Republicans and Democrats: Is one worse than the other?

Many people (well, nearly always conservatives and Tea-bagger types) often claim that “Republicans and Democrats are all the same” when it comes to dirty politics. The usual claim (often riding off a discussion of a Republican being caught doing ill deeds), is that The Democrats are just as bad, and that it doesn't matter if it was a Republican or a Democrat -- both groups are equal in terms of their slime factor.

Is this claim true? Are they really just as bad?

After some simple (and even after more thorough) research, you will have to agree with me that not only is it NOT true, but that there simply is no comparison to the level of slime in the Republican party versus the Democratic Party.

Let’s start with the worst examples of Republican abuses against the people of the USA.

Nixon:

• Claimed presidential powers that did not exist
  
• Watergate was the attempt by Nixon and his staff to rig the elections.
  
• The white house tapes revealed that Nixon also was trying to prevent Jewish people from public office and being appointed as court judges.
  
• The Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) and the Plumbers worked on ways to manufacture phony scandals to defame democrats, as well as engaged in illegal gangster-style money-laundering.
  
• Anti-Semitism and overt racism was Rampant in Nixon’s white house.
  
• Nixon and his staff openly discussed how to assassinate certain democratic members of congress and news reporters.
  
• Nixon’s staff contained over 40 people who were convicted of federal crimes.
  

All of the above is very well documented and reported on. There is no conjecture about it. The facts are part of the official Government investigation, the Nixon Library, and the Library of Congress.

Which Democratic President did anything even resembling the above? I’d certainly love to hear who the Democratic equal of Nixon is, because as far as I can tell, no Democratic President in the 20th century has even come close to the Nixon record.

The Republican “Southern Strategy”:

• The Southern Strategy was the Republican party’s way of gaining Southern white votes by creating fear of black people. The Policy was overtly racist.
  
• When the Democratic Party split over the Civil Rights Amendment, and hundreds of Southern Democrats left the party as it promoted the Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party Welcomed them with open arms.
  
• In 2005, The Republican party actually apologized for this racist strategy in an attempt to get black voters in the party.
  

Now a true believer in the Republican party would obviously defend his party by either denying the racism that oozes from the party, or they will try to suggest that Democrats do the same thing, except they use the fear and hatred that black voters have for white people. Some might fall for this desperation ploy, but name one democrat running for office who ever told black voters that they were going to “keep whitey down” or “punish the white man for racism”. It simply doesn’t happen, and the republicans who use this tactic to try to say that democrats are just as racist, only in reverse, fail to address the fact that historically, Republicans have been against the civil rights act, and tend to oppose laws that attempt to ensure civil liberties.

Ronald Reagan:

• Reagan made a deal with Terrorists to give them weapons in exchange for Hostages. He also allowed South American drug lords to import illegal drugs into the country (with military escorts), and the money from the sale of the drugs went to purchase arms for the Contra rebels, a CIA-created group used to terrorize Nicaragua, which was a democratic nation.
  
• Reagan’s staff contained over 138 people who were convicted of federal crimes.

Have any Democratic Presidents ever done that?

George W. Bush:

• Where to begin? How about the establishment of “free speech zones” to avoid letting the news media see protestors?
  
• The Gulf war has been analyzed in detail, and it’s no mere conjecture that Bush and his staff invented the reasons to go to war, and invented lies to support them – it’s documented fact.
  
• Bush fired 12 lawyers because they were doing their job the correct way, instead of taking direct orders from Bush to start investigations designed to defame Democratic critics of the President.
  
• Bush stuffed the military full of private advisors and military contractors, which increased the cost of using the military by 1000% or more in some cases. Work traditionally done by enlisted men is now performed by private contractors who cost hundreds of times more ($200/hour versus less than minimum wage for enlisted troops).
  
• Bush’s white house endangered the life of one of our CIA officers in order to get revenge against her husband who was openly critical of the administration.
  

What have Democratic presidents done that’s anything like that?

When one takes all of this – the big overall picture substantiated by historical facts – and asks “how do the Democrats compare”, the answer is a resounding “There is no comparison!” The Democrats simply do not have any record as a whole of the kind of civil rights-violating criminal activity, arrests, convictions, and jail time that the republicans do. You may be able to find some democrats engaging in mudslinging, and other questionable activities each election season, but the Republican Party tends to commit criminal acts and behave like mobsters by comparison.

Bill Clinton is often used as an example of someone who was “as bad as Nixon”, but the Lewinsky scandal was no abuse of federal power, and was no attempt to violate citizen’s rights. In fact, Conservative opponents of Clinton had to pretty much make up phony scandals to make Clinton look bad. The Whitewater Investigation cost us millions of dollars, and was nothing more than Republicans trying to bog Clinton down in a phony scandal. When all was said and done, Whitewater only revealed that Clinton was the victim of an illegal land deal by Jim Mcdougal. Jerry Falwell, and other members of what I like to call “the Criminally insane branch of the right wing”, even invented a “hit list” of people that Clinton allegedly has murdered to keep them from testifying against him in the Whitewater hearings. When the list is examined, though, most of the people on it are still alive.

We can even see this desire to invent artificial scandal against democrats today, as media pundit after media pundit goes on the air and rather than talk about what President Obama HAS DONE, talk about what his COULD DO or MIGHT DO.

Anyone saying that the democrats and republicans are alike is simply wrong. Comparing the Democrats to the Republicans is like comparing school children to the mafia. The Republicans are far worse,far more criminal, and have a long history of racism and criminal prosecutions that the Democrats haven’t even come close to matching.