>>I'm sorry, but it's not even the same thing. Sure...the pundits and the talking-heads all do this; but when it comes to elected politicians, the Democrats are on a level alone. And the reason why (as someone already pointed out) is because the media would never allow a Republican to get away with it. Just look at the way they treated Trent Lott's praise of Thurmond vs. Chris Dodd's praise of Robert Byrd; two very similar situations that were treated completely differently.<<
I think you must be right given the difficulty I had finding counter examples as requested above.
Paul...I spent a couple weeks doing just that to counter an argument from a democrat friend of mine. While there is no shortage of attacks from the peanut gallery, I could find very little about "personal" attacks on Democrats from Republicans.
While names like Lott and Delay did come up, those "attacks" were actually legitimate criticisms of policy. And that's one of the reasons this distinction is even that much more important: The media attempts to make policy disagreements by Republicans a personal matter...or an attack on Democrats and their constituency. There is a BIG difference between the two, especially since Democrats do make it personal.