There should have been much more grousing about it in my opinion. But Williams sounds like an idiot and there’s no reason anybody should care what he has to say about the subject.
At this point he’s just a harmless singer. But in 2012…
Because he’s hurting my position by promoting it out of partisanship and ignorance. He’s handing ammo to the idiots who would try to tar me with the same brush.
In other words: “Get off my side, Williams!”
Hillbilliesare funny!
With apologies to Waylon and Willie:
Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be presidents,
Don’t let 'em give speeches or ride limousines,
Let 'em be skinheads or klansmen or queens,
Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be presidents,
'Cause they’ll make up dumb rules and they’ll turn into fools,
Even with a country they love.
[Peter Griffin] And now Conway Twitty [/Peter Griffin]
Hank Williams Jr. also is against President Obama addressing school children, but mainly because he doesn’t like schools.
Sure there was. It’s what led to Maryland, and some other states I don’t know right off, passing legislation saying that if 270 electors’ worth of states pass similar legislation, they’ll have their electors vote for whoever won the national popular vote. If enough states pass it, the electoral college is dead.
Hank’s music sucks anyway. I can still like Hank Williams Sr., right?
Inquiring minds want to know what Charlie Daniels has to say about it.
Finally, a GOPer can play songs at his various campaign stuff and not receive a ‘Cease and Desist’ letter from an angry musician.
-Joe
Hank Williams statement, along with any comment made by **any **“celebrity” rates a who gives a rats ass what they think response
After the 2000 election, Hillary Clinton did the same thing. She called for an end to the electoral college:
Whether you agree with her or not, at least she had her facts straight.
What’s your point, Crafter_Man? Hoping to catch us in some sort of hypocrisy? After all, every liberal loves Hillary Clinton…
God, you’re stupid.
And with zero percent of the vote in, we’re ready to call it. Hank Williams Jr. has lost to his unnamed opponent. Unnamed Opponent is your senator-elect from Tennessee!
Exactly - there are reasoned arguments on both sides, for and against having an electoral college. She chose to make an argument against but didn’t have her head up her ass in the process, unlike Mr. Williams.
Well, if we didn’t have the electoral college then Gore would have been President in 2000, probably leading to a highly contentious 2004 election. Should Gore have won again, it is not improbable that in 2008 Lieberman would have been the Democratic nominee or that the Republicans would have won the election.
Obama may not have been the president.
However, I doubt that’s what Hank meant.
As others have pointed out, Williams is not being criticized simply for complaining about the Electoral College. He’s being criticized for:
a) being a hypocrite. If Bush would have lost without the EC, why wasn’t Williams concerned about it back then.
b) being factually incorrect. Without the EC, Obama still would have won comfortably, unless the system that replaced the EC consisted of “The only votes that will be counted are the votes of morons like Hank Williams, Jr.”
Personally, i think there are problems with the EC, and i’m happy to discuss them at any time—after a Bush victory, or after an Obama victory—because the problems are structural and fundamental, and are not related to who happens to win any particular election.
Everyone here is saying how Williams is stupid, because Obama garnered a majority of the popular vote. That’s a valid point; however, maybe Bocephus is thinking that without Lincoln as president, Obama never would have had the opportunity to run. (This is the man who wrote the song “If the south woulda won,” after all.) So maybe he’s looking back to the election of 1860, when Lincoln won with less than 40% of the popular vote.
Okay. Probably not.
Almost certainly that’s true.
But there is a way to fanwank his statements into something approaching truth.
Consider this: without the Electoral College, the pattern and method of campaigning would change dramatically. The primary system would be virtually unrecognizeable. Obama’s careful study of the primary system; his grass-roots organization that made such stellar use of the caucus rules in states that had them; all of that would be different.
Now, it’s anyone’s guess how a first-term junior senator from Illinois would have fared under that system, but I think it’s at least a matter for debate that he would not be President today if the Electoral College didn’t exist.
[/fanwank]
Myself, I prefer to stick with: “Sex clubs should be outlawed! After all, if jack Ryan hadn’t tried to fuck his wife in front of onlookers, Obama wouldn’t be President today!”