Response to a Lush Rimbaugh listener

I tuned into Lush's show the other morning while driving into work and heard one of his (rare) callers make a point that he thought was the End-All, Be-All of political discussion. This is not a direct quote (it's difficult to take notes while driving), but he said something to the effect of "I always hear Liberals quoting Republicans to lend credence to their arguments, but I never hear the opposite. No Republican quotes Democrats to add legitimacy to their point."

I will now apply reason, and science, to this caller's statement (Science? Run for the hills!). Let's make the wild assumption that he's correct on the "factual" basis of his comment, in that no Right-Wingers quote facts from Democrats. I know a quick Google search would totally disprove this, but he did make the qualification that he never hears it, so let's just build from there.

At best, what we have here is an observation that one group (Democrats) quotes a second group (Republicans), and not vice versa. Let's see how many theories we can develop that also satisfy this set of criteria. We'll start by restating the caller's conclusion, more correctly, in thesis form, and follow it by others theses that are equally likely.

• Democrats recognize the superiority of Republicans and need their information to make any point.

---

• Republicans are unable to quote Democrats in order to lend "credence" to their own arguments, because the inclusion of such quotes usually illustrates the falsehoods of the Republican.
• Democrats recognize that voters in the Republican party reflexively deny any fact that doesn't come out The Heritage Foundation or other Republican think tanks, so they're forced to use that very same information to point out hypocrisy and flaws.
• Democrats make the effort to engage in debate, and therefore quote others in an attempt to either reinforce or deny a point. Republicans merely slander or refuse to debate, knowing that they haven't a leg to stand on.
• Democrats recognize that even the worst of Republicans can get something right once in a while. The Republicans feel that even the best Democrat is beneath them.
• Democrats are able to read and perform research, and therefore are able to actually quote others.
• Republicans are unable to adapt their rhetoric in order to include quotes.
• Republicans don't listen to people that disagree with them, and so are unaware of quotes from Democrats.

Each of the above items has an equally likely chance of being the reason for the observed behavior. True, some of them are absurd, but even they cannot be ruled out merely on the stated observation. Feel free to add more possibilities in response to this post.