You Are All a Public Danger

[Perd Hapley]

And how's the third party solution working out for you?  Hear me out first.  

I've done third-party before.  May do so again.  I can see both sides of the debate, and have been on both sides.  I've concluded that both solutions (reform the GOP, or vote third party) have their ups and downs.  Neither approach seems to work very well, and I would agree with those who say the third party movements need to quit putting so many eggs in the presidential election basket, and focus more on local and state elections.  

So I'll do what I think is best, and you do the same.  In the meantime, maybe the third partyers can stop talking as if they have seen the light and the GOP voters are all lockstep drones with total faith in their party.  I can count neither the number of times I've criticized the GOP, or the number of times I've been accused of thinking they can do no wrong.  As we saw, earlier.  

And one more thing, since I've got a good long rant going.  Going a bit off-topic, but just as an example, I've often thought that the religious conservatives and the not-so-religious conservo-libertarians could come together on a great many things if we could drop all the hostility we fling at each other.  There's a lot of needless suspicion on both sides.  I think the same thing is true with the GOP v Third Party issue.  A little less back-stabbing, a little more understanding and cooperation.  Alas, tis but a pipe dream.  

[Balog]

When did I say I wanted a third party? I want the R's to pull their heads out of their fourth point of contact. I'm just not willing to support a kinder gentler only sort of socialist just cause they happen to have an R by their name.

[Perd Hapley]

Then I'm not sure what you're getting at.  Did you vote for McCain, or abstain, or what?  

Or maybe you just misunderstand me.  I never said our grievances with the GOP should not be aired.  It just seems to turn into a never-ending, monotonously repetitive bull session.  

It's funny that Repub's are taken to task for being "the party of No."  (I wish they really were.)  But anyway, to listen to some Republicans, the only thing they seem to be against is their own party.  

[Balog]

I registered to vote several months in advance, but my application apparently got "lost" and I didn't find out until too late to do anything about it. :( I didn't vote for anyone in '08, damn it all.

I'm not against (or for) "the Party" per se. I'm against the weak and spineless members of it. Not all R's are bad, and I'd love to have more good ones to support. But I'll be damned if I'll give anything to the likes of Romney, Huckabee, or McCain.

[longeyes]

It's not that the Republicans are bad people, it's that they are, in my mind, out of touch with reality.  They are operating as parliamentarians, dealmakers, negotiators, when the other side is in full smashmouth, guerrilla warfare mode in brazen defiance of the most basic rules of civil process.  The GOP needs to re-think its rules of engagement unless they are simply jousting for a dishonorable peace.

[longeyes]

The health care bill is a perfect example.  Instead of recognizing that all the current liberal and leftist initiatives have to be scrapped utterly, the GOP, in the main, is trying to "work out a compromise."  Anything to avoid appearing principled, I guess.  If they are afraid to be the Party of No the way our Revolutionary forebears were, in a time that calls first and foremost for a loud, unequivocal "HELL NO!" they are useless to us and useless to this blessed nation.

[AZRedhawk44]

The health care bill is a perfect example.  Instead of recognizing that all the current liberal and leftist initiatives have to be scrapped utterly, the GOP, in the main, is trying to "work out a compromise."  Anything to avoid appearing principled, I guess.  If they are afraid to be the Party of No the way our Revolutionary forebears were, in a time that calls first and foremost for a loud, unequivocal "HELL NO!" they are useless to us and useless to this blessed nation.

[rabblerabble]

Hear, hear!

[/rabble]

 

That's McCain-ism at its finest.  There's no "compromise" on gun control that suits me.  There's no "compromise" on single payer health care that suits me.  There's no "compromise" on illegal immigration that suits me.

It's just a way for the Leftists to get SOME of what they want now until they pester me again for a "compromise" in another 5-10 years on the same issue.  Then my slider moves left just a little bit more to appease them again.  And again.

I WANT a party of "Hell Damn No!"   

[longeyes]

Yesterday the EPA told Congress who's boss.  Anyone over five would have recognized the remarks as a threat. 

One might have expected the Republicans in Congress to tell the EPA that this is not yet a nation run by bureaucratic ukaze, outside the Constitution, and that, small point, the EPA gets its financing from Congress. 

[roo_ster]

Yesterday the EPA told Congress who's boss.  Anyone over five would have recognized the remarks as a threat. 

One might have expected the Republicans in Congress to tell the EPA that this is not yet a nation run by bureaucratic ukaze, outside the Constitution, and that, small point, the EPA gets its financing from Congress. 

That would require a party of policritters with, at minimum, 33 vertebrae between them.

[MicroBalrog]

That would require a party of policritters with, at minimum, 33 vertebrae between them.

Ah, but that would be radical you see.

[Perd Hapley]

It's not that the Republicans are bad people, it's that they are, in my mind, out of touch with reality.  They are operating as parliamentarians, dealmakers, negotiators, when the other side is in full smashmouth, guerrilla warfare mode in brazen defiance of the most basic rules of civil process.  The GOP needs to re-think its rules of engagement unless they are simply jousting for a dishonorable peace.

This I agree with.

The health care bill is a perfect example.  Instead of recognizing that all the current liberal and leftist initiatives have to be scrapped utterly, the GOP, in the main, is trying to "work out a compromise."  Anything to avoid appearing principled, I guess.  If they are afraid to be the Party of No the way our Revolutionary forebears were, in a time that calls first and foremost for a loud, unequivocal "HELL NO!" they are useless to us and useless to this blessed nation.

This as well.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

But I'll be damned if I'll give anything to the likes of Romney, Huckabee, or McCain.

Yeah, none of them would be a huge improvement over what's going on right now.  We're better off with Obama.

[roo_ster]

Yeah, none of them would be a huge improvement over what's going on right now.  We're better off with Obama.

I assume that's tongue-in-cheek, but McCain and Huck are economic illiterates and Romney is a RINO born-again Conservative. 

Sure, I bet things would be somewhat better, but McCain & Huck would likely have done the same as BHO WRT spending big bucks to "stimulate" the economy.

Romney would have been the best pick to help get gov't out of the way of recovery, but he would have stabbed us in the back in many other ways.

[Balog]

"Look, you can get stomach cancer, or you can get lung cancer. If you're so selfish as to not want cancer at all, you're just part of the problem." 

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

"Look, you can get stomach cancer, or you can get lung cancer. If you're so selfish as to not want cancer at all, you're just part of the problem."  

yerself

You're making a fallacy that Thomas Sowell describes in one of the last chapters of Basic Economics.  The fallacy lies in thinking categorically about things that should be thought of quantitatively.  You're making the mistake of categorizing both Republicans and Democrats as deficit spenders and concluding there's no difference between them.  If you consider spending and deficits numerically, the way such things ought to be considered, you see that there's a huge (order of magnitude) difference between them.  Barry is on track to run up more deficits in his first year than Bush managed in his entire two terms.  And Barry is just getting warmed up.

Even at his RINO worst, Bush was much, much, much better than Obama is.  Romney, Huckabee, McCain, and all them would be considerably better, too.  None are perfect, but you guys clearly are never going to be satisfied so, so what's the point?

If you must think about these things categorically, then at least use better categories.  Ask yourself which kind of president we can survive and which kind we can't.  To use your medical analogy, one kind is like a cold or a flu, and the other is like a deadly cancer.  Given the choice you'd much rather have the flu.

[Ben]

And yet another one of my threads veers way into bites the dust land.