Can be. Often, in the context of usage and sentence structure, the intended value is conveyed quite unambiguously.
Case in point.
That’s the problem, they tried to make the tent big enough for old school fiscal conservatives, the religious right wing and now incorporate the tea party angry blue collars as well. How can one candidate appeal to all of them? The real solution is some kind of coalition government of smaller parties where each party gets some reps in the resulting government. Don’t see that happening any time soon under the current US system.
Well, let’s see…
First off, mollify the grumpy populism by, say, promising to raise the corporate tax rate cap. Hell, you can even do it, the corporadoes will know the fix is in, they’ll be consulted on useful exemptions and carve-outs for job creators. But so as not to cripple business America, allow overseas money back into America with appropriate penalty for unpatriotic tax evasion. A good scolding, perhaps. Be sure to emphasize how this will really stick it to those fat cat investment types that support Hillary so much…
Embrace women’s health issues firmly and without hesitation. Insist that all abortion clinics must have emergency neurosurgery rooms with up to date equipment. This will dovetail nicely with defunding Planned Parenthood, especially after the scandal about poor hygenic practices at their clinics. There isn’t one yet, but you can lie about it anyway.
Make firm committments to protect religious liberty and the right of any American to insult any other American. Promise to write and pass a Religious Liberty Constitutional Amendment! You can’t, of course, but they don’t know that.
You can yoke those constituents together loosely, you simply have to let each one believe that their concerns are central, and the others are just along for the ride.
This argument demonstrates true conservatives have problems with basic logic. Their premise is that the people want a more conservative candidate. So why, when the people were given a choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, did the majority vote for Obama? Did the people think Obama was more conservative than Romney?
The same issue applies to the question of why Romney got nominated. The people (in this case Republican primary voters) had more conservative choices than Romney. But the primary voters didn’t vote for those more conservative candidates - they voted for Romney.
True conservatives need to wake up and smell the coffee. The voters, in both Republican primaries and general elections, are choosing the less conservative candidates.
I thought the narrative was that, without a conservative enough candidate on the ballot, the “true” conservatives were sitting the election out, and the battle turned out to be a contest for the votes of the lib’ruls and the lukewarm conservative Lites.
I don’t think there IS any ideal conservative candidate, and there never is.
That’s partly because there are a LOT of factions in the “conservative” coalition, and it’s well nigh impossible to come up with a candidate who satisfies all of them. The Religious Right, the libertarians, the Supply Siders, the Rust Belt “Reagan Democrats,” the hawkish neocons… all of them have very different ideas of what makes a “true” conservative. ROnald Reagan was the last candidate who both
- Appealed to all those factions, and
- Was likable enough to appeal to non-ideologues.
Good luck finding ANYBODY ever again who can manage that combination.
To show you how weird things get and how quickly… just a few years ago, Marco Rubio was regarded as a Tea Party darling who’d boldly challenged and beaten liberal, Establishment "Republican-in-name-only Charlie Crist. Now, many paleoconservatives and Trump fans are calling HIM a “RINO” and an “Establishment Republican.”
it appears to me that if you/they don’t want your lives put at risk by the country’s leaders, then you/they shouldn’t have joined the military, which actually does exist for reasons other than to provide free schooling and 20-year retirement benefits.
I don’t think Romney lost because he wasn’t conservative enough - he lost because the incumbent has an advantage in most elections. (And because the media figured out that Obama was going to lose the debates unless they jumped in to help him.)
But an ideal conservative wouldn’t win for the same reasons Bernie Sanders isn’t going to win. US Presidential elections are decided by moderates. Someone too far to one side or the other is going to do better in the primaries than an electable candidate. Rubio is a good candidate. Cruz is hated like poison on these boards and among yellow dog Democrats in general, but you can’t tell anything from that. I can’t believe the GOP is silly enough to nominate Trump - not because he is too conservative but because he is a novelty candidate. Whoopee cushions are fine in their place, but the Oval Office isn’t that place.
The ideal candidate is someone who is conservative on fiscal and military matters, socially moderate, a textualist who will nominate Supreme Court justices who interpret the Constitution instead of rewriting it, and who has the requisite experience in governing to be effective in carrying out conservative policies. But that is the sort of candidate I want, not necessarily someone who wins Republican primaries.
The traditional wisdom is to run in the primaries from the extreme and then swerve to the middle in the general election. We see that now - I suspect when and if Hillary wraps up the nomination we will hear much less about the trillion dollars or so in new spendingshe is proposing than we do now.
Regards,
Shodan
That is only significant if we know how much new spending the Republicans are proposing.
I want the military that I served in and continue to have friends serve in to be used to protect the United States, not sent to die in wars of choice that just increase the danger to the US and greatly weaken America.
I imagine most people in the military would prefer to call the shots and decide for themselves which battles were worth fighting. Obviously this isn’t workable in practice, so when you sign up for military service you also agree to fight whichever battles your political and military leaders decide would be advantageous for you to fight. Whether someone might have friends involved is rarely used to determine whether some specific battle is worth fighting.
Based on the last 70 years of US history, they don’t have a good track record either. We might have been better off if we did leave it up to the troops to decide if and when they fought.
Yes, this is obviously true, and we have the right to call out and criticize the leaders (and others) who advocate for wars of choice which weaken us and strengthen our enemies. The presence of my friends in the military, and the fact that I used to be active duty, just makes it more important to me that we only engage in military actions that actually protect America and our interests rather than weaken us and strengthen our enemies (in addition to getting good Americans killed!).
Or, if you come of age during that nasty conflict in Southeast Asia, you join the Navy. Less dangerous than the Army & staying in school is too hard. Get “asthma” & you can even leave early…
(That* is* your story, as I remember?)
As a non-conservative, what I’m seeing is that the different branches that call themselves conservative don’t mesh that well with each other.
Business Conservatives- all they want is low taxes and to gut regulation. They’ll happily pay lip service to the anti-abortion and pro-gun types, but they really don’t give two shits about those issues.
Social Conservatives- all they care about is their pet issue(s). Abortion, gun control, gay marriage, school prayer. They’ll happily vote for the business conservatives if they think they’re on their side. Lately, they’ve been getting fed up with the business types since they never seem to get any results from them.
Fearful Whites- They fear the bogeymen- whether they be Muslims, Mexicans, gays, atheists, whatever. They want to undo the last 50 years of societal change and they want to use the military every time a car bomb goes off. They don’t want government to do anything, but they want to control what little it does do. They want government out of their lives, except in the bedroom and uterus.
Rubio may consolidate the business type, Cruz is inheriting the social type, and Trump has the fearful group to himself. Whoever gets to consolidate 2 of these groups wins. Right now I don’t see any individual who can unite the 3 groups.
That wouldn’t explain the primary losses. I’m assuming true conservatives would claim some of the Republican candidates who were running. So if the people wanted a true conservative President, they would have voted for somebody like Santorum or Bachmann or Paul or Perry or Gingrich in the primaries and made him the Republican nominee instead of Romney.
C’mon, you know better.
Hillary Clinton isn’t running around saying she plans a trillion dollars. It’s her political opponents who are saying that’s her plan. And do you really think they’re going to stop saying it if she gets nominated?
The only way we’ll hear less about trillion dollar spending is if the conservatives decide to start claiming she’ll spend ten trillion dollars.
The narrative among many on the right, however, is indeed that he lost because he has always been too moderate.
And, just so we don’t go too far away from actual facts, no one ever thought Obama wouldn’t do great in the debates. His performance in the first debate was a surprise to everyone. Other than that, he did great, as expected. And without the media jumping in to help him. Obama slammed Romney perfectly fine on his own even before the moderator jumped int.
Hillary is running to the left as prep for the primaries, as I said. She has to sort of match Bernie Sanders so as not to let him bleed off too many of the extreme Democrats. So she has to talk about all the things she is going to do. Of course she isn’t going to admit she wants to do will cost another trillion. But she needs to veer left for the primaries.
Regards,
Shodan
Correct, the media thought he would do great and didn’t need their help. But he didn’t, and he did.
No he didn’t. The moderator didn’t jump in to help him in the first debate, and he lost pretty convincingly. IOW he didn’t do perfectly fine on his own.
Regards,
Shodan