You asked *me *a question, and *I *asked *you *for clarification. Are you interested in a dialogue, or are you just here to snipe?
That we agree on. It’s just that the existence of some modest quantity of bio/chem weapons left over from before Gulf War I was a pretext, not a justification, for invading.
Well, sure, but you’ve still got to consider the nature of the incompetence.
Bush and his surrogates were going around the country for months, beating the WMD drum. And just out of sheer carelessness or forgetfulness, they forgot to do anything about securing the purported WMD locations when they invaded?
First of all, more than a few people are involved in the development of a war plan. Orders would have gone down, and a plan would have come back. Generals, Rummy, Cheney, Bush all surely would have signed off on it. That’s a lot of people to have mental lapses, down and back, over the very point that they’d been filling the airwaves with.
It’s implausible on its face.
Second, if that happened despite its near-impossibility, you wouldn’t want to trust this crew with a sharpened #2 pencil, let alone with the most powerful arsenal in the history of mankind. You’d want to impeach them for that act of incredible group forgetfulness just to make sure nothing like it happened during the remainder of their term in office.
So, once having spouted crap, even as you define it, they are not allowed ever to learn and grow? Please. If “they” had spoken up as you insist “they” didn’t, you’d slam them for still spouting crap. And *that * is using your *own * caricatures. :dubious:
Amazing how blind partisans can always find a way to say the character flaws are always with the “other people”, innit?
Cardinal, if your dad really is a committed fundie, anything you say is most likely only going to piss him off, or at best cause him regret at his having failed at raising you. *Do * seriously consider just smiling, and nodding and changing the subject.
The only thing I disagree with is that he gave the neocons what they want. They are royally pissed at how he carried out the war. The neo-cons thought that Iraq was going to be the tip of the spear - a wedge into the heart of the middle east from which the U.S. could start exerting pressure on Iran, Syria, and other governments. Their big beef with Bush isn’t that he went to war, but that he didn’t use the leverage the war gave him to continue pushing for change. They started getting unhappy when Paul Bremer was appointed to an interim government. They wanted to follow the Afghanistan model - keep the Iraq military intact, put up a new Iraqi government immediately (Chalabi was their boy), and then start planning the next ‘phase’ in middle east reconstruction.
The other thing the neocons are mad about is that they see their ‘vision’ as an important big idea, and Bush utterly failed to explain it to anyone.
I’m defending their position at all - just explaining their source of discontent with Bush.
When a President like Bush has his popularity drop into the 20’s, it means he’s lost everyone except the most hard-core partisans and the single-issue voters for whom he did the one big thing they wanted. That’s about it.
BTW, where does that 75% approval rating among Republicans come from? The closest I can find is 69% and that is in a poll in which his overall ratings put 41% of Americans strongly disapproving of his performance and another 17% who disapprove “somewhat”.
Also, I am very curious as to how low approval rating within a President’s party faithful (of either side) have ever gone. Anyone with any historic cites? (I do get the impression that the Republican faithful do tend to hang more loyally/doggedly than do the Democratic partisans.)
That number needs some context, too - what percentage of people self-identify as a member of which party? The Republicans’ still-significant approval rating means less if there are fewer total Republicans.
Another consideration for Cardinal - when you’ve succeeded in pointing out the facts of Bush’s failure to conform to your dad’s perception of what Bush wants to do, does he acknowledge it as a failure of Bush’s, or claim (as I’ve heard others do) that it’s all the Democrats’ fault for stopping him? If the latter is the case, you’ve done all you can humanly do and it’s time to talk sports instead.
Many self-identified conservatives on the Dope hate Bush specifically because of his reckless fiscal policies. What other president in American history – what other national chief executive in modern world history – has cut taxes at the start of a war?! But W did it – because it puts (or leaves, minor quibble) more money in the pockets of the rich, and hang the federal deficit and the national debt.
Same reason he supports a guest-worker program – not because it provides some immigrants with the chance to earn money at seasonal work, but because it provides cheap labor for big agricultural employers.
These should be key points with your Dad, Cardinal – because they illustrate how the modern, post-Goldwater American conservative movement has been an alliance between the religious-cultural conservatives who provide grassroots organizing and votes, and the superrich and the corporations who fund the right-wing think-tanks and media outlets and Pub candidates’ campaigns. But these two groups do not have the same material interests at all (most religious conservatives, like most Americans in general, being working-class or middle-class); and this president will always serve the interests of the suits while paying lip-service to the evangelicals.
IOW, your Dad and millions of like-minded Americans are being played for suckers, and being played highly successfully.
Contrapuntal and Stratocaster: I’ll note that I substantiated my claim regarding the Republican’s lack of character. You apparently lacked the wherewithal to reply with either facts or logic. How sad and what a waste of electrons.
But Cardinal and Sam Stone gave replies that are worthy of this board.
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Firstly, there’s a distribution of character in our society, and it’s plausible that at one time or another one side is captured by ideology more than the other. Only the media would have us believe that Democrats and Republicans are mirror images with one another with regards to their weaknesses. No: the world doesn’t permit such coincidences: each side as different predominant weaknesses.
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The test for this would be to study whether, say, Democratic approval ratings of Clinton varied more with his performance than Republican ratings varied with GWBush. My proposition, I believe, is testable.
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That aside, it’s my perception that kneejerk liberalism has staged a comeback since Nov 2006. I’m reading more opinions that tend to blur personal responsibility and make naked and factually empty appeals to compassion. These views don’t bother me, but I find it interesting that they seem to have left the woodwork.
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The form of poor character that Cardinal mentions is different than right-wing poor character. A compare and contrast would be interesting, though difficult to pull off.
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It’s my perception that the Clinton centrists and others trounced this particular wing of the Dem party in terms of policy, though not on a cultural level. Example: the Dems are behind tradeable emission permits and other market-based methods to advance the environment. Earth-firsters and their like can still attract media attention (when the Dems are in office, at least). They just don’t get their ideas implemented.
No, not immune. But I hypothesize that Republicans wallow in group-think. Democratic personalities divide into 2. One part likes to display their cleverness. The other (ideological) part likes to project their moral soundness. I would argue that the latter group of scolds was in long-term decline, but have lately started coming back in minor ways.
Specifically, “Radical feminists” of the early 1980s had taken quite a few hits from female writers by the time Clinton’s affair was uncovered by Walsh in the mid-late 1990s. Meaning that you are conflating feminist views that fewer had upheld by Clinton’s time. Furthermore, let’s not forget that the Clinton affair was consensual, though you addressed this in your post.
Still, this is a matter of degree: you are correct that no group is immune from one tendency or another, which only underlines the necessity of not giving those perceived to be on your side free passes with regards to corruption, competence and other matters of public policy.
Fighting against group-think tendencies within the Democratic sphere is the urge to be clever or at least consistent. As an example, TPMMuckraker.com has given fairly aggressive coverage of Cold Cash Jefferson’s [D] blatant corruption. (Though, to our shame, the dishonest representative won re-election.)
My point was that their own apparently-strongly held beliefs were abandoned when they they were forced to choose between them and siding with the hated Republican enemy.
Of course they are allowed to learn and grow - and do you think they would have if it had been a Republican accused of all the same things Clinton was? Of course not.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you accusing ME of being a ‘blind partisan’? After I just gave a long detailed message explaining why conservatives have valid reasons to dislike Bush? As for saying that the character flaws are always with the ‘other people’, I posted the thing about Clinton and feminists as ‘balance’ to show that BOTH sides do the same thing - because I had just finished saying that Republicans had abandoned their core principles in favor of partisanship. Or in your world is a ‘blind partisan’ someone who criticizes Democrats for any reason, ever? Or what? Frankly, your whole post is confusing unless we look at it through the filter of, “Sam Stone said something - therefore I must virulently oppose whatever it is that he said, without bothering to read it very carefully or think very hard.”
This is what you said, and this is to what I was responding.
I have seen nothing to substantiate that claim. Are you referring to your assertion that 75% of Republicans approve of the job Bush is doing? If you have cited that, I apologize, I must have missed it. Can you point out to me where that is?
Thanks.
I think it’s just that choosing the extremist wing of feminism wasn’t the best example to demonstrate your Dem comparison. You’d need to find an actual case of Dem wrongdoing that Dems chose to ignore in their support of the doer-of-wrong.
Good luck with that 
I’m very curious as well. I’ve googled around a little, but haven’t been able to get a handle on this. If anybody can obtain approval rating data over time broken out by party affiliation, let me know.
I’ve been casually tracking Republican approval ratings of GW Bush for a little over a year now. They are remarkably high, though the media seems reluctant to address their schoolgirl crush.
Anyway here are your cites. 75%: “Among Republicans, 75 percent approve of his job performance, and by overwhelming numbers they approve of his handling of foreign policy, the war in Iraq and the management of the economy.”
That link will be good for another week, then you will need Times Select.
Here is what appears to be the Malaysian Times’ capsule summary of the article:
http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/233905/cs/1/
I found that via Google News.
Maybe conservatives are different
Here’s another one (PDF).
So I think it’s overly politically correct to pretend there aren’t measurable differences between the two types and that the type that adheres to conservatism is more likely to have larger numbers of people who will do so from almost blind partisanship just because that is part of the overall psychological makeup of that group.
Choosing media sources on the basis of emotions and feelings, rather than from a desire to be actually informed shows a lack of character.
The rigidity of Republican approval ratings --the extent to which they do not vary with administrative performance, shows a lack of character.
Democrats view the government --and media-- differently than Republicans. Democrats (and businessmen) want tough-minded, fact-based analysis from their media sources: conservatives prattle on about bias. The presentation of different viewpoints challenges the worldview of headcase conservatives: they can’t handle it. Here’s a presentation of the moderate and liberal viewpoint:
That’s from a post at Brad DeLong’s blog.
Our challenge is develop a taste for reality-based thinking within the conservative mentality. For conservatives who are economically inclined a decent start would be with Gregory Mankiw’s blog.
I guess I would counter that group-think is most often spotted from people outside the group. In other words, if you’re a Democrat and you’re sitting with a bunch of fellow Democrats engaging in Bush bashing, or joining the chorus in one of the endless Republican-bashing threads on this board, you’re much less likely to see it as ‘group think’.
The other day I was accosted by a man who heard me saying something about the Iraq war that wasn’t overtly hostile to Bush. He was almost frothing at the mouth, but when I asked him questions about what should be done and what he felt was right, he became completely incoherent. All he knew was the venom he hears from his friends and the liberal talking points he’s routinely fed. Another person on the same day heard me talking about using prices to control traffic congestion, and immediately started muttering about big corporations and the evil rich. These are the kind of people who still supported the Liberals here in Canada despite reams of evidence that they were corrupt, that they weren’t serving the progressive cause at all, and in fact were just your garden variety power-hungry suits from rich, powerful backgrounds. But they uttered the correct dogma, and therefore had the unwavering support of progressives. That’s no different than the Republicans who still support Bush despite his not being a good conservative. He’s a Republican, that’s all that matters. Paul Martin was a Liberal, that’s all that matters.
There’s plenty of group-think to go around, on both sides. I would say that I see far more of it on the left, but then I’d be guilty of the same biased judgement I’m talking about.
Maybe my experience is a little different because here in Canada those feminists had a lot more traction, and even managed to influence government policy. So they were still extremely vocal when Clinton came along. The sudden silence was deafening when the accusations against Clinton started appearing.
Right. But you seem to be saying that the Republicans are worse. I beg to differ.
If you could provide any specific example of “they”, instead of your own caricatures, it would help tremendously in your quest to be considered to be dealing with reality. But, staying with your own caricatures anyway, is there not also a possibility of “them” recognizing that reality is inevitably more complicated than simple sloganeering and ideologuism can cope with?
Not in the comic-book story you just told.
Really, now. Where are all the accusations of hypocrisy about Gingrich’s own infidelity coming from, ya think? The hypothetical “radical feminists” of Samworld, or the Biblethumpers? Just the first example that comes to mind, ya know. I could keep on, but I don’t think you do.
Of course you do. It’s just unpleasant to face it, that’s all.
So, to be clear, this is the first time you have provided cites, correct? Your claim of substantiating the Republican’s lack of character is a false claim, is it not? Your only substantiation was your claim. Or, your post was your cite. Right?
Now, to your cite. Let me pick a few cherries along with you.
Clearly, a large number of Republicans would favor a candidate who is quite unlike Bush, both in performance, and political philosophy. It makes one wonder exactly how the question was phrased that elicited the 75% figure. Alas, that aspect of the methodology is unavailable to us.
However, even granting all your dubious assertions, nowhere have shown that any particular belief or response by a Republicans is due to a lack of character. And I stand by my post, agreeing with Stratocaster, that assertions like that are responsible for this board having a leftward bias. It is essentially an argument ad hominem.
Why do you even bother engaging Republicans, if they are so morally deficient?
You did, eh? That’s great. You’re now my new hero. Can you direct me to where you proved your point about a majority of Republicans lacking character? We’ll leave it to the rest of the board inclined to read it to see exactly who is posting in the absence of facts or logic.
Now there’s a fine example of group-think and its reaction to a thought from outside the group. The group-thinker’s reaction is not to engage the person in discussion, find out his viewpoint, counter his reasoning with your own, no. The group-thinker’s reaction is to dismiss the heresy with words such as “incoherent”, “venom”, “frothing”. That does several things: It deters the necessity of the hard work of reasoning, it allows differing thoughts to be pigeonholed as “talking points” and then dismissed altogether, it allows the person expressing them to be dismissed as at best a lesser grade of human whose views need not be considered at all, and it makes society just a little worse to live in.