Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Balog on April 23, 2014, 12:01:37 PM
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-dole-is-back-in-kansas-running-for-nothing-but-running-hard/2014/04/22/21c15ef6-c9eb-11e3-b81a-6fff56bc591e_story.html
Bob "Erectile Dysfunction" Dole is on the warpath, doing what he can to promote "moderates" like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie. I've gotta say, the nice thing about the losing GOP candidates for POTUS is they try hard to make you not sorry they lost. I sincerely thank the man for his service in WWII, but that's not a free pass on what he's done since.
There are only two possible candidates he mentioned favorably on the first day of his tour — former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who he thinks could help win more Hispanic votes; and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, of whom he said, “I don’t think he knew what happened on the bridge.”
What Washington needs, he said, is more people willing to reach across the aisle, as he says he was often willing to do.
Dole believes his party has moved too far to the right. “I believe in a party of inclusion,” he told an audience at the First Lutheran Church in Ottawa Monday night. “You don’t say, ‘You’re not a good enough Republican, you’re too moderate.’ I thought I was a conservative, but we’ve got some in Congress now who are so far right they’re about to fall out of the Capitol.”
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This may explain more moderate candidates, just more left leaning people in the populace.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
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Bob Dole is still alive?
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This may explain more moderate candidates, just more left leaning people in the populace.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
Party affiliation != ideology.
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Party affiliation != ideology.
In general Democrats aren't really known to be stanch conservatives.
Perhaps conservatism really is dying or going into hibernation.
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In general Democrats aren't really known to be stanch conservatives.
Perhaps conservatism really is dying or going into hibernation.
Perhaps people don't want to be affiliated with a Republican party that hasn't been conservative in many years? Perhaps low information voters don't actually know anything about the Democratic party and self ID with it because of cultural forces having nothing to do with ideology? Perhaps if the GOP can pull its head out of its own ass for once and nominate a charismatic, actually conservative person who can articulate those ideas well that would make a difference?
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Personally I think the cause is lost. The USA as a constitutional republic that is.
The poor republican candidates and the far left democrat candidates reflect the overarching philosophies of the country.
The vast majority of the country no longer understands liberty or rights in the same way the founders understood them. Discoverable pre-existing natural rights/God given inalienable rights no longer are the foundation of the system. It is all welfare statism all the time with rights meaning nothing more than government underwriting or sanction.
How can you maintain or build a strong nation on such a flimsy base?
The poor Republican and Democrat candidates accurately represent the pool of citizens they are drawn from.
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Personally I think the cause is lost. The USA as a constitutional republic that is.
The poor republican candidates and the far left democrat candidates reflect the overarching philosophies of the country.
The vast majority of the country no longer understands liberty or rights in the same way the founders understood them. Discoverable pre-existing natural rights/God given inalienable rights no longer are the foundation of the system. It is all welfare statism all the time with rights meaning nothing more than government underwriting or sanction.
How can you maintain or build a strong nation on such a flimsy base?
The poor Republican and Democrat candidates accurately represent the pool of citizens they are drawn from.
Yeah, it's a cultural problem and no amount of politics will fix it.
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charby has a good point. If the composition of America in 2008 or 2012 was as it was in 1980, we would be in President Romney's second term.
Politics is downstream from culture and culture is downstream from genetics. People build a culture that suits them and their environment.
We have been admitting a craptonload of folks from places with much more socialist/authoritarian/centralized gov'ts and then we don't beat them over the head and intimidate them into buying into our culture. We ought not be surprised if they act like folks who built up a more centralized society when they get here.
Also, centralized decision-making is more or less attractive given a population's genetics & culture/time-preference.
If you agree with these:
1. The more intelligent a person is, the more likely they will craft a better solution to the problems that beset them than some central gov't bureaucrat 1000 miles away.
2. The longer a person's time preference, the more likely they will craft a better solution to the problems that beset them than some central gov't bureaucrat 1000 miles away.
You are stuck with these:
3. The less intelligent a person is, the less likely they will craft a better solution to the problems that beset them than some central gov't bureaucrat 1000 miles away.
4. The shorter a person's time preference, the less likely they will craft a better solution to the problems that beset them than some central gov't bureaucrat 1000 miles away.
Folks with less intelligence and shorter time preferences benefit from being told what to do. Anyone who has raised a child understands this. Left to themselves, their lives are "poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Also, less intelligent folk are less able to even contemplate long term effects. Courses of actions that benefit them in the short term (vote for the racialist who will hire lots his kind into "phoney baloney gov't jobs") are those that will get their support. Even if it is a recipe for bankruptcy in the long term. The "long term" doesn't exist for them.
Ben Franklin and the other Founders set up a gov't that maximized liberty and prosperity for yeomen with a particular anglo-saxon protestant culture (and those willing to internalize this culture). This is a sub-optimal arrangement for others, even others as closely related as those in southern europe, given their history and arrangements. We ought not be surprised to see it rejected by newcomers with zero blood connections, zero cultural connections, and who have their resentments stoked by the multi-cultist progressives.
For my own part, I would have little problem imposing a regime of liberty by force, no matter the squawking. That's how it has been done everywhere liberty has sprouted: liberty wrested by force. That is my patrimony and I am little inclined to see it destroyed by those unable to appreciate it. This, too, is a sentiment growing in the face of centralizing power and culture. We will see who prevails. If history is any guide, sell liberty short.
"They have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy."
----Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov"
"Men are qualified for freedom in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there is without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free."
----Edmund Burke
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
----LP Hartley
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This may explain more moderate candidates, just more left leaning people in the populace.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
Well, crud. According to those results, we independents should be heavily represented in the legislature.
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As long as they've been identified as a voting blok independents have been voting for the lesser of two evils. That is almost the definition of an independent here in the USA.
The Senate is probably the best representation of the majority of independent voters.
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The Senate is probably the best representation of the majority of independent voters.
I would agree about that. The house is better representation of how regions of the US feels, i.e. blue district vs red district.
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As long as they've been identified as a voting blok independents have been voting for the lesser of two evils. That is almost the definition of an independent here in the USA.
This certainly accounts for some of my votes, if I choose to vote in that particular race at all. Some of them, I just leave that part of the ballot blank.
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This certainly accounts for some of my votes, if I choose to vote in that particular race at all. Some of them, I just leave that part of the ballot blank.
I refuse to vote for folks running unopposed.
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Personally I think the cause is lost. The USA as a constitutional republic that is.
The poor republican candidates and the far left democrat candidates reflect the overarching philosophies of the country.
The vast majority of the country no longer understands liberty or rights in the same way the founders understood them. Discoverable pre-existing natural rights/God given inalienable rights no longer are the foundation of the system. It is all welfare statism all the time with rights meaning nothing more than government underwriting or sanction.
How can you maintain or build a strong nation on such a flimsy base?
The poor Republican and Democrat candidates accurately represent the pool of citizens they are drawn from.
This.
Yeah, sure, the GOP could re-brand itself as the party of alien amnesty, abortion-on-demand, and same-sex polygamy. Even if they did win, the nation loses; so there's no point.
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Well, crud. According to those results, we independents should be heavily represented in the legislature.
Some kind of pollster called me at home last night. That right there irritated me, but I guess the "Do not call" list has an exemption for political polls. So the young woman asked me if I am a registered Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
I replied that I am "unaffiliated." I think that was too big a word for her, because she came back with, "So you're undecided?"
"No," I said, "I'm an unaffiliated voter."
She hung up on me.