US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2435

On October 26 2015 09:15 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't even think that in the American context Trump or Carson qualify as conservative. Romney and Chris Christie probably fit that label but I think they need to invent something new for Trump.

On October 26 2015 06:57 cLutZ wrote:
Romney was not the Republican's best choice in 2012 because he had a very low chance of defeating Obama, a sitting President, with strong voter demographics, and very adept/talented campaign staffers (that basically never stopped campaigning and organizing for him post 2008). Romney was a poor choice because he was the establishment "safe" choice that ran him on the assumption that merely being milktoast conservative was what Americans would want.

On October 26 2015 10:40 Danglars wrote:

Both, while implicitly saying your choices of illustration lead me to doubt your handle on the movement entirely.

The man talks a lot of sense--probably the real reason he drives the liberals wild. The gotcha sound bites are just fodder for the salon/dailykos/thinkprogress types to hyuk it up. I'm not cruel enough to deny the left their peculiar humor.

On October 26 2015 09:21 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Carson isn't saying conservative things though.

There is nothing conservative about believing Muslims shouldn't be president (and doubling down on it), or that we should space out vaccines, or that Obamacare is analogous to slavery because it makes us subservient to the government (not that it does), or that ISIS will result in anarchy that will prevent the 2016 elections from happening, or that homosexuality is a choice because people go into prison straight and come out gay.

Those are just dumb things to say, not conservative things to say. They are just misrepresentations of reality, not conservative talking points. And they change from gaffes into stupidity when they are then doubled down on by the candidate rather than correcting his mistake. Like not knowing what Muhammed himself said about sharia law, for example.

Conservativism can win elections. Stupidity can't. Or shouldn't, at any rate.

On October 26 2015 11:10 frazzle wrote:
2. Campaign on his record. Instead he had to campaign against his own record and people could see he came off as a hypocrite.
3. Take slightly more centrist positions.
.

On October 26 2015 07:25 Rebs wrote:
Im sorry but please explain how Game Theory POV, makes Palin a good choice?

The line of argument your presenting for Palin being a good choice or Rick Perry (who is an absolute dunderhead) arent so much game theory as hail mary's and/or pandering too the conservative base.

If you think that the conservative base makes up an election winning electorate I dont think your quite sure what country you are living in anymore.

The other hilarious part about this is that you dont seem to mind having morons in charge just as long as they can draw meaningful distinctions with their counterpart (which while important, isnt really in anyones best interest except the winner) Thats a scary thought.

On October 26 2015 08:18 ZeaL. wrote:
I don't think it has anything to do with game theory but I get the point. Doing the standard "best play" wasn't going to win McCain the presidency so he had to do something crazy to win (4 pool/level 1 rosh lineup). First female VP, gets the base riled up, boobs. It didn't work out but that doesn't mean that McCain would have been better off with Lieberman, Romney, or Pawlenty or something.

On October 26 2015 08:57 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Rick Perry had a chance? The man who couldn't remember his policy positions at a debate? The man who didn't win a single primary in 2012? The man who couldn't even run a functional campaign in 2016 long enough to get to the first debate?

Judging by the map here he didn't even win a single county. How was that man going to have a better chance at beating Romney than Obama exactly? Would he have caused a meteor collision with Obama's headquarters or something?

It's all Romney and McCain's fault for being too moderate. Nothing about the pivot they were forced into in the primary that, in Romney's case, made him abandon every single leverage point he had against Obama lest he be called a liar to his base and in McCain's case forced him into a Palin pick. "True" conservatives, no matter how incompetent, would have done better.

On October 26 2015 11:10 frazzle wrote:

Hunh?

After the first debate Romney pulled into a tie and had momentum. Sure, he petered out, but I can name a couple things that could have left him in position to win that aren't about him needing to be more conservative.

1. Don't make the 48% gaffe. Take that away and he might have been leading going into the debates.
2. Campaign on his record. Instead he had to campaign against his own record and people could see he came off as a hypocrite.
3. Take slightly more centrist positions.

I get it. To win the primary he had to win the hard right and that made #2 and #3 near impossible. But that's not the argument here. The argument made here is if the right hadn't been such uncompromising ideologues than Romney could easily have won and was probably their best candidate to win the general. He was just hamstrung by his own base and Obama was a far cry from being a sure thing.

On October 26 2015 11:26 IgnE wrote:


He's a seventh day adventist.

On October 26 2015 10:56 jalstar wrote:

Carson is definitely conservative, Trump is conservative on some issues like immigration, and moderate populist on others like taxation.

On October 26 2015 11:58 RubickPicker wrote:

Trump's tax policy is actually kind of a classic conservative if you remember what that term used to mean before Barry Goldwater and Reagan. Especially Reagan, who imposed income taxes on levels of incomes that previously weren't taxed at all. Our tax system used to look very differently, when the GOP was represented by everyone from Eisenhower to Nixon and the Democrats were represented by people like JFK who despite his family's liberal legacy was strongly anti-communist.

Trump is even couching his plan to eliminate income taxes for the lowest brackets, a return to some pre-Reagan thinking, with hype about telling the IRS that "I win." Except, you're "winning" by being poor, and I don't think even Charlie Sheen would call that winning. :b

However, it is conservative in some old-fashioned sense that the people who make the fewest amount of dollars be able to get the most value out of them as they can, by being exempt from some of the avenues government taxes people (their income is still subject to, for example, payroll tax.)

On Monday a bipartisan group of House members will try to revive the Export-Import Bank, a federal government agency that finances exports — which its critics deride as little more than a slush fund for big corporations.

The agency, known as the Ex-Im bank, essentially stopped doing new business on July 1, after House leaders let its charter lapse at the behest of conservative Republicans who attacked it as "corporate welfare."

But the bank has plenty of friends in Washington, and earlier this month 42 Republicans joined 176 Democrats to sign a discharge petition, a rarely used legislative maneuver designed to force a measure up for a vote.

Supporters in the House appear to have enough votes to re-authorize the bank, although it's less clear it can pass the Senate.

On October 26 2015 12:07 jalstar wrote:
I think this is a common misconception, there were plenty of what would today be called conservatives during that era, it's just that very few of them could get elected since they opposed the New Deal. Goldwater was probably the last of the old anti-New Deal Republicans and Reagan was part of a movement that rebranded the anti platform with a focus on religion and conflating foreign and domestic policy.

On October 26 2015 11:54 Danglars wrote:

I take it you reject Christ of all flavor, and we just had a Mormon up running so my question is, "So?" and "Are you cruel?"

On October 26 2015 10:56 jalstar wrote:


Carson is definitely conservative, Trump is conservative on some issues like immigration, and moderate populist on others like taxation.

On October 26 2015 11:54 Danglars wrote:

I take it you reject Christ of all flavor, and we just had a Mormon up running so my question is, "So?" and "Are you cruel?"

On October 26 2015 12:30 GreenHorizons wrote:




If I ask a candidate "how long humanity has been on earth" and they respond "since the beginning of earth ~10,000 years ago" I would think most people would say "Next!" But answers like that are exactly what the Republican base is after.

That Republicans don't have a problem with that isn't something to cast shade at liberals with it's something that should inspire some self reflection.

On October 26 2015 11:26 Cowboy64 wrote:

I understand where you're coming from, but you have to take these things in context. Carson didn't say Muslims shouldn't be President, but even if he did, the American public seemed in pretty close agreement with him about it. Polls of the issue around the time showed that most Americans did agree with his actual statement. Whether or not this is "stupid" is irrelevant in the context of who wins the argument.

Spacing out vaccines was throwing a bone to Trump, who had just put his foot in his mouth over the issue while standing next to a doctor. The media offered Trump to Carson on a golden plate and he refused it, and came out looking better for it, regardless of whether what he said was currently backed up by any medical science or not. If we're being honest than we all know that the actual science of vaccines wasn't really the issue in that debate, it was whether not knowing the actual science was going to hurt Trump or not. It did, but in a more subtle, long-term way. Anyway, the point is that most Americans don't understand vaccinations, and they don't really care about the details all that much.

That's the problem with a lot of these supposed gaffes that the media fall over themselves trying to elicit, and dance around gleefully whenever they succeed. Most of them aren't really all that effective as attack ads. And you're right when you say it's not conservatism that's being communicated in those specific moments. It's usually something else, some other idea that the candidates, being real people with real quirks, happen to let through the filter. Sometimes it hurts them, but most times it doesn't. Romney's 47% comment was effective because it actually displayed a core philosophical belief that Romney held, and it happened to be the main criticism of him: he was a disconnected rich guy who lacked empathy.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you or I think is stupid. It matters if everyone else thinks it's stupid, and if they thought Ben Carson was stupid than that should be showing up in the polling data. Also, good luck convincing anyone that a neurosurgeon is stupid. Once again though, don't come at me with all the reasons why a brain surgeon can be stupid in other areas, I already know that. I'm not who you have to convince. You have to convince Average Joe voter.

edit:
This is more what I was talking about with my "conservatism isn't unpopular" rant. The idea that the Republicans have to run to the center to win, but Democrats could probably win with Bernie Sanders, who is openly to the left and openly avoiding running to the center. That belief betrays another, more primary belief, namely that the opinion of the country is center-left. That right wing politics are firmly on the fringe and can't win elections. The real right wing, not the Romney/McCain/George Bush 1 and 2 kind of "right wing" that support big Republican government as opposed to big Democrat government. I think it's true that conservatism is a minority belief, but so is liberalism.

On October 26 2015 13:23 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Hilariously, up in in Canada the most religious provinces all elected Liberal representatives. Overwhelmingly so. Like 80% Christian demographics voting 70%+ Liberal.

On October 26 2015 13:42 GreenHorizons wrote:


From what I read, the Mormon/7th day brands of Christianity aren't the ones you're talking about there. But an interesting tidbit in general.

On October 26 2015 13:21 IgnE wrote:


What's cruelty got to do with it?

On October 26 2015 13:23 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Hilariously, up in in Canada the most religious provinces all elected Liberal representatives. Overwhelmingly so. Like 80% Christian demographics voting 70%+ Liberal.