Can’t Republican electoral success just be attrubuted to the same fear mongering that makes otherwise sane people live in terror of Juan del PhonyVotera?
True, I suppose he could be such a dullard that he’s amazed by the common.
Seems kind of insulting, but ok.
What does that have to do with your predictions? You were wrong as late as 1:06 PM, a point extremely close to election day and a point at which the supposed folly you now say caused the loss was evident.
Why was your prediction wrong?
OK, let’s assume it was.
So what?
How does that change the election results? How does that change anything?
Who cares? As all the stockbrokers will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future success.
No. To implications that it’s unusual or worthy of amazement that people are voting in large numbers for Republicans, I point out that BobLibDem’s confident prediction that people won’t continue to elect Republicans is unlikely to be correct.
When did the discussion shift to a claim that non-citizen voting is a moral wrong?
Certainly I don’t claim this. I claim non-citizens voting a poor choice for public policy, and a perfectly defensible limitation to impose.
To your shame, you have not.
I don’t agree that the slightest taint of shame should accrue to a refusal to accept a loaded, inaccurate word that essentially concedes the opposition argument.
The Left excels at carrying signs, occupying parks and failing to observe basic hygiene principles, and substituting attempts to shame their opposition into compliance instead of debating the issues openly and honestly.
If the United States were inflicted with the magic curse from the Jim Carrey movie, “Liar, Liar,” in which the habitually untruthful protagonist is forced to speak only the truth for a day, politicians of all stripes would suffer…but Democrats more than Republicans, because Democrats hold all sorts of positions that they don’t dare reveal because the electorate won’t like them. They don’t abandon these positions, of course – they work towards enacting them without admitting it. They know better than the ignorant voters, after all.
This thread amply displays the disdain the Left has for the voter. And if there is any validity in summoning the finger of shame in the midst of issues that should be debated instead as matters of public policy, it would be for this utter disdain that you really feel at the prospect of actually letting the stupid cretinous voters have their way on anything. They favor photo ID, sure, but we all know they’re morons and can’t be trusted.
Right?
“Sought rhetorical advantage”? I would describe that as just using some (in his mind) well deserved profanity. It’s hard for me to see how leaving that statement pass unchallenged would somehow cause some future argument of his to carry greater weight, or anything along those lines. (And of course it’s worth pointing out that significantly more voters voted for Democrats in congressional races than Republicans.)
But whatever.
What I remember most clearly from 30-odd pages ago or whatever is a claim I made that there would be a bell curve, with a fair number of voters somewhat inconvenienced by new voter ID laws, a smaller number with more serious obstacles, and even fewer with nearly-intractable obstacles, which I think you agreed with. As far as I know, we’re still missing an after-the-fact study in which someone actually really analyzes the effects of one of these voter ID laws, which is what we really need in order to be able to speak authoritatively about what the effects were. But in any case, I don’t think you have the grounds to be able to authoritatively state
how could you know that?
There’s also an interesting semantic discussion to be had… if there’s a hardworking single mom who holds down two jobs, and would have voted in the election, but the new voter ID laws would have required her to take an afternoon off of doing one of the other super-important things she does, and she ends up not doing so, although she certainly COULD have if there were literally a gun to her head and she was forced to prioritize things differently… is it fair to describe the voter ID law as having “prevented” her from voting? It’s a difficult line to draw, imho.
Oh, and
Really? The 1960’s called, they want their stereotypes back.
Well, aside from you acknowledging the possibility that Republican success and voter fraud concerns are based on fear and not reason, I was vaguely hoping the former could be recognized as a useless tangent and be dropped.
Because in debate, if my opponent makes a gratuitous assertion, I am permitted to equally gratuitously deny it. Why is the claim that we ARE preventing “scores of thousands of citizens from voting,” allowed to pass unchallenged, when you yourself agree that we lack any after-the-fact study showing this?
And why do we lack such a study? It’s been seven years since Indiana’s 2005 law was upheld by the Supreme Court – ten years since it was in place.
No, it’s not fair. But even if it’s simply a close question, why does that close question get resolved against me?
Occupy Wall Street was not a case study for personal cleanliness.
I agree that an absolute statement of that sort deserves challenging. But the way to challenge it is to ask for a cite, or to sarcastically point out the over-certainty with which it’s being made, or something along those lines, not to make an equally unsupported claim in the other direction.
That is an excellent question… beats me.
Hang on, are you SERIOUSLY making the claim that liberals, on average, have worse personal hygiene than conservatives? Really? Seriously? I mean, really?
I suggest it’s since you’re claiming voter fraud is a problem, despite its rarity. For the sake of the principle of preventing voter fraud, you seem indifferent to the unfair result visited on the single mom. She doesn’t even have to be one of “scores of thousands”. If she’s even one of scores, the problem created is greater than the problem solved.
Hence, you are a bad citizen.
That really ought to be beneath you, Counselor. Do work on that, won’t you?
Why would it be beneath him? It would be beneath someone possessing rational integrity, I admit, but why Bricker?
Serious question - why does he get the presumption of being better than he demonstrates?
Why would a mass demonstration camped in a park for weeks be a case study for personal cleanliness?
It shouldn’t. I never said it should. Perhaps you should direct this question to MaxThe Vool, who suggested that my claim of a lack of personal cleanliness among Occupy protesters was an outdated, 1960s characterization of the Left.
No. I’m pointing out that in that particular case, personal hygiene standards suffered.\
You quoted me thusly:
But your ellipses hide the specificity of my actual words:
Note the lack of a comma between ‘parks’ and ‘and failing to observe.’ This construction shows that the latter is not a separate critique, but to be read together with the occupying of parks to form one accusation.
Too rational a response. Better to point out that SOLDIERS on THE FRONT LINES of IRAQ might have reduced hygiene standards, and then ask Bricker why he hates the troops.