Republican Pot calling the Kettle Black

The pot calling the kettle black is an expression which to the Phantom always meant that both the pot and the kettle are black but the pot is fool enough to denigrate the kettle for an attribute they both share. The alternative explanation, is perhaps more British, but better: The pot is accusing the shiny kettle of what it sees, as it's own reflection as black, while in fact this is an attribute not shared, but found only in the pot.

Wikipedia cites the following:

The following poem is found in the school book "Maxwell's Elementary Grammar", copyright 1904.

"Oho!" said the pot to the kettle;
"You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you're given a crack."

"Not so! not so!" kettle said to the pot;
"'Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean – without blemish or blot –
That your blackness is mirrored in me."

The issue of someone seeing his own faults in another is germane today because Republicans have fastened onto this behavior as a conscious tactic.

Thus they accuse Democrats, they "see" in Democrats:
1. The effort to win elections by suppressing the vote
2. The will to  kill Medicare
3. The will to kill Social Security
4. Support for policies which crush the middle class.

To name only the most often voiced accusations.
The problem is, in the case of the pot, there is a certain blindness to reality, which the Phantom is  not sure obtains in the case of the Republicans. The Phantom credits the Republican Congressmen, Senators, operatives (Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity) with more savvy and intelligence than one associates with a black pot.  These men and their women (Ann Coulter, all the Fox blond bimbos) know exactly what they are doing, the Phantom suspects. They see how badly they have been hurt by their own positions in these four arenas and they have decided to simply use the playground tactic of, "I'm not mean; you're mean! I'm not ugly; you're ugly. I'm not disgusting; you're disgusting!"

It's an atavistic but occasionally effective tactic. 

Apparently, they think it works for them.