Narrow definitions are the rule in politics

One way to "win" an argument is to control the meaning of the terms used and the Republicans have understood this better than the Democrats for decades. Thus "fiscal responsibility" can mean spending billions of dollars that the government doesn't have while cutting taxes for the wealthy; "defending freedom" can mean taking away civil rights and stifling the freedom of the press; "equality" can mean protecting the rich and powerful from incursions by minorities into the best colleges in America; "values" can mean enshrining narrow "Christian" tenets held by a vocal few into the law of the land; and why they can claim that "Hollywood elites" have infested the Democratic Party while failing to mention the stars in their own party such as Bob Hope, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Dennis Hopper, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Fred Thompson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston or Ronald Reagan. That's just a sample of the doublespeak that has been the norm for the "right" since 1980. The Republicans have controlled the White House and/or the Congress for 26 of the past 28 years and yet they still proclaim the baldfaced lie that everything that's wrong in America is somebody else's fault. That's why "Country First" rings hollow- because most of us who make up the country don't count as far as the Republican Party is concerned. Their interests are narrow, their terms are narrow, their minds are narrow. The Republican Party needs to regain real conservative values, not the pseudoconservative values that they've acten upon for most of the past 30 years.

Obama and McCain Tax Proposals

According to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are both proposing tax plans that would result in cuts for most American families. Obama's plan gives the biggest cuts to those who make the least, while McCain would give the largest cuts to the very wealthy. For the approximately 147,000 families that make up the top 0.1 percent of the income scale, the difference between the two plans is stark. While McCain offers a $269,364 tax cut, Obama would raise their taxes, on average, by $701,885 - a difference of nearly $1 million.