Kick the football, Charlie Brown!
Daniel
It takes a lot to make someone vote for the other party, and this isn’t just blind partisanship. For example, it would take quite a lot to make me vote for anyone the current Republican party, what with its enthrallment to the religious right. Only after this link is broken will the party of Lincoln be even a possibility.
Lying to make an unjustified war is pretty fucking harsh though. If the media were showing more American coffins and more Iraqi civilian death and destruction, that would change a lot of party lines.
Scene: The Oval Office…
“Bad news, sir. We’ve been monitoring the SDMB, and, well, there have been some developments…”
“Well, what, Karl? Not that Stoid again?! Didn’t we tell John-Boy Ashcroft to…”
“No, sir. It’s Flowbark. He’s bailed on you, sir. Repented. Recanted. Says you suck, sir.”
“Well, that’s a letdown, for sure. Still, we got ol’ Scylla. Like a rock, he is, they won’t grind him down anytime soon…”
“Maybe you better sit down, sir…”
A few examples:
John Tyler took over as President a mere three weeks after William Henry Harrison was inaugurated, delivered a speech in the cold and rain, and died. He managed to completely alienate himself from the Whig party, with which he was only nominally associated, and was essentially excommunicated.
James Polk ran on a platform which promised he would not seek a second term, and unusually for a politician, he stuck to that promise.
Benjamin Harrison was nominated in 1888 largely on the reputation of his grandfather, President William Henry Harrison. He lost the popular vote by 100,000, but won in the electoral college. His campaign had made numerous pledges to special interests, and as a result his administration spent the entire surplus in the Treasury and put the government back into debt. The Republican Party attempted to abandon him as un-reelectable, but he was nominated anyway and got his ass whipped in 1892.
Harry Truman was grandfathered out of the 22nd Amendment and reputedly considered running for a third term. The stalemate in the Korean War, the loss of China to the communists, and his general unpopularity forced him to announce he would not run again in 1952. Lyndon Johnson faced a similar scenario in 1968, but he too announced he would not seek a second (full) term, largely as a result of the expansion of the Vietnam War.
Jimmy Carter faced strong opposition from Ted Kennedy in 1980, and as things got steadily worse there was considerable speculation that the President might lose the nomination in the Convention. Carter invoked some sort of rule (or something) which basically forced his delegates to vote for him on the first ballot, which he won. (If anyone can expand on that for me I’d appreciate it, because I think that most modern example shows why it’s a practical impossibility to yank an incumbent in the party convention.)
The most solid example was that of Franklin Pierce, who lost his only remaining child in a train accident prior to being inaugurated and reputedly increased his already notorious alcohol intake as a result. The Democratic party nominated James Buchanan over him the following cycle, leaving Pierce to comment, “there’s nothing left to do but get drunk.” (G. W. Bush is a descendant of Pierce through his mother.)
I know I’ve already said this ages ago, but as one of the (albeit, reluctantly) pro-war crowd who swallowed the "Stop Saddam before he uses WMDs), I, too, was absolutely, dead wrong.
“Dear God, is this true?!”
“Yes, but don’t worry sir - we’ll always have milroyj, no matter what we do.”
“Really? Cackles Excellent. In that case, unleash the sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads!”
Thanks for the very complete answer, Sofa King.
It reads like in all of the previous situations the President chose to stand down due to honouring a previous election pledge or by implicitly recognising their own unpopularity - so effectively taking into consideration what is the best option for the party as a whole. It looks like GW Bush would / could only be replaced (if it was desired) as the GOP running candidate if he and his team personally chose to stand down - which is hardly a likely scenario.
Those of you who, like SimonX, are still clinging to the hypothesis that “it’ll be alright” might find this article interesting:Cash for public works runs dry in Iraq at bad time
Scylla, you are a gentleman and a scholar. I applaud your actions in this thread and deplore anyone who would continue to give you shit. I am proud to share this Board, whose level of discourse you have raised considerably by your actions here and in other threads, with you. May you prosper and go forth to spread your brand of prinicpled conservatism to your ideological fellow travellers, who are in dire need of it now. And the blimp thread was a fucking riot, BTW.
I also applaud flowbark, gobear, and the others who have recognized that they have been duped.
OK then clue me in.
Clinton lied about having sex and had a lot of people calling for his head. He was officially reprimanded IIRC.
How is Bush getting a free ride on this? Has all the flag waving patriotic nonsense that was rampant not too long ago made them fearful of the repercussions if they seriously challenge him?
At least Blair has had some major big hitters calling him out(eg. Robin Cook) Why are the Dem.'s and right thinking Rep.'s not outraged by this lie. Your precious soldiers the ones I hear so many of you say you respect and support to the n[sup]th[/sup] degree are getting killed because of these lies. Is the feel good factor in the US that strong? (WOW We’re #1. We stomped all over a pissant economically fucked country)
Where’s the moral outrage I saw when Clinton was getting his knob sucked in the oval office?
I’ll have to get more cynical. That’s the ticket.
I was merely optimistically hypothesizing about GWB’s future levels of hubris re foreign policy ventures, not about the relative state of affairs in Iraq.
jimbo, you had it almost right.
All of the “flag waving patriotic nonsense that was rampant not too long ago”, has not made them fearful, but has led to a false sense of righteousness. Somehow.
The Democratic lawmakers are fearful of their jobs, their hides, and their reputation if they get in the way of the Republicans(who as of late have decided to play by their own rules). The peoples voice isn’t strong enough, and those who support the pres, support the prez almost no matter what.
Sam
P.S.- I applaud humility you have shown, Scylla. Very impressive.
“I’m sorry sir, but during your time in office, sharks were added to the engangered species list. We tried to get some, but it would have taken months due to all the red tape.”
“No sharks?”
“No.”
“Well what do we have?”
“The Usual Suspects.”
“Are they ill-tempered?”
“Oh, very ill-tempered.”
“Very well, release The Usual Suspects.”
A few possible explanations for this:
First, keep in mind that the Congress is Republican controlled. IIRC it was either a very thin minority or Republican controlled during Clinton’s terms as well. Given that most Americans did not seem to care about the blowjobs, and a lot of work went in to making them care, I think that it is not reasonable to expect the congress to go after their guy. That would be political suicide.
Also, the levels of complexity may be a bit much for your average Sadam=bad man, penis in mouth + lying about it=naughty, they get. The situation with when we attacked Iraq, why and on what grounds, on the other hand simply makes their heads hurt.
Finally, we are all still stinging from 9/11. We want someone to pay for this and Bush 2.0 is telling us that we are fighting terrorism. Never mind that we seem to be doing a bad job of it, and making more terrorists. We are doing something, even if it’s stupid! Couple this with the way that many have successfully linked dissenting opinion to disloyalty to god and country, and there is not room for much else. Perhaps this will change once the media starts showing the body bags, or once we start seeing all of the poor folks returning missing limbs, but who knows
While I give kudos to all that have admitted they were misled, I wonder if they will again be so easily duped in the future. I also don’t sense the gravity of the situation being fully acknowledged.
This actually raises a pretty good point in my opinion. I have been wondering a lot recently if the reason that I did not believe Bush was because I detest him, or if I didn’t believe him because I made a study of the evidence at hand and reached a sound conclusion. I don’t think that I have an answer yet, but I am pretty sure that it is more the former than the later.
To be sure, once the folks that believed him started chiming in I did some digging around, but I think that I have to admit that I reached my conclusion first then went about supporting it (which totally sucks).
This is kind of important in that I then have to admit that my though process is fundamentally the same as those that believed the man, only my biases are different. I suspect that I am not alone in this.
FWIW I didn’t think Bush was too bad a guy when he was elected (or maybe because I can’t fucking stand Gore), and I thought going into Afghanistan was a good move, but from there it was all down hill.
Let’s put it this way…
About a year ago I thought D the Cynic was a complete fucking moron. Now I agree 100% with just about everything he says.
It’s not paranoid, but prudent to be biased against politicans telling the honest truth.
If your biases were just agin GWB and not agin polis in general, maybe you should do some thinking about that.
I busted on the last pres, and I’ll bust on the next pres. They deserve it and, IMHO, it’s my patriotice duty as a member of the American electorate to do so.
Did I read that right? Somebody associated the concept of “humility” with friend Scylla?
Nurse? Nurse?