Democrats are on the whole weak, cowardly, and passive. Unwilling to point out the obvious evil and stupidity of the Republicans, and unwilling to stand up to them. I’m not a Democrat.
But you are trying to put into power people who are; the consequences are the same regardless of your motivations.
No, it’s an example of the kind of behavior I was point out above. It’s very foolish for anyone gay to vote Republican regardless of their reasons; that’s like a black man voting for the KKK. And, the reasons you all give are bad ones in themselves since the Republicans are anything but fiscally prudent and have no interest in small government.
No; it’s simply that the Republicans are both nasty and incompetent; admitting that is admitting reality, not “tunnel vision”. Regardless of how politically incorrect it is to admit it.
Yeah, but they lost the election. And they’ve alienated huge swathes of people who would probably otherwise support them; Hispanics for example. More to the point; the OP was pointing out all the people who should be pissed of; that doesn’t mean that they actually are.
My wife is from The South (you missed the capitalization) and somewhat religious. She’s also quite open-minded in most ways, yeah, like, kinda liberal. If she were to read this thread, she would consider your comment insulting. But she would never stoop to such a level as you have. “It’s ok if he believes that. Well, bless his heart …”
You aren’t a Democrat? Why? Wouldn’t they have you, either?
Not every Republican believes the same things. I don’t know what your political party is, or how you would identify yourself, but I have a feeling the party would have 1 member.
You’ve written some pretty lame things, but this has to rank right up there with some of the most pathetic drivel I’ve read from you yet. Because YOU SAY SO, any gay person that votes Republican is like a black man voting for the KKK. Do you realize how ignorant you sound? Apparently not, or you wouldn’t have typed that ridiculous statement.
As to your other statement “republicans are anything but fiscally prudent and have no interest in small government”, I would in general agree with you; however, given the choice of our two-party system that we are unfortunately saddled with in this country, are you suggesting there isn’t a choice between the two parties when it comes to these two issues? I’m amazed at the blind haze you view the world in.
Wow. Your “reality” is spooky. Why do you get up in the morning? This is a free country, you know. You are free to leave it. It’s not politically incorrect to admit it. It’s just flat wrong. But you know that already. If you actually believe what you type, you must be a hoot at parties. I think you like to get a rise out of people. No one over the age of 10 actually believes that everything is in absolutes. Except apparently you.
No worries. I’ll let my gay friends know you disapprove of their voting. I’m sure they’ll re-think it and agree that it’s like a black man voting for the KKK. :dubious: Of course, this puts my black gay friend in quite a pickle, doesn’t it? Since he has money and votes in favor of his wallet, he must be true evil. Maybe a better analogy would be he’s like a jew who would vote for Hitler! :rolleyes:
What, you’ve never heard of people voting against their best interests?
Way I see it, the Pubs have formed a majority mentality in a country that’s increasingly populated by minorities. Their traditional base is white, fat, male, rich, complacent, jingoistic and rather than adapt, they’re still trying to sell their line of swill to people who are none of those (well, maybe “fat” cuts across political lines these days). Their three chief electoral weapons are 1) appealing to their shrinking but still-sizable base 2)appealing to those foolish or greedy members of the opposition who aspire (inaccurately) to being rich and complacent someday 3) appealing to uninformed people who don’t understand the somewhat more complex and subtle worldview that the Democrats offer, as opposed to the dumbed-down broad-brush framing of concepts that the Pubbies put forth.
I wouldn’t have them. I don’t like or respect them, why would i join them? They are better than the Republicans, but that’s a very low hurdle.
Irrelevant since they are a single party, well known for party discipline. You vote for a Republican, you are voting for the Republican Party; and if you disagree with the Party you are voting against your own interests.
Please. It’s obvious, and hardly unique to me. Most of the people I know think that homosexuals who vote for Republicans are stupid, lunatics, or blinded by greed to the point of irrationality. The Republican Party is consistently and loudly the fanatic enemy of homosexuals.
Yes, the Democrats are much better. The Republicans are more spendthrift, more corrupt, more incompetent, more outright irrational when it comes to finances. The economy does better under the Democrats, the population in general prospers more, less money is wasted under them.
“America love it or leave it”. :rolleyes: Now there’s a right wing cliche.
I agree with you and SFP. It’s actually pretty funny most of the time–you just have to remind yourself that it’s a very left-leaning message board that likes to congratulate itself for this attribute, assuming this is the way all right thinkers think. It remind me of the Pauline Kael quote (perhaps apocryphal) regarding Nixon’s election to the presidency, how she couldn’t believe he was elected, since no one she knew had voted for him.
That’s this board, for the most part. Someone could post this OP with a straight face and there’s not a almost-unanimous response of, “Dude, that is ridiculous overstatement.” The very fact that Republicans ARE elected wasn’t a hint to the OP that his premise is biased nonsense. That’s just “people voting against their own interests.” It’s absolutely self-evidently an asinine assertion that will be for the most part applauded on this board (or be viewed as just a minor step into hyperbole, understandable really). It’s message board idiocy, remind yourself, as much as this board likes to dress up their pronouncements as THE TRUTH.
This message board is your idea of a place that is “very left leaning”? It’s at most moderate left; more center really.
And, like it or not the Republicans are both broadly factually incorrect, openly motivated by hate towards much of the population, and demonstrably incompetent. No amount of insisting that that can’t be true will make it so.
I don’t know if I totally misread the OP or that my personal feelings are keeping me from seeing something…
But in this case, tunnel vision my ass!
I find it funny that those attacking the OP are taking the OP comments as though they were directed at them personally, "I’m a Republican and I’m nothing like that!
Why did I read it as a description of the GOP leadership and their current tactics? Again, my perception matches the OP in that the GOP leadership and their tv and radio talking heads appear to me to be only saying no No NO! about everything and are quite willing to alienate whomever they feel do not match some narrow core beliefs.
I do not read the OP as a direct attack on individual Republican voters (especially not conservative leaning individuals).
So let me ask this: those who countered so strongly, do you support the direction that those in the GOP leadership are taking? Do you agree or disagree that an obstructionist movement is being used by the Republicans within Congress?
Or am I totally off the mark/naive/seeing what I want to see?
If the Republican party really did this, I would vote for it. Both parties spend like there is no tomorrow. Neither party shrinks government. Both mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren. Neither adequately pay for all the spending and neither cuts spending.
Politicians of both ideologies are more concerned with bringing more and more money into their home districts, and don’t care how it affects the country as a whole. None are serious about actually reducing government if it means less money at home. Bad economics trump political suicide.
I don’t know, because it specifically poses a question as to why anyone would vote for them. If that’s not also an indictment of sorts of the people voting for the GOP, I don’t know what is.
You seem to be an example of what I described–it is so self-evident to you that the Republicans are evil, with evil motives, that you are incredulous that anyone would push back. You’re in the right place, brother.
Re: obstructionist tactics, I am okay with them when they obstruct harmful nonsense. I personally would love to see the gears of the Federal government come to a grinding halt. I don’t think that it’s their job to solve every problem, and I think they generally do a horrible job of it, and I include in that assessment the fact that they think that they needn’t actually have money to spend it. I despise this mindset whether it’s Dem or Rep, and I’ll give the Dems the props of acknowledging that at least they don’t pretend to be small government. But I do look for genuine small-government, fiscal conservative candidates, and they tend not to be in the Dem party.
So, yes, I welcome anything that puts a halt to most of this “good stuff” the Obama administration and the Dem Congress are doing or have planned.
I agree with Sparky that there are two conversations going on in this thread—the OP’s initial question and some of the responses to it are coming from different places.
Here’s an area of differing interpretation. The OP asks:
Aside from arguing that there is a subtext, note that if taken at face value there is a difference between asking “why anyone would vote” Republican and asking, after pissing off so many people, how are the Republicans still able to muster “a winning coalition.”
This seems to have little to do with basic conservative political principles and more with current leadership tactics. That is, consider for a moment the Big-Ender party; they want to make it official state policy that eggs are opened big-side first. The country is about split (a rebuttable premise of the OP) on the issue, say 40% big-enders, 40% small-enders, and the rest neutral or undecided. The Big-Ender party puts forward a campaign that arguably (another rebuttable premise) alienates several large groups. Within these large groups, there is no strong correlation between group membership and –endedness. For example, when polled on –endedness, gay people are just as likely to answer ‘big’ as they are ‘small’, just as there is no inherent connection between homosexuality and preference for different fiscal policies.
The question seems to be “now that the Big-Enders have alienated these groups, how is it that their overall vote numbers have not diminished proportionately?” This isn’t asking how anyone could still vote Big-Ender. It’s not even asking how could a gay man still vote for the Big-Ender party after being insulted (insults aside, some people would still want to make big-endedness policy, and would rationally not want a small-ender in office). It’s suggesting that there were potential Big-Ender voters who have been put off voting for them, and asking how the party is still able to garner an ostensible plurality without those votes.
……
Addressing the OP:
Because politics is theatre, and because though it’s better than any alternative, the actual vote count doesn’t actually represent actual, societal-wide tallies. The tactics that alienate so many aren’t necessarily meant to appeal to rationality and reason (those are drawn in by less vitriolic expressions of political philosophy), they’re meant to motivate and entice people to action; to get out the vote. The strategy is courting the notion that the number of people whose passions are enflamed to the point of attending rallies and voting (and, crucially, who would not have done so before) is greater than the number of people who are put off and would not vote for them.
This is exactly what I was alluding to earlier, and the questions you suggest certain posters ask themselves and honestly answer would be genuinely reflective of the truth that obviously can’t be handled.
Suggesting that there is a truth, which has lately been unexamined and cast as an insult, is not the same thing as a non-Republican characterizing themselves as “always right.” To say that is what is being done in a debate is deflective, dishonest, and further obstructionist, and exactly the type of non-answer the citizens in this country have been getting from that side lately.
I think it’s an immaterial distinction, and it simultaneously offers as a given that the Republicans are using unworthy tactics and are pissing off a majority of people. This is a notion that is gospel here on the SDMB, but it’s not in the real world. It leads to the cognitive dissonance reflected in the OP and then in the thread–e.g., the GOP is pissing everybody off, nobody likes them, everybody agrees their tactics are evil (offered after the OP), and yet they’re still getting elected. That does not compute! Uh, no, it doesn’t. I agree.
And then on this board, people will scratch their heads in response to the push-back and offer another version of, “No, no, you’re misunderstanding. Since we all agree that the GOP is deliberately casting aside the best interests of the country, and insulting a majority of the populace in the process, how do we explain their ongoing viability as a political party?” Then we repeat the cycle. See what I mean?
By selling their votes in Congress for earmarks to benefit rural states that receive more in federal spending than they pay in taxes. Red states are parasites that leech off the hard work of blue states. Red state voters like the handouts, so they reelect the guys who bring home the bacon.
This election in Ca it has gotten to the point that I am afraid to vote.
I remember brown as gov and I remember how he did his job as mayor of Oakland and AG.
But I don’t think I can vote for either of the main Rep canidates.
In November I may vote third party. As a way of saying none of the above. Which if prop 14 passes will be that last chance.
