# Can a viable Republican candidate survive the primaries?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [November 21, 2012, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724 "2012-11-21T15:14:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/61 "2012-11-22T17:36:36Z")

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> [@YogSosoth](#):
>
> That speech he gave is practically the exact one he gave where he mentioned that 47% of people are lazy moochers!

And the most spectacular bit of Karmic Justice in the entire thing is that Romney is going to finish with **47%** of the vote. 😃

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**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/62 "2012-11-22T17:45:10Z")

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Are you reading Free Republic, places like that? They will not be swayed and their reaction is predictable. I’d offer examples like Jennifer Rubin and her take on SSM and immigration, or even Krauthammer (less self-reflection, I’ll admit) or George Will, or even Coulter to some extent. These are not the voices of people saying, “If only we’d been more conservative, if only we’d had someone who could have taken a stronger stand on immigration, on SSM, etc.” Quite the contrary.

Here’s [Coulter](http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-11-21.html#read_more), not someone I’d offer as a calm voice of reason:

> [@](#):
>
> But we’re not going to win any elections by telling ourselves fairy tales about a candidate who lost because he wasn’t conservative enough, articulate enough or mean enough.

Or [Will](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-republicans-must-start-over-again/2012/11/09/d7c81db0-29e8-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html):

> [@](#):
>
> Most voters already favor less punitive immigration policies than the ones angrily advocated by clenched-fist Republicans unwilling to acknowledge that immigrating — risking uncertainty for personal and family betterment — is an entrepreneurial act. The speed with which civil unions and same-sex marriage have become debatable topics and even mainstream policies is astonishing. As is conservatives’ failure to recognize this: They need not endorse such policies, but neither need they despise those, such as young people, who favor them.

Don’t just read the far-right loony sites. We know what their opinion will be. And I’m not saying a strategy has crystallized or that the GOP speaks in a unified voice yet. But I think to some extent a prediction that the GOP would double down on “conservatism” has become a straw man, or so it seems to me. Maybe I’m reading the wrong people, but that’s not what I’ve been seeing.

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**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/63 "2012-11-22T17:52:24Z")

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Guys, you are talking about the social issues, but what you are not discussing is THE topic that is near and dear to the heart of the IMPORTANT Republicans, which is maintaining and extending the wealth inequality that exists in America via the continued looting of the middle class. The money Republicans will GLADLY throw all the social issues under their Brinks truck if they think it will get their hands on the levers of power.

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**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/64 "2012-11-22T17:55:25Z")

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All that needs to be done is to form a bridge/alliance between people with moderately conservative views on tax policy and military spending, on the one hand, and people who believe that Obama is the AntiChrist and conspiring with the UN to breed cyber-controlled velociraptors to take all our guns and force Eagle Scouts into gay marriages.

Really, how hard could that be?

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**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/65 "2012-11-22T19:05:36Z")

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**Stratocaster** , you seem like a thoughtful person, but I think you are deluding yourself at least a little. From your cite, look at what else George Will has to say:

> [@](#):
>
> Liberals have an inherent but not insuperable advantage: As enthusiasts of government, to which many of them are related as employees or clients, they are more motivated for political activity than are conservatives, who prefer private spaces. Never mind. Conservatives have a commensurate advantage: Americans still find congenial conservatism’s vocabulary of skepticism about statism. And events — ongoing economic anemia; the regulatory state’s metabolic urge to bully — will deepen this vocabulary’s resonance.

translation: 47% of the population are moochers sucking off the government teat, and Obama is a [del]socialist[/del] statist. And are conservatives ever going to quit beating the ‘liberal’ drum? It is a delusion- people don’t vote dem only because they fit into this propaganda construct of ‘liberal’ your team has spent so much effort promoting. It never occurs to these pundits that maybe, just maybe, they can see that GOP candidates are necessarily either lying or stupid when they make certain claims.

> [@](#):
>
> The 2010 elections, the first after the Supreme Court’s excellent Citizens United decision liberalized the rules about funding political advocacy, were especially competitive. Social science confirms what common sense suggests: More spending on political advocacy means more voter information and interest. The approximately $2 billion spent in support of this year’s presidential candidates — only about two-thirds as much as Procter & Gamble spent on U.S. advertising last year — surely contributed to the high turnout in targeted states.

translation: Allowing corporate interests to dominate the national discussion is a wonderful thing that results in a more informed electorate! What could possibly go wrong (for people who favor corporate oligarchy)?

I could do the same exercise with the Coulter article you cite. The fact is that, at heart, the suggestions of the kinds of changes you see as necessary are simply gestures, mere marketing attempts that have zero meaning when it comes to what the GOP ultimately stands for. See how conservative pundits continue to cling to the same stale, self-serving explanations for what is happening, practically in the same breath they [del]acknowledge their desire to con Latinos out of their votes[/del] insincerely suggest changing their stances on immigration and poor and non-white people?

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**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/66 "2012-11-22T19:16:45Z")

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> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> Are you reading Free Republic, places like that? They will not be swayed and their reaction is predictable. I’d offer examples like Jennifer Rubin and her take on SSM and immigration, or even Krauthammer (less self-reflection, I’ll admit) or George Will, or even Coulter to some extent. These are not the voices of people saying, “If only we’d been more conservative, if only we’d had someone who could have taken a stronger stand on immigration, on SSM, etc.” Quite the contrary.

I did read Krauthammer. Free Republic and Stormfront was just surfed on a lark, but the articles I was talking about came from [FoxNews.com](http://FoxNews.com), the WSJ, National Review Online, and [RedState.com](http://RedState.com). There were a lot of articles, and it seemed that the further we get from election day, the faster these people are falling back  
into their old habits

> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> Here’s [Coulter](http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-11-21.html#read_more), not someone I’d offer as a calm voice of reason:Or [Will](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-republicans-must-start-over-again/2012/11/09/d7c81db0-29e8-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html):Don’t just read the far-right loony sites. We know what their opinion will be. And I’m not saying a strategy has crystallized or that the GOP speaks in a unified voice yet. But I think to some extent a prediction that the GOP would double down on “conservatism” has become a straw man, or so it seems to me. Maybe I’m reading the wrong people, but that’s not what I’ve been seeing.

I think you’re being fooled, to be quite honest. Using Romney as an example again, the GOP and conservatives know they have to change, but I think it’ll take more than 2 election cycles to get that into their heads. Those articles might contain seeds of moderation, but have they repudiated all the divisive BS they’ve been spewing out for years? Somebody should ask Coulter if losing means not only that the GOP needs to change on some issues, but doesn’t that mean the liberals were right on a lot of things all this time? That the New York Times is a much more trustworthy source than Fox News or the Drudge Report?

I’ve already given some examples, like Romney and his donor speech last week. If he really felt he was wrong, he wouldn’t be calling these things “gifts” that Obama was giving them (as if lowering taxes on the rich, deregulation, and breaking unions aren’t gifts to the rich :rolleyes:), he would be calling them legitimate demands of the population, ones that Obama heard but the GOP didn’t.

Paul Ryan, a week after the election, went on TV and claimed that because the House didn’t fall to the Dems, then that one thing was proof that Americans wanted the GOP’s tax plan. I’ve heard Boehner talk about tax reform already 3 different times, and each time he uses words like tax reform, the same thing that Romney ran on and lost. You know what I’d want to hear before I take them seriously? “The GOP has heard the American people’s will and that is that the taxes on the rich must go up, not through simply reform but an increase in their percentages”

Its great to talk moderation right after a big defeat, but until I see some action, I won’t be holding my breath. Luckily for us, a major test of that newfound sincerity is coming in just over a month. We’ll see if the GOP learned the lessons from this election and vote to increase taxes on the rich while keeping them lower for the middle and lower class

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**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/67 "2012-11-22T23:17:21Z")

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I’ve been pretty hard on the GOP in this thread, but in the spirit of fairness, here’s an example of [Obama being vague about the age of the Earth.](http://www.salon.com/2012/11/21/obama_once_gave_rubio_like_answer_on_earths_age/) _Ahem_ Hey Obama! The Bible isn’t a good source for answering questions like this!!! Wise up :mad:

OTOH, I don’t feel like Democrats are as rigid when it comes to factual matters. Am I wrong?

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**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/68 "2012-11-23T00:23:32Z")

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> [@elucidator](#):
>
> All that needs to be done is to form a bridge/alliance between people with moderately conservative views on tax policy and military spending, on the one hand, and people who believe that Obama is the AntiChrist and conspiring with the UN to breed cyber-controlled velociraptors to take all our guns and force Eagle Scouts into gay marriages.
> 
> Really, how hard could that be?

I think I speak for all Eagle Scouts in saying that I’d marry _anyone_ to get my own velociraptor.

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**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/69 "2012-11-23T01:49:29Z")

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> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> The far-right absolute loonies will never change. We need to abandon them.

But how can you abandon them - if you mean push them out? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t need to have the party’s permission to let your name stand for a party’s primary for a House or Senate seat? So if the right-wing of the party puts forward a tea-party candidate and works for that candidate in the primary, what can the moderates do, except try to win the primary? And if they lose the primary, the more right-wing candidate becomes the face of the party for that election. Is there any way that the party establishment can freeze out the more extreme elements, other than defeating them in the primary?

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**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/70 "2012-11-23T03:56:33Z")

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I don’t think it is the Republican base that really drove this year.

After listening to the first five minutes of this interview with [Trevor Potter](http://billmoyers.com/segment/trevor-potter-on-big-moneys-election-effect/), it sounds like the only way to survive the primaries would be to get the right billionaire(s) backing from the beginning.

[QUOTE=Trevor Potter]

What happened this year is the billionaires kept Santorum and Gingrich going for months in a way that the public never would’ve.

And they attacked, used the billionaire’s money to attack Romney. He had to spend his money to defend himself and raise a lot of money through his super PAC to defend himself. But the result was the election took much longer to get a Republican nominee than the Republicans had hoped. And Romney was broke starting.  
[/QUOTE]

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**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/71 "2012-11-23T04:52:15Z")

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Republicans also have to become fiscally responsible. And I don’t mean “fiscally conservative” and “no taxes ever” and “tax and spend democrats” and “eliminate waste” and “government is always more inefficient” and “government regulations are the problem” ad nauseum.

Republicans need to lay our a credible plan with details on how to right the fiscal ship instead of mouthing supply side platitudes. Supply side economics or at least the Republican version of is an empirically proven failure. Republicans need to become economically credible again and its not part of any of the soul searching efforts going on.

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**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/72 "2012-11-23T06:38:55Z")

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> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> In answer to some of the other posts, I don’t think it’s about becoming like Democrats or masking our true intentions. There is a populist message in our core values: protecting individual liberties, ensuring that social programs like SS and Medicare actually survive so they’re there when people need them, spending within our means–just like everyone else in the U.S. has to. Those messages, properly delivered without the need to demonize vast portions of the population, can resonate with lots and lots of people.

Ronald Reagan was a conservative who actually cared that Social Security was viable for the future - possibly because he was old enough to remember when it did not exist. Ditto Medicare. Do you think Paul Ryan actually wants to preserve these things as government programs? (I( have no idea what Romney really believes.) Or is he really so deluded that he doesn’t see the impact of his voucher program?

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**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/73 "2012-11-23T07:21:49Z")

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I’m not so sure the GOP does want to preserve SS and Medicare, even if Reagan played nice with them. Hopefully someone can produce or link to a better exposition of the following theory, since I don’t know all the details and am not 100% sure it is true.

It is said that the GOP strategy going back to Reagan is to balloon the deficit to the point that the ensuing crisis turns the electorate against the social safety net. When the dems get the White House on their side of the political pendulum swings, attack them for not being able to solve the economic problems. Defeating the dems in this way, the GOP proceeds to undo SS and medicare and plenty of other programs while awarding more tax cuts to the wealthy. Now the economy is wrecked and the social safety net gone, but people are more dependent than ever, only now directly on the whims of the chief capitalists. It does kind of take a middleman government out of the way from being between the capitalist overlords and the common people and is more efficient in it’s way. Downside is that the government is essentially defeated and the people sort of captured. Obviously the people won’t go for this if the GOP is forthcoming, so they will have to spend a lot of effort on the most persuasive delivery of their ‘message’.

I didn’t invent the general outlines of this theory. Where does it come from and how veracious is it? In any case it appears not to be working atm, probably at least partly because the loony but needed base elects nutters in primaries.

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**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/74 "2012-11-23T10:55:17Z")

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> [@Northern\_Piper](#):
>
> But how can you abandon them - if you mean push them out? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t need to have the party’s permission to let your name stand for a party’s primary for a House or Senate seat? So if the right-wing of the party puts forward a tea-party candidate and works for that candidate in the primary, what can the moderates do, except try to win the primary? And if they lose the primary, the more right-wing candidate becomes the face of the party for that election. Is there any way that the party establishment can freeze out the more extreme elements, other than defeating them in the primary?

What I’m speculating is that the harder-right (but not loony) sector of the tribe will recognize that the current formula is a losing one, and will not select “party purity” candidates they might otherwise be inclined to. Honestly, your question is a good one. I’m addressing presidential candidates, not Congress, and I don’t know how it will work, or how many election cycles it will take. But I believe just as a practical matter the GOP will abandon a presidential strategy that logically ends with them losing the general election for president. At some point (I think now), they’ll say, “Let’s stop hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer.” A district in Wyoming may still elect a Tea Party guy for Congress, but that’s not the trend in the Senate, which tends to rein in the loose cannons in Congress. The national dynamic will be interesting.

**Try2B Comprehensive** , I think your read of Will and others is straining a bit to confirm something, when the contrary evidence is right there. Your translation of the first bit, for example, I don’t read that way–it’s a typical “liberals tends to like expansive and growing government programs, conservatives (ought to) prefer smaller government.” Such a sentiment, when not delivered through clenched teeth, is self-evident. I’d argue it’s part of the beneficial tension that ought to exist when both parties are viable and robust–let the best ideas be debated, let the better ones win the day. Let each party be a check against the excesses of the other.  
\*\*  
Voyager\*\*, I truly believe Ryan wants to save Medicare and SS. I agree with him 100% that they cannot survive in their current form. Are his strategies for doing so wrong? Okay, let’s debate them then, instead of permitting the dialogue to simply demonize the evil rich white guys. Let’s frame it as a campaign to save those programs, because I believe they’re unsustainable. What do the Dems suggest as reform? Or what’s their argument that they’re fiscally fine as is? That debate does not occur in the current model and it’s not healthy for the country, for the GOP and (I’d argue) for the Dems either. That’s why even liberal columnists were begging for Obama to lay out a substantial vision for his second term, and he never really did–he didn’t need to, it would have been a poor political strategy.

Let’s let the public discourse be around real problems and the details that matter in such a debate. That’s not what happens now. If the Democratic ideas win the day, so be it.

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**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/75 "2012-11-23T18:19:58Z")

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> [@Stratocaster](#):
>
> \*\*  
> Voyager\*\*, I truly believe Ryan wants to save Medicare and SS. I agree with him 100% that they cannot survive in their current form. Are his strategies for doing so wrong? Okay, let’s debate them then, instead of permitting the dialogue to simply demonize the evil rich white guys. Let’s frame it as a campaign to save those programs, because I believe they’re unsustainable. What do the Dems suggest as reform? Or what’s their argument that they’re fiscally fine as is? That debate does not occur in the current model and it’s not healthy for the country, for the GOP and (I’d argue) for the Dems either. That’s why even liberal columnists were begging for Obama to lay out a substantial vision for his second term, and he never really did–he didn’t need to, it would have been a poor political strategy.
> 
> Let’s let the public discourse be around real problems and the details that matter in such a debate. That’s not what happens now. If the Democratic ideas win the day, so be it.

I’m old enough to remember the debate about Medicare when it was up for a vote. That the solution was a large government program did not get universal support. Why would Ryan, a small government advocate, be interested in saving a big government program? I agree that the best solution is a different question, I just doubt that he is starting from the premise that this is a government obligation.  
The difference between now and the Reagan years is that for SS, at least, Reagan and the Dems both agreed that SS was a good thing, and the discussion was about how to change it. If that were truly the case today SS could get fixed in about 20 minutes. Medicare is clearly harder.

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**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/76 "2012-11-23T18:54:57Z")

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> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#):
>
> I’ve been pretty hard on the GOP in this thread, but in the spirit of fairness, here’s an example of [Obama being vague about the age of the Earth.](http://www.salon.com/2012/11/21/obama_once_gave_rubio_like_answer_on_earths_age/) _Ahem_ Hey Obama! The Bible isn’t a good source for answering questions like this!!! Wise up :mad:

Did you even read your own link? Obama doesn’t make any statement that’s vague on the Earth’s age and he was answering a question that was directly related to the creation story from Genesis.

You couldn’t have found a worse example of “fairness” if you tried.

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**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/77 "2012-11-23T19:06:55Z")

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> [@Justin\_Bailey](#):
>
> Did you even read your own link? Obama doesn’t make any statement that’s vague on the Earth’s age

Sure he did:

[QUOTE=Bronco Bama]  
Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible? That, you know, I don’t presume to know.  
[/quote]

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**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/78 "2012-11-23T19:16:23Z")

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> [@Voyager](#):
>
> I’m old enough to remember the debate about Medicare when it was up for a vote. That the solution was a large government program did not get universal support. Why would Ryan, a small government advocate, be interested in saving a big government program? I agree that the best solution is a different question, I just doubt that he is starting from the premise that this is a government obligation.

But his strategy results in Medicare surviving. That’s in his plan. Certainly it attempts to make it a fiscal possibility, and one can argue it won’t work or that the changes are too severe. But it is intended to save the program, something that won’t occur without changes. My point is that we don’t even debate the plan so long as the Dems can simply dismiss it as the product of unfeeling rich white guys, intent on punishing freeloaders (not saying you’re doing that).

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/79 "2012-11-23T19:29:31Z")

</div>

> [@bup](#):
>
> Sure he did:

Which is the exact opposite of **Try2B Comprehensive** was saying. Obama was questioning the Bible verse, not the scientific consensus on the age of the Earth.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/80 "2012-11-23T20:08:44Z")

</div>

You see a difference, then, between

> [@Rubio](#):
>
> Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that

> [@Obama](#):
>
> Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible? That, you know, I don’t presume to know.

Is that right? Or do you say Rubio’s answer also questions the bible, rather than the age of the earth, which is the “exact opposite” of what \*\*Try2BComprehensive \*\*said?

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