You Forgot, Didn't You?

Sorry, Lt Governor Michael Steele(R-MD). Being the first black anything doesn’t count if said black belongs to the party of Jim Crow. What party was that again?

He sure has a strange way of showing it.

(Lifted from Allah)

Comments

[Rob]

Well, as you may already know, that protester is almost all wrong historically.

Aside from the origins of the Republican party with Pres. Licoln and Civil War, the "old South" was dominated by -Democrats- and it was that party that was behind much of "Jim Crow" for decades. Further, when the civil rights legislation of the 1960's went before Congress following the death of Pres. Kennedy, the new Pres. Johnson (a southern Democrat), was unable to get the majority of his own party to support it. The legislation passed only because the majority of Republicans in Congress at that time voted for it.

[baldilocks]

Um...yes I know. :-)

[Ben]

It is a standard debating or rhetorical tactic to accuse your opponent of your own faults and sins first. That way, when they accurately accuse you of the same thing, its comes across as silly and childish, and lessens the impact or damage when one's own sins are revealed.

Hence Bush is a liar, so that when Kerry is caught having to take back his Christmas in Cambodia story, or his medal toss, or really a whole host of things, when Kerry is busted, it is not as big a deal. After all, Bush is a liar too.

I swear, sometimes listening to the inaccurate slander the left spews about Republicans, I have to wonder what planet they are on. It feels in a small way what the Jews in 1930's Germany must have felt like. You know its a lie, and you cannot believe that anyone is stupid enough or blind enough to buy into it. But some do. Go figure.

[Sigivald]

Ben: The technical term is "tu quoque"; more or less "you're one too!".

Of course, in logic, rather than in rhetoric or debate, it's called a fallacy, because it has no logical import at all. (Hell, it only has decent rhetorical power if it's accurate. One wonders if the protestor truly believes what her sign says, and how she'd express the basis of that belief if asked.)

[lyle]

Not just Jim Crow. The KKK committed terrorist atrocities with impunity for a hundred years because when their leaders took the hoods off, they were politicians and power-brokers of a one-party system.

That party was the Democrat Party.