I’ll give you my point of view. I expect my Republicans to not be draft avoiders, I have no big problems with a Dem avoiding the draft. I expect Republicans to be Hawkish and Dems to be Dovish. I expect Dems to publicly support Pro-Choice and Gay Marriage, I will settle for a Republican being privately Pro-Choice but not publicly announcing it. In many ways this is simply my checklist of qualifying as a candidate for their parties. No Republican at this time could openly champion Pro-Choice and get the nomination in my opinion. So yes I do have different standards for the two parties. Of course my key issues are the Environment & Foreign policy, so my sympathies often split between the parties anyway.
For those that consider Pro-Choice and Gay Friendly important, they better hope that it is Rudy that somehow gets the nom. He is the most socially liberal of all the Republican Candidates and is even Pro Gun Control which will piss off the NRA. He is in favor of silly things like no assault weapons and thorough background checks. Stuff we mostly already have, so I doubt he will make things any worse by NRA standards, he just won’t be helping them.
Yes, but General Pace’s discretion should be limited to whether the orders he has are lawful orders, not whether they are “moral” orders. So he would be within his rights to say “I have a duty to enforce the laws and regulations as they are, whatever my feelings; making public my personal opinion would distract from effective performance of that duty”. Weasely? Yes. But you don’t make it to Chairman JCS w/o SOME weaseling. Part of the job.
Right. Besides, politicians face a problem: even if they were a relative majority, the bulk of people who have a more tolerant, live-and-let-live POV, are not particularly activist about it nor likely to bother to put up a fight.
Plus there’s also the element that it was “General Pace, USMC” rather than for example the Sec. of Defense or the Navy Secretary, civilian politicians, saying it. Those uniforms, ribbons and stars do still have an effect of creating a “Deference Field” around the person and nobody wanted to be perceived as attacking “General Pace, USMC” for his “beliefs”.
Now, in my fantasies I can imagine myself as President gathering a meeting of every senior officer and announcing: "From this instant on the policy is to be gay-friendly. The only thing I expect to hear about it from y’all after this moment is ‘Sir, Yes, Sir’. " Which would be 100% lawful and constitutional for me to do. But alas, I don’t live in that fantasy.
Hypocrisy. The SOP of too, too many Republicans. Pretend you’re snow-white and make the other guy out to be Evil Incarnate. Sadly, too much of the public is stupid enough to buy it.
Would you sleep better in the election year if both candidates were Pro-Choice and Gay Friendly after 8 years of Bush. No Democrat I know and this Green Republican thought there was little was for Bush to win in 2004 and yet he did. I would think Democratic voters might feel better about the opposing candidate being a ‘Liberal’ Republican and not a Conservative or “Bob Dole Moderate” Republican. Rudy is basically a moderate Politician, not much further to the right than Hillary from what I can see.
So lets say Hillary gets the Nom and is so disliked that it opens the door for a Republican to win again. Do you want Brownback, McCain, Gingrich, Romney or Giuliani? I would hope and believe most Dems would prefer Rudy in this group.
I would settle for Rudy or McCain, as at least McCain is a hawk and pretty green by Republicans low standards. Of course with the Iraq and Iran situation, I am not too sure that a hawk like McCain is a very good idea. I like Clark and Gore the most for the Democrats, but neither is likely to run.
No, I honestly thought when you posted that you were talking about Republican candidates and didn’t say so.
I’m not a fan of Giuliani but of the Republican candidates so far if I had to vote for one he’d be the one I’d chose. It’s too early to say because he’s changed on some issues.
I agree with you Hiliary seems more conservative on some issues than he is but I’m not a huge Hiliary fan.
You’re right, of course. But surely there is a response that is better than both hers and that one. How about something like this…
I’m not qualified to judge someone else’s morality because I’m not God. I believe that our government should protect the rights of all citizens. Period. And I think that — especially while we’re fighting a war on terror — a military policy that recruits straight people convicted of robbery and homicide while rejecting gay people who translate Arabic is just the dumbest thing ever conceived.
I’d remind you that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was considered an improvement over the previous policy. It hasn’t so much worked out that way in practice, but I hear the Ideal World is just over the next dimensional rift…
Think of it this way, Lib: Which is better, staying with an SO who has good intentions to treat you great but drags his/her feet, or switching to a new SO who hates your guts and wants to shackle you to a pipe in the basement?
I suspect Rudy is just being a better politician than he used to be and weaseling like crazy on the Pro-Choice and Pro-Gay stuff so he can get the Nom. I do not like it, but I understand it.
I don’t believe a man that moved in with a pair of gay friends after the very ugly Gracie Manor fiasco has really changed his position on this issue. As far as Pro-Choice, he has always been careful to basically give the message that he is uncomfortable with the idea of abortion but supports Pro-Choice. He has been careful lately to only say he is not comfortable with abortion unless I missed something.
Again, I do not expect die-hard Dems to get excited about him, but I expect many independents and moderates to be at least enthused that he has a chance over the right wing of the party that has had a strangle hold until recently.
With respect, there’s enough wrong with the world that establishing rights for gays still would not make it close to ideal. “Oh well, nothing’s perfect” isn’t going to get anything done.
Given those choices, I’d take the first one. But if there were yet a third choice, an SO who has championed my well-being and happiness for more than thirty years, I’d gravitate toward her.
And if the selection of that SO didn’t depend on vanishingly small probabilities and the cooperation of the majority of the US population, I would, too. To paraphrase a certain recent Republican operative, “You go to elections with the candidates you have, not the candidates you wish you had.”
Wait a second. He’s not running for President – and he left the Senate in 1997! Sorry, but Simpson earns exactly zero points for political courage in this instance.
I find Hillary’s statement to be unexceptional. I challenge the crowd to find any Presidential candidate who doesn’t waffle on this issue.
In my experience, attacks on Hillary are pretty much always this flimsy. I have no idea why, but this country is full of people who simply don’t like Ms. Clinton and don’t want to.
Because after this many years in the public eye none of us have any idea what she really stands for, other than for smug political ambition without spine. From those infamous chocolate chip cookies on we all have gotten the impression that she will present to us whatever it is that she is told is what the majority of us wants to hear. The result is the opposite of what her handlers would desire: that many liberals see her as a neocon and many conservatives see her as an liberal wacko. We do not believe that she believes anything that she says. We do believe that she believes that we are all really idiots, but that is it.
This particular episode annoys because it plays into what we already feel about her.
You are right, many of us have a pre-existing dislike for her and we do not want to like her.
I think that’s a pretty good description of your current plight. I mean, since nothing’s going to happen anyway, I think that if you moved over to a place where your voice is welcomed and important, you’d fare better. The LP might not stand a chance nationally, but in local elections they’ve had hundreds of successes. A sheriff who won’t enforce laws that oppress you seems like a promising place for you to start.
Personally, I liked her fine until she came out against the first ammendment. That’s a pretty difficult black mark for a politician to over come in my book.
Except that things are changing, just not as fast as we’d like it. The Democrats still aren’t in a position that I’d call totally gay friendly, but we’re pushing them closer and closer every election cycle, and dragging the Republicans behind them. On a popular level, support for gay rights increases evey time they run a poll. There’s still a long way to go, but the political mainstream is aligning itself with support for gay rights, and the process is not going to be helped by abandoning the mainstream entirely for an ineffective fringe group that a significant number of us don’t agree with on most other political issues.
That’s not particularly helpful, as most of the laws oppressing gays are administrative laws enforced by bureaucrats. A sympathetic sheriff isn’t going to get anyone domestic partner benefits. And for those of us who live in urban, liberal areas (that is, most of us) the local laws are usually pretty solidly on our side anyway, so we don’t need a libertarian sheriff riding to our rescue. The problems we face aren’t local matters. They’re state and federal issues, and that’s a level at which the libertarian party has had virtually no success.
You might agree with us on more than you think. Lower taxes and expenditures, sure, I know you don’t like that one. But what about equal rights for all people? Open immigration and free trade among free people? An end to welfare and legal shields for corporations (President Clinton already ended personal welfare, or at least greatly restricted it)? Government noninterference in abortion and other personal matters? The repeal of frivolous laws of prohibition? The enforcement of due process, habeas corpus, warranted searches? An end to asset forfeiture and eminent domain? The right to privacy and the sanctity of your home? The freedom to bargain collectively and boycott your employer? The separation of church from the state, including Congressional prayers and religious trappings? The criminalization of commercial fraud and misleading claims from advertisers?
Just be mindful that once the Democrats have allowed you to enjoy the rights that God or nature already gave you, all that is necessary for them to take it all back is a political wind that blows the other way. At any rate, I wish you success.
