It’s going to be interesting watching the GOP talk itself out of doing immigration reform. They’ll be engaging in slow-motion political suicide, but the bottom line is that they won’t do it because they don’t want to do it, and Republicans are very good at finding reasons they should do whatever it is they want to do. They don’t want to deal with global warming and you know the drill: global warming isn’t happening, if it is happening then it’s not caused by humans, if it is caused by humans then there’s nothing we can do about it, if there is something we can do about it then that something is not whatever Democrats are proposing. Also too: Al Gore is fat!
All humans are like this to some extent insofar as the wish to do usually precedes the justification to do. But Republicans take it farther, and that’s both a strength and a weakness. This is especially true with their leaders. George W. Bush was “a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius”, Maggie T’s opponents “knew they were toppling a person who was their political and moral superior”. And my favorite, from Josh Marshall (I’m self-linking because the TPM link died somehow):
(Fred) Barnes: Why is Jeb Bush the best? It’s very simple. His record is the best. No other governor, Republican or Democrat, comes close.
Josh Marshall: Why is Jeb the best? Because he is the best! No one rocks as hard as Jeb, bitch!
The greatness of Ronaldus Magnus is not a conclusion, it’s a premise.
With liberals, it’s the opposite. I can find plenty of faults with FDR, LBJ, Clinton, Obama.
My impression is that liberals have always been big handwringers, at least for the past 40 years or so, and that makes our arguments sound less forceful because they involve equivocation as well as assertion. But it probably also means we would never decide it was a good idea to completely alienate a rapidly growing segment of the population and doom ourselves to 20+ years of minority status.