Reply #53: I suggest we prosecute the criminals to the fullest extent of the law... [View All]

[Warren DeMontague]

I mean everyone from Dick Cheney and Robert Novak down to Nathan Sproul-- if it can be shown they broke the law.

Wholesale demonizing of the opposition, however, is counter-productive.

What I think we should do is point out that we are the party of tolerance, we are the party of inclusion, we are the party of fair play. If you want a bunch of theocratic kooks who want to throw your wife in jail for taking the birth control pill, and yell "democracy is on the march" while they're busy trying to keep people from the polls, yeah, you should vote Republican.

If we win this year- hopefully- it will deal a serious blow to the politics of slime. The poltics of fear. The politics of division and simplistic labeling. The Chickens of Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay and their shitty-ass tactics will finally, it is hoped, be coming home to roost. It will be a victory for all of us who can still think.

So in the future, I want to see us fight smart-- certainly not ape their tactics. Should we "forgive and forget"? No. I think widespred wrongdoing has been done, from the Pentagon to the FCC, and it should be addressed. But we would be missing a golden opportunity to present the glaring differences between us and the other guys if we didn't take advantage of a Kerry victory to try to, in some sense, re-unify the nation.