I know these guys all seem to have such charming and interesting differences. But once a GOP nominee is chosen, don’t you think they will be put through the sausage factory and become the generic GOP product that discerning people all know is coming? Won’t any GOP candidate follow Scott Walker’s example?
It is simple to explain. Walker ran on one thing, and once in office sprang his nutjob agenda on the populace from the top down. People were taken by surprise, it was soooo not what they had voted for. Remind you of anyone? (ok, Americans have a short attention span so I’ll give you a hint: Iraq) People were very, very, Very upset.
Do we Americans really want to spin the roulette wheel of woe one more time? Do we want to let their PR analysts figure out what you react to so you’ll vote for them? What are we going to get next time? Guantana-Ohio? Gays classified as Mexicans and deported? Seriously, you simply do.not.know.what.it.will.be., bad excepting.
The GOP candidates in fact share an extremely narrow base. If they succeed in capturing the government again, they will hijack it to extremely narrow ends, again.
But at least you had the courage to open a thread here bashing Republicans in general, rather than just focusing on specifics. It’s about time someone did that!
John, are you saying the GOP’s whole MO is something other than a push-marketing campaign? Take Mitt ‘corporations are people’ Romney. Is corporate personhood something voters are really clamoring for, or is that something the very wealthy want for their own benefit and seek to impose on our nation by any means necessary?
I’m not sure what point you are making with your links, please explain. Is Christie still popular? Because he resembles Walker with his teacher-hating (‘teachers are parasites’) and union bashing. Governor John Kasich of Ohio is another example. He tried un-doing the unions there and his popularity dropped like a meteor. Apparently he is content to be a kamakaze office-holder in attempting to impose a GOP agenda the population doesn’t want. Just like Walker, and Christie. And Bush, and the GOP’s SCOTUS appointments. If elected, how long until the next GOP nominee picks up this or some other cause du jour, something entirely un-coupled from their campaign platform?
My point is too specific to be dismissed as general GOP bashing.
Yes. It’s absurd to think you can reduce the actions of hundreds, if not thousands, of politicians to a single catch phrase.
Exactly how much of Romney’s campaign is devoted to that issue? I’ll tell you how much-- a lot less than the Occupy movement is making it a huge issue. And anyone who thinks that abolishing corporate personhood is a good idea has only the most superficial understanding of the issue.
You asked if they were all the same. They aren’t. And the folks in NJ (not generally a Republican state) seem pretty happy with Christie.
Yes, Christie hates teachers. :rolleyes:
Your point, such at it is, has no specificity other than to claim, without any proof, that all Republicans are just like Scott Walker.
Perhaps Try2B Comprehensive should have titled the OP:
*Explain why [del]any GOP candidates[/del] the current set of GOP candidates currently running for the 2012 nomination excepting a small number of low-polling candidates who haven’t seemed to pander *that *much (e.g. Huntsman) nor attributing the characteristics of the very fringe and wacko candidates to the GOP at large and of course excepting Ron Paul whose positions have been fairly constant over time and possibly including Sarah Palin because it’s been over two hours and her name has not come up *are different from Scott Walker?
…
Basically, the question is one of comparing two models. This is not to place a value judgment on either, and of course there are exceptions and nuances that are too large or subtle to cover in one post.
A lot of people are less enthusiastic about President Obama because he (subjectively appeared to) campaigned further to the left than his actual presidency. No one could reasonably expect him to enact the entire perceived agenda, and the uniform, hyper-partisan bloc of NO! on the right thwarted many actions, but he has seemed to move to more of a centrist position.
In comparison, Governor Walker seemed to campaign towards the center, but when elected he was able to capitalize on the friendly state congress and enacted legislation that (subjectively appeared to be) was much further to the right than the electorate expected.
Had Obama had a majority in both houses and a less uniform opposition base (e.g. the Senate would not need a supermajority to pass a law against kicking puppies), would he have governed further to the left than he has? I think the answer is yes (e.g. we’d actually have had a shot at a more reasonable overhaul of the health system). Would he have governed as far over to the left as Governor Walker appears to have shifted to the right? I don’t see any evidence to that effect, particularly in areas where congress has little impact.
What about a Gingrich or a Santorum? If they win the nomination, will they move to the center to try and swing the independent vote? If elected, will they continue to play to the middle or shift to the right? IMHO, they’d shift to the right hard. There have been more opportunist candidates than in years past, and the level of pandering and pushing each other for not being right wing enough is severe. I think the current crop of candidates will put the I’m so right wing! motif into action once elected despite how they moved center-ward during the general.
You’d have to produce his voting record and demonstrate that he hasn’t voted strictly along party lines. If he has, he might as well be John Boehner Himself enacting the Destroy America to Defeat Obama strategy. But I can’t say I know for sure yet- you may have produced a counter-example.
Now think back to how we got involved in Iraq. Republican president, then holy shit! it’s a fucking EMERGENCY!!! We have to do something batshit crazy! And it worked.
Don’t you see the pattern? Why can’t GOP candidates propose sane solutions to problems instead of this dictatorial method of declaring a state of emergency as an excuse for some kind of scorched earth policy?
This behavior creeps me out, and I believe GOP candidates all want to enact it on the national, and therefore global, stage. They have done it before. And they’ve been engineering the national fiscal state of emergency since at least Reagan after all, see starve the beast.
We’ll regret electing them like Wisconsin regrets Walker. Let’s not elect them anymore.
Like President Obama, Scott Walker won an election by having a majority decide that they wish to have him in control for the next 4 years. If, after 4 years, the majority decide they do not agree with what has been done, they might be out of that job.
Whoever you support, may lose, and you have to suck it up until the next election. I have been bitterly disappointed by election results in the past, but find that in the big scheme of things - its
mostly one dickhead winning over another dickhead.
Seriously - who in their right mind wants to be a politician and go through what they go through to be a supposed leader.
On the whole, I’d say you have to live with your electoral choice. But when the winner governs so radically different than what he campaigned for, then a recall is appropriate.
Like if someone campaigns against warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detentions, Presidential signing statements, using the state secrets privilege and the launching of military expeditions without Congressional approval and then does all of those things once in office?
Except he has used them to America’s advantage. In comparison to the dismal record on the economy, President Obama has had major successes on foreign policy.
Generally we can’t stereotype various demographics. I’ve just realized GOP agents may be one group we can stereotype. I seem to remember a list of policy positions a GOP hopeful candidate had to promise to adhere to if they were to receive campaign money from the party. I can’t find it right now but this demonstrates that to a large degree, they think alike. That is stereotypical, yes, but also true.
His campaign may not be devoted to the issue, but apparently it is what he thinks. Which puts him out of step with what I estimate to be a comfortable majority of Americans.
Ok, happy with Christie. I didn’t know. And, see below.
This is a little weasely, but you’ve been pretty reasonable so fuggedaboutit. Christie attacks teachers as part of his anti-union GOP requirements. It may not be personal. Probably none of it is, he’s a politician.
All right, 1 point John Mace. I have asked the mods to change the title to ‘Explain How Any GOP Candidates Are More Sincere Than Scott Walker’. I think GOP candidates and especially office-holders are bound by a set of requirements that is consistent with the GOP message machine, which results in insincerity, one glaring example of which is Scott Walker. But I’m forced to confront the fact that my language was unclear for being overly broad, though I think you’ll agree my edit is consistent with my OP and subsequent comments.
I simply can’t be the only one who has noticed what I’m trying to point out, regardless of whether I can choose the precise label for it. Here are a few points to make my case.
First, take a look at the colossal flip-flop of the Bush Administration. From here:
Riiiight. People were willing to vote for Bush as long as he ran on a position diametrically opposed to what came to define his presidency. If he had run on what he intended to do, he would never have won.
But the GOP has changed, right? They’ve rejected their big-spending, deficit-ballooning ways, haven’t they? No, actually the demographic that put Bush in the White House are the same people who are now stuffing Congress with Tea Party candidates. From The Christian Right in Disguise?
But they have changed since those days, right? They aren’t voting for who they vote for because they want to impose a religious agenda on America, right? It’s jobs jobs jobs and the deficit crisis. From the same article, look what happens when you ask a Tea Party candidate about the usual evangelical social issues:
As it turns out, the article I am quoting was not just engaging in idle speculation. Didn’t the GOP in 2010 run on jobs jobs jobs? Sure they did, my memory isn’t that bad. But once elected, what happened to that idea? It has been one anti-abortion bill after another, mixed in with affirmations of ‘In God We Trust’ and similar bs. Programs that actually would create jobs have actually been heartily rejected, take for example the high-speed rail proposals in Florida and Wisconsin. They don’t want jobs, not really. They want… well it isn’t entirely clear, but 1st Amendment-defying evangelical goals are part of it, no matter how insincerely they attempt to cover it up.
Here is an article verifying what I’m claiming about Scott Walker, namely that he ran on one thing, then surprise! pulled a huge switcheroo on his constituents:
But you just keep denying it, Walker, mmmkay? Just repeat to yourself, GOP voters are credulous and easily led. They will believe anything. GOP voters are credulous and easily led. They will believe anything. There you go, buddy.
And finally, and article from Salon.com called The Anti-Obama Cult just today exploring the gobbledegook spewing from the mouths of all the major presidential candidates:
They are portrayed as ‘true believers’, yes, but more importantly they are portrayed as all delivering the same insincere rhetoric. The pattern of ‘run on one thing, do another’ is clear as can be. If you hate government intrusion in your life in favor of ‘liberty’, why would you vote for people who intend to impose their social agenda on you? They are using phrases like ‘small government’ and ‘liberty’ in an Orwellian way. Vote them in and you won’t get those things. At all. They’ll become true believers in something else as soon as they are elected, but they know you won’t vote for them if they are honest about that. Just like Scott Walker.
So, GOP candidates (not the voters necessarily, the point is they’re getting fooled) are insincere, and we can expect a Walker-esque switcheroo from any that get elected. We won’t find out what they intend to do until it is too late.
Even though Iran is not building a nuclear bomb! All the GOP candidates with possibly the exception of Paul seem to advocate going to war with Iran over their nuclear program. Hmmm, attack a country that is not (yet at least) building a nuclear weapon… where o where have I heard that before?