneralization. But I'm right, aren't I?

The whole “Dems want your guns” nonsense is also counter to actual real-life events. In fact Democrats have no problem accepting rural, pro-gun Dems into the party which makes them “big tent” almost by definition. Can you imagine Republicans allowing an elected Rep to propose gun control legislation or turn pro-choice?

I mean sure they do it, and then that guy ends up getting kicked out (a la Specter).

In the long run, as the U.S. becomes a one party state, the level of corruption is skyrocket since cheating will be the only way that people have to protect themselves from the government.

So Dems gain by default, but don't expect it to last more than a few years at most. Pretending this shift is permanent or says more about the inclusiveness of democrats than exclusionary practices of republicans is wishful thinking.

“Republican In Name Only” – 41,800 results
“Democrat In Name Only” – 10,300

My guess would be we don't hear as many criticisms of DINO commentary because the terminology isn't used as often by Democrats.

The real question is why we rarely hear criticism of Democrats when they do the exact same thing.

Oh. Wait. It's because Democrats get a pass. I remember.

Your statements above and related ones hold more true to the Democrats than with the Republicans, though another related remark may be that's what _Washington_ is like these days. I used to like listening to C-SPAN for information and even a perverse form of entertainment during the 1990s (when Christopher Dodd would lie about GOP “extree-mists” and Al Gore would babble robotically about “dev-a-state … and … de-stroy … Me-di-care…and…Me-di-caid…” but even C-SPAN (on which often every other word is “uh”) is as unpleasant to listen to as a typical speech or press conference by George W. Bush.

To be more general, many will outgrow their leftism, as is commonplace and the natural way of things — maturation. This is counteracted by agents who espouse leftism even when grown, the most notorious being the media (notably left of the public at large, as are many in government and in academia).

The older people who remain liberal or who surprisingly _become_ liberal, or more liberal (such as my friend in DC) are the most interesting.

How many of them are expecting “green jobs” to magically appear next week or sometime, any time, soon, to be followed by a transformation in our energy supply sources (even though solar and wind aren't able to replace base-load generation, and both sources, solar in particular, aren't developed enough)?

How many of them actually believe people will gladly tolerate new fuel taxes or vehicle taxes and even before that, rush to downsize from standard-size vehicles into smaller vehicles, or to rush to electric vehicles (the recharging infrastructure as well as generation capacity for which has yet to be developed, for vehicles inferior in performance and costing much more)?

Too many.

“And then there's the Cheney Exegesis, though the perception of conservative ownership of the national security issue is somewhat dulled since Iraq.”

I regret not encountering anything good about this here, on this site (I waited as I often do for others to do their part). The Democrats and liberal Americans for ages have been tarnished as weak on security (when not acting openly against it, in favor of our adversaries), and when Obama made his speech at the same time Cheney did (hyped by fools as a “duel”), intelligent observers and listeners of it know that Obama and the Dems were on the defensive about national security and his policy with respect to the prison at Guantanamo (one of the many objects of wrath of the many pathological people in the Dems' left wing and farther left). Obama's speech was defensive, gravitating toward arguments made in favor of his and his administration's positions and intentions (plans) on these issues.

He did this again in his speech in Cairo. The more diseased people will say it was to repair damage done by the Bush administration (some sick people still hate Bush and Cheney and don't want to stop bashing them and _still_ want them punished for something, somehow). It was not. The speech's words aimed to dispel common anxiety the Arabs and other Muslims have that arises not even so much for US support of Israel (exposing a dark hatred the Arabs and others have, one sadly shared here on the farther left), but because the Muslim world has an inferiority complex and resents the West as it has ever since the Middle Ages, when progress there effectively stopped while the West overtook them. Obama even went so far as to challenge his audience, telling them to be open and honest about what they discuss behind closed doors, things that are long-established facts. It was in some ways a defense of the USA and the West, similar to how he defended himself domestically in the earlier speech, against common misconceptions or even myths.

Conservatives actually value authority and loyalty a great deal more than Liberals, who tend to emphasize fairness and potential to cause harm as foundational values.

With that context understood it's no real surprise that the left tends to be more fragmented generally. This also helps to explain why we hear about RINOs or otherwise ejected Republicans when they don't follow the “with us or against us” methodology.

But because they are so busy uncritically and blindly repeating the talking points written by the leftist blogosphere, TMV's current stable of authors seems incapable of considering that possibility. The promise of perspectives from “left, right, and center” goes unfulfilled.