They accuse the other party of whatever they are doing or have been caught doing to defuse the issue.
They then say well everybody does it, or there are allegations on both sides.
One thing is for certain in a classic liberal defense is they lie like a rug to spin their story.
Yep.
It’s called “Projection.”
And if there is a coordinated strategy regarding some topic and you cannot figure out what is going on, it is usually because some crime or dirty trick is about to be revealed and the leftists are planning their excuses ahead of time.
Example: The Dems start complaining of Reps being caught taking campaign money from lobbyists and then proposing legislation to help those lobbyists. The state-run media runs with it makes a huge issue out of it. The Reps try to defend themselves (unaware they are actually providing the future defense of the libs). The leftists look noble, honest, above it all. A few months later a major scandal of the same sort is revealed but it is the Dems who are caught red-handed. By then, because of the projection, the country is already used to it. The country has lowered their expectations of this sort of behavior and has begun to accept it simply by having been inundated by the topic in the news. The Dems’ defense is, “Hey, the Reps did it. Everyone does it. There’s nothing really that bad about it. But WE will propose some legislation to prevent OTHERS from doing this sort of thing in the future.”
So the effect of Projection is:
It familiarizes the people with an unacceptable behavior. This lowers the standards of expectation.
After the expectations are lowered, the people are more likely to defend those accused of the behavior.
When the true culprits are caught, the behavior is already familiarized and they do not look like they are deviating from that behavior.
The culprits use the argument, “This is old behavior. Everyone is already doing it. Therefore, we have done nothing wrong.”