I don’t actually agree with every one of those. CBS should have stood behind Dan Rather, and during the Bush years CNN wasn’t called the Cheney News Network by leftists for nothing. If there truly was a left media bias from all the big network/cable names, then Bush never would have won re-election. All the timid glimpses of what was really going on in Iraq that started happening halfway through Bush’s 2nd term (or thereabouts, because I turned off everything after that election) that finally started making Bush’s approval numbers go down? Many of us had heard about it all and so much more long before the election. If the media had been doing their job, mainstream America would have heard about it all too and would have been just as appalled as we were.
Whoop! I saw what you did there. Here, let me help you out…
And I have yet to see a single Republican do anything other than ignore the above point.
Heck, why isn’t the mainstream media talking about this kind of thing? Especially if they’re so liberally biased? That, to me, is a fairly damning bit of investigative reporting. Are they afraid of poisoning the well or something? Sorry to tell it to you, Mr. and Mrs. Media, but this well has been full of cyanide for decades.
Desipte all the spittle-speckled frothing, it isn’t conservatism that’s the problem, it’s the conservatives, much like it’s not Christianity that’s the problem, it’s the Christians.
Limbaugh and the lot are looking for their place in this new world, and I suspect they’ll find it. After 8 more or less disasterous years of Bush and Co. the righties are vexed for a spot at the table, but there is one, because there has to be. As a life long spectator of Chicago Politics, having Democrats in charge with no opposition isn’t a good thing either. Do not forget (as we humans are wont to do) that the republicans and indeed conservatives, are a well-funded, well-organized group with deep roots and deeper (if not occasionally misguided) convictions. All of this insanity of late comes as the party and ideals burn away the underbrush. Keyes, McCain, Palin, Steele and the rest are struggling for a place as the nation turns its eyes to the ostensible socialists and hopes that maybe THEY can help. I suspect we’ll find that again, as always, there exists middle ground between radical leftists and right-wing fundamentalists, and further, that middle ground is the American people who want thier sons and daughters to marrry who they love, but also want them to have enough money to buy a home for their families
The role of government needs to be reduced in the lives and loves of the average American, and increased in the lives and dealings of American business. Mr. Obama can stay right out of my gun cabinet and Mr. Bush can stay out of my wife’s uterus, for example.
Limbaugh and his ilk have a voice and people listen, however more people listen to the President for the time being, so rather than allowing this cankerous, ever-chattering demogogue to gain a foothold in your head, ignore him. The small fire started in the GOP by Obama’s election may well take him in its’ time.
So you’re not banning Mr. Obama from your wife’s nether regions?
But seriously, you’re right. Any one party controlling everything with such ease is a little unsettling. Plenty of people on the left don’t see Obama as ostensibly socialist, though, and quite a few criticize him as a corporatist democrat. To be honest, his presidency is so young that it doesn’t have a foundation that is definable yet.
Nonsense. Conservatives had complete power to implement their policies for six years. Then they got their asses handed to them in two straight elections, because people didn’t like the results of their policies.
Socialists? Please. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are well to his right.
Conservatives need new ideas, not new faces. (And Newt Gingrich does not count as a new face, though I know you didn’t mention him.) Tax cuts, small government, and ‘family values’ aren’t going to cut it anymore. And as Obama said, the concern is not over how big or small the government is, but whether it works; judging by the position he currently holds, I’d say a fair number of people agree with him.
The problem is that the left and the right spend so much of the middle’s time and money arguing about who’s right and why that nothing every truly gets done. Neither group can see the forest for the trees, this is just the flipping of the hourglass.
That may be, but there are plenty of reasonable people I know who, including myself on some things, that see if not Obama as a socialist, at least some of the policies as such. Truth be told, I rather like the idea, though I know socialism in general is a recipe for disaster.
On the contrary, the only real threat to Obama was Palin, not McCain. If Sarah wasn’t such a hillbilly, and could come off with Hillary’s finesse and a little softness, we might be looking at a completely different White House.
Tax cuts and smaller government are essential to making a government ‘work’ as it were. The truth about government programs is that once you start them, and people come to depend on them, they never go away, or they do, but with such a thrashing and wild fight that it’s ugly to the end and sometimes not worth it. I agree with the spirit of Mr. Obama’s comments, but if he expands the role and mission of government, we’ll all pay for it. As an Obama voter, I hope this is the right road that we’re on. I don’t believe it is, and he’s going to have to prove it.
Wrong. Conservatism is what conservatives do. The same for religion, communism and all the other dogmatic ideologies. It’s what those motivated by ideologies do that defines the impact of an ideology. Any other view is just ‘No True Scotsman’ in a different kilt.
Programs and rules are different things. As a government, my job is to create the rules/regulations and follow that up with enforcement (which is admittedly a program in the strictest sense, but stay with me here). The idea of both is to ensure measured growth and a fair yet competitive market. The programs I’m talking about are more of a social nature and serve a smaller portion of society. I think what Mr. Obama has set out to do is noble in purpose, but flawed in execution. I hope to hell I’m wrong.
Bollocks. If, for instance, Islam can be described as a peaceful religion, yet it is the violent minority that defines it in the eyes of the world, any other ideology can be addressed and seen the same way which means we may be making the same mistakes about conservatism as the conservatives are making about Islam.
Islam is not and never has been a Religion of Peace. Its universal attitude to women alone makes that claim untenable but this has been hashed and rehashed endlessly on SDMB (and from my readings the notion that the temporally later Sword Verses negate all the lovey dovey stuff concocted when Islam was small and vulnerable in Medina, which is basically what jihadist theology argues, is more valid theologically than cherry-picking the ‘play nice’ bits just as the theology of the alcohol ban is based on the temporal progression of partial to total ban verses).
The mumbo-jumbo of ideologies mean nothing. It’s what their adherents do that matters.
Dogmatic marxism is the same. You can look at what Marx wrote about it in his various phases but the bottom line is that the dictatorship of the proletariat when turned into practice is abhorrent.
The Crusades made Christianity a violent religion.
Ideologies are not real. They have no existence beyond how their followers act.
If and when self-identified conservatives start acting in a way various 18th and 19th century philosophers might approve of then it can claim to be reformed. Until then it’s the party of war, financial irresponsibility, poor-bashing/rich coddling and fundamentalist christianity.
Rush is its perfect spokesman.
And I’m all for programs that level the playing field although I share your dislike of those that grow beyond their usefulness.
Gee, if the liberal media has such power to convert people to liberal ways of thought, why did Bush ever get elected? Twice? Reagan, twice? Bush I? Nixon? Hell, if the media has such power over elections, conservatives would never ever be elected at all. However, this does not appear to be the case.
I thought — you know, free market and all — that any business is going to provide to the public what the public wants to buy. If there’s evidence that the media has a liberal bias, doesn’t that suggest to you this is where the money is?
Why would a nation, if it espouses a conservative point of view, give billions to a media industry with a contrary point of view? How does a “liberal media” survive in a free market if the nation itself doesn’t subscribe to that point of view?
It seems like this is a huge smoke screen, to me. Conservative talk radio survives, I think, because conservatives are more likely to accept doctrine handed down from an authority figure, where liberal audiences are more skeptical and fractious. Our habit in recent years has been to squabble over details, which makes for bad radio.
Don’tcha get it, Fish? It’s so insidious that it doesn’t respond to your so-called “logic” or “analysis” or “thought”. The liberal agenda exists because you can feel that it exists. No other measurements matter.
I won’t bother to touch the whole “liberal media” foolishness. **Fish **nicely addresses it here, as have others elsewhere.
Instead let us examine SA’s claim regarding higher education. This seems to say that those among us who are most educated are also the most liberal. Therefore, unless SA can produce evidence of coercive brain washing in our universities, we must conclude that liberalism is a consequence of an enlarged understanding of the world.
And so conservatism must be a consequence of a narrow and restricted understanding of the world. Hmmmmmmmm… Well, we now know what “tighty righty” really means. Thanks, SA!
(proceeds to dust off diplomas mounted on office walls…)
You’re misunderstanding the point. It isn’t a question of who wins some particular election, it’s a question of societal direction. Things are commonplace now that would have been thought unthinkable fifty years ago. The media (entertainment and news) and the educational system in this country are what has driven those changes and societal acceptance of them. It’s a fairly well known phenomenon that people in this country elect Democrat congressmen to bring them home goodies, and they vote Republican for president to protect them from everyone else’s congressmen. Other factors come into play as well, such as the perceived ability of the Democratic candidate (in retrospect, does anybody really think Gore or Kerry were all that great?), the perceived need for a strong military and/or action in times of crises, etc.
The fact remains that since the thirties, when liberalism truly began to make headway in the halls of congress and education, congress has overwhelmingly been in the hands of the Democrats, including one fifty year stretch.
No. Hollywood and the news media are so convinced of their own importance and the rightness of their cause that they are perfectly happy to take the hit to their bottom line. A great many celebrities have deliberately alienated large segments of their public by taking liberal stands that they knew would harm them at the box office. They don’t care. They are so insulated by their bubble of luxury and plenty, and so driven by the desire to be heroes among their peers, that they almost feel compelled to alienate conservatives.
For one thing, it’s largely the only choice they’ve had – prior to Limbaugh and Fox, that is. And you can see by the success of Limbaugh and Fox that there was a huge audience in this country, pent up with resentment over the liberal slant of the news media, that was plenty happy to turn from CBS, NBC, et al. once they had an alternative. People have no such luxury when it comes to Hollywood and the educational system. It’s either go with what they put out or nothing at all.
It’s true that conservatives are less fractious than our liberal counterparts, but I attribute that to our having a pre-established sense of right and wrong and tendency to ask ourselves, when pondering something we want to do, “I want to do this, is it right?”, whereas liberals, who tend to define right and wrong by what they personally want, will say, “I want this, therefore it’s right”. And of course, everyone wants different things, and that’s why IMO you guys are so fractious and disorganized – everyone wants different things.
