2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The attacks I'm seeing here against Bernie and his message are positively Republican in nature. [View all]Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)Yes, presenting "free stuff" as negative is a standard Republican framing. No argument here.
No, comparing Sanders to Mondale is entirely legitimate (although he's a lot further left than Mondale was). And the very substantial middle-class tax rises that would be needed to pay for his health-care "plan" are one of the reasons he'd be very unlikely to win an election, so it's entirely legitimate to highlight them.
And mostly no, there's nothing underhanded about pointing out that a man who's spent the last however many years running for office as a socialist might well try to bring socialism to America if elected, which is another reason he'd be very unlikely indeed to win an election. But it is dishonest to suggest that he might sympathise with communism, so part marks here.