Monday, October 5, 2009

The Politics of the Olympics

Regardless of how one feels about Obama's campaigning for Chicago to host the Olympics, the crowing from some on the Right about Chicago losing is just bizarre. As Roland Martin said:

Whenever President Obama has traveled overseas and offered pointed and direct assessments of the United States, some of them critical, Republicans have ripped him for criticizing America, saying a president should always defend the United States.

So I want to hear the explanation by these so-called patriots of their giddy behavior over the United States losing the 2016 Olympic Games.

This is an example of what I was talking about in a previous post about how the Republican Party is treating politics as a zero-sum game. It doesn't matter what Obama and the Democrats propose, the GOP proclaims that it is against it. The Republicans have adopted this strategy rather wholeheartedly, but it is hard to see how this can pay off in the long run. Can anyone (Republicans included) even say what the GOP stands for right now? If the Republicans expect to govern effectively in the future, they need to stop the slash-and-burn tactics and take a stand on something. I guess I'm not optimistic about that happening, however. It's much easier to paint the other party as EEEVIL! than to actually make a case on the merits. Unfortunately both parties are well-versed in this, but right now at least the Democrats are standing up for something whether or not you agree with any of it.

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