Just to clarify, did you mean to disagree with my statement about their opposition to diversity? Because if so, who was behind Chick fil a appreciation day? CA prop 8? Who puts forward all the stuff about English as the official/only language? Who opposes mosques being built in the south and in Manhattan? Muslim red scare witch hunts? The Southern Strategy? A disposition to xenophobia is imho a primary motivation for an individual to affiliate with the Republicans in the first place.
It would be both bad strategy and a lie to describe the Republican candidates like that. If someone is moral & ethical they aren’t going to be in a position of power within the party that the Republicans have become. They’ve demonstrated their incompetence; and with their anti-government focus, they are in fact dedicated to being incompetent on purpose. Someone who wants government to fail is not going to be a competent government official. The Republicans have also repeatedly demonstrated their total lack of interest in the best interests of either the country or the world. They want to make the world worse, not better, and are generally the cause of problems; never the solution.
This. An honest description of the Republicans is going to be highly insulting, because they really are just that awful.
QFT and as for the item that this will increase costs, the ACA is only partially effective, we will see if the expanded competition will reduce costs, and lets not forget that this was the Republican plan back in the 90’s, this is the last chance for free enterprise to show that they can do a better job regarding health care and the costs of it.
We are paying almost 18% of our GDP in healthcare now, already more than a 3rd than the next developed country with universal health care already in place. To me logic does say that under the current conditions there is a growing percentage of people that would be working already if employers in the USA did not have to pay such high premiums that are a “feature” in the current system.
There are more than two candidates. Go down the list until you find one who isn’t pro-murder, -torture and -kidnapping.
Good luck with that.
This, like most of your posts, is unhelpful hyperbole. Like it or not, the Republicans are part of the political landscape. Demonizing and insulting them isn’t likely to produce constructive dialogue. In fact, rhetoric like yours underscores the problem I articulated at the start of this thread–each side calls the other incompetent, evil, etc. etc. etc., each hiding behind its ideology and treating extremism as if it were some sort of desirable commodity.
You forgot his serial rape of the entire female population of Oklahoma and his deliberate spread of Ebola virus throughout the world. Oh, and he murdered forty-three million Eskimos and Aborigines. He also wiped out eleventy-twelve endangered species and blew up Jupiter.
(Your lunacy aside, what percentage of torturers do you think are repentant?)
Pst. Greenslime. That’s what Der does. Maybe you will enjoy it after a while. I sure do.
QFqualityHyperbole. ETA: To be fair though, Grunman may or may not have been referring to a US politician.
The OP: I dunno, it depends. I mean Palin was truly a lunkhead. Carter had the political sense of an autistic amoeba. And Reagan was a bit of a muppet, wasn’t he?
Obama and McCain’s moral sense was fine, though McCain’s grades weren’t too hot. I don’t doubt Romney’s technical ability but let’s face it, he’s the only person I know of who has gone from anti-abortion, to pro-choice, then back to anti-abortion. Never mind him championing Romneycare before it became Obamacare at a national level. So his moral flexibility and problems with veracity are a little unusual, even for a politician. Hey, at least he’s not a saint, like Jimmy Carter: that was problematic.
“It’s the end of America as we know it.”
I’m gonna count how many times I hear this phrase from now on. Past users:
Sean Hannity
Anne Colter
Glenn Beck
Sarah Palin
As it has apparently eluded you thus far, there’s a difference between actual fact (like the Obama administration specifically asking the Senate Committee on Armed Forces to remove exceptions for American citizens protecting them from being detained indefinitely without trial) and this chaff.
There are some that came to recognise that it is at least ineffective if not unethical, but the particular one I was thinking of has a goddamn book deal defending torture.
There might as well not be. Spoiler effect, 2-party-system, first-past-the-post, et cetera.
But here’s the thing: calling the republican party “intentionally obstructive” isn’t hyperbole. It’s what they do. It’d be like saying, “Hey, don’t call Charles Manson insane, that kind of rhetoric doesn’t help anyone” – no, it’s not rhetoric, it’s an accurate descriptor. And you know what? I will gladly demonize those who stand against science, progress, equal rights, and economic stability, as those who do are either incompetent beyond belief or evil, and neither of those two qualities have any place in running our country. So what, do we have to lie to ourselves to get constructive dialogue? Why?
“Constructive dialogue” does not work with them. Treating them like a “loyal opposition” that cares about the country and who can be reasoned or compromised with has only led Obama and the Democrats to defeat after defeat. They are flat out enemies, not just rivals of the Democrats.
And demonizing and insulting the Democrats has worked quite well for the Republicans. It’s pretending that the Republicans are decent human beings that has failed miserably. What you are really doing is trying to convince the Democrats and the Left to continue with a pattern of behavior that has consistently failed for them.
I don’t believe either candidate should make statements about the other candidate that aren’t grounded in reality.
If Candidate A is making statements about the Candidate B that fly in the face of the facts, then it would equally be flying in the face of the facts for Candidate B to make your suggested statement about Candidate A, wouldn’t it?
First of all, a candidate’s past record is also worthy of discussion. If Romney says, “you should vote for me because I’m the sort of businessman who can put this country back to work again,” then he’d better be prepared to defend his record as a businessman. If an examination of that record is unflattering, please don’t go confusing that with character assassination.
Second, specifying the damage to people’s lives that would likely be caused by the other candidate’s stated policies is also not character assassination.
Even if Obama wins, who controls the Senate next year is probably pretty close to a 50-50 proposition, given that most of the seats in play are held by Democrats at present. If Romney wins, the odds are pretty overwhelming that the GOP will control both houses of Congress to boot.
Reminds me that in 1988, I thought Bob Dole would be a pretty decent President, but in 1996, I thought a Dole Presidency would be a disaster. The reason? Congress.
This. As much as I hate to admit it, “constructive dialogue” is exactly what the republicans want from the dems, because it’s so ridiculously easy to ridicule and shut down. It holds no power with the populace. And the fact of the matter is, it has become more and more impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt, and more and more difficult to claim that their goal is anything less than complete control of washington at all costs.
You are underestimating the power of American conservatives to screw things up: “Hey, let’s take a surplus and create a deficit by cutting taxes”.
(bolding mine)
Ah, but here you succumb to endorsing yet another rhetoric device that stifles reasoned dialogue. For a given piece of legislation and/or program–one side is in favor of it, the other is “obstructionist.” In other words, make the pretension that your side is in favor of truth, justice and beauty, while the other side’s sole purpose is to get in the way of human advancement.
Obviously, you consider the Republicans/the American right to be profoundly, consummately, irredeemably malevolent, but how on earth could you or anyone else who feels like you ever engage in any kind of constructive dialogue with them? And like it or not, though their fortunes may wax and wane, they’re not going away.
I vehemently disagree with many of the Republicans’ positions, but I’m not going to extrapolate that to saying they are evil simply because I disagree with what they want to do. If our elected representatives consistently take the position that “The opposing party is a gang of evil slimeballs who want to (insert horrible overarching goal),” then they might as well all take guns to work and settle things on the House and Senate floors once and for all.*
*In a bipartisan deficit-reduction move, selling pay-per-view subscriptions to the action
I’m sorry but turning “intentionally obstructive” into “they are evil” does not fly for me.
From the time they declared that their efforts should be geared to make sure Obama would be only a one term president one should not have problems on saying that indeed their overall idea was to be intentionally obstructive, it does not also mean that they would do so in all occasions, but when serious issues like Health care reform, and global warming gas emission controls come to a vote, obstructionism does fit.
And still, it does not mean that many are saying that they are therefore evil, ignorant and mislead by powerful interests is what I see what they are.
No. One side is just a bunch of politicians, while the other - the Republicans - are a bunch of corrupt, thuggish fanatics who have outright stated that they are determined to be obstructionist.
Again; no one can. They aren’t interested in “constructive dialogue”. The Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated that they aren’t interested in compromise, and attempting to do so with them just results in them taking advantage of you.
Nor do I. I call them “evil” because of the consistent malignance, selfishness, and amorality that is characteristic of them. And I don’t feel obligated to pretend that they are good people just because of some American-exceptionalist determination that it’s unthinkable that an American political party can be composed of genuinely ill intentioned people. Despite such things not being at all rare in human history.
Except that’s what the Republicans are, and denying that reality is self destructive.