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<blockquote data-quote="cheryl" data-source="post: 1454903" data-attributes="member: 1">Pssst...<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/the-weak-argument-defending-executive-amnesty/382906/" target="_blank">Reagan and Bush Offer No Precedent for Obama&#039;s Amnesty Order - The Atlantic</a>The invocation of the Reagan and Bush cases exemplifies the bad tendency of political discussion to degenerate into an exchange of scripted talking points. “Oh yeah? Well, this guy you liked also did this thing you don’t like!” Is that really supposed to convince anybody? What we have here is not a validation of the correctness of President Obama’s action. It’s the shaking of a fetish, an effort to curtail argument rather than enlighten it. It’s a style of argument borrowed from the late-night cable-comedy shows, in which a clip of somebody saying something at some point in the past is supposed to estop that person—or anybody in any way connected to him, or supportive of him, or even mostly but not entirely admiring of him—from ever saying anything different in the future. But a zinger is not a rebuttal. In this case, with all the huge differences between Obama’s situation and those of his predecessors, it does not even zing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="cheryl, post: 1454903, member: 1"] Pssst... [URL='http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/the-weak-argument-defending-executive-amnesty/382906/']Reagan and Bush Offer No Precedent for Obama's Amnesty Order - The Atlantic[/URL] [I]The invocation of the Reagan and Bush cases exemplifies the bad tendency of political discussion to degenerate into an exchange of scripted talking points. “Oh yeah? Well, this guy you liked also did this thing you don’t like!” Is that really supposed to convince anybody? What we have here is not a validation of the correctness of President Obama’s action. It’s the shaking of a fetish, an effort to curtail argument rather than enlighten it. It’s a style of argument borrowed from the late-night cable-comedy shows, in which a clip of somebody saying something at some point in the past is supposed to estop that person—or anybody in any way connected to him, or supportive of him, or even mostly but not entirely admiring of him—from ever saying anything different in the future. But a zinger is not a rebuttal. In this case, with all the huge differences between Obama’s situation and those of his predecessors, it does not even zing.[/I] [/QUOTE]

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