The GOP MO

Here is a quote from one of my favorite bloggers, Kevin Drum of WashingtonMonthly, in reaction to news that the GOP will use the August recess to make the argument that Reid has failed to move forward on any major legislation this session: "You have to give Republicans points for consistency. They bring the Senate to a halt and then blame Democrats for not getting anything done. They destroy FEMA's ability to respond to natural disasters and then hold it up as an example of why you can't trust government to do anything right. They lose a war via unparalleled military incompetence and then claim that liberals are defeatists for pointing it out. They spend 20 years claiming that Social Security is going bankrupt and then use the resulting public insecurity about Social Security as an explanation for why the whole system needs to be privatized."

Two questions. First, do the Democrats engage in such blatant chicanery, but I am just too partisan to see it or are they really just fundamentally more honest about policy? Second, assuming that the American public actually is persuaded by the GOP's specious position(s), how do the Democrats convince the public that the GOP is, to put it bluntly, deliberately and maliciously lying?