Do you just read what they say they’re going to do? Because Rand’s Howard experience was so painfully bad that even I felt sorry for him, and I hate almost every political belief the Paul family has ever espoused. There was absolutely nothing politically adept or exciting about that day.
There will always be a “conservative” party because there are conservative people. Its like people who feel a need to portray themselves as hard-headed realists. People who respond positively to the very word “austerity”. Slap that word on any policy, no matter how stupid, and you’ve half-way got them sold. They shove aside anything they can’t understand, regardless of the evidence, on the basis of “common sense” and “gut feelings”. Of course, the only real difference between a “gut feeling” and “feminine intuition” is testosterone poisoning.
Like fathers who believe that the best thing they can do for their sons is to “toughen them up”. Give them the truth, they demand intellectual rigor, proof, evidence. Give them proof and evidence, they deride it as somehow effete and intellectual.
And so long as conservatism accepts the necessity for change and only demands care and prudence in how it is brought about, they are valuable and worthy. But since the inmates took over the asylum, the conservatives are banished from the Teapublican Party, it is in the hands of reactionaries. It is one thing to stand athwart of progress and demand it to stop, that isn’t really very reasonable, but its not out and out nuts. Demanding that the clock run backwards, that’s nuts.
Right about here is where Adaher will rush up and grab the mike and say “'luc, I’m a let you finish, but…”
Reacting to events in a timely manner has never been the President’s strong suit. After all, they knew where bin Laden was for months before taking him out. Good thing bin Laden was tired of moving from place to place or he’d still be around.
but planning a war? Obama proved in Libya that he’ll do that happily.
And he’s said clearly that Iran’s development of nukes would be a redline. You don’t think he’s lying, do you?
If you weren’t a dishonest person, you might have said, *suspected *in that sentence. And you might have mentioned that it was carefully planned.
In adaher’s world, every success is a miserable failure. I suspect that means his miserable failures to argue his points are in his eyes, great success!
Yeah, the way he moved in all those ground troops, and demanded that the coalition not do anything at all. *No, adaher, the central message of Buddhism isn’t, “every man for himself”. That’s a mistake. *
And what would you have him do?
What kind of a question is that to his stating that Iran’s development of nukes is a redline?
On Iran policy, I favor the President doing exactly what he’s doing right now: sabotaging their program covertly, supporting sanctions, and if it comes to that, bombing them.
Is that what that sound is? I thought he was doing something else entirely.
Well, that’s 'cause drew didn’t mention the angry teeth-grinding little grumble after each rake-whap.
Though in retrospect, even that might not be indicative.
So here’s some fun with numbers, using both this source and historic election results.
The relative Democratic youth advantage in Presidential elections (the amount that the youth vote for the Democratic candidate outperformed the general results) has been
1976 D+7
1980 R+8
1984 R+1
1988 D+3
1992 D+1
1996 D+10
2000 D+2
2004 D+7
2008 D+34
2012 D+23
Yes, Reagan did better with youth voters than he did with voters in general but otherwise there has been a historic slight Democratic lean among youth voters. Nothing like these last two cycles and Obama’s regression towards the mean was not so impressive. Will there be further regression to the mean with different set of candidates? Maybe, maybe not. But the linked article also makes the following point:
Reagan’s gaining self identification among a group of youth 30 years ago has reaped benefits for the GOP for several decades as that cohort aged out of youth, and still does as that group still votes. The lean towards Obama was much larger. Will that stick and generalize to future Democratic candidates overall? It seems rational to assume that such is at least probable.
Libertarians are so much fun when they try to justify…well, anything they believe in with any argument other than “Fuck you, Jack. I got mine.”
Officially sanctioned Republican study on how the GOP is doing with young people: it is a “dismal present situation.”
So happy adaher can find the silver lining! Things can only go up from here! It’s always darkest… right before the light totally goes out!
“If it comes to that” contradicts “doing right now.” Obama is not “right now” bombing Iran “if it comes to that.” The mixture of time tenses could only be parsed by a time-traveller… And if you were a time-traveller, your predictions would be more accurate…
As for bombing, what kind? The sites are pretty well hardened. Would anything other than a nuclear first strike really do the job? I suppose we could knock out their national electric grid: that might (or might not) interfere with their Uranium enrichment program. Is it a good idea? Is enriching Uranium a meaningful cause for an act of war?
adaher here’s another take on that college Republican report. (I was trying to one with as positive of a spin on it as possible.)
Reagan’s success was “the big tent.” The current approach of many in the party, labelling anyone who does not agree completely with all of the farthest Right positions as a RINO, leaves them with pup tent at best, and it drives youth and heck, many middle aged folk, Latinos, and many others, who might otherwise agree with many of their positions, away. Rural White older males, even won overwhelmingly, is not enough to win a national election if you drive everyone else to the other side.
OMG GUYS, THIS IS A DISASTER. If the Democrats lose the dissatisfied French youth vote, we could be in some SERIOUS shit!!!
RELATED POINT: How do we get all the GOP malcontents to make like the French youth and undertake an imminent mass exodus to Somalia???
The youth vote changes, as Dseid’s source shows. Obama’s candidacies drew an unusual coalition for Democrats. Given how the midterms and other off-year elections went, it seems likely that this coalition will not stick together for another candidate.
The most recent election, in which Mark Sanford won, post-election analysts said, “Oh well, it’s a Republican district”. True enough, but pre-election the key was thought to be African-American turnout. The turnout didn’t happen because Obama wasn’t on the ballot. It also didn’t happen in Virginia or New Jersey in 2009, didn’t happen in Massachusetts in 2009(and likely won’t happen this month in MA either). And it sure as heck didn’t happen in 2010.
As a matter of fact, youth and African-American turnout was horrible in 2010.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20021551-503544.html
The share of the voters who were young was HALF what it was with Obama not on the ballot, African-Americans turned out at 10% of the population instead of 13% in 2008. Is there any particular reason to believe that 2014, or even 2016, will be any different?
Without Obama, the coalition is apathetic.
Funny as all hell;
CNN article, Republican chairman saying the party is ‘open for repairs’ in response to McCain’s comments.
First comment: “What is the point of voting for the Republicans when they ignored their entire Conservative base in the last election.”
:eek:
:smack:
Ladies and Gentlemen, that is some weapons grade Derp.
Yes, French youth angry about mounting debt and underfunded pension liabilities will be dying to come to America, where those issues don’t exist.
It’s a lot worse in France, where they tax rich people at 75% and still can’t balance their budget.
They haven’t actually taxed anyone at that rate yet. It was introduced for the 2013 fiscal year as part of the government’s new austerity program. Before that, France’s highest marginal rate was 44%.
Point is, given our debt ratio and tax burden, plus our very high defense spending, we can fix our deficit problem a lot easier than France or most other Western countries can. They already tax as much as they can, are heavily in debt, and don’t spend enough on defense to be able to get significant savings there.
If it came down to an emergency, where people just stopped lending to us, we could fix our budget overnight simply by raising taxes to European levels and cutting defense down to European levels. Most EU countries have no plausible path to solvency in the near term. If things go tits up over there, we’ll see mass immigration from there again.
France spends 2.3% of GDP on defense. Less than us, but good enough for sixth in the world in absolute terms. As far as debt ratio goes, their debt is 10% less of GDP than ours.