Well, actually, yes these things are different, because I have no recollection of liberals banding together to shut the government down and threaten it with default as the Tea Party and its politicians did.
Then you are ignorant of history.
Threatening to shut down the government by withholding funds (and occasionally going through with it) is an opposition tactic that dates back to the founding fathers.
The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.
-James Madison (Federalist Papers no 58)
(And for the record, one link you provided includes the statement "The Tea Party is not a terrorist group. It has legitimate concerns about debt, jobs and Obamacare. But what was not legitimate was the line it crossed.")
Which doesn't change the fact that the senate majority leader said the exact opposite. Someone of far greater status than Coulter, or Horowitz, or Bennet.
Your comments about arguing in good faith ring hollow when confronted by the fact that you only apply those standards to your opponents.
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Date: 22/10/13 19:24 (UTC)Then you are ignorant of history.
Threatening to shut down the government by withholding funds (and occasionally going through with it) is an opposition tactic that dates back to the founding fathers.
The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.
-James Madison (Federalist Papers no 58)
(And for the record, one link you provided includes the statement "The Tea Party is not a terrorist group. It has legitimate concerns about debt, jobs and Obamacare. But what was not legitimate was the line it crossed.")
Which doesn't change the fact that the senate majority leader said the exact opposite. Someone of far greater status than Coulter, or Horowitz, or Bennet.
Your comments about arguing in good faith ring hollow when confronted by the fact that you only apply those standards to your opponents.