[andyfox]

Excellent post. Another part of the Republicans' "dirty little secret", is that the Republican party leadership and most Republicans, have a much more conservative agenda across every issue which they wish to foist upon the unsuspecting middle of American voters. But to do this, they have to both claim a more centrist position than they really believe in, and as you said, to use any convenient hypocritcal distortion and criticism of Democratic policies to damage Democratic office holders. The Bush administration is a master of this.