"Citizens United in the first 90 days, do you think they were hoping to lose?"
The Democrats believe Citizens United hurts them and benefits Republicans. It does not challenge my core thesis.
"If what you say is true, it should be trivial to provide examples of the opposite, so why don't you?"
Republicans have, for instance, supported Voter ID laws consistently, while Democrats have vigorously opposed them.
You have two basic choices here. You can either agree this is an example of the Republicans attempting to improve voter security. Or, you can repeat the standard accusations that Voter ID laws are simply intended to hurt minorities and suppress their votes, in which case you're basically agreeing with my thesis that the party's interests in these matters are driven by their interests rather than their stated principles.
(The idea that voter ID is some sort of unmitigated atrocity is a peculiarly American one not shared by the rest of the world, which is why I infer it's a political position and not a logical one.)
If, of course, you attribute to the Democrats all their stated reasons and goals, but every time the Republicans open their mouths they're lying every possible way and have every possible bad motive, of course you'll end up with the result that the Democrats are just awesomesauce and the Republicans stink, but it's not an interesting result. The conclusion is entirely described by the measurement metric. At least if I apply an action-based interests-driven theory equally to both parties, I end up with a potentially-consistent result. And in the scientific sense, I can tell you, it's a very highly predictive theory. I sit up and take notice when a political party makes what lawyers would call an against-interest admission, because it does not happen often.
As has been discussed elsewhere, voter ID does not increase election security whatsoever. Voter fraud is vanishingly rare, and there are systems already in place to detect and mitigate it without requiring everyone to go out and buy IDs.
Democrats only opposed to Voter ID as long as IDs cost money to get. It is a poll tax, and poll taxes are unconstitutional.
The accusation that Voter Id laws hurt minorities is not baseless, it is literally the intent of these laws. Communications that were revealed during the discovery phase of the NC Voter ID suit show that NC Republican legislators commissioned studies to discover what forms of IDs are disproportionately relied on by black people and poor people, like welfare cards, military IDs, student IDs, employee IDs, etc. so that they can be excluded from voting with them.
Know what actually does increase election security and auditability? Paper backups, which Republicans in Congress are unanimously opposed to.
The Democrats believe Citizens United hurts them and benefits Republicans. It does not challenge my core thesis.
"If what you say is true, it should be trivial to provide examples of the opposite, so why don't you?"
Republicans have, for instance, supported Voter ID laws consistently, while Democrats have vigorously opposed them.
You have two basic choices here. You can either agree this is an example of the Republicans attempting to improve voter security. Or, you can repeat the standard accusations that Voter ID laws are simply intended to hurt minorities and suppress their votes, in which case you're basically agreeing with my thesis that the party's interests in these matters are driven by their interests rather than their stated principles.
(The idea that voter ID is some sort of unmitigated atrocity is a peculiarly American one not shared by the rest of the world, which is why I infer it's a political position and not a logical one.)
If, of course, you attribute to the Democrats all their stated reasons and goals, but every time the Republicans open their mouths they're lying every possible way and have every possible bad motive, of course you'll end up with the result that the Democrats are just awesomesauce and the Republicans stink, but it's not an interesting result. The conclusion is entirely described by the measurement metric. At least if I apply an action-based interests-driven theory equally to both parties, I end up with a potentially-consistent result. And in the scientific sense, I can tell you, it's a very highly predictive theory. I sit up and take notice when a political party makes what lawyers would call an against-interest admission, because it does not happen often.