Provided Obama still pulls it off, I’m pretty OK with the idea of perhaps one less R senator, or a few less R congressmen. Much better to have the money-men throwing sacks of bills down the Romney rat hole.
It may be a wash though, because Obama’s debate v.1 performance may have pulled D money from down-ticket races to shore up the top guy.
I think the Democrats got most of the mileage out of this issue. People were aware that Romney was refusing to release his returns and they were aware that Romney is very rich. The actual returns most likely wouldn’t have shown anything more than the use of specific tax loopholes.
Not an issue with traction. Many voters see the country divided into “us” and “them” - and the people these policies were directed against were “them”. So this wasn’t an issue that was going to swing voters from one party to the other.
An overplayed issue in my opinion. Yes, Romney was vague and flip-flopped. But I don’t think he set new records in either category as his opponents claim. He just ran a generic campaign because he thought this was his best strategy.
Like you said, ideology has won over doctrine. Religious conservatives have become more of a political faction than a religious one. Conservative Protestants, Conservative Catholics, Conservative Jews, and Conservative Mormons have all been working together to advance their conservative beliefs while agreeing to disagree on their religious differences.
We’ll only have this debate once a Republican gets in and continues some of the more odious policies that Obama has introduced and or entrenched (ie the kill list).
Right, but a candidate saying point blank many of the people voting for him and his opponent are lazy and don’t take responsibility for their lives, saying later he stands by that remark, and Obama’s advantage was undone by him ‘looking sleepy’ in one debate.
Historians won’t be able to explain that.
Ummm…we are calling that the “disposition matrix” now. Didn’t you get the memo?
Obama came into office with a massive mandate, overwhelming control of Congress…
Yeah, I don’t remember it quite like this, either.
Of course they will. A whole lot of people only knew Romney through the negative ads that Obama ran. I think a lot of people were surprised to see that Romney did not have horns on his head. I think they were more surprised to see Romney wipe the floor with a sitting president.
Except for that niggling little fact that Harry Reid was right and that Romney paid no federal income taxes for 10 years. Well, he was kind of wrong. Romney paid as close to zero as possible without actually being zero, not for 10 years, but for 15, using a loophole that was closed only shortly after he took advantage of it.
Bloomberg broke the story a week ago. The mainstream media has ignored it.
By historians I mean objective people. Of course partisan hacks already have an explanation.
First, I ever since we’ve had a black president, I’m not sure we’re allowed to use the word ‘niggling’.
Second, saying the he ‘took advantage’ of a ‘loophole’ implies that he did something illegal, or at least unethical.
It’s not a ‘loophole’, it’s the way the law was written, and if it works in someone’s favor then oh well.
If there were a ‘loophole’ that allowed me to pay no federal taxes, you can bet your ass I’d ‘take advantage’ of it.
This is a non-issue for me.
No…partisan hacks are the ones that are confused about how Obama could lose so much ground in one poor debate. Look in the mirror. You can’t seem to imagine how much it benefits a relative unknown to stand face-to-face with the president and seem so much stronger than the president?
So where were they in 1992, 1996, and 2008?
Most people are not hard line partisans. That’s just the empirical truth; if the majority of people agreed with the Republican Party, Romney would be winning a 1984-level landslide, not just having a chance.
And of course it works the other way; it’s certainly impossible the majority of people agree with the Democratic party, or else it’d be an Obama landslide, and George W. Bush would never have been President.
Lots and lots of people can be swayed. The evidence would suggest the partisan base is more like 35% of the electorate, since that appears to be about as badly as you can, in theory, do. It is indisputably the case that Presidents like Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan can convince way more than half the people that they are the right man for the job.
I think yorick73 is at least somewhat right about the debate. It will be small enough comfort if Romney ends up losing, but I think he’s right.
If the economy is terrible, people will vote against the incumbent. It’s just too easy for the challenger to say “Look how much your life sucks, do you really want this guy to stay in charge?” Look what happened to Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. If the Republicans were running a charismatic inspirational leader, Obama would be toast. The fact that he’s competitive, let alone the slight favorite is astonishing.
While I agree with your general point, I don’t think it’s necessarily true, given that Democratic voters are simply less likely to vote. If everyone who agreed with the Democratic platform registered and voted, there would be Democratic landslides in many places that are purple now.
This is true. It’s about voter turnout to a large extent, hence all the Republican voter suppression tactics.
The LDS Church is no more a cult than mainstream Christianity. I was with you until you made this blatant bigoted argument.
cult/kəlt/
Noun:
A system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.
A relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.
Go by the first definition all monotheistic religions are cults. Go by the second definition the LDS church may have started out cult-like in the 1880s but is certainly not anymore.
Next tired/blatantly erroneous criticism of one or both of the candidates please.
The blatant falsities are what makes this election so close. Independents like me don’t want to vote for either candidate because we can’t stand either side and their stupidity, so there is no telling how us undecideds will vote. I blame ugly partisans politicos which basically shot themselves in the foot if they expected to earn the independent vote in any significant percentage.
It was unethical in the sense that it was unforseen that it would be used in that manner, and when discovered, was legally shut down.
“Thus, the specifics of Romney’s trust wouldn’t have passed legal muster if it had been set up 13 months later, he said.”
But that’s not exactly the point. The larger point that Democrats are trying to make is that the Republican tax policies that Mitt Romney not only avails himself of, but supports legislatively, are designed to only benefit the ultra-wealthy at the expense of the rest of the country, and in this case, including the charities these trusts were allegedly set up to support.
Ordinary taxpayers don’t have access to these kinds of “loopholes” that Republicans have designed for their wealthy benefactors’ sole use, and that’s not only unethical and immoral, but it’s decidedly unpatriotic.
Not really. Actually, More Americans Say They Are Better Off Now Than Last Year.
Except that I don’t think that the poster made the bigoted argument… I think he or she was saying that many Protestants and other Christians view Mormonism as a cult, not that the poster personally did.
And that is true, whether you like it or not or agree with it or not.
The poster can correct me if I am mistaken…
Thanks for posting that. As I read it, Harry Reid probably got his information from someone within the LDS church familiar with Romney’s donations. I could see that a honestly tithing Mormon would be especially offended at someone using the their obligation in this way.