I used to get calls about once a week. FWIW, I registered Republican down here in Miami. They’d ask if I supported the Pro-Life agenda, I’d say no, they said thank you very much and goodbye. Maybe they take me off the list after a while.
Well, UncleBill, if by “try to change your mind”, you mean “call you with lame recordings by someone who sounds like the governer”, then yes. You’d think they’d try a little harder to make my parents change their mind. I should ask some Republicans if they get calls from Democrats. I feel sorry for Independents in my state, they probably get these stupid calls from both sides.
[Mike Doonesbury Voice]
“Plus, I’m really enjoying this sluggish economy.”
<<how come a Democrat was able to sustain a good economy longer than anyone else in history? >>
Well, I don’t know that you can demonstrate that presidencies and economic cycles are closely related, or even correlated. A few things spring to mind, though:
1.) The boom of the late 90’s corresponds very closely to the election of the first Republican led congress in decades.
2.) The previous record for continuous expansion was set under the Reagan/Bush administration.
3.) Clinton had the advantage of a rapid technological revolution, built on the shoulders of technological advances made during Reagan/Bush and prior administrations.
4.) The Reagan/Bush expansion only ended when Iraq invaded Kuwait, creating an oil shock.
5.) The Clinton boom may well not have been possible had runaway interest rates and high inflation not first been tamed during the Reagan Administration.
6.) Alan Greenspan is a Republican.
<<High unemployment>>
If you think this unemployment level is high, you have a pretty short memory.
<<While people who like it are welcome to join the Republican party, the Democratic plan was far superior. We would have had a nice soft landing and then moved on.>>
Assumes facts not in evidence. Indeed, there is no reason to believe that the recession would not have been more severe had Bush’s tax cut not gone into effect.
<<high deficits>>
Well, duh…during slow times, government revenues decrease–governments will often increase spending as a counterbalance. Hell, Democrats INVENTED that technique. Basic Keynesianism. Right out of FDR’s playbook. If you have a problem with it, take it up with every liberal economist under the sun.
<<an ill defined war plan.>>
How would you know it’s ill-defined?
The disarmament of Iraq seems like a pretty well-defined mission to me.
<<As for the Democrats choosing Nancy Pelosi, well, you aren’t one of ours any more, and we want a real liberal, and we’ve got one. >>
Well, so you have my sympathy.
The problem is that the American people reject “real liberals.” And you lose moderate voters and Reagan Democrats like me. I mean, didn’t you guys learn ANYTHING from Mondale’s defeat in 1984? If not from Mondale’s defeat, from George McGovern’s? Al Gore’s?
And if you can’t learn from getting your heads bashed in, then at least learn from Clinton–when he went center, when he rejected “real liberalism,” he was successful. GATT. NAFTA. Balanced budgets. When he tacked left, he got into trouble. Health care.
Feel free to continue to lose elections with a San Francisco liberal at the helm.
Count me among the winners.
No no no – you forget, we have to give that credit all to Al Gore. After all, he invented the internet, right?
Yep – the most effective thing about him was that he was wishy washy! He wanted to please everybody, and to have everybody like him, and so he was eventually willing to move to the center – and go along with much of the Republican-controlled (after 1994) Congress’ agenda, or at least compromise his original positions on them. And by doing so, these aspects of his presidency turned out to be effective – mostly by not pushing the hardcore liberal agenda, like he tried in the first two years (government controlled health care plan, etc).
Clinton proposed a budget for each of his years as President, and passed it over Congressional objection each year. The supposedly Republican controlled Congress, was really just the House of Representatives, which caved in to Clinton’s budgets ever single time without fail. To the fullest extent that Administrations get credit for economic good news on their watch, the Clinton Administration is entitled to the long economic good news. One merely needs google old articles to find out the woe and doom that the Republican leadership predicted for each Clinton economic move ever made. The Republicans were wrong on all of them, just as they are now wrong on economic policy which has lead to two full years of economic stagnacy, and huge amounts of money not being paid into the treasury, which is going to the hands of the very wealthy and directly financed by further national indebtedness. While I think our OP has every right to register as a Republican, he has done so in exchange for a loan of $2,000.
The reason the Clinton economy worked was that Clinton presented and stuck to responsible economic policies: a plan for balancing the budget and paying off the national debt, a plan for reducing unemployment and creating good jobs, etc. The reason the Bush II economy will never work is that the plan is to unbalance the budget, borrow untold and unaccounted for amounts of money, give tax breaks to the wealthiest, do nothing for unemployment, etc., etc. This, like the bailout of savings and loans during the Bush I years at the expense of massive debt, is basically enriching the very richest people in the nation, writing an IOU to the treasury and having the population at large eventually pay it off. When the tax rates for the wealthiest are also reduced, this amounts to giving money to the rich, and having everyone else pay that money off eventually at the tax rates that do not tax the rich nearly as much as the poor in terms of standard of living. The Republicans call it “trickle down economics”, I call it “piss on working people economics.”
The more I read our original poster’s rants, and how much Fox News Party line propaganda and historical revisionism is in them, the more I am beginning to think that this is not so much a conversion as a long time Republican (and Democrat hater) trying to gain converts.
I really can’t think of much that Clinton did that was a positive for the economy, and all that dot.com economy, the 5% growth per year stuff, is what’s now turning out to be hooey. It has come to light on Dubya’s watch, but it grew into place on Mr. Who Cares watch.
Hickory wrote:
Just say to those people, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t YOU the president?”
Because, as several recent presidents have proven, you don’t have to be smart to become president.
Somehow I’m thinking Hickory6’s party choice may not be so recent.
When I think of Clintonomics, I think of “Save Social Security First.”
He didn’t.
Uncle Bill <<Somehow I’m thinking Hickory6’s party choice may not be so recent.>>
Based on…based on what, exactly? I mean, my OP DID say “it’s been building for a while.” But it also said “I registered as a Republican today,” meaning that it was very recent.
If you have some evidence to suggest I’m lying, such as an 8 year old voter registration card with my name on it, or an old post stating I was already Republican (and feel free to search this ID or under panzermanpanzerman,) then go ahead and post a link.
If not, then please cease and desist with the ad hom insinuation.
I need to cite that? Your very thorough recitation of Republican positions leads me to believe you are very well established in your idealogy. “party choice” does not equal “registered as”. It sounds like you changed your mind a while back. I am not challenging your date of registered party affiliation.
Ok.
Yeah, I changed my mind about being a Democrat a while back, and switched to independent around 1993 or so.
I remained independent until saturday. Supported McCain in 2000.
It was the increasingly empty, increasingly shrill desperation of Democratic rhetoric that finally got me to make the switch all the way over.
Example: I Am Spartacus characterization of me as a “Democrat hater.”
It’s absurd to think that simply because I disagree with Democrats I must be a “Democrat hater.” The charge is false–I don’t hate anyone except Al Qaeda and their ilk.
But Democrats seem to be increasingly drawn to the idea that anyone who doesn’t buy their arguments must be motivated by “hate.” I see the tired old formulaic construction of “Republican hate” almost every day. And it’s stupid. It also pisses off and alienates former blue dog Democrats like me.
The more I get accused of “hate” simply for being a conservative, the longer it’s going to be before I pull the lever for a Democrat national candidate.
HEY. I still want a cite on how Bush helped liberate Europe, dammit!
Well, heck! You were a member of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” since before there WAS one. Pfft. No coffee-mug for you, then.
-Tygr, turned from the donkey path since 1992 - “Thank you Mr. Clinton for forcing me to look the other way.”
Smart is as smart does, I reckon.
Kyla,
I never suggested that Bush the Younger liberated Europe.
I wonder if that’s a regional thing? I’ve been registered as a Republican since I’ve been old enough to vote, and thus far the only solitiations for money I’ve ever gotten have come from my college, which is insane if they think I’m going to donate money to them. I haven’t gotten policial or “issue” phone calls from any groups either, lucky me 
**Hickory6: Feel the power of the Dark side! **
No, I am not your father.
b