Partisanship, Politics of Fear and So On

How many times during the election were Republicans criticized for using the "politics of fear" or the "politics of division" or, now during the debate about Obama's stimulus package, of raging partisanship?

Hate to tell my good friends on the left, but your guys do it too, in spades. Without taking sides on the merits of the stimulus bill, let's look at some tactics of either the administration or its supporters and decide if they're deploying an us vs. them strategy

Joe Biden
"Every economist, as I've said, from conservative to liberal, acknowledges that direct government spending on a direct program now is the best way to infuse economic growth and create job."

Really, Mr. Vice President? Well here are 200 who don't agree, or did you mean to say "every economist other than those who disagree"?

President Barack Obama
“When we get past the politics of division and distraction and we start actually focusing on what we have in common, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish…’’

Americans United for Change is running ads in states with Republican Senators that say, among other things, "Every Republican voted with Limbaugh — and against creating 4 million new American jobs" in reference to Limbaugh's statement last week about hoping Obama fails, or something like that.

Maybe the stimulus plan has no waste, is optimally designed and will accomplish exactly what it's advertised to accomplish. Or, maybe, just maybe, Democrats are using a domestic emergency as cover to satisfy long standing policy goals irrespective of their stimulative value (but create a plausible argument that this or that expenditure is actually stimulative). Didn't they accuse another president of the same thing?

I have no clue if the administration's plan as passed by the House is good/bad/ugly/indifferent. I'll bet that of 435 representatives, 435 of them don't know either. I'd also venture that even the best economic minds have only a slightly better idea. No one knows. We can't run a test case, we can't have a do-over. Does anyone really believe we can just vote ourselves 4 million new jobs? If we could, we'd have done it already. Politicians and their supporters who like the bill are not automatically benevolent and bipartisan and those who oppose it are not automatically malevolent and hyperpartisan. Both sides are political, which means they look for ways to deliver goodies to their constituents and pass the cost onto the other guy's.

When a politician says "change" what he generally means is "do things my way for a while."