US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2436

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 08:57 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 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.

Marco Rubio is a U.S. senator. And he just can’t stand it anymore.

“I don’t know that ‘hate’ is the right word,” Rubio said in an interview. “I’m frustrated.”

This year, as Rubio runs for president, he has cast the Senate — the very place that cemented him as a national politician — as a place he’s given up on, after less than one term. It’s too slow. Too rule-bound. So Rubio, 44, has decided not to run for his seat again. It’s the White House or bust.

“That’s why I’m missing votes. Because I am leaving the Senate. I am not running for reelection,” Rubio said in the last Republican debate, after Donald Trump had mocked him for his unusual number of absences during Senate votes.

Five years ago, Rubio arrived with a potential that thrilled Republicans. He was young, ambitious, charismatic, fluent in English and Spanish, and beloved by the establishment and the tea party.

But Rubio had arrived at one of the least ambitious moments in Senate history and saw many of his ideas fizzle. Democrats killed his debt-cutting plans. Republicans killed his immigration reform. The two parties actually came together to kill his AGREE Act, a small-bore, hands-across-the-aisle bill that Rubio had designed just to get a win on something.

Now, he’s done. “He hates it,” a longtime friend from Florida said, speaking anonymously to say what Rubio would not.

Which makes for an odd campaign message.

Rubio must convince voters that his decision to leave the Senate — giving up the power he already has — is actually a mark of character, a sign that he is too dedicated to public service to stay.

On October 26 2015 23:34 frazzle wrote:

We're admittedly talking hypotheticals. 1. No 47% gaffe. 2. Cutting to the center, most likely on taxes/entitlements.

In the actual race it turned out Pennsylvania was never in play at the end and neither, really, was Ohio. But if Romney goes into the debate with a lead (no 47% gaffe) and then sticks to his more populist positions he adopted in the debate he could have had momentum and a poll lead.

A few percentage points change is all that was needed to put Ohio, and with a populist shift even Pennsylvania in play. That would have been enough.

In terms of explaining the actual win by Obama, what you point out is certainly correct. And the Republicans went full Poll Truther which made them less likely to course correct and killed any chance they might have had to win after the debates.

My point is that Romney COULD have won given a few changes. He wasn't dead in the water from the start. Even as late as October, with Benghazi in the headlines, he had pulled within a point in the polls. It wasn't a sustained high polling mark though, so it doesn't make a huge dent in, say, 538's predictions at that point, but it could have been sustained if Romney hadn't walked into a trap in debate #2 over the Benghazi stuff. I mean, even without changing his positions and not making the 47% gaffe he still had a window of opportunity there.