Got something else for us to gnaw on then, F-P? Something of a factual nature?
No.
Well then, you shouldn’t be dismissive of what you are just short of acknowledging is an objective judgment based on the facts.
No, I just think the whole issue is so hopelessly subjective that there’s not much point in trying to have a serious discussion about it with a highly partisan crowd such as we have here.
Which part? I think it’s reasonable to dismiss such folks like King and Bachmann as not people with serious ideas about government. Do you agree with this? If so, then the point of disagreement is whether such folks are the driving force for Republican governing philosophy.
On what basis do you say the crowd is highly partisan instead of factual and objective?
Shodan’s usually full of shit anyway, but that topic was unusually partisan even for him. And so, so stupid.
Because you are part of it.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree, it can be pretty entertaining. If I hadn’t been around here for years, I would interpret some of this stuff as intentional parody. But no, it’s posted with a straight face. People absolutely sputtering over the fact that someone else won’t accept that Republicans hate Obama because he’s black, disagree for the sake of being obstructionist, hate the poor, care only for the rich, want women to suffer, etc., etc., fill in the rest of the blanks…then when the “Dems will rule forever, our ideas have finally been brought to the top of the mountain!” party evaporates, then they trot out the “the Repugs’ lies have taken hold, because it’s never that our ideas have been rejected, only distorted by the evil Rovian slander machine…”
Most of the posts on the board could be computer generated, mapped to a few simple specs… 
Well what about that other message board? You know, the one where the right and left are about evenly represented? And issues are debated without partisan rancor but the tighty righties almost always win the debate with crisp, clear reasoning and rock solid citation?
Because it doesn’t exist, does it? Because you get totally creeped out when you find yourself hanging around with the kind of people you find in the comments section of Fox Gnaws or Blightbart. So you hang out here, and when you lose debates, you console yourself with the thought that, really, the SDMB is overwhelmingly liberal/lefty and your sterling ideas don’t get a fair shake.
You’re here because this is the best you can do.
As far as the Republican Party’s goals and agenda, its not that the batshit baboons control the Party, its that the Party is afraid of them. For years and years, the Corporadoes kept their Devil’s Bargain with the nutbars by promising that this time, just one more election, and there would never be gay marriage, or socialized medicine, and school children would fold their hands in prayer every morning. But they could never deliver, they never really meant to deliver.
But now the chickenhawks have come home to roost, and the fervent desire of the incumbent to remain incumbent have rendered the Republican Party gormless and trembling. We warned you, you didn’t listen, just one more election, just one more compromise with the idjits, and then it will be different. But it isn’t.
And we are all the worse for it. Truly honest conservatives aren’t Republicans anymore, they are “independents”, embarrassed to be seen with the batshit baboons. We didn’t do that to you, you did it to yourselves. An honest conservative recognizes the necessity of progress, but insists on prudence and caution. Nothing wrong with that, we could well use the criticism of a loyal opposition.
But there is a difference between conservative and reactionary. The Republican Party has lost that distinction. A clock that runs backward is broken.
Care to cue us in on those plans? I mean, maybe I’ve missed it. Like, the republican plan for healthcare.
…Oh wait.
Or the republican plan to deal with climate change.
…Oh wait.
Or the republican plan for economic recovery.
…Okay, that one at least exists. It’s a sham, extremely unlikely to produce the desired result, and is basically a gigantic giveaway to the super-rich, but hey - it exists.
I mean, maybe it is fair to say they have a plan. I just can’t see much of it beyond “make the rich richer”, “fuck the poor”, “dismantle the government”, and “fuck the environment”. Immigration is the one place where I see anything even resembling a plan.
See, that’s the flaw in your perspective. You see lefties winning debates. I see the left-wing version of what you see in comments on Fox News. There is certainly a sane left-wing perspective on this board, but they are typically lost in the shrieking of the crazies. And the shout-down gets categorized as “We won again!”
I’m not complaining–I really am entertained by it, the gleeful self-congratulation in the echo chamber. There are countless righty versions of this phenomenon as well. That frothing isn’t as entertaining for me. I like to see the other side’s loonies, not mine. 
Do you even read the same forum I do? When the usual suspects (Der Trihs, BobLibDem, etc.) say something stupid like “Republicans hate Obama because he’s black” (and even then it’s not exactly often that something that dumb is said!), the usual response from the peanut gallery is “Oh god, what did that idiot say this time?” Not “Yeah, you tell 'em!” What kind of fucking delusions do you suffer from? 
I’ve been to a forum or two like that. The level of intellectual discourse is incredibly poor. You wanna know why? Anyone with half a brain tends to leave when they hear the shit the nutbags spout. It devolves into jingoism, and while both sides are definitely to blame, I can’t shake the feeling that there would have been more intelligent posters if they didn’t constantly have to fight to be heard over the Ann Coulter fanboys and idiots who legitimately believe that Obama killed Andrew Breitbart.
The fact is that the average republican on the internet is not as smart as **Bricker **or **Shodan **or adaher even fucking Clothahump. Depressing, innit? The average liberal isn’t as smart as your typical SDMB liberal either, but they usually aren’t quite as batshit insane. Let’s not pretend there’s any sort of equivalency here - republicans have damn near a monopoly on the batshit crazy when it comes to politics. And it’s the batshit crazies who drive away the rational-minded ones, leaving nothing but insanity on both sides. At least, that’s my experience.
You’re right, there are virtually no examples of people attributing disagreements with Obama to racism. And on those rare, rare occasions, the lefties shout down the person who dares to utter such slander. Yeah, some one is delusional here, you’re right.
Disgrace only matters to those with a sense of shame. Shodan and Bricker and the party they luuuurve have been shameless for quite some time.
You’re out of your gourd. The most frequent liberal posters around here have easily lapped the conservative field lately in terms of total volume of grating gobshite rhetoric. The horseshit-per-post title is way too close to call at this early stage of the game.
There have been pages and pages of threads recently where genuinely every poster involved was a waste of time and a jackass. I don’t think very many posters here are more liberal than me, so it’s not like this is a partisan thing. The arguments aren’t even smart enough to be evaluated as partisan arguments. It’s more like watching a team of asshole dogs with no limbs fighting a larger, more insane and annoying team of blind, coked-up rabbits. There are no winners here.
Oh, Shodan said a thing that was like a thing from before, and it was stupid then but this is a different thing, kind of, and that has crossed a line. Shut the fuck up. Jesus christ. It’s Shodan; it’s not like he’s hiding what he thinks about you. If I click on a link that is purporting to show god-damned Shodan crossing a line he hasn’t previously crossed, it better be a link to a video set in an animal shelter, not some fucking post where he said something exactly the same as the shit everyone is always saying about everything.
Oh, so his being blackish isn’t a factor at all? Not the least little bit? There are no racists any more, all gone? And if it is a factor, how do you define it, how do you quantify it?
This is Post of the Year material here. Bravo, sir, bravo.
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Yeah, see, the issue with this is that you’re simply wrong. In many issues, there’s no equivalency. There’s no balance. There’s right and there’s wrong. Just to take up a handful of issues I’ve seen on this board for which those on the right have completely failed to bring up a convincing argument: voter ID, climate change, health care, and gay marriage. What you’re describing is a fantasy. It doesn’t happen. I mean, what’s going on? Are the righties here on the forum particularly stupid? No, I’ve seen enough of the internet to believe that, say, Bricker is at least representative of average (if not way, way, way *above *average). It’s just that the right wing doesn’t have anything. The arguments against healthcare reform, for voter ID, against action on climate change, and against gay marriage are intellectually (and frequently morally) bankrupt. There’s ideological blinkering going on here, but it’s not what you think.