Both sides do it/Democrats vs. Republicans

About

The phrase "both sides do it" is often used in discussions about the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, which have essentially become a political duopoly (excluding all other parties from any substantial participation).

While it is true that both of these parties are clearly colluding in a number of ways (e.g. good cop/bad cop politics) and share a number of negative characteristics, and that the public benefits tremendously whenever a non-lizard (i.e. someone who belongs to neither party) wins an election, it is also true that the Republicans are far more guilty of malfeasance in a number of areas, including:

• lying and misrepresenting facts
• use of emotional and religious arguments
• platforms based on ideology and dogma rather than reasoning from factual information; moralism
• hypocrisy (probably due to moralism)
• corruption
• fealty to those who provide the majority of funding to their campaigns, rather than to their constituencies (Lessigian corruption) – in other words, representing the 1% rather than all voters equally
• election fraud

Obama vs. Romney

This is also true for the 2012 presidential election. While incumbent Barack Obama has basically carried forward and even expanded many of the truly awful policies of his predecessor, he has also at least taken a sane approach in many areas where Bush did not (employing science-based policy in many areas where Bush preferred faith-based policy or simply appointed key administrators on a political basis). Obama's opponent Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has made it clear that he has no interest in facts and will do his best to represent the interests of the wealthy and privileged. He is also likely to carry forward Bush's policy of appointing ideologically-driven justices to the US Supreme Court.