But does she really count as a rising star when there’s no way she can hold any position higher than she already does?
I have trouble seeing how movements to elect “true Reagan conservatives” like the Conservative Party’s candidate in N.Y. can benefit from endorsement that include tne nutty right-wing of the Republican Party. Short-term or long-term, what these sorts of candidates will mostly accomplish is to weaken Republicans and elect Democrats.
Let’s be real here - Sarah Palin’s “libertarianism” only applies to certain issues she thinks the government shouldn’t interfere in. Other stuff like abortion rights - well, it’s fine then if the government tells people what to do.
It’s hard to think of true libertarians practicing as Republicans, other than the rare outlier* like Ron Paul.
“Outlier” is a much nicer word than “loon”.
AND the People’s Front of Judea! Splitters!!!
But seriously… I think it would be a good thing for political discourse, if not the Republican party, for the party to divide into another distinct group. In my view, Republicans lose a lot by aligning themselves with fundamentalism and social conservatives. With those elements in place, I for one wouldn’t dream of voting Republican, whereas I might if the emphasis really was on streamlining government.
So basically, I’d appreciate it if they would make the whacko wing of their party more easily identifiable.
First, as I’ve said before, she never made any social issues, including abortion, a part of her governing in Alaska. She’s certainly personally anti-abortion, but people can be against all kinds of things without wanting to make them law. I think her official position during the campaign was that it’s a state issue, that they can legalize it or make it illegal as they see fit. That would be the same as the Obama administration’s attitude towards pot.
But even granting her opposition to abortion, that’s one issue. There are no perfect libertarians - none that could get elected, anyway. To me, the most important issues are smaller government, less spending, fewer regulations, and more stability (i.e. governments not cranking out new programs or regulations of the day to address every problem). All of the people on that list at least claim to be defenders of those principles.
However, Robot Arm made a very good point - we’ve seen an awful lot of Republicans, including most of the people on that list, come into office promising to cut government, and they wind up presiding over large expansions of government anyway.
But some of the people on that list don’t deserve the criticism. Dick Armey fought constantly for smaller government. He wanted to privatize social security, he fought for a flat tax, he opposed funding the NEA, and he has staunchly opposed farm subsidies. In addition, he fought with James Dobson, the ‘focus on the family’ idiot, because Dobson didn’t think he was treating Christians well enough (i.e. not socially conservative enough).
Armey is also a Professor of Economics firmly in the free market school, and has constantly opposed trade barriers and is for more open immigration.
Steve Forbes has always been a staunch defender of free markets and small government - even when he ran for President and it cost him.
She’s a rising star in the sense that she’s energizing the grassroots, and therefore can help with fundraising. The key to any third party bid is money, because it’s so hard to raise it nowadays because of campaign finance reform. Basically, you need a huge grassroots movement.
But I read another article about what at least Palin is up to which sounds plausible - she’s raised a gigantic sum of money through ‘SarahPAC’, and she plans to be a kingmaker - she’s going to use her PAC to donate to politicians who share her values, even if they aren’t Republicans.
The idea is that by doing so, she’s going to put pressure on the Republicans to get back in line with their supposed values. This will keep her in the spotlight, keep her on the campaign trail (for others), and help her raise even more money through speaking fees, books, etc. Then she might consider running for President sometime down the road - not 2012, but maybe 2016 if Obama is elected again, or 2020 if not.
She’s got lots of time - at least 25 years before she’s too old to run. So she’s playing the long game. She wants to be Reagan - but Reagan ca 1964, when he became the lightning rod for the ‘base’, and kept that position for 16 years before becoming president (albeit becoming a governor first).
I think it’s more plausible that these politicians have seen the size of the ‘tea party’ movement, and are jockeying for position to be the leaders of that movement.
Arrgh, I hate being sick, for some reason I thought this was about the Mayor race. sigh
The teabaggers are not any kind of significant “movement.” It’s just a minority of hardcore fundies, gun nuts and racists. They’re everything that Americans repudiated in the last election, and they’re shrinking, not growing.
No one who actually wants to win any sort of national office would want to attach themselves to to a bunch of idiotic birthers, deathers and town hall screamers.
Palin is politically finished, by the way. The kind of “values” she esposues (i.e xenophobia, theocracy, plutocracy, corporatocracy witch burning, Ark hunting, book burning, gay bashing, lying, killing animals from helicopters, secession, creationism, narcissism, anti-environmentalism, fear-mongering, making things up, forcing little girls to have rape babies, war-mongering, shopping with other people’s money, quitting, the list goes on) are exactly what’s killing the GOP. She might be a hero to angry, sub-literate, white evangelicals, but she has no appeal outside them.
Balloon Boy and his idiot parents have been getting a lot of media attention, too, but I’m not betting on Balloon Boy in 2012.
Thanks, and some of those are good points about Armey, but there’s nothing inherently limiting or simplifying about a flat tax. After you’ve figured out what counts as “income”, calculated all the deductions and credits, figuring out the amount of tax is the easiest part of the whole deal. In terms of simplifying taxes, a flat tax fixes the one thing that’s not broken.
You know, you say so many things in this forum that are outright falsehoods or wild guesses masquerading as fact, and yet I never call you on them (remember your claim that 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth?). And yet, you and others make me cite just about everything I say. So…
Cite? Give me a cite that shows me they are shrinking, when every poll I’ve seen indicates that they are growing in size or strength. And how about a cite that they they are fundies, gun nuts and racists? A cite other than your far-left watering holes, that is. Perhaps you know of a poll that has asked the tea party people to ranks their concerns in order, and god, guns, and putting down the black man came out on top?
The stuff you post belongs in the pit. You bomb these threads and fling out wild numbers, extreme characterizations, and you flat-out deny facts that everyone damn well knows are true. Great Debates is supposed to be about reasoned debate, backed with facts and cites. It’s not your personal pissing ground.
Most ‘flat tax’ proposals make back the income lost through progressivity by eliminating the zillions of deductions, tax credits, and other loopholes that complicate the tax code. That’s what makes it simple - not the fact that it’s flat.
I’m wondering if Ron Paul will run again in 2012…
You’ve seen nothing of the changing demographics in the US? America is getting younger and browner. Angry white people are an increasing minority.
How about every word they say or write on their signs? have you ever been around one of those rallies or seen those people? Have you read the signs? Are you under the impression that the teabaggers are actually some kind of organic, grassroots movement? These teabag parties are completely artificial. They’re just talk radio and Fox News fan cons, sponsored and hyped by the radio stations and by Fox News itself. Most of the idiots who go to them can’t even articulate what they’re pissed about. Are you telling me there’s anything to them OTHER than the birthers, deathers, gun nuts, people that think advisory “czars” have power, racists holding pictures of Obama dressed as a witchdoctor with a bone through his nose and other assorted morons and nutjobs? What IS the “movement” in your mind? What is the ideological basis of it?
Maybe some proposals have combined a flat tax and a simplified tax, but there’s no reason those two ideas have to be presented together. If he wants to simplify taxes, fine, good luck with that. When a politician pitches a “flat tax”, I think he’s promising something we all want (simplification) to get what he really wants (lower rates for the wealthy).
That’s the key feature of this whole Teabagger “movement.” It’s just a bunch of generalized anger and frustration with no real unifying focus. Are they pissed because the government seeks to become more involved in healthcare? Is it because of the bailouts? Is it because of war spending? Are they worried about a tax increase? Immigration? Lobbyist control of government? There are a whole bunch of legitimate grievances that can loosely be tied to a general dissatisfaction with government, but is it the type of dissatisfaction that calls for the government to be scrapped, or the type of dissatisfaction resulting from the Democrats wresting control of the government away from the Republicans?
Anyone who thinks they can unify this scattershot discontent into a coherent political movement is in for a rude awakening. We’ve spent years proceeding on the assumption that government was the problem, and now a majority are clamoring for their government to step up and take charge. The pendulum isn’t going to swing back towards small government until after the current crop has had a shot at trying to fix things.
To be honest, there is no question that the anger is partially stimulated by the fact that it’s Democrats doing it. But that’s no different than the gay movement or the anti-war movement being quieter during Democratic Presidencies. Some times it takes an opponent to do something to wake you up to the fact that it’s a real problem. It’s easy to give your own guys a pass.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there is a real movement out there. Diogenes thinks it’s self-evident that this group will shrink in size because of Demographics. I wouldn’t be so sure. There’s no hard immutable law that says young people have to be liberal. Gen X was more conservative than its parents.
There are a number of factors at play which could lead to a general conservative resurgence. One is that national security is starting to become a larger issue again, and not just in the war on terror. The U.S. is facing a lot of hard opposition right now from a number of countries.
The financial meltdown is making people more conservative with their money. The growth of the debt is turning a lot of people into real deficit hawks who might not have made that their prime issue in the past.
And now, since you didn’t provide any cites for your assertions, I’ll provide a counter-cite. According to Gallup, there’s only a six point gap between the ‘Republicans and leaners’ vs the ‘Democrats and leaners’. For a while there, the Democrats had a big lead, but it’s coming back down.
The Republicans have very poor support, but the number of independents is now higher than it’s been in years, and more of them lean to the right than to the left (“Democrats and Leaners” is only 6 points higher than “Democrats”, but “Republicans and Leaners” is 16 points hgher.
And it’s still early in the Democrat’s reign. If they keep this up, and keep passing big government laws, they’re going to reawaken the inner conservative in a lot of people.
I find from talking to people that there’s two very common misconceptions about the current political climate in the U.S. On the one hand you have people who still insist the country is exactly divided on every major issue. Sometimes it’s conservatives who are wishfully thinking their ideology isn’t really in the gutter at the moment, but just as often it’s liberals who are for no good reason a few years out of date. I’m not saying it’s a long term shift - people are fickle - but you can’t look at the results of the last 2 elections and still believe the country is as evenly divided as it was 9 or 5 years ago.
Then on the other hand are people who look at the recent Pew Research poll that found self identified voter affiliation as 35%, 23%, 36% (D, R, I) and assume the GOP is dead. With higher independents than anytime in the past 70 years, you have to acknowledge that most of the increase is from Republicans who are disgusted with the party and don’t want to be affiliated with it. But I think it’s a mistake to think that their actual ideology has shifted much.
Somebody else pointed out that the GOP’s problem is their base is acting like an anchor that needs to be appeased but makes them unappealing with more moderate people who were formerly open to voting Republican. And the biggest problem for them is that it’s not really a mistake in strategy. It would be very hard right now to abandon the angry people in an attempt to be reasonable and woo independents with actual ideas instead of just being angry. Especially when you consider that in reality, their opposition is actually extremely moderate, although we’ve recently renamed moderate to Socialist.
So given all that, I think it’s possible that a bona fide party of angry Tea Baggers could ultimately be a good thing for the Republican party. In the short run, the next election or 2, they’d split the very small pool of people actually willing to admit being Republicans. But, possibly, the Republican leadership in Congress might realize that wooing the Tea Bag loving type is literally not an option because they took their ball and are playing on their own now. I think if that happened and the Republican party started engaging in real debate they’d eventually be able to win back a lot of the independents they’ve lost. As much as I don’t particularly like their ideas, I think our country really needs a party putting serious proposals forward for fiscal conservative small government alternatives. I hope this Tea Bag party really takes off and we can take all the anger and hate that makes up the Republican platform lately and get back to having serious debates about how to solve our problems.
The war and gay rights are tangible, identifiable causes. What is the teabaggers’ cause?
Really? What opposition? Who’s going to get us? Even the “War on Terror” is mostly fake. Who is a threat to national security, and more specifically, what does it have to do with anger at OBAMA?
Yeah, right. The teabaggers are all deficit hawks. :rolleyes:
They’re upset about their taxes going down, huh? And they’re upset about financial bailouts that saved their jobs. That’s why they’re holding signs that say, “show us the birth certificate,” and "
And now, since you didn’t provide any cites for your assertions, I’ll provide a counter-cite. According to Gallup, there’s only a six point gap between the ‘Republicans and leaners’ vs the ‘Democrats and leaners’. For a while there, the Democrats had a big lead, but it’s coming back down.
The Republicans have very poor support, but the number of independents is now higher than it’s been in years, and more of them lean to the right than to the left (“Democrats and Leaners” is only 6 points higher than “Democrats”, but “Republicans and Leaners” is 16 points hgher.
And it’s still early in the Democrat’s reign. If they keep this up, and keep passing big government laws, they’re going to reawaken the inner conservative in a lot of people.
[/QUOTE]
The war and gay rights are tangible, identifiable causes. What is the teabaggers’ cause?
Really? What opposition? Who’s going to get us? Even the “War on Terror” is mostly fake. Who is a threat to national security, and more specifically, what does it have to do with anger at OBAMA?
Yeah, right. The teabaggers are all deficit hawks. :rolleyes:
They’re upset about their taxes going down, huh? And they’re upset about financial bailouts that saved their jobs. That’s why they’re holding signs that say, “SHOW US THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE,” and “THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS ARE THE JEWS FOR OBAMA’S OVENS,” and, “OBAMA’S PLAN: WHITE SLAVERY” That’s the reason for the racist drawings, and the signs with the veiled assassination threats ("…blood of tyrants").
There’s no coherent message or cause there.
It’s still quite a jump to expect a movement largely composed of angry, aging straight white people to start drawing a lot of young people in. Especially when the things they’re angry about tend to be mostly things that either don’t bother young people, or that most young people feel the opposite way about.
All I can say about this is, WTF?!
On this date one year ago, according to your cite, the Democrats’ “big lead” was three points. Now, as you point out, it’s six points.
Quite honestly, I can’t see any value in the stat you cite. On April 6-9 of this year, Dems had a 19-point edge in that stat, and a month later, the two parties were tied. Pollsters generally regard party affiliation as being considerably less volatile than that. It makes me wonder about Gallup’s methodology.
A more general comment: for a third party of any sort to arise, there needs to be some sort of underserved market, politically speaking.
As the GOP itself continues to move to the right, there’s less and less room out there for an even further-right political party to find popular support. Maybe a new party could out-wingnut Sens. DeMint, Inhofe, and Coburn, or George Will’s new crush, Michelle “petite pistol” Bachmann, but most of the followers of such a party would be on furlough from the loony-bin.