What is the real question people with political concerns should be asking? Maybe to stay focused on the real question we need to know about red herrings. So ... what is a red herring? For years, we've been misled by a fox hunting fable which claims if two parties were fox hunting and one party wanted to cheat, it would drag a heavily smoked herring, red in color, across the path of the other party's hounds to distract them from finding the scent of the fox. Although this fable has no basis in reality, if you were to see two parties on the hunt, both dragging red herrings across the landscape, you would be tempted to call the parties Democrats and Republicans, wouldn't you say? Red herrings: Arguments which distract from the real question . So in Washington we recently witnessed a fox hunt called "fighting over the 2011 budget to avoid government shutdown." The Republican red herring was: "Government is spending too much, so we must cut costs....