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On February 08 2012 08:42 Castrophy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2012 08:35 Sovano wrote:
I love Ron Paul, but sadly he's not going to be on par with Mitt Romney or Gingrich for that matter. Hopefully some of his ideas are absorbed by the front-runner though.
On a side note going to my first caucus tonight! Though it's Republican, and I'm pretty liberal. Though I'm interested in what they are going to converse about. It'll be cool if you can do a writeup of your caucus experience for us who live in primary states!
Just got back from my Republican caucus. I can say the experience was okay, generally because I was the minority view. I drove to my precinct area, which was at my local elementary school. I signed up as an observer, because I wanted to be with my high school friends that were there as well, and for the most part I was there to record what was talked about and my reactions. The whole thing took one hour, as it is required to make the event "legal" or "official" along those lines. It took 30 minutes to get situated, be briefed on rules and what not, and then vote for one of the four Republican candidates. I don't know the results of everyone there as a whole, but this is what my room came down to. There were 46 people that attended. The votes came out like this: Newt Gingrich with 4, Ron Paul with 13, Mitt Romney with 9, and Rick Santorum with 20. After that we elected 11 precinct delegates to move onto the B54 stage or whatever it was called. They were uncontested so everyone who was nominated were automatically through. Afterwards we began to the other half the caucus, which was discussing and amending the Republican platform. We first talked about social security, and there were differing views on whether it should be privatized and what not, and one person that expressed their view it should be eliminated, believing that his children should be self-sufficient. I can't go into further detail about social security as I'm rather oblivious to it, so some of the things they said were confusing. The next thing we talked about was specifying minimum wages into the platform. It was not specifically written down that they take the stance of promoting minimum wage because of their negative effects, of which they did not elaborate. The third third thing we talked about was gay marriage. There was a mixed opinion upon this issue. One side was for marriage to be defined between a man and a woman. The other half said government should not be affiliated with the church and should be secular, therefore the government has no say into regulating marriage. The next issue was Obamacare. They wanted to rename Obamacare to it's real name, which I forgot what it was, as did they. Nothing more was talked about it which struck me as odd. The last issue was a bit vague, but I believe it was setting universal standards to preschools and to have a universal curriculum as well, much like a Unitarian government would do, such as France.
Overall the caucus ended up pretty one-sided on the issues. The only one were it was divided about 50/50 was the topic of gay marriage. After that I left after the hour was up, as many others did as well. I definitely found it to be an interesting experience, seeing a different perspective. For my school it is mainly Democrats and Independents, with few Republicans. Seeing the other point of view opened my minds to how Republicans think. I wish I could have spoken up on some issues, like the gay marriage one, but I felt it would have been best for me to just observe, as such my status during that caucus was. I hope this helped give you a better image of what a caucus is. I now wonder what a primary is like, lol.
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On February 07 2012 18:58 BobTheBuilder1377 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2012 18:44 ixi.genocide wrote:figures... thats what we get in media these days Lol. Yeah, It's been going viral this past 24 hour cycle. This is what happens when you have someone like Mitt who's out of touch with the common man and you have him doing these pictures. He's such an easy target man. xD
every presidential candidate is out of touch with the common man and almost every one of them is in the 1%.
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On February 08 2012 12:39 Sovano wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2012 08:42 Castrophy wrote:On February 08 2012 08:35 Sovano wrote:
I love Ron Paul, but sadly he's not going to be on par with Mitt Romney or Gingrich for that matter. Hopefully some of his ideas are absorbed by the front-runner though.
On a side note going to my first caucus tonight! Though it's Republican, and I'm pretty liberal. Though I'm interested in what they are going to converse about. It'll be cool if you can do a writeup of your caucus experience for us who live in primary states! Just got back from my Republican caucus. I can say the experience was okay, generally because I was the minority view. I drove to my precinct area, which was at my local elementary school. I signed up as an observer, because I wanted to be with my high school friends that were there as well, and for the most part I was there to record what was talked about and my reactions. The whole thing took one hour, as it is required to make the event "legal" or "official" along those lines. It took 30 minutes to get situated, be briefed on rules and what not, and then vote for one of the four Republican candidates. I don't know the results of everyone there as a whole, but this is what my room came down to. There were 46 people that attended. The votes came out like this: Newt Gingrich with 4, Ron Paul with 13, Mitt Romney with 9, and Rick Santorum with 20. After that we elected 11 precinct delegates to move onto the B54 stage or whatever it was called. They were uncontested so everyone who was nominated were automatically through. Afterwards we began to the other half the caucus, which was discussing and amending the Republican platform. We first talked about social security, and there were differing views on whether it should be privatized and what not, and one person that expressed their view it should be eliminated, believing that his children should be self-sufficient. I can't go into further detail about social security as I'm rather oblivious to it, so some of the things they said were confusing. The next thing we talked about was specifying minimum wages into the platform. It was not specifically written down that they take the stance of promoting minimum wage because of their negative effects, of which they did not elaborate. The third third thing we talked about was gay marriage. There was a mixed opinion upon this issue. One side was for marriage to be defined between a man and a woman. The other half said government should not be affiliated with the church and should be secular, therefore the government has no say into regulating marriage. The next issue was Obamacare. They wanted to rename Obamacare to it's real name, which I forgot what it was, as did they. Nothing more was talked about it which struck me as odd. The last issue was a bit vague, but I believe it was setting universal standards to preschools and to have a universal curriculum as well, much like a Unitarian government would do, such as France. Overall the caucus ended up pretty one-sided on the issues. The only one were it was divided about 50/50 was the topic of gay marriage. After that I left after the hour was up, as many others did as well. I definitely found it to be an interesting experience, seeing a different perspective. For my school it is mainly Democrats and Independents, with few Republicans. Seeing the other point of view opened my minds to how Republicans think. I wish I could have spoken up on some issues, like the gay marriage one, but I felt it would have been best for me to just observe, as such my status during that caucus was. I hope this helped give you a better image of what a caucus is. I now wonder what a primary is like, lol.
50/50 on gay marriage is definitely a surprisingly good distribution for a Republican event.
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On February 08 2012 12:48 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2012 12:39 Sovano wrote:On February 08 2012 08:42 Castrophy wrote:On February 08 2012 08:35 Sovano wrote:
I love Ron Paul, but sadly he's not going to be on par with Mitt Romney or Gingrich for that matter. Hopefully some of his ideas are absorbed by the front-runner though.
On a side note going to my first caucus tonight! Though it's Republican, and I'm pretty liberal. Though I'm interested in what they are going to converse about. It'll be cool if you can do a writeup of your caucus experience for us who live in primary states! Just got back from my Republican caucus. I can say the experience was okay, generally because I was the minority view. I drove to my precinct area, which was at my local elementary school. I signed up as an observer, because I wanted to be with my high school friends that were there as well, and for the most part I was there to record what was talked about and my reactions. The whole thing took one hour, as it is required to make the event "legal" or "official" along those lines. It took 30 minutes to get situated, be briefed on rules and what not, and then vote for one of the four Republican candidates. I don't know the results of everyone there as a whole, but this is what my room came down to. There were 46 people that attended. The votes came out like this: Newt Gingrich with 4, Ron Paul with 13, Mitt Romney with 9, and Rick Santorum with 20. After that we elected 11 precinct delegates to move onto the B54 stage or whatever it was called. They were uncontested so everyone who was nominated were automatically through. Afterwards we began to the other half the caucus, which was discussing and amending the Republican platform. We first talked about social security, and there were differing views on whether it should be privatized and what not, and one person that expressed their view it should be eliminated, believing that his children should be self-sufficient. I can't go into further detail about social security as I'm rather oblivious to it, so some of the things they said were confusing. The next thing we talked about was specifying minimum wages into the platform. It was not specifically written down that they take the stance of promoting minimum wage because of their negative effects, of which they did not elaborate. The third third thing we talked about was gay marriage. There was a mixed opinion upon this issue. One side was for marriage to be defined between a man and a woman. The other half said government should not be affiliated with the church and should be secular, therefore the government has no say into regulating marriage. The next issue was Obamacare. They wanted to rename Obamacare to it's real name, which I forgot what it was, as did they. Nothing more was talked about it which struck me as odd. The last issue was a bit vague, but I believe it was setting universal standards to preschools and to have a universal curriculum as well, much like a Unitarian government would do, such as France. Overall the caucus ended up pretty one-sided on the issues. The only one were it was divided about 50/50 was the topic of gay marriage. After that I left after the hour was up, as many others did as well. I definitely found it to be an interesting experience, seeing a different perspective. For my school it is mainly Democrats and Independents, with few Republicans. Seeing the other point of view opened my minds to how Republicans think. I wish I could have spoken up on some issues, like the gay marriage one, but I felt it would have been best for me to just observe, as such my status during that caucus was. I hope this helped give you a better image of what a caucus is. I now wonder what a primary is like, lol. 50/50 on gay marriage is definitely a surprisingly good distribution for a Republican event.
50 thinking it should be outright outlawed, the other 50 saying the federal government has no business outlawing but favor allowing the states to draft the law.
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I'm surprised that Santorum took most of the anti-romney vote with him but, I guess this just goes to show how uninformed most of these voters are. :<
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On February 08 2012 13:03 BobTheBuilder1377 wrote:
I'm surprised that Santorum took most of the anti-romney vote with him but, I guess this just goes to show how uninformed most of these voters are. :<
Hey Bob, what is with the 1377? I know it is off topic by why those numbers. It bugs me everytime I see you post 
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Hmph. If Santorum can ride this well enough I could honestly see him being Mitt's VP.
Lets all raise a toast of santorum to the man himself!
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On February 08 2012 13:14 1Eris1 wrote:
Hmph. If Santorum can ride this well enough I could honestly see him being Mitt's VP.
Lets all raise a toast of santorum to the man himself!
I think it's too late to be his VP. If anything, it will be somebody like Pawlenty or non-running governor.
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I actually find Santorum to be rather likeable. Of course I disagree with most of his Christian views, but in terms of having an affable personality (especially in the debates - compared to say Gingrich's constant negativity). The kind of person I probably wouldn't mind being friends with.
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ROFL, that was fun.
See ya Richard
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I just finished attending my caucus in Colorado. I'll give a write up on what happened later. I will give a small preview though. I did give a speech in support of a candidate that I never thought I'd give
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On February 08 2012 13:26 Dick Santorum wrote:
I actually find Santorum to be rather likeable. Of course I disagree with most of his Christian views, but in terms of having an affable personality (especially in the debates - compared to say Gingrich's constant negativity). The kind of person I probably wouldn't mind being friends with.
I couldn't ever be friends with someone like that.
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So it has been a very bad night for Romney.
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On February 08 2012 14:36 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So it has been a very bad night for Romney.
How so? Besides just losing.
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On February 08 2012 14:36 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So it has been a very bad night for Romney.
Yea, Colorado was supposed to be his lock.
Just by the fact that Santorum is giving him a run for his money in Colorado makes him look pretty shaky.
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On February 08 2012 14:36 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So it has been a very bad night for Romney.
A good night for Santorum is a good night for Romney. Romney needs Santorum to have a good enough night to stay in the race. I don't think Paul, Gingrich or Santorum will be dropping out soon. With that, Romney should have it in the bag.
EDIT: In fact the worst outcome for Romney would have been that Santorum had a bad night and finally just dropped out. That woulda been bad for Romney.
Santorum having a good night is the best Romney could hope for.
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Up until now, the less equipped "Non-Romney" candidates have been able to focus on just 1 state (2 max) at a time (not counting Missouri which didn't have Gingrich even on the ballot and doesn't award delegates).
Romney just needs his opponents to have enough success that no one drops out. Then when dozens of states are having primaries at the same time, his opponents won't have the resources to compete in more than 1 state. That is when Romney will wipe it up.
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When you have to spend 50 million dollars too run negative ads in order to sway voters which each state have less turn out than four years ago. And you still win only half the states, that's a problem a big one. So far this was the nominations largest Caucuses/Primary with just 3 states and Santorum swept it. No matter how much Romney spent on Super PAC's and actual Campaign cash in these states the winner spent much much less.
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So I went to the Republican caucus for northern Jefferson County in Colorado. Jefferson County is one of the more affluent suburban counties making up the Denver metro area. Attendance looked very good. The attendees seemed to skew towards the middle-aged, with a lot of seniors as well.
In my particular precinct, there was a rather spirited discussion about how Romney and Gingrich are both flawed candidates. The general consensus was that people should vote for Santorum -- not because of Santorum himself -- but to keep the nomination process going so that Obama would have less time to dump all over our eventual nominee. This didn't really make much sense to me because Obama is going to have a solid 2-3 months to crap over whomever the nominee is.
As for me, when I sat down at my chair, I still did not know whom I was going to vote for. However, after listening to discussions about the other candidates, I eventually stood up and gave a speech in support of Ron Paul, which isn't something that I suspected that I would ever do. I started out by expressing my discomfort with Ron Paul on a whole host issues, particularly foreign affairs. However, the ultimate point that I communicated was that Ron Paul's general ideas with regards to the proper role and scope of the federal government in our lives are too important to ignore. Even if republicans are not going to vote for Ron Paul, they should at least listen to him and to his ideas to preserve and foster the growing libertarian streak within the republican party. Though Ron Paul will never be a mainstream politician, his ideological successors in the next generation of politicians will be. In short, my speech wasn't so much about this election so much as it was about future elections and the evolution of the republican party. This little speech (probably a little under 5 minutes) was very well received.
The final tally in my precinct was 13 votes for Santorum, 3 for Ron Paul (including me), 2 for Newt Gingrich, and 0 for Romney.
Anyway, to all of you Ron Paul robots: don't say that I never did anything for your boy. =p
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Gingrich has to drop out now if he wants Romney to lose. Staying in will just steal votes from santorum. If Gingrich dropped out tommorow, then Santorum could ride this momentum to a victory imo... Republicans are that meh on Romney. Ofc he won't drop out tho.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyzfata2KS1qbdwe9o1_500.jpg)
