When did the GOP lose touch with Reality?

[BluegrassCat]

A really great (and somewhat lengthy) post by lifelong conservative Republican and former W. Bush speechwriter David Frum about the GOP's descent into madness. An honest assessment from the inside of the intellectual collapse of a once vibrant party. It's a shame intellectual honesty has become such a rare commodity on the right. I hope they find their way back soon. I've only posted an excerpt here but I highly recommend the full piece.

"But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy *errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action *phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.”

"We used to say “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.” Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information."

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

[Stavros]

Thanks for this link and a stimulating article, it reminds me of a moment not long after Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979 when there was a surge of interest in libertarian ideas and some radical 'conservatives' dismissed Harold MacMillan as a socialist; presumably some of today's Republicans would say the same of Eisenhower.

It is a pity nobody in the Labour Party had the courage to denounce the way in which Blair, Mandelson and Brown trashed a party with values and a mixed but often positive record in government. I cannot believe that the party which sanctioned extraordinary rendition, torture, detention without trial, and such wilful ignorance of economics was not dissolved in shame in 2010. In Europe the Cold War made the existing political parties obsolete, and I would have preferred a re-alignment of politics around different agendas and ideas, but no, this farce continues with a party losing votes becoming half the government. Labour lost its soul, and is but a ghost doomed for a certain time (if not all time) to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires...

[Prospero]

Thanks for that bluegrass - very interesting and disturbing.

[russtafa]

Thanks for this link and a stimulating article, it reminds me of a moment not long after Margaret Thatcher's victory in 1979 when there was a surge of interest in libertarian ideas and some radical 'conservatives' dismissed Harold MacMillan as a socialist; presumably some of today's Republicans would say the same of Eisenhower.

It is a pity nobody in the Labour Party had the courage to denounce the way in which Blair, Mandelson and Brown trashed a party with values and a mixed but often positive record in government. I cannot believe that the party which sanctioned extraordinary rendition, torture, detention without trial, and such wilful ignorance of economics was not dissolved in shame in 2010. In Europe the Cold War made the existing political parties obsolete, and I would have preferred a re-alignment of politics around different agendas and ideas, but no, this farce continues with a party losing votes becoming half the government. Labour lost its soul, and is but a ghost doomed for a certain time (if not all time) to walk the night, and for the day confined to fast in fires...Hey they are like our Labor party:dancing:

[Faldur]

We have an administration that has run up $4 trillion in new debt in 30 months. Operating without a budget, almost a 1,000 days. And you say were out of touch? Keep living in la la land Alice, let the adults fix things.

[BluegrassCat]

We have an administration that has run up $4 trillion in new debt in 30 months. Operating without a budget, almost a 1,000 days. And you say were out of touch? Keep living in la la land Alice, let the adults fix things.

Thanks for that insightful take on Frum's piece, Faldur. You clearly devoted a lot of thought to it.

[Faldur]

Thanks for that insightful take on Frum's piece, Faldur. You clearly devoted a lot of thought to it.

Lol, didn't waste my time reading it.

[onmyknees]

First of all....Frum is a Republican....I'm not. I have no use for him, he's part of the problem that put us here. Mirror meet Mr. Frum. And although he may have some cred with the country club Republicans, their days are numbered. He has the same psychosis that David Brooks has. They're establishment. They like to get invited to all the book parties and Holiday Cocktail extravaganzas, suck up to Chris Matthews and the NPR crowd, and you get those invites by eating your own. His words are irrelevant to fiscal conservatives and libertarians.
If I posted any of the dozens of articles by Doug Schoen ( Clinton) or Pat Caddell ( Jimmy Carter) lamenting the democratic party is so far left of what it was even a decade ago....you'd dismiss them out of hand. I return the favor. David Frum is persona non grata, but nice try. FAIL

[BluegrassCat]

First of all....Frum is a Republican....I'm not. I have no use for him, he's part of the problem that put us here. Mirror meet Mr. Frum. And although he may have some cred with the country club Republicans, their days are numbered. He has the same psychosis that David Brooks has. They're establishment. They like to get invited to all the book parties and Holiday Cocktail extravaganzas, suck up to Chris Matthews and the NPR crowd, and you get those invites by eating your own. His words are irrelevant to fiscal conservatives and libertarians.
If I posted any of the dozens of articles by Doug Schoen ( Clinton) or Pat Caddell ( Jimmy Carter) lamenting the democratic party is so far left of what it was even a decade ago....you'd dismiss them out of hand. I return the favor. David Frum is persona non grata, but nice try. FAIL

You're proving his point by engaging in character assassination rather than dealing with the substance of his claims. FAIL indeed. lol

[onmyknees]

You're proving his point by engaging in character assassination rather than dealing with the substance of his claims. FAIL indeed. lol

And you're using a country club republican as some sort of leverage thinking we'll react with OMG...David Frum?? We'd better do some self evaluation because he's been our savior in the past..... LMFAO.

I explained....he was a part ( albeit) a small part of what put us here. Would you ask for Micheal Jackson's doctor for some drugs if you weren't feeling well simply because he had some political positions that you found useful? If you're looking to affect fiscal conservatives to do some soul searching....come up with something better than David Frum. Three or 4 of us have told you that, but you're pretty slow. He had no cred with lefties yesterday, but suddenly he's a sage....you're fuckin' kiddin with this......right?:dancing:

[Ben]

A really great (and somewhat lengthy) post by lifelong conservative Republican and former W. Bush speechwriter David Frum about the GOP's descent into madness. An honest assessment from the inside of the intellectual collapse of a once vibrant party. It's a shame intellectual honesty has become such a rare commodity on the right. I hope they find their way back soon. I've only posted an excerpt here but I highly recommend the full piece.

"But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy *errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action *phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) “the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.”

"We used to say “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.” Now we are all entitled to our own facts, and conservative media use this right to immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information."

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

David Frum is okay.... He's quite principled. (I like so-called conservatives who don't waver. One should stick firm to their beliefs. Again, Ron Paul is indicative of a principled politician. Albeit I disagree with Paul on a lot of his positions.) I mean, most politicians are opportunists. Whether they're so-called Dems or so-called Republicans. Anyway, they're essentially part of the same team. Although there are some differences. An acquaintance of mine said he doesn't vote because politicians, all politicians, serve their own interests. That's partly true. They serve their own power. And corporate power. All governments serve power structures.
Here's David Sirota: "... every politician on the national stage is an opportunist. As a rule, you don’t get to be a U.S. congressman, Senator or president without being a narcissistic, self-focused, would-fleece-your-own-mother-to-get-elected opportunist. In a sense, politics at that level is rarely ever about ideals and “good guys” and “bad guys” — it’s about a bunch of opportunists getting together and seeing whose self-interest wins."

[onmyknees]

Attention Blue Grass .....head to a dark room and and start a
re-evaluation of all you previously held dear. Two Democrats are about to tell you Why Obama is bad for your party. I'm sure we can expect your mea culpa................tomorrow? Get Real man.








By PATRICK H. CADDELL
AND DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN (http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=PATRICK+H.+CADDELL%0A%09%09%0A% 09%09%09%3CBR%2F%3E%0A%09%09%09%0A%09AND+DOUGLAS+E .+SCHOEN+&bylinesearch=true)

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion.
He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor—one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president's administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.
Certainly, Mr. Obama could still win re-election in 2012. Even with his all-time low job approval ratings (and even worse ratings on handling the economy) the president could eke out a victory in November. But the kind of campaign required for the president's political survival would make it almost impossible for him to govern—not only during the campaign, but throughout a second term.
Put simply, it seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance. With his job approval ratings below 45% overall and below 40% on the economy, the president cannot affirmatively make the case that voters are better off now than they were four years ago. He—like everyone else—knows that they are worse off.
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Associated Press Secretary of State Hillary Clinton



President Obama is now neck and neck with a generic Republican challenger in the latest Real Clear Politics 2012 General Election Average (43.8%-43.%). Meanwhile, voters disapprove of the president's performance 49%-41% in the most recent Gallup survey, and 63% of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll.
Consequently, he has to make the case that the Republicans, who have garnered even lower ratings in the polls for their unwillingness to compromise and settle for gridlock, represent a more risky and dangerous choice than the current administration—an argument he's clearly begun to articulate.
One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be "guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it." The result has been exactly as we predicted: stalemate in Washington, fights over the debt ceiling, an inability to tackle the debt and deficit, and paralysis exacerbating market turmoil and economic decline.
If President Obama were to withdraw, he would put great pressure on the Republicans to come to the table and negotiate—especially if the president singularly focused in the way we have suggested on the economy, job creation, and debt and deficit reduction. By taking himself out of the campaign, he would change the dynamic from who is more to blame—George W. Bush or Barack Obama?—to a more constructive dialogue about our nation's future.
Even though Mrs. Clinton has expressed no interest in running, and we have no information to suggest that she is running any sort of stealth campaign, it is clear that she commands majority support throughout the country. A CNN/ORC poll released in late September had Mrs. Clinton's approval rating at an all-time high of 69%—even better than when she was the nation's first lady. Meanwhile, a Time Magazine poll shows that Mrs. Clinton is favored over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by 17 points (55%-38%), and Texas Gov. Rick Perry by 26 points (58%-32%).
But this is about more than electoral politics. Not only is Mrs. Clinton better positioned to win in 2012 than Mr. Obama, but she is better positioned to govern if she does. Given her strong public support, she has the ability to step above partisan politics, reach out to Republicans, change the dialogue, and break the gridlock in Washington.
President Bill Clinton reached a historic agreement with the Republicans in 1997 that led to a balanced budget. Were Mrs. Clinton to become the Democratic nominee, her argument would almost certainly have to be about reconciliation and about an overarching deal to rein in the federal deficit. She will understand implicitly the need to draw up a bipartisan plan with elements similar to her husband's in the mid-to-late '90s—entitlement reform, reform of the Defense Department, reining in spending, all the while working to preserve the country's social safety net.
Having unique experience in government as first lady, senator and now as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton is more qualified than any presidential candidate in recent memory, including her husband. Her election would arguably be as historic an event as the election of President Obama in 2008.
By going down the re-election road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity, common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength. If he continues on this course it is certain that the 2012 campaign will exacerbate the divisions in our country and weaken our national identity to such a degree that the scorched-earth campaign that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election will pale in comparison.
We write as patriots and Democrats—concerned about the fate of our party and, most of all, our country. We do not write as people who have been in contact with Mrs. Clinton or her political operation. Nor would we expect to be directly involved in any Clinton campaign.
If President Obama is not willing to seize the moral high ground and step aside, then the two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, must urge the president not to seek re-election—for the good of the party and most of all for the good of the country. And they must present the only clear alternative—Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Caddell served as a pollster for President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is author of "Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond," forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield.

[BluegrassCat]

And you're using a country club republican as some sort of leverage thinking we'll react with OMG...David Frum?? We'd better do some self evaluation because he's been our savior in the past..... LMFAO.

I explained....he was a part ( albeit) a small part of what put us here. Would you ask for Micheal Jackson's doctor for some drugs if you weren't feeling well simply because he had some political positions that you found useful? If you're looking to affect fiscal conservatives to do some soul searching....come up with something better than David Frum. Three or 4 of us have told you that, but you're pretty slow. He had no cred with lefties yesterday, but suddenly he's a sage....you're fuckin' kiddin with this......right?:dancing:

Another dodge. The more you attack the messenger the more important the message appears. Since you don't object to any of the substance I assume you agree with it or at least recognize its truthfulness. Congrats, it's the first step on a long road back to honesty.

[Erika1487]

I would comment, but I have no dog in this fight anymore :wiggle:

[BluegrassCat]

Attention Blue Grass .....head to a dark room and and start a
re-evaluation of all you previously held dear. Two Democrats are about to tell you Why Obama is bad for your party. I'm sure we can expect your mea culpa................tomorrow? Get Real man.



So now we can add changing the subject as well as character assassination to your response. Every little bit keeps building my case. lol.

As for this nonsense, the idea that the president would have more bargaining power with the GOP if he resigned is literally laughable. I laughed. Why would the GOP cooperate with someone who has no power? And as the article states, Obama still has a good shot at winning re-election, indeed, most political scientists are predicting his victory. The article cites Truman and Johnson, do they remember who actually went on to win the WH in those elections? It's just a silly idea that Clinton could just step into the role and win. Her positive poll numbers are largely a result of being out of the public eye and partisan crosshairs. She would quickly be the target of smears that would lower her standing.

So thanks for your bit of fiction OMK. Now back to the reality of the conservative movement. Still nothing to say? Your silence is deafening. :dancing:

[Stavros]

onmyknees, surely the point of this thread and the value of Frum's article is that it opens up for debate the problem that the Republican Party has in agreeing on what it now stands for. On both sides of the Atlantic these 'conservative' parties have tended to contain blocs that are -in your cute phrase- 'country club' conservatives at one end, and libertarians at the other -the aggressive manner in which the Tea Party enthusiasts denounce their Republican brothers and sisters as RINO's suggests that this is a bitterly divided party, and divided parties don't win elections -although in the US I guess individual candidates will win. The voters either don't know what they are voting for, or they may look at another fiasco in Congress today, for which the 'no surrender' loonies are responsible, and decide the Boston Tea Party looks much better in the history books than as a roadshow on its way to the Capitol...the English conservative party is not as badly divided as it was after Thatcher left, but the fissures remain similar -if we didn't have the comedy of this coalition I dread to think where we would be now. But Hippifried in the other thread did raise the core question -are Libertarians actually Conservatives? Shouldn't the Tea Party actually be a separate party from the Republican?

[hippifried]

I would comment, but I have no dog in this fight anymore :wiggle:
Oh? Change of heart or just tired?

[yodajazz]

Lol, didn't waste my time reading it.


You're proving his point by engaging in character assassination rather than dealing with the substance of his claims. FAIL indeed. lol

I agree with you BC. Rather than discuss facts, I see people only looking to things that confirm their viewpoint. I have seen so many articles with statistics saying the rich are getting a greater percentage of the total wealth, and that middle class wages have been stagnant for decades. Yet the Republican universe says tht giving more breaks, and less oversight, to the wealthy is the answer. Republicans say creating jobs here, when the evidence shows they're increasing tied to overseas investments. Why was the stock market in such upheaval over the European monetary situation, if thier real focus is the US economy?

Even though, throughout history, people understood that war meant, that a nation needed to band together and sacrifice, its not recognized today. But facts outside the Republican universe, are not given much weight. I'm not sure who believes this, but I am surprised that there are people who think that cutting back on support to public education is good ofr our collective future.

[Stavros]

I need to qualify my earlier comment as I am not always completetly aware of how the US system works. According to today's New York Times, the failure of the Supercomittee to agree on the deficit could work both ways -Bush's tax cuts expire at the end of 2012, which I was not aware of -and I assume taxes then rise (?) but the cuts must also go ahead, mostly in the military, hence the argument that both sides win if they let things stay as they are. Whether or not your economy overall wins is another matter. But I have to say to use all those man hours to come up with no agreement at all suggests your Congress is in need of reform, or you just need to elect people who put their country's interests first.

[Silcc69]

I need to qualify my earlier comment as I am not always completetly aware of how the US system works. According to today's New York Times, the failure of the Supercomittee to agree on the deficit could work both ways -Bush's tax cuts expire at the end of 2012, which I was not aware of -and I assume taxes then rise (?) but the cuts must also go ahead, mostly in the military, hence the argument that both sides win if they let things stay as they are. Whether or not your economy overall wins is another matter. But I have to say to use all those man hours to come up with no agreement at all suggests your Congress is in need of reform, or you just need to elect people who put their country's interests first.

They will go to the Clinton era which was 39% for the richest. They currently pay 36%. I'm not sure how it would effect the other tax brackets.

[hippifried]

They currently pay 36%.

No they don't. Those brackets are for wages, salaries, & tips. If memory serves, the top rate on capital gains is 15%. That's how Warren Buffet pays a lower rate than his secretary.

[Faldur]

No they don't. Those brackets are for wages, salaries, & tips. If memory serves, the top rate on capital gains is 15%. That's how Warren Buffet pays a lower rate than his secretary.

Short term tax rates in 2011 are the same as the investor's ordinary income tax rate, up to 35%. I assure you Jimmy Buffet is in the 35% bracket,.

Long term rates remain from 15 - 35% depending on the type of earned income. Small Business Stock Gains are at 28%.

Long Term and Short Term CApital Gains Tax Rate 2011, 2012 (http://creditguide.hubpages.com/hub/Long-Term-Short-Term-Capital-Gains-Tax-Rate)

[Silcc69]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_bracket#Tax_brackets_in_the_United_States

[onmyknees]

Another dodge. The more you attack the messenger the more important the message appears. Since you don't object to any of the substance I assume you agree with it or at least recognize its truthfulness. Congrats, it's the first step on a long road back to honesty.


Stuipd is as stupid does.
You're entire premise was that because some speech writer ( by no means a spokesman, or even a lightweight) in The GOP wrote some things he perceived as wrong with the GOP, that conservatives here would dive into some deep introspection and confess their sins to you. That's an asinine premise, Frum is like that other air head Meghan Mc Cain...they represent no one but themselves...and the ironic thing is they have no following on the right, but apparently now they do on the left. ..so rather than take any time to explain that to a fragile, closed mind...I thought I'd provide you with the exact opposite scenario, to show you how adolescent your attempt was. It obviously went soaring right over your head. When you find some article posted by someone who actually has some credibility, such as a Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Larry Kudlow, then maybe you'll have a scoop worth answering...until then...you shoot more blanks than anyone I know, but I give you a "D" for effort and an "F" for content. You wear the dunce cap today.

[Erika1487]

Oh? Change of heart or just tired?

Not a big change of heart, but I have changed many of my social positions to reflect my current life, and I am tired of defending a party that
A) fired me
B) Does not respect me for who I am.
If the younger generation gains power that would bring me back into supporting or maybe even working for them agian, but under it's current leadership I would rather be shot in the knee caps with my own 44Mag.
Just my :2cent

[Stavros]

Maybe the discussion should be about how political parties change over time, it has happened in the USA since the Civil War, it has happened in the UK since the First World War, and it has also been a feature of continental Europe. If there is one common denominator it is losing an election or two or, in the case of the Labour Party in the UK, four elections on the trot. Soul searching then takes place, the leadership changes, policies are reviewed.

In the US, however, the party system differs -the 'leader' of the Democrats does not automatically become the Presidential candidate, same with the Chairman of the Republican Convention; whereas in Europe, if someone is elected/chosen to lead their party they acquire huge significance. In Europe the Cold War had a divisive impact, mainly because our socialist parties were formed before the Russian Revolution, whose consequence with the creation of alternative, Communist Parties, split the left forever after. In the USA the Republican Party has gone from being the party of Lincoln to a party associated with the South and South West of the USA; its 'natural constituency' seems to have flipped.

But do these parties have a soul? Do they have a coherent ideology? The GOP is clearly divided between 'country club conservatives' and tea party radicals; but it is also divided on specific issues such as abortion, gay rights, and foreign policy. The blocs that are associated with the parties -the unions with the Democrats, Wall St/Corporate America with the GOP seem secure, but it seems clear to me that just as there has been no effecitve re-aignment of party politics in the UK, in the USA also there is a rigid two-party system, is it the case that there is no separate Tea Party because its adherents need the national organisation of the Republican Party as their vehicle?

I wonder if people are afraid of the consequences if an effective third party emerged with a strong Presidential candidate that resulted in 'hung elections' in which it is the Electoral College who chooses your leader, who would clearly not have a popular mandate, maybe elected on just over a third of the vote. Capitalism is clearly changing, why doesn't the party system?

[BluegrassCat]

Stuipd is as stupid does.
You're entire premise was that because some speech writer ( by no means a spokesman, or even a lightweight) in The GOP wrote some things he perceived as wrong with the GOP, that conservatives here would dive into some deep introspection and confess their sins to you. That's an asinine premise, Frum is like that other air head Meghan Mc Cain...they represent no one but themselves...and the ironic thing is they have no following on the right, but apparently now they do on the left. ..so rather than take any time to explain that to a fragile, closed mind...I thought I'd provide you with the exact opposite scenario, to show you how adolescent your attempt was. It obviously went soaring right over your head. When you find some article posted by someone who actually has some credibility, such as a Paul Ryan, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Larry Kudlow, then maybe you'll have a scoop worth answering...until then...you shoot more blanks than anyone I know, but I give you a "D" for effort and an "F" for content. You wear the dunce cap today.

No, no you already used character assassination, don't you have any other ways to avoid dealing with the substance? Maybe repeating talking points or maybe just making something up? Try it, it might make you feel better. You'll have "won." LOL

And nobody on the left follows Frum, he's much too conservative, but at least he's honest. And he's clearly no airhead like McCain, or Cain or Perry or Palin or Bachmann or any other Tea Party favorite. It's sadly predictable that you would offer huckster snake-oil salesman Paul Ryan as someone with credibility.

I had no hopes of a confession from conservatives on here but introspection would be a nice change from the lack of self-awareness and hatred that permeates the conservative posts on here. But I assume looking in the mirror is too painful, that's why it feels good to bash the black guy in the WH.

[BluegrassCat]

Maybe the discussion should be about how political parties change over time, it has happened in the USA since the Civil War, it has happened in the UK since the First World War, and it has also been a feature of continental Europe. If there is one common denominator it is losing an election or two or, in the case of the Labour Party in the UK, four elections on the trot. Soul searching then takes place, the leadership changes, policies are reviewed.

In the US, however, the party system differs -the 'leader' of the Democrats does not automatically become the Presidential candidate, same with the Chairman of the Republican Convention; whereas in Europe, if someone is elected/chosen to lead their party they acquire huge significance. In Europe the Cold War had a divisive impact, mainly because our socialist parties were formed before the Russian Revolution, whose consequence with the creation of alternative, Communist Parties, split the left forever after. In the USA the Republican Party has gone from being the party of Lincoln to a party associated with the South and South West of the USA; its 'natural constituency' seems to have flipped.

But do these parties have a soul? Do they have a coherent ideology? The GOP is clearly divided between 'country club conservatives' and tea party radicals; but it is also divided on specific issues such as abortion, gay rights, and foreign policy. The blocs that are associated with the parties -the unions with the Democrats, Wall St/Corporate America with the GOP seem secure, but it seems clear to me that just as there has been no effecitve re-aignment of party politics in the UK, in the USA also there is a rigid two-party system, is it the case that there is no separate Tea Party because its adherents need the national organisation of the Republican Party as their vehicle?

I wonder if people are afraid of the consequences if an effective third party emerged with a strong Presidential candidate that resulted in 'hung elections' in which it is the Electoral College who chooses your leader, who would clearly not have a popular mandate, maybe elected on just over a third of the vote. Capitalism is clearly changing, why doesn't the party system?

Polarization is a huge problem in American party politics. The GOP has been moving to the right over the last 30 years. The Democratic Party has moved to the left, though not as much as the GOP went right. The result is the gridlock we have today, where one party will willfully sabotage the economy to unseat an opposing party president.

This polarization is maintained through the primary system where a small ideologically extreme group selects the candidates who will go into the general election thus guaranteeing an extreme outcome. A possible fix is to create open top-2 primaries where everyone votes in one primary and the top 2 vote-getters go on to the general. You're no longer guaranteed a Republican and a Democrat in the general. You could have two Republicans, two Independents, one Green & one Democrat etc. Washington state is the only one to try it so far, but hopefully more will follow its lead.

[Odelay]

Short term tax rates in 2011 are the same as the investor's ordinary income tax rate, up to 35%. I assure you Jimmy Buffet is in the 35% bracket,.

Long term rates remain from 15 - 35% depending on the type of earned income. Small Business Stock Gains are at 28%.

Long Term and Short Term CApital Gains Tax Rate 2011, 2012 (http://creditguide.hubpages.com/hub/Long-Term-Short-Term-Capital-Gains-Tax-Rate)


And I assure you that Warren Buffet didn't become one of the top 5 richest men in the world by being a moron and having his income taxed at 35%. Rich people draw their income from the sources that will be taxed least. In this case, 15%. Besides, if you knew anything about Buffet you would know that he's made his money as a value investor. One who buys stocks that are undervalued and holds them for a long period of time. Every time he sells a stock it's one he's held for longer than a year, ergo 15% tax rate. And I'm sure he draws a nominal salary, like Bill Gates does... often as little as $100,000, so very very little of his income is taxed at 35%. He's been transparent about his finances. His blended tax rate has worked out to be around 16 to 17%.

[Ben]

Because ol' Newt wants to embrace (some aspects of) the free market: no child labor laws and most likely no minimum wage laws. (Corporate executives, who are by and large liberal -- meaning: they believe in gay marriage, abortion etc. -- do not believe in free markets.
Because, well, because they want a powerful Nanny State to protect them from the rigors and discipline of markets.
I mean, what does bailing out the banks have to do with pure/unfettered capitalism. Again, unfettered markets would be an absolutely disaster for the ownership class and they know it....) And we saw what happened when the big banks became zombie banks. They came running to the State for a handout -- ha ha ha! What happened to their so-called "belief" in unfettered markets -- ha ha!!! :)

Child Labor Is Great! - Newt Gingrich - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOKgxm10P-c&feature=channel_video_title)

[Ben]

A quiz to match you to your perfect sweetheart GOP presidential candidate:

http://reason.com/quiz/GOP2011/match

[Ben]

Why Not Huntsman? (http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/21/why-not-huntsman)

Huntsman has a record more conservative than his moderate image suggests:

http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/21/why-not-huntsman

[Stavros]

A quiz to match you to your perfect sweetheart GOP presidential candidate:

http://reason.com/quiz/GOP2011/match

Apparently I am in love with Gary Johnson, and I have never even heard of him before taking this test! Guess that was a blind date.

Who said this?
"I have two grandchildren. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."
How can America be simultaneousy secular and Muslim? Some of the quotes in this survey are barely literate.

[beandip]

When did the GOP lose touch with Reality?

That would be about the time they began to fight the Dumocrats for first place in line for sucking bankster cock.

[beandip]

First of all....Frum is a Republican....I'm not. I have no use for him, he's part of the problem that put us here.

Math doesn't care what side of the political fence you're on there chief.

The sooner you stop with the bullshit politics and pry your head out of your ass the better off you'll be.

[hippifried]

Who said this?
"I have two grandchildren. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

Who cares? Ok ok... I'll take a guess. Oh yeah!
It's that ignorant reactionary shithead that couldn't find a clue with a microscope, right?
There's too many sets of empty flapping lips out there to choose a name to put on the description.

I'm so sick & tired of all the stupid...

[Ben]

[[QUOTE]] When did the GOP lose touch with Reality? [[QUOTE]]

One could say the same about the Dems. (I like neither party... if you can even call the GOP a political party... as they simply serve the super rich. I mean, super rich. Ain't even the rich. But the SUPER rich.)
But Obama is somewhere in the real world. Ya can't say that about Bachmann or Santorum (a homophobe, transphobe and religious zealot) and even Cain comes across as being irrational.
Paul is steadfast in his beliefs. On some policy positions he's good. On others, well, not so good. Huntsman appears sensible. And Romney is a corporate stooge.

Video: CAIR Decries Santorum's Call for Profiling of Muslims - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6PVE7QkUY)

And here Santorum does Sarah Palin:

Santorum: 'Africa Was A Country On The Brink' - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve0Jjr9EC0Q)

[arnie666]

[[QUOTE]] When did the GOP lose touch with Reality? [[QUOTE]]

One could say the same about the Dems. (I like neither party... if you can even call the GOP a political party... as they simply serve the super rich. I mean, super rich. Ain't even the rich. But the SUPER rich.)
But Obama is somewhere in the real world. Ya can't say that about Bachmann or Santorum (a homophobe, transphobe and religious zealot) and even Cain comes across as being irrational.
Paul is steadfast in his beliefs. On some policy positions he's good. On others, well, not so good. Huntsman appears sensible. And Romney is a corporate stooge.

Video: CAIR Decries Santorum's Call for Profiling of Muslims - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6PVE7QkUY)

And here Santorum does Sarah Palin:

Santorum: 'Africa Was A Country On The Brink' - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve0Jjr9EC0Q)

Palin never said that, the network that broke the story even apologised for getting it wrong. Your belief in that,is proof positive the effect the media has on the masses, one lie that they even admit was one, and they was misinformed by a mischief maker. That has been stated numerous times on here.

[Ben]

[quote=Ben;1053236][[QUOTE]] When did the GOP lose touch with Reality? [

Palin never said that, the network that broke the story even apologised for getting it wrong. Your belief in that,is proof positive the effect the media has on the masses, one lie that they even admit was one, and they was misinformed by a mischief maker. That has been stated numerous times on here.Palin Didn't Know Africa Is A Continent, Says Fox News - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJr3XRedYU)

[Ben]

[quote=Ben;1053236][[QUOTE]] When did the GOP lose touch with Reality? [

Palin never said that, the network that broke the story even apologised for getting it wrong. Your belief in that,is proof positive the effect the media has on the masses, one lie that they even admit was one, and they was misinformed by a mischief maker. That has been stated numerous times on here.I'm not sure who to believe: Sarah or Fox.... Hmm... tough one. I tend to side with Sarah.

Palin Didn't Know Africa Is A Continent, Says Fox News - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJr3XRedYU)

Sarah Palin "Africa question"-On Larry King Live - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNQLBSHckQ8)

[Silcc69]

Why was Palin on that quiz? She isn't running for the nominee.

[Ben]

Why was Palin on that quiz? She isn't running for the nominee.


A quiz to match you to your perfect sweetheart GOP presidential candidate:

http://reason.com/quiz/GOP2011/match

Good question.
I don't like either Party. But I was surprised when my "candidate" came up: Gary Johnson....
I mean, how many debates has he been excluded from anyway?
And:
Huntsman seems pretty sensible, pretty rational. Plus he believes in science. I'm surprised they haven't thrown him out of the Party -- ha ha!
And, too, I'm surprised they haven't thrown Paul off the stage for his sensible and rational foreign policy positions. And, too, fiscally conservative positions when it comes to military expenditures. I mean, we're off the charts when it comes to military spending. I mean, as Paul points out, why do we have troops in Germany and Japan?

Jon Huntsman discussing science, evolution, and global warming - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDmsk0dwPyo)

[Ben]

Paul Craig Roberts has a different take on it. He thinks, aside from Ron Paul, they're all idiots and dangerous....

Paul Craig Roberts: GOP debate is an amazing collection of stupidity - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Y73ZRIlXA)

And Ron Paul:

Ron Paul on Fox News 11/16/11 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnoooZkEd6I&feature=relmfu)

[Ben]

Ol' Newton can't decide whether or not he believes in (the science of) global warming. But, then again, politicians position themselves where they think it best suits their own interests:

Then:

Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich Commercial on Climate Change - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6n_-wB154)

And NOW:

Newt Gingrich Renounces Global Warming Ad - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tW590-BH5c)

[Ben]

In G.O.P. Field, Broad View of Presidential Power Prevails:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/us/politics/gop-field-has-broad-views-on-executive-power.html?_r=3&hp

[onmyknees]

Good question.
I don't like either Party. But I was surprised when my "candidate" came up: Gary Johnson....
I mean, how many debates has he been excluded from anyway?
And:
Huntsman seems pretty sensible, pretty rational. Plus he believes in science. I'm surprised they haven't thrown him out of the Party -- ha ha!
And, too, I'm surprised they haven't thrown Paul off the stage for his sensible and rational foreign policy positions. And, too, fiscally conservative positions when it comes to military expenditures. I mean, we're off the charts when it comes to military spending. I mean, as Paul points out, why do we have troops in Germany and Japan?

Jon Huntsman discussing science, evolution, and global warming - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDmsk0dwPyo)

Ben....Thanks or your support of Huntsman, and the increasingly irrational, Ron Paul but we'll chose our nominee, and it won't be either of these two. I liked Ron Paul....I think he has some very salient points about the Fed and The Dollar, and the Debt, but as time goes on he's exposed himself as a bit of an unelectable loon, and he's widely seen as anti Isreal. I can't get in his head, so I can't be sure that's accurate....but some of his statements are certainly eye opening. His thoughts on 911 are puzzling to put it mildly. While I'm more than willing to vote for an unconventional candidate, he's not the one. Any candidate that compares the Gaza with The Concentration Camps will not be the Republican nominee..
Ron Paul does interview with Iranian state TV, bashes Israel, defends Hamas - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1t4O9CcZQ0&feature=player_embedded)

While I agree Ron Paul is an important and refreshing Republican/Libratarian voice on domestic policy....interviews like this leave one to wonder what goes on inside his head

Ron Paul tells 9/11 Truther why he won't come out about the "truth" over 9/11 - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrQVaiFYmcg&feature=player_embedded)

[robertlouis]

I'm reproducing this article from last Tuesday's Guardian by the American commentator Glenn Greenwald without further comment other than that it posits an interesting and credible thesis for the undignified rush to the far right of most of the Republican candidates - his conclusion is that they don't have much choice.

Vote Obama – if you want a centrist Republican for US president

Because Barack Obama has adopted so many core Republican beliefs, the US opposition race is a shambles

By Glenn Greenwald





American presidential elections are increasingly indistinguishable from the reality TV competitions drowning the nation's airwaves. Both are vapid, personality-driven and painfully protracted affairs, with the winners crowned by virtue of their ability to appear slightly more tolerable than the cast of annoying rejects whom the public eliminates one by one. When, earlier this year, America's tawdriest (and one of its most-watched) reality TV show hosts, Donald Trump, inserted himself into the campaign circus as a threatened contestant, he fitted right in, immediately catapulting to the top of audience polls before announcing he would not join the show.

The Republican presidential primaries – shortly to determine who will be the finalist to face off, and likely lose, against Barack Obama next November – has been a particularly base spectacle. That the contest has devolved into an embarrassing clown show has many causes, beginning with the fact that GOP voters loathe Mitt Romney, their belief-free, anointed-by-Wall-Street frontrunner who clearly has the best chance of defeating the president.

In a desperate attempt to find someone less slithery and soulless (not to mention less Mormon), party members have lurched manically from one ludicrous candidate to the next, only to watch in horror as each wilted the moment they were subjected to scrutiny. Incessant pleas to the party's ostensibly more respectable conservatives to enter the race have been repeatedly rebuffed. Now, only Romney remains viable. Republican voters are thus slowly resigning themselves to marching behind a vacant, supremely malleable technocrat whom they plainly detest.

In fairness to the much-maligned GOP field, they face a formidable hurdle: how to credibly attack Obama when he has adopted so many of their party's defining beliefs. Depicting the other party's president as a radical menace is one of the chief requirements for a candidate seeking to convince his party to crown him as the chosen challenger. Because Obama has governed as a centrist Republican, these GOP candidates are able to attack him as a leftist radical only by moving so far to the right in their rhetoric and policy prescriptions that they fall over the cliff of mainstream acceptability, or even basic sanity.

In July, the nation's most influential progressive domestic policy pundit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, declared that Obama is a "moderate conservative in practical terms". Last October, he wrote that "progressives who had their hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion", because the president – "once you get past the soaring rhetoric" – has "largely accepted the conservative storyline".

Krugman also pointed out that even the policy Democratic loyalists point to as proof of the president's progressive bona fides – his healthcare plan, which mandates the purchase of policies from the private health insurance industry – was designed by the Heritage Foundation, one of the nation's most rightwing thinktanks, and was advocated by conservative ideologues for many years (it also happens to be the same plan Romney implemented when he was governor of Massachusetts and which Newt Gingrich once promoted, underscoring the difficulty for the GOP in drawing real contrasts with Obama).

How do you scorn a president as a far-left socialist when he has stuffed his administration with Wall Street executives, had his last campaign funded by them, governed as a "centrist Republican", and presided over booming corporate profits even while the rest of the nation suffered economically?

But as slim as the pickings are for GOP candidates on the domestic policy front, at least there are some actual differences in that realm. The president's 2009 stimulus spending and Wall Street "reform" package – tepid and inadequate though they were – are genuinely at odds with rightwing dogma, as are Obama's progressive (albeit inconsistent) positions on social issues, such as equality for gay people and protecting a woman's right to choose. And the supreme court, perpetually plagued by a 5-4 partisan split, would be significantly affected by the outcome of the 2012 election.

It is in the realm of foreign policy, terrorism and civil liberties where Republicans encounter an insurmountable roadblock. A staple of GOP politics has long been to accuse Democratic presidents of coddling America's enemies (both real and imagined), being afraid to use violence, and subordinating US security to international bodies and leftwing conceptions of civil liberties.

But how can a GOP candidate invoke this time-tested caricature when Obama has embraced the vast bulk of George Bush's terrorism policies; waged a war against government whistleblowers as part of a campaign of obsessive secrecy; led efforts to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs; extinguished the lives not only of accused terrorists but of huge numbers of innocent civilians with cluster bombs and drones in Muslim countries; engineered a covert war against Iran; tried to extend the Iraq war; ignored Congress and the constitution to prosecute an unauthorised war in Libya; adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists; and even claimed and exercised the power to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield and without due process?

Reflecting this difficulty for the GOP field is the fact that former Bush officials, including Dick Cheney, have taken to lavishing Obama with public praise for continuing his predecessor's once-controversial terrorism polices. In the last GOP foreign policy debate, the leading candidates found themselves issuing recommendations on the most contentious foreign policy question (Iran) that perfectly tracked what Obama is already doing, while issuing ringing endorsements of the president when asked about one of his most controversial civil liberties assaults (the due-process-free assassination of the American-Yemeni cleric Anwar Awlaki). Indeed, when it comes to the foreign policy and civil liberties values Democrats spent the Bush years claiming to defend, the only candidate in either party now touting them is the libertarian Ron Paul, who vehemently condemns Obama's policies of drone killings without oversight, covert wars, whistleblower persecutions, and civil liberties assaults in the name of terrorism.

In sum, how do you demonise Obama as a terrorist-loving secret Muslim intent on empowering US enemies when he has adopted, and in some cases extended, what was rightwing orthodoxy for the last decade? The core problem for GOP challengers is that they cannot be respectable Republicans because, as Krugman pointed out, Obama has that position occupied. They are forced to move so far to the right that they render themselves inherently absurd.

[Ben]

I'm reproducing this article from last Tuesday's Guardian by the American commentator Glenn Greenwald without further comment other than that it posits an interesting and credible thesis for the undignified rush to the far right of most of the Republican candidates - his conclusion is that they don't have much choice.

Hey Robert,
Here's another interesting article by Greenwald. Which I read over the weekend.
He writes about, in part, how can liberals actually support Obama. I mean, look at his foreign policy record.
It's, in many ways, more extreme than Bush. I mean, the Bush administration kidnapped suspects. Whereas Obama simply assassinates them.
Greenwald also writes about the rapid rise in drone attacks. Again, how can liberals support this? (He also writes about Paul. There are a lot of positives about Paul. As Greenwald points out. But that DOES NOT mean to say he supports him or his candidacy. There's also a lot to revile about Paul.)

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/

[Ben]

Ben....Thanks or your support of Huntsman, and the increasingly irrational, Ron Paul but we'll chose our nominee, and it won't be either of these two. I liked Ron Paul....I think he has some very salient points about the Fed and The Dollar, and the Debt, but as time goes on he's exposed himself as a bit of an unelectable loon, and he's widely seen as anti Isreal. I can't get in his head, so I can't be sure that's accurate....but some of his statements are certainly eye opening. His thoughts on 911 are puzzling to put it mildly. While I'm more than willing to vote for an unconventional candidate, he's not the one. Any candidate that compares the Gaza with The Concentration Camps will not be the Republican nominee..

I don't support Huntsman. And: I've always said I like Paul on certain positions. But now he's being thrust into the media spotlight. And they're exposing him. Whether or not what they say is true or not, well, I don't know. Is he a racist? Is he homophobic? If he is then of course that would utterly change my opinion of him.
But what Paul is doing is interesting. He's actually showing that the Dems and Republicans are exactly the same when it comes to foreign policy. And his foreign policy positions should be the Dems foreign policy positions. I mean, so the American people actually have a choice. Now, of course, they don't.
I mean, in a lot of ways Obama is more extreme on foreign policy than Bush. Obama is more extreme on civil liberties. Obama is more extreme when it comes to cracking down on whistleblowers.
So the differences between the so-called political parties are pretty slight. Yep! The differences are pretty slight. The Republican Party are actually ceasing to be a political party. They simply serve the super rich. Ain't even the rich anymore. It's the super rich. And the Dems are rapidly moving in the same direction. (I mean, the Democratic Party used to serve middle class and working class Americans. They're rapidly abandoning that.)
And God knows what's happened to the party of Theodore Roosevelt (who was a conservative) and Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower is surely spinning in his grave when he looks at this so-called Republican Party.

[onmyknees]

I'm reproducing this article from last Tuesday's Guardian by the American commentator Glenn Greenwald without further comment other than that it posits an interesting and credible thesis for the undignified rush to the far right of most of the Republican candidates - his conclusion is that they don't have much choice.

Vote Obama – if you want a centrist Republican for US president

Because Barack Obama has adopted so many core Republican beliefs, the US opposition race is a shambles

By Glenn Greenwald





American presidential elections are increasingly indistinguishable from the reality TV competitions drowning the nation's airwaves. Both are vapid, personality-driven and painfully protracted affairs, with the winners crowned by virtue of their ability to appear slightly more tolerable than the cast of annoying rejects whom the public eliminates one by one. When, earlier this year, America's tawdriest (and one of its most-watched) reality TV show hosts, Donald Trump, inserted himself into the campaign circus as a threatened contestant, he fitted right in, immediately catapulting to the top of audience polls before announcing he would not join the show.

The Republican presidential primaries – shortly to determine who will be the finalist to face off, and likely lose, against Barack Obama next November – has been a particularly base spectacle. That the contest has devolved into an embarrassing clown show has many causes, beginning with the fact that GOP voters loathe Mitt Romney, their belief-free, anointed-by-Wall-Street frontrunner who clearly has the best chance of defeating the president.

In a desperate attempt to find someone less slithery and soulless (not to mention less Mormon), party members have lurched manically from one ludicrous candidate to the next, only to watch in horror as each wilted the moment they were subjected to scrutiny. Incessant pleas to the party's ostensibly more respectable conservatives to enter the race have been repeatedly rebuffed. Now, only Romney remains viable. Republican voters are thus slowly resigning themselves to marching behind a vacant, supremely malleable technocrat whom they plainly detest.

In fairness to the much-maligned GOP field, they face a formidable hurdle: how to credibly attack Obama when he has adopted so many of their party's defining beliefs. Depicting the other party's president as a radical menace is one of the chief requirements for a candidate seeking to convince his party to crown him as the chosen challenger. Because Obama has governed as a centrist Republican, these GOP candidates are able to attack him as a leftist radical only by moving so far to the right in their rhetoric and policy prescriptions that they fall over the cliff of mainstream acceptability, or even basic sanity.

In July, the nation's most influential progressive domestic policy pundit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, declared that Obama is a "moderate conservative in practical terms". Last October, he wrote that "progressives who had their hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion", because the president – "once you get past the soaring rhetoric" – has "largely accepted the conservative storyline".

Krugman also pointed out that even the policy Democratic loyalists point to as proof of the president's progressive bona fides – his healthcare plan, which mandates the purchase of policies from the private health insurance industry – was designed by the Heritage Foundation, one of the nation's most rightwing thinktanks, and was advocated by conservative ideologues for many years (it also happens to be the same plan Romney implemented when he was governor of Massachusetts and which Newt Gingrich once promoted, underscoring the difficulty for the GOP in drawing real contrasts with Obama).

How do you scorn a president as a far-left socialist when he has stuffed his administration with Wall Street executives, had his last campaign funded by them, governed as a "centrist Republican", and presided over booming corporate profits even while the rest of the nation suffered economically?

But as slim as the pickings are for GOP candidates on the domestic policy front, at least there are some actual differences in that realm. The president's 2009 stimulus spending and Wall Street "reform" package – tepid and inadequate though they were – are genuinely at odds with rightwing dogma, as are Obama's progressive (albeit inconsistent) positions on social issues, such as equality for gay people and protecting a woman's right to choose. And the supreme court, perpetually plagued by a 5-4 partisan split, would be significantly affected by the outcome of the 2012 election.

It is in the realm of foreign policy, terrorism and civil liberties where Republicans encounter an insurmountable roadblock. A staple of GOP politics has long been to accuse Democratic presidents of coddling America's enemies (both real and imagined), being afraid to use violence, and subordinating US security to international bodies and leftwing conceptions of civil liberties.

But how can a GOP candidate invoke this time-tested caricature when Obama has embraced the vast bulk of George Bush's terrorism policies; waged a war against government whistleblowers as part of a campaign of obsessive secrecy; led efforts to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs; extinguished the lives not only of accused terrorists but of huge numbers of innocent civilians with cluster bombs and drones in Muslim countries; engineered a covert war against Iran; tried to extend the Iraq war; ignored Congress and the constitution to prosecute an unauthorised war in Libya; adopted the defining Bush/Cheney policy of indefinite detention without trial for accused terrorists; and even claimed and exercised the power to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield and without due process?

Reflecting this difficulty for the GOP field is the fact that former Bush officials, including Dick Cheney, have taken to lavishing Obama with public praise for continuing his predecessor's once-controversial terrorism polices. In the last GOP foreign policy debate, the leading candidates found themselves issuing recommendations on the most contentious foreign policy question (Iran) that perfectly tracked what Obama is already doing, while issuing ringing endorsements of the president when asked about one of his most controversial civil liberties assaults (the due-process-free assassination of the American-Yemeni cleric Anwar Awlaki). Indeed, when it comes to the foreign policy and civil liberties values Democrats spent the Bush years claiming to defend, the only candidate in either party now touting them is the libertarian Ron Paul, who vehemently condemns Obama's policies of drone killings without oversight, covert wars, whistleblower persecutions, and civil liberties assaults in the name of terrorism.

In sum, how do you demonise Obama as a terrorist-loving secret Muslim intent on empowering US enemies when he has adopted, and in some cases extended, what was rightwing orthodoxy for the last decade? The core problem for GOP challengers is that they cannot be respectable Republicans because, as Krugman pointed out, Obama has that position occupied. They are forced to move so far to the right that they render themselves inherently absurd.


Wow....Glen Greenwald....never heard of him. How about you Ben ? :dancing:

Appearently he's become the liberal go to guy. Who Knew?

[Ben]

GOP Candidates Go Extreme Anti-Abortion, Rick Santorum Surges Pre-Iowa - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C2Jlm5NB_A)

[Ben]

Gingrich Runs Alongside Ego, Romney with Corporation - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ajIFmL-iEo)

[robertlouis]

Wow....Glen Greenwald....never heard of him. How about you Ben ? :dancing:

Appearently he's become the liberal go to guy. Who Knew?

Come on, omk. You're being untypically ingenuous. :whistle:

It was in the Guardian so it's unlikely to be from Fox News, but I'm genuinely interested to know what you think of the overall thesis. Does Obama fit the criteria for an old-style moderate Republican and if so does that stance force his GOP opponents to head for the right so that they have grounds on which to oppose him?

Bear in mind that for those of a liberal persuasion like me, Obama has been a massive disappointment. He's the equivalent of Blair in the UK.

[onmyknees]

"Does Obama fit the criteria for an old-style moderate Republican?"

I can answer this in one word.....NOFUCKINGWAY !

McCain is an old style moderate Republican.

And I wish you libs woud really stop trying to make that connection . All you're doing is trying to mitigate your disappointment by fooling yourselves into thinking he's not one of you. He is...you're stuck with him...go down with the ship RL !!!!!!!

[Ben]

Originally Posted by onmyknees http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/images/ca_serenity/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?p=1071892#post1071892) Wow....Glen Greenwald....never heard of him. How about you Ben ? :dancing:

Appearently he's become the liberal go to guy. Who Knew?


Come on, omk. You're being untypically ingenuous. :whistle:

It was in the Guardian so it's unlikely to be from Fox News, but I'm genuinely interested to know what you think of the overall thesis. Does Obama fit the criteria for an old-style moderate Republican and if so does that stance force his GOP opponents to head for the right so that they have grounds on which to oppose him?

Bear in mind that for those of a liberal persuasion like me, Obama has been a massive disappointment. He's the equivalent of Blair in the UK.

I wouldn't classify or brand Glenn Greenwald as a liberal. He might be a left-liberal or a democratic socialist or historical Tory. I don't know. He's never really been clear about his political clan, as it were.
What Greenwald does do is critique the political establishment. Not serve it. Like the plain prevailing media do.
He is just as critical of Obama as he was Bush. So, in that sense he doesn't align himself with a political slanted tag, as it were.
You shouldn't cozy up to power; you should critique power and point out wrongdoing and corruption and lawbreaking.

[Ben]

"Does Obama fit the criteria for an old-style moderate Republican?"

I can answer this in one word.....NOFUCKINGWAY !

McCain is an old style moderate Republican.

And I wish you libs woud really stop trying to make that connection . All you're doing is trying to mitigate your disappointment by fooling yourselves into thinking he's not one of you. He is...you're stuck with him...go down with the ship RL !!!!!!!

I don't see any stark differences between Obama and Romney. Does that mean Romney is a Democrat???????
So, McCain believes in global warming. (YouTube clip below.) That's moderate. That's existing somewhere in the real world.
What's a moderate Republican? Low taxes, so-called free trade. (Albeit we don't have free trade because the core of free trade is the free circulation of labor; nor do we have free markets. To quote Ron Paul: "Just so that we're clear: the modern system of money and banking is not a free-market system. It's a system that's half socialized – propped up by the government.") This sounds like Obama. Hold on. He's atrocious with respect to civil liberties. Maybe he's an extreme Republican. Hold on. His foreign policy is extreme. Hmm... who knows.
And we should note that conservatism came out of classical liberalism. So, is McCain a classical liberal? Well, yes. So, the terms are essentially intertwined.
And, too, what label would or should we give to, say, Abraham Lincoln? I mean, his position along with the Republican Party was that there's no difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery.
So, as Lincoln pointed out, the idea of renting yourself is degrading. (Are there any Republicans today who've similar positions to Lincoln -- ha ha ha!)
Abraham Lincoln regarded it as an attack on your personal integrity. And the Republican Party, again this is the mid 19th. century, despised the industrial system that was developing around them. Because it was destroying their culture, their independence, their individuality. In essence, constraining them to be subordinate to masters.

Sen. John McCain refutes a global warming denier - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQMxIwpK_es)

[Ben]

Conservative Fantasies About the Miracles of the Market

by Robert Jensen (http://www.commondreams.org/robert-jensen)

A central doctrine of evangelicals for the “free market” is its capacity for innovation: New ideas, new technologies, new gadgets -- all flow not from governments but from individuals and businesses allowed to flourish in the market, we are told.
That’s the claim made in a recent op/ed in our local paper by policy analyst Josiah Neeley of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think-tank in Austin. His conclusion: “Throughout history, technological advances have been driven by private investment, not by government fiat. There is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon.” http://www.statesman.com/opinion/cheap-energy-comes-when-market-rules-2105711.html
As is often the case in faith-based systems, reconciling doctrine to the facts of history can be tricky. When I read Neeley’s piece, I immediately thought of the long list of modern technological innovations that came directly from government-directed and -financed projects, most notably containerization, satellites, computers, and the Internet. The initial research-and-development for all these projects so central to the modern economy came from the government, often through the military, long before they were commercially viable. It’s true that individuals and businesses often used those innovations to create products and services for the market, but without the foundational research funded by government, none of those products and services could exist.
So I called Neeley and asked what innovations he had in mind when he wrote his piece. In an email response he cited Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers. Fair enough -- they were independent entrepreneurs, working in the late 19th and early 20th century. But their work came decades after the U.S. Army had provided the primary funding to make interchangeable parts possible, a transformative moment in the history of industrialization. In the “good old days,” government also got involved.
As Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway explain in their book Merchants of Doubt, the U.S. Army’s Ordinance Department wanted interchangeable parts to make guns that could be repaired easily on or near battlefields, which required machine-tooled parts. That research took nearly 50 years, much longer than any individual or corporation would support. The authors make the important point clearly: “Markets spread the technology of machine tools throughout the world, but markets did not create it. Centralized government, in the form of the U.S. Army, was the inventor of the modern machine age.”
That strikes me as an important part of the story of the era of Edison and the Wrights, but one conveniently ignored by free-marketeers.
Even more curious in Neeley’s response were the two specific products he mentioned in his email: “The plow wasn’t created by government fiat, and neither was the iPhone.”
The plow and the iPhone are the best examples of innovations in the private sphere? The plow was invented thousands of years ago, in a world in which governments and economic systems were organized in just slightly different ways, making it an odd example for this discussion of modern capitalism and the nation-state. And the iPhone wouldn’t exist without all that government R&D that created computers and the Internet.
Neeley didn’t try to deny the undeniable role of government and military funding; for example, he mentioned the Saturn V rocket (a case made even more interesting, of course, because Nazi scientists were brought into the United States after World War II to work on the project). “But the driver of these advances’ adoption and relevance outside the realm of government fiat has always been the private sphere,” he wrote in his response.
Neeley is playing a painfully transparent game here. He acknowledges that many basic technological advances are driven by government fiat in the basic R&D phase, but somehow that phase doesn’t matter. What matters is the “adoption and relevance” phase. It’s apparently not relevant that without the basic R&D in these cases there would have been nothing to adopt and make relevant for the market.
We’re in real Wizard of Oz territory here -- pay no attention to the scientists working behind the curtain, who are being paid with your tax dollars. Just step up to the counter and pay the corporate wizards for their products and services, without asking about the tax-funded research on which they rely.
There are serious questions to be debated about how public money should be spent on which kinds of R&D, especially when so much of that money comes through the U.S. military, whose budget many of us think is bloated. More transparency is needed in that process.
But anyone who cares about honest argumentation should be offended on principled grounds by Neeley’s sleight of hand. His distortion of history is especially egregious given the context of his op/ed, which argues against public support for solar energy in favor of the expansion of oil and gas drilling. Neeley focuses on the failure of Solyndra -- the solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy after getting a $535 million federal loan guarantee -- in trying to make a case against government support for alternative energy development. When public subsidies fail, there should be a vigorous investigation. But the failure of one company, hitched to a highly distorted story about the history of technological innovation, doesn’t make for a strong argument against any public support for solutions to the energy crisis, nor does it cover up the fact that the increasing use of fossil fuels accelerates climate change/disruption.
The larger context for this assertion of market fundamentalism is the ongoing political project to de-legitimize any collective action by ordinary people through government. Given the degree to which corporations and the wealthy dominate contemporary government, from the local to the national level, it’s not clear why elites are so flustered; they are the ones who benefit most from government spending. But politicians and pundits who serve those elites keep hammering away on a simple theme -- business good, government bad -- hoping to make sure that the formal mechanisms of democracy won’t be used to question the concentration of wealth and power.
Throughout history, the political projects of the wealthy have been driven by propaganda. There is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon, which means popular movements for economic justice and ecological sustainability not only have to struggle to change the future but also to tell the truth about the past.


http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imagecache/author_photo/robert_jensen.jpg (http://www.commondreams.org/robert-jensen)
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

[Ben]

An interestin' article:

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/27/the_current_crop_of_gop_liars/singleton/

[Ben]

This will be, well, controversial, to say the least -- ha ha!

Low IQs, Conservatism Linked To Prejudice - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWHwxIAfIcc&list=UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ&index=8&feature=plcp)

[BluegrassCat]

The conservatives on here are certainly doing their part to back up these findings.

[Faldur]

The conservatives on here are certainly doing their part to back up these findings.

Post something worthy of response and I'm sure you'll see plenty. I'm not sure you have any members of the GOP on this board, maybe Erika.

[onmyknees]

The conservatives on here are certainly doing their part to back up these findings.

You fool.

yea like ....well like, like this is toxic, ya know ? They like did this survey right, and ya know like ..... ROTFLMAO

Let me get this straight....Ben posts a clip, of a 20 something valley girl talking about some "study" ( that's an ironic word to use considering the host and his guest) from some unknown university in Canada....appearing on a cable TV side show that has less ratings than the local traffic station in Kenosha Wisconsin, and you jump all over it with your best "me too" enthusiasm. And you wonder why we laugh at you....If you were a fish, you'd bite on a bare hook !!
No Ben...it's not controversial...it's pathetic, and you're pathetic for posting it. Hardly your best cut and paste job. :dancing:

This is classic. I'm saving this thread and getting into the comedy central writers.

[trish]

Looks like OMK just proved you're right, Ben. It's controversial. Who'da thought?

[trish]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/opinion/krugman-severe-conservative-syndrome.html

[Prospero]

Excellent piece by Krugman. Thanks Trish.

[yodajazz]

Thanks Trish, also! Looking at a related link, I found this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?pagewanted=all&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

This article makes that claim that the poorest are getting less, in percentage of Government benefits, than in the past. It goes to one of my beliefs that everyone, rich, middle class, or poor is trying to maximize the benefits, of their financial relationship with government. It's not just 'lazy' people, as some people are led to believe.

[buttslinger]

It's funny watching the same Tea Partiers that revolted after Bush lining up behind Romney, another Rove puppet.

[Ben]

Thanks Trish, also! Looking at a related link, I found this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?pagewanted=all&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

This article makes that claim that the poorest are getting less, in percentage of Government benefits, than in the past. It goes to one of my beliefs that everyone, rich, middle class, or poor is trying to maximize the benefits, of their financial relationship with government. It's not just 'lazy' people, as some people are led to believe.

Reagan, now, is seen as a moderate. That's how far to the right the Republicans have moved.
I mean, Romney is moving more and more to the right during this campaign. He has to. To capture the nomination. But, deep down, Romney is a moderate.

Biden: 'This isn't your father's Republican Party' - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJUinSTmcDM&feature=plcp&context=C437673fVDvjVQa1PpcFPa90Qx73V4NzmRmFFRD8DC tK_qntABeQQ=)

[Ben]

Happy Hour: GOP's 'Social Darwinism' ? - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-8txDRszSc&feature=plcp&context=C4eb1685VDvjVQa1PpcFNyDbgyjPkTyeBeHyQmWpr8 xMVzBLpe4wM=)

[Cuchulain]

You fool.

yea like ....well like, like this is toxic, ya know ? They like did this survey right, and ya know like ..... ROTFLMAO

Let me get this straight....Ben posts a clip, of a 20 something valley girl talking about some "study" ( that's an ironic word to use considering the host and his guest) from some unknown university in Canada....appearing on a cable TV side show that has less ratings than the local traffic station in Kenosha Wisconsin, and you jump all over it with your best "me too" enthusiasm. And you wonder why we laugh at you....If you were a fish, you'd bite on a bare hook !!
No Ben...it's not controversial...it's pathetic, and you're pathetic for posting it. Hardly your best cut and paste job. :dancing:


Attaboy kneeler. Stick to your guns. Even when it's obvious to everyone that you're just another angry little CON who never lets facts get in the way of a good rant.

I realize you want to dismiss the whole TYT phenomenon as a "cable TV side show that has less ratings than the local traffic station in Kenosha Wisconsin" but the plain truth is
'The Young Turks is the largest online news show in the world, covering politics, pop culture and lifestyle. The TYT Network is one of the Top 50 You Tube Partners, with over 30 million views a month and well over 670 million total video views on The Young Turks YouTube Channel. An award-winning online broadcast, The Young Turks won the 2011 People's Voice Webby Award for Best News & Politics Series, 2011 News/Politics Shorty Award, and Best Political Podcast 2009 at the Podcast Awards and Best Political News Site 2009 at the Mashable Awards. Additionally, The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur debuted on Current TV in December 2011.' http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/2/prweb9195065.htm

Kneeler, are you really this guy?
Barack Obama is the American Nero. - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmcPtq2tzT8&feature=plcp&context=C477cda6VDvjVQa1PpcFNo-602WZCFFZkl12OW8Ge68BTSeB5_KLI=)

[Prospero]

There used to be liberal republicans. Not allowed any more. These days anyone with compassion or the inkling of something that is not hard right gets labelled a rhino... republican in name only. When did the GOP yield to the totalitarian temptation?

[Ben]

There used to be liberal republicans. Not allowed any more. These days anyone with compassion or the inkling of something that is not hard right gets labelled a rhino... republican in name only. When did the GOP yield to the totalitarian temptation?

Well, their base are Christian nutcases. And I mean "nutcases" in the nicest way possible -- :)
Anyway, their base are hardcore Christians. So, well, that's it.
I mean, nobody supports their policies.(Because their core policies enrich the top 0.01 percent of the population and harm/hurt the rest. Policies like free trade (albeit it isn't free trade), the free movement of capital and the free import of goods and, lastly, starving the beast. Ya know, we're the beast. And we need to be starved.
A lot have "fallen in love" with Santorum because he's a Bible thumper.
Plus elections and election campaigning are pretty simple: politicians want uninformed voters (about 90 to 95 percent of voters are low information voters) making IRRATIONAL choices. That's how our market system works: we've uninformed consumers making irrational choices. But for markets to work, well, you need informed consumers making rational choices.

[robertlouis]

Well, their base are Christian nutcases. And I mean "nutcases" in the nicest way possible -- :)
Anyway, their base are hardcore Christians. So, well, that's it.
I mean, nobody supports their policies.(Because their core policies enrich the top 0.01 percent of the population and harm/hurt the rest. Policies like free trade (albeit it isn't free trade), the free movement of capital and the free import of goods and, lastly, starving the beast. Ya know, we're the beast. And we need to be starved.
A lot have "fallen in love" with Santorum because he's a Bible thumper.
Plus elections and election campaigning are pretty simple: politicians want uninformed voters (about 90 to 95 percent of voters are low information voters) making IRRATIONAL choices. That's how our market system works: we've uninformed consumers making irrational choices. But for markets to work, well, you need informed consumers making rational choices.

It's a curious kind of "Christianity" which consistently preaches a doctrine of hate - hate for gays, hate for women who want control of their bodies and hate for anything and anybody they fear or otherwise don't understand.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The American Christian right is every bit as intolerant and extremist as the likes of the Taliban and the Mullahs in Iran. The only difference is that so far the wisdom of the better part of the American people has prevented them from getting their hands on the levers of power. But if that ever does happen, through the agency of the Republican Party, you'll see a theocracy unleashed which will take America back centuries.

[BluegrassCat]

It's a curious kind of "Christianity" which consistently preaches a doctrine of hate - hate for gays, hate for women who want control of their bodies and hate for anything and anybody they fear or otherwise don't understand.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The American Christian right is every bit as intolerant and extremist as the likes of the Taliban and the Mullahs in Iran. The only difference is that so far the wisdom of the better part of the American people has prevented them from getting their hands on the levers of power. But if that ever does happen, through the agency of the Republican Party, you'll see a theocracy unleashed which will take America back centuries.

I think there are important cultural and political differences between the two groups that would prevent christian conservatives from reaching those depths. Firstly, America places great value on the principles of equality, democracy, and freedom of speech and religion at least in the abstract if not always in the particular. Even with a Rick Santorum presidency and a quiescent Congress these cultural values would prevent a full on regression to the dark ages. You would find increasing restrictions on the reproductive rights of women and a lot more government money going to Christian organizations but not a complete mirror image of a Muslim theocracy.

The other important arresting factor is that the people who fund the GOP and its candidates are the 1%, and they could give two shits about social conservatism. They find it useful to get the Christian conservatives to vote for the moneyed interests in the name of Jesus, but in name only. If these candidates ever starting threatening the bottom line (for example by actually trying to carry out what Jesus said) their corporate masters would quickly find new tribunes with the appropriate interpretation of the gospels.

While America is increasingly becoming an oligarchy, I don't see theocracy as a possibility.

[robertlouis]

I think there are important cultural and political differences between the two groups that would prevent christian conservatives from reaching those depths. Firstly, America places great value on the principles of equality, democracy, and freedom of speech and religion at least in the abstract if not always in the particular. Even with a Rick Santorum presidency and a quiescent Congress these cultural values would prevent a full on regression to the dark ages. You would find increasing restrictions on the reproductive rights of women and a lot more government money going to Christian organizations but not a complete mirror image of a Muslim theocracy.

The other important arresting factor is that the people who fund the GOP and its candidates are the 1%, and they could give two shits about social conservatism. They find it useful to get the Christian conservatives to vote for the moneyed interests in the name of Jesus, but in name only. If these candidates ever starting threatening the bottom line (for example by actually trying to carry out what Jesus said) their corporate masters would quickly find new tribunes with the appropriate interpretation of the gospels.

While America is increasingly becoming an oligarchy, I don't see theocracy as a possibility.

Are you sure? Here's Santorum in his own words. What a prick.

[BluegrassCat]

Sanatorum would have no ability to ban porn. This is cheap talk to the base.

[robertlouis]

Sanatorum would have no ability to ban porn. This is cheap talk to the base.

....who would shout at him until he did something about it. The worrying thing about Santorum is that he is the real deal - a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool true believer, a fanatic.

At one level that's more admirable than the cynics (I'm looking at you, Newt) who'll say anything to garner votes. But when he says what he says, he truly believes it. That's chilling. And even if, as seems likely, the GOP challenge to Pres Obama is in the end going to be headed by Romney, it won't be easy to forget or ignore that large constituency on the religious right for which Santorum has articulated beliefs, hopes, desires, and, heaven help us, a sense of expectation.

Even from this side of the Atlantic I find that truly terrifying, and I am concerned that an otherwise intelligent man like you seems eager to dismiss it so casually, no disrespect intended.

[muh_muh]

and its also something he never said
http://www.snopes.com/politics/santorum/taliban.asp
awesome fact checking there from you

[hippifried]

Sanatorum would have no ability to ban porn. This is cheap talk to the base.
He doesn't seem to know that. Just writing the executive fiat could cause trouble for years while the courts bounce it around. Besides; Just making such a stupid statement tells me he's too stupid to be President. & being a radical papist & all, even the klan doesn't want him.

[BluegrassCat]

The question was never whether Santorum would be a good president. I think we can dismiss that out of hand. The question was would he (or any president) be able to institute a Christian theocracy. I mentioned the institutional barriers that I see preventing such an occurrence. I fail to understand how recognizing the limits of the presidency is equivalent to dismissing the nastiness of the Christian Right.

[martin48]

I hope to God you are right. The Christian Far Right scare the shit out me if they ever get real power.



I think there are important cultural and political differences between the two groups that would prevent christian conservatives from reaching those depths. Firstly, America places great value on the principles of equality, democracy, and freedom of speech and religion at least in the abstract if not always in the particular. Even with a Rick Santorum presidency and a quiescent Congress these cultural values would prevent a full on regression to the dark ages. You would find increasing restrictions on the reproductive rights of women and a lot more government money going to Christian organizations but not a complete mirror image of a Muslim theocracy.

The other important arresting factor is that the people who fund the GOP and its candidates are the 1%, and they could give two shits about social conservatism. They find it useful to get the Christian conservatives to vote for the moneyed interests in the name of Jesus, but in name only. If these candidates ever starting threatening the bottom line (for example by actually trying to carry out what Jesus said) their corporate masters would quickly find new tribunes with the appropriate interpretation of the gospels.

While America is increasingly becoming an oligarchy, I don't see theocracy as a possibility.

[Prospero]

I would agree with bluegrasscat that a theocracy in the US is not really likely - but a deeply conservative and repressive government really is possible. You've only got to recall the worst excesses of the McCarthy era to see how these things can spiral out of control. There are ugly attitudes just below the surface on many issues in a large part of the population- an the people who gather in this forum, these boards, would certainly suffer if someone like Santorum became President.

And the hard won fight of the civil rights movement is still in living memory for most of us over the age of 40. That's a mere blip.

[hippifried]

It matters not whether he's allowed to have the power or not. An attempt to create a theocracy will take years to straighten out in the courts. I'm not the least bit worried about the US becoming a theocracy. The trend has been in the opposite direction since the end of the Eisenmower administration. That trend has slowed, or even stopped, from time to time, depending on the virulence of the rhetoric. This is one of those times. The object of the God zanies is to reverse the trend, & while they're quoting the Bible or talking shit about the Constitution, they're willing to tell any lie to reach that objective. Of course it must be everybody else who's practicing hypocracy. The whole world is marching out of step.

[Dino Velvet]

I'm not the least bit worried about the US becoming a theocracy. The trend has been in the opposite direction since the end of the Eisenmower administration.

I agree too. When the Church pushes, people feel freer now to push back. People change over time and through generations. Everyone has their chains to break.

[Ben]

Republicans Love Big Government (So Long as It Serves Big Business):

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/18-10

[buttslinger]

Republicans are searching for dirt, try washing your hair, Issa. PUNK! It's about time somebody slapped your face.