Partisanship vs. Personal

[kennyboyerfan]

We've had discussions here before about what partisanship means. I've been reading a lot about William F. Buckley -- he had quite an amazing life -- and have been struck by how many deep and lasting friendships this conservative icon had with liberals.

John Leo wrote the following:

"He taught a generation of debaters and polemicists that adversaries were to be opposed, but not loathed or hated. (Gore Vidal was the understandable exception.) His style was to fight tooth and nail, then invite his opponent out for a drink or dinner afterwards. His detractors saw this as a ploy to unsettle opponents. Occasionally it was. But debate was about ideas. It wasn't personal."

Just something to keep in mind as we hammer each over between now and Election Day.

[Turd Ferguson]

I accept your dinner invitation.

[Reggie Cleveland]

Fuck off. That was stupid. Something a LC wanna-be would post.

[kennyboyerfan]

Fuck off. That was stupid. Something a LC wanna-be would post.

I knew that was coming.

Buckley had many liberal friends. I doubt Rush has many.

[Reggie Cleveland]

I knew that was coming.

Buckley had many liberal friends. I doubt Rush has many.

True, but that's probably because he's really fat and probably smells bad.

[kennyboyerfan]

True, but that's probably because he's really fat and probably smells bad.

On a different subject, you been reading any of these Buckley obits? He had a pretty fascinating life.

[kennyboyerfan]

From Hedrick Hertzberg at The New Yorker:

"He was a cultivated man. He understood that there was more to life than checking off the correct ideological boxes. He had a gift for friendship, and his warm friends included such luminaries of the left as Murray Kempton, Norman Mailer, Allard Lowenstein, and Michael Harrington. He could not have been happy with the vulgarity of the movement he did so much to spawn, and he was quite thoroughly out of sympathy with messianic, militaristic neoconservatism."

Can you imagine liberal and conservative leaders getting along like that today?

[Reggie Cleveland]

On a different subject, you been reading any of these Buckley obits? He had a pretty fascinating life.

Like I didn't already know that.

[kennyboyerfan]

Like I didn't already know that.

I didn't, not really. I knew he had been on TV and written a lot of books that I hadn't read.

[Reggie Cleveland]

I didn't, not really. I knew he had been on TV and written a lot of books that I hadn't read.

Don't bother. They're inpenetrable.

[madyaks]

I am Partisanship and it's Personal.
If you really think the other side hurts your country, if you think George Bush got us into a bs war and is responsible for the deaths of 3000+ young Americans, if you think he and his party have helped to destroy the middle class in America, How can it not be personal?

Maybe at times you can be James Carville and Mary Matalin, but I couldn't do that right now. Not at a time when there is so much on the line for this country.

[Jaws]

Buckley or madyaks?

Madyaks or Buckley?

Decisions, decisions.

[Reggie Cleveland]

I am Partisanship and it's Personal.
If you really think the other side hurts your country, if you think George Bush got us into a bs war and is responsible for the deaths of 3000+ young Americans, if you think he and his party have helped to destroy the middle class in America, How can it not be personal?

Maybe at times you can be James Carville and Mary Matalin, but I couldn't do that right now. Not at a time when there is so much on the line for this country.

For the good of mankind, please just shut up.

[kennyboyerfan]

I am Partisanship and it's Personal.
If you really think the other side hurts your country, if you think George Bush got us into a bs war and is responsible for the deaths of 3000+ young Americans, if you think he and his party have helped to destroy the middle class in America, How can it not be personal?

Because most people generally try to do the right thing. They may be misguided, or stubborn, or stupid, or just plain wrong, but they generally don't wake up in the morning and think, "I'm going to get my country into war and destroy the middle class."

I know I'm going to get smacked around for saying that. I think Bush is incompetent, but I don't think he's inherently evil. Just like I don't think, as Rush Limbaugh says every week, that liberals are evil and out to destroy the country. Thinking that way tends to get the base fired up, but I don't think it solves very much.

[Reggie Cleveland]

helped to destroy the middle class in America

Anybody here
Seen my old friend John Smith
Can you tell me where he's gone?
Freed a lot of crabgrass, but it seems insurance salesmen die young
I just looked around, and he was gone