U.S. Election '08: Race to the Conventions [Archive] - Page 4

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Louis VI the Fat

04-29-2008, 23:05

Interestingly, I think Obama validated Wright's political expediency charges with his recent denunciation of Wright- the man he could no more disown than the black community, or his own grandmother... Obama's racist Granny had better watch her back. :wink:No surprises there. There isn't a more two-faced, slick opportunist in contemporary American politics than Obama. The guy makes me dizzy.

When he's fundraising with limousine liberals in San Fransisco, middle-class Americans are clinging to religion. When he's talking to religious folk, he presents himself as a deeply spiritual man. When he's talking to unemployeds, he'll abandon NAFTA. When he's talking to Canadians, he won't. When his audience is black, Wright's a hero. When his audience is mixed, Wright is denounced. :dizzy:

I've said it before: at least Clinton is smart enough to know when she is putting up an act, and Obama isn't. Clinton's acts are meticulously consistent, and are kept up until found out. Obama doesn't ever bother with that. He'll just say whatever is expedient at the moment, depending on who's listening. Well, with the servile attitude the American press has shown him, I wouldn't bother with even trying to be consistent in my lies either. :wall:

I'll bet Obama will pull his usual indignified, aloof face tomorrow if a reporter dares to even so much as politely inquiry into the reasons for his current denouncement of Wright.

Xiahou

04-29-2008, 23:29

So unless I've missed some major aspect, he doesn't appear to be a racist bigot.
I think the racism charges come from him blaming the black communities problems on "white arrogance" or "rich whites", ect. Also, some can be inferred from his praise of blatant racists such as Farrakhan. He's certainly doing his part to divide the country along racist lines. Does that make him a racist? Depends on your definition. I think "anti-American" is a label that sticks to him much easier.

Certainly if I white public figure went around praising David Duke as one of the great voices of white people in the last century and blamed blacks for the countries problems they would be branded as racists. :shrug:

Redleg

04-29-2008, 23:30

Like Tuff said, it isn't racist to state, as Wright did, that different ethnicities may be more different than political correctness might allow us to talk about. If he was speaking of cultural difference then I would agree. However he was not speaking of a cultural difference he was speaking of a physical difference besides the color of their skin, the physical make up of their body. Now if he had said that black people do not have the skin layer of fat that white people have - he would have been correct. However he went into the aspect of the brain, one that no-one has been able to prove when it comes to racial differences.

I also miss the racial hate speech and the intolerance that are usually associated with racist bigots. I thought I'd overlooked that in the transcript so I read it again. Still not there.
[/quote]

Oh its very similiar to the speech of several white racist speeches I have had the misfortune to have heard. While some of it colorful there is enough race baiting in his speeches to quantify him as a racist. Especially given that he is taking criticism directed at him and saying its against black churches. That is classic bigot speech. "your after my particlur group, not me." Again if I was to espouse that the black brain is different then the white brain what do you think that would get me labeled as?

You'd have to call Wright thoroughly misguided on some points, particularly the Aids epidemic which he thinks may be the result of a racist government ploy. But if you consider the Tuskagee syphilis experiment or the involuntary sterilisations of black American women in the not too distant past, you can see where he is coming from. And accusing the government of racism does not equal anti-white racism.

Now don't think I don't know what he is doing with his criticism of the government that is not what gets him the racist bigoted label? That only gets him the conspricary kook label that he also deserves. He deserves his racist label for his directly racist comments.

Besides, Wright hammers constantly on reconciliation:

God does not desire for us, as children of God, to be at war with each other, to see each other as superior or inferior, to hate each other, abuse each other, misuse each other, define each other, or put each other down.So unless I've missed some major aspect, he doesn't appear to be a racist bigot.

He also hammers on having white america apologize for slavery. Which is an opinion he can hold but one that he sure can't blame this generation for. As several hunder thousand white american's didnt die to keep the union together and end slavery. It would seem to me that enough blood has been shed on that particuler issue in this country. So if he was so worried about reconciliation why does he need an apology from people who had absolutely nothing to do with slavery over 140 years ago?

Sorry Adrian you can disagree with me all you want, but the simple fact is if as a white man I said some of this stuff - I would be labeled a racist and rightly so. Just because he says it - doesn't by default make him not a racist. Maybe he is attempting to force some sort of reconciliation by doing what he is doing, but using conspricary and yes race baiting is not the way to do it, it only makes him what he claims he is fighting against. When he claims his words are taken out of context - they just might be, but when an individual makes the comments he has made in the way he has made them - he open himself for being accused of being just what he has been labeled as.

Defending his comments by claiming its an attack on the black church only goes to demonstrate that he has confused himself about what his comments are - racism. He might have said them with all the best intentions but it doesn't make them not racist.

Adrian II

04-30-2008, 00:04

However he went into the aspect of the brain, one that no-one has been able to prove when it comes to racial differences.The fact that someone makes a mistake doesn't make him a racist. And if he considers the attack on Obama an attack on his church (not his race), that does not qualify him as a racist either. Same thing with the Aids conspiracy, the whole notion is stupid, but it's not racist.
Again if I was to espouse that the black brain is different then the white brain what do you think that would get me labeled as?I believe that this is bothering quite a few white Americans: if I'm labelled a racist when I say that, then by God, so shall Jeremiah Wright. As an outsider I get the impression that despite appearances, a truly open debate of race issues past and present in the U.S. is still being stifled by such sensitivities and signs of distrust.
I think the racism charges come from him blaming the black communities problems on "white arrogance" or "rich whites", ect.You have to admit he has experienced white arrogance first hand. Imagine having served six years as a U.S. Marine and then learning that people of your race haev been used as guinea pigs in a syphilis experiment conducted by your own government. I would be mad as hell and it would stick with me for a long time.
Also, some can be inferred from his praise of blatant racists such as Farrakhan.Yeah well, I admit that's a critical point in the transcript. Where he essentially says he refuses to distance himself from Farrakhan because Farrakhan is too big. Farrakhan is a nutcase on wheels who thinks the world of Adolf Hitler and holds that whites are almost humans, only they aren't quite evolved yet. I guess you're right that it makes Wright look weak, even stupid, and in a sense guilty of racism by association.

I guess it all goes to show that the old American black-and-white movie isn't over by a long stretch.

KukriKhan

04-30-2008, 00:44

We are in the middle of a 2-year long job interview. We've whittled down the field to 3 major contenders for the job.

This latest test has been a fairly good challenge to Sen. Obama, to see how he reacts under pressure to people and events out of his personal control. It's the kind of thing he'll be faced with as POTUS every day.

I have to grade his performance on Wright-gate as a 5 (out of 10); merely average. Late out of the gate, he repudiated Wright's remarks, but didn't explain why Wright was wrong - only that he was (wrong).

He proposes direct talks with Dinner-Jacket, Kim, and other nutcases (nuttier than nutty Wright); if he's gonna do that as a new precedent in american foreign policy, he'd better get more proficient in swiftly handling nuts, kooks, and others whose interests are not his/ours.

Adrian II

04-30-2008, 00:48

He proposes direct talks with Dinner-Jacket, Kim, and other nutcases (nuttier than nutty Wright); if he's gonna do that as a new precedent in american foreign policy, he'd better get more proficient in swiftly handling nuts, kooks, and others whose interests are not his/ours.Ahem! :yes:

(I'm with Louis IV The Fat. Only I don't think Obama is just slick, I think that's just the outer symptom of a deeper problem: Obama doesn't know what he wants, and that would make him a very very bad President)

Redleg

04-30-2008, 01:18

The fact that someone makes a mistake doesn't make him a racist. And if he considers the attack on Obama an attack on his church (not his race), that does not qualify him as a racist either. Same thing with the Aids conspiracy, the whole notion is stupid, but it's not racist

Yes Adrain that mistake makes him a racist because he espouses it to be true. And I am not speaking of any attack on Obama, I am speaking of what he says the critizism of his speech is, instead of taking ownership of his words, he calls the criticism an attack on black religion. He quantifies the race issue by calling criticism on his words an attack on black relgion, sorry if you say something stupid and your critized for it, its not an attack on your race or your religion, its a criticism on you. To try to deflect in such a way is to use your race and religion. Using race makes him racist in my opinion. The Aids notion is stupid indeed, but that isn't what makes him racist in my opinion. Its his use of race that makes him so.

I believe that this is bothering quite a few white Americans: if I'm labelled a racist when I say that, then by God, so shall Jeremiah Wright. As an outsider I get the impression that despite appearances, a truly open debate of race issues past and present in the U.S. is still being stifled by such sensitivities and signs of distrust.

Yes I agree, when there is a double standard concerning how each side is allowed to speak - it indicates that racism is still a problem. And the stiffling and distrust is done by both sides of the debate. I don't call people by the ethnic makeup - they are Americans wether they be black, white, red, brown, yellow, or even purple. But if an individual is going to say because what Rev. Wright does - he should understand that he is doing the same thing that he is preaching against.

You have to admit he has experienced white arrogance first hand. Imagine having served six years as a U.S. Marine and then learning that people of your race haev been used as guinea pigs in a syphilis experiment conducted by your own government. I would be mad as hell and it would stick with me for a long time.

Pointing out the racism of the past is perfectable acceptable in my opinion. That doesn't present a problem. However being a kook is his problem when he preaches that the government is out to get all blacks. I have experience arrogance of several different types but I dont go arround preaching goofy ideas as gosbel either.

Yeah well, I admit that's a critical point in the transcript. Where he essentially says he refuses to distance himself from Farrakhan because Farrakhan is too big. Farrakhan is a nutcase on wheels who thinks the world of Adolf Hitler and holds that whites are almost humans, only they aren't quite evolved yet. I guess you're right that it makes Wright look weak, even stupid, and in a sense guilty of racism by association.

His own words make him guilty of all three, the association with Farrakhan is only just that.

[quote]
I guess it all goes to show that the old American black-and-white movie isn't over by a long stretch.

Nope - but at least for the most part its just words now. Versus the old days of ugly racism in the United States

Seamus Fermanagh

04-30-2008, 01:49

Ahem! :yes:

(I'm with Louis IV The Fat. Only I don't think Obama is just slick, I think that's just the outer symptom of a deeper problem: Obama doesn't know what he wants, and that would make him a very very bad President)

Obama knows exactly what he wants -- the Presidency. In short, he is a seeker of power. As are both of his major opponents.

All of them have a publicly ballyhooed "vision for America" -- but if you lined them up and told each that they could have that vision enacted immediately if they forswore office and returned to the status of "privatus" I think you'd be stunned by the rapidity of their negative responses.

All of them also have an agenda going that is partly hidden. This is where they'd like to take the USA if they can, but clear statements are likely to piss off too many voters so you won't hear/see this.

McCain would like to get most of the social conservatives to shut up and keep their social conservatism out of government. He's conservative on some of these issues himself, but doesn't favor government taking much of a role here (note: this actually ties in very well with the limited government/libertarian side of conservatism).

Clinton would balance the budget while expanding spending on healthcare, social security, and a host of education programs. Perforce, military spending will take it on the chin and the WoT will be reframed (gradually and by policy steps rather than any referendum) as a police function. The Patriot act will be rolled back to a more mirandized version, though the TSA is here to stay.

Obama certainly has many of the same policy goals as Clinton, but I believe he'll work to make democracy more direct in character and thereby enhance the political position of African Americans. He's not an America hater, just a guy using them, but his wife is convinced that the USA sucks rocks and needs to be bashed into a different shape altogether.

Tribes':

No, I do not like being reminded of the fact that the USA has participated in some terrorist acts directly, has supported (tacitly usually, but overtly sometimes) others, and has directly or indirectly underwritten many more without caring. It does not please me to think that my country is morally just as bankrupt as the rest of the world with its own sets of blinders etc. My countrymen can rival anyone on the planet for self-chosen ignorance, pettiness, prevarication and perfidy -- yet, no, strangely enough I do not revel in this.

Perhaps I should begin each day by banging my head against a wall until I'm bleeding or start some flegellant cult and wallow in self-loathing. Don't bet on it happening that way though.

You worry me tribes. You're obviously bright and obviously passionate, but you focus so much on injustices of one stripe or another that I wonder if you manage to see anything else. A healthy does of cynicism is darned useful, but not if it becomes an end in itself.

Adrian II

04-30-2008, 02:08

Nope - but at least for the most part its just words now. Versus the old days of ugly racism in the United StatesThanks for clearing that up Redleg and Xaihou. It's a different country and I sometimes find it hard to fathom what counts as (subtle) signs of racism and what doesn't.

To me, there is a big difference between a person who is frightened, misguided or insensitive about race issues on the one hand, and an all-out racist on the other. To the first, you can talk about your differences. Sometimes all it takes is a few kind words, with others it requires a long and painful dialogue, but in any case you're talking.

With a true racist from another race you can't have a dialogue because he despises you for what you are. You can't talk it over. It's a dead end. All you can do is negotiate a stand-off, put up a fence between the two of you, sit on your porch and watch the fence to make sure the other guy doesn't move the posts.

Now that damnable thing called PC has taught us that the slightest sign of 'racial' thinking, be it ever so remote, innocent or benign, is equally racist, divisive and bad. This means that public life becomes a maze of fences, all avidly guarded by men and women who watch your every move as you negotiate between the posts and the wires and the funny signs that say 'keep out, different race'. I get the impression that in the 1960's during the civil rights confrontions, the riots and the political infighting, at least blacks and whites in the U.S. were talking. And that nowadays they are politely smiling and keeping their distance, each hiding behind their spiritual or local political leadership and a host of official and informal taboos. And that there is no more dialogue.

And that stinks.

Same thing happens over here, between muslims and non-muslims. All in the name of tolerance and respect.

Geoffrey S

04-30-2008, 07:25

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
I think by now Obama has amply proved that the exact opposite is also applicable.

Tribesman

04-30-2008, 07:47

Tribes':

No, I do not like being reminded of the fact that the USA has participated in some terrorist acts directly, has supported (tacitly usually, but overtly sometimes) others, and has directly or indirectly underwritten many more without caring. It does not please me to think that my country is morally just as bankrupt as the rest of the world with its own sets of blinders etc. My countrymen can rival anyone on the planet for self-chosen ignorance, pettiness, prevarication and perfidy -- yet, no, strangely enough I do not revel in this.

Perhaps I should begin each day by banging my head against a wall until I'm bleeding or start some flegellant cult and wallow in self-loathing. Don't bet on it happening that way though.

But Seamus it isn't about the people who don't like to be reminded , it is about the people who claim it isn't true .

FactionHeir

04-30-2008, 11:37

I'd be interested in how Orgah's would vote between the three candidates now. I imagine voting lines may have shifted.

CountArach

04-30-2008, 12:22

ICantSpellDawg

04-30-2008, 13:24

I don't think so - I support McCain because he is pro-life (mostly) and has a more sensible position regarding foreign policy. Those are really the variables for me. If Obama was pro-life I might support him instead, even though his foreign policy is shortsighted. I'm still unconvinced that McCain knows the first 2 things about the economy. Only 1 Mitt as VP would convince me of that.

This Wright issue will be responsible for Obama's downfall should it happen. Wright should be allowed to say what he has said, but when he says it as a messenger from God, we have a problem. Maybe this will promote some more accountability among black leaders.

Wright does preach divisiveness and many untruths. Wright, however, isn't running for president.

KukriKhan

04-30-2008, 14:18

I'd be interested in how Orgah's would vote between the three candidates now. I imagine voting lines may have shifted.

On the contrary I think that just about everyone here had their mind made up once we got down to the final three. No one is spitting the dummy and voting third party (AFAIK) and the Democrat-Republican line seems fairly well defined.

Since we've made this the single US Politics thread, we can add/remove polls at any time, to guage backroom zeitgeist. If anyone thinks a poll would be useful, PM a backroom Moderator with your idea of how it should be constructed - we'd be glad to assist.

CountArach

05-01-2008, 07:55

This Wright issue will be responsible for Obama's downfall should it happen.
There is no delegate math that says that Clinton can win. This will all blow over with the general, except for perhaps occasional re-runs on Faux News.

KukriKhan

05-01-2008, 12:49

There is no delegate math that says that Clinton can win.

True, but there's also no law telling the political parties how they must use the delegate math, or whether they must use it at all, in selecting their candidate.

Dem party bosses could decide to disregard both the popular vote and/or the delegate count, and resort to the ancient "smoke-filled room" method. 'Course they'd have lots o'splainin' to do, and they'd probably lose the new voters Obama brought into the fold; but they could do it - and I wouldn't be surprised if Sen. Clinton pushed for just such a scenario, painting Sen Obama as less-than-electable, with too much 'baggage'.

CountArach

05-01-2008, 12:59

Yeah I know - Clinton not stepping aside by now is just making it all the more likely that there will be a coup in her own party. Someone is going to have to tell her that she can't win.

Banquo's Ghost

05-01-2008, 13:13

Dem party bosses could decide to disregard both the popular vote and/or the delegate count, and resort to the ancient "smoke-filled room" method. 'Course they'd have lots o'splainin' to do, and they'd probably lose the new voters Obama brought into the fold; but they could do it - and I wouldn't be surprised if Sen. Clinton pushed for just such a scenario, painting Sen Obama as less-than-electable, with too much 'baggage'.

I wonder if this scenario would turn out the best for all.

It doesn't look like America is yet ready for a black president. Very nearly there - which is amazingly encouraging, but not quite. Sen. Obama's run this time may have provoked enough thinking, but not quite enough actual change to win him the general election.

If the Clintonistas force their way, he can bow out with grace and style, ready for a real and unopposed run next time. During the next four years, he can understand and deal with the issues that will arise. He will have moral authority with his own party - more so, I would think, if he bowed out now, but with an air of quitter for the wider public. Best to be deprived unfairly.

Clinton would then have to run wrapped in the bedclothes she has soiled herself, against a candidate who would eviscerate her on every sordid character issue. McCain would probably be a unifier for the country and a president even Democrats would respect and support - and then Sen. Obama, hopefully having honed his policies and beliefs to a more robust level, would become a natural successor to a country more at peace with itself.

At this point, both Democrat candidates look unelectable, but Obama has the future if he isn't thrown to the lions too early.

ICantSpellDawg

05-01-2008, 14:13

There is no delegate math that says that Clinton can win. This will all blow over with the general, except for perhaps occasional re-runs on Faux News.

In the general!

KukriKhan

05-01-2008, 14:28

That story-arc is certainly a strong possibility, Banquo's Ghost.

With over 100 more 24-hour news cycles until the conventions, anything still can (and probably will) happen. This over-extended campaign length is not only "killing" us, the electorate, with oversaturation, it's murdering the candidates, too. Who, in their right mind, would volunteer to subject themselves, their families, and every decision ever made in their lifetime, to such scrutiny?

Xiahou

05-01-2008, 15:43

It doesn't look like America is yet ready for a black president. Very nearly there - which is amazingly encouraging, but not quite. Sen. Obama's run this time may have provoked enough thinking, but not quite enough actual change to win him the general election.
Yes, for if America were ready for a black president we'd all have voted for him. Policies and issues be damned, we need a black president. :dizzy2:

Maybe it's not that America doesn't want a black person as president so much as the right one hasn't run yet. :idea2:
I don't really care what race a candidate is, if they espouse my views, they'll get my vote.

There is no delegate math that says that Clinton can win.Obama isn't going to reach the needed number either. This one is going to be decided by the party-insiders, whoever wins the nomination. :shrug:

Banquo's Ghost

05-01-2008, 16:26

Yes, for if America were ready for a black president we'd all have voted for him. Policies and issues be damned, we need a black president. :dizzy2:

Maybe it's not that America doesn't want a black person as president so much as the right one hasn't run yet. :idea2:
I don't really care what race a candidate is, if they espouse my views, they'll get my vote.

That's nice to know, but from what I read, it's not entirely true of your fellow citizens.

Senator Obama clearly espouses pretty core Democrat values and views. As I believe you have noted before, Clinton and he are almost indistinguishable on most issues that Democrat voters care about.

Yet many white voters still express significant unwillingness to vote for him and subsequent research shows a racial concern - even expressed sotto voce by the party hierarchy.

Now, you may well say that this is a Democrat problem and that whilst that party is riven thus by racism, the Republicans are without stain. But that's still a pretty big chunk of the electorate that is finding it hard to choose a black candidate - not because his views are out of step with theirs, but because of his colour.

I should note that I am still in awe of the United States for enabling us to even have this conversation, as the Republic of Ireland (and I suspect much of Europe) is light years away from being able to consider a coloured leader. So I'm not criticising, just reflecting.

ICantSpellDawg

05-01-2008, 18:54

That's nice to know, but from what I read, it's not entirely true of your fellow citizens.

That's how I feel, as well. Whoever they are, if they share my valuesand are competant, they get my vote. Period.

FactionHeir

05-01-2008, 19:02

Yet many white voters still express significant unwillingness to vote for him and subsequent research shows a racial concern - even expressed sotto voce by the party hierarchy.

Now, you may well say that this is a Democrat problem and that whilst that party is riven thus by racism, the Republicans are without stain. But that's still a pretty big chunk of the electorate that is finding it hard to choose a black candidate - not because his views are out of step with theirs, but because of his colour.

I think it works both ways. The black electorate doesn't seem to want to vote a white person when a (half) black is running. Obama consistently gets 80-95% of the black vote in each dem primary/caucus, while Clinton gets only up to 65% of the white votes. In a way you could argue reverse racism here.

Banquo's Ghost

05-01-2008, 19:47

I think it works both ways. The black electorate doesn't seem to want to vote a white person when a (half) black is running. Obama consistently gets 80-95% of the black vote in each dem primary/caucus, while Clinton gets only up to 65% of the white votes. In a way you could argue reverse racism here.

That's a fair point. :bow:

Crazed Rabbit

05-01-2008, 21:37

That's nice to know, but from what I read, it's not entirely true of your fellow citizens.

Senator Obama clearly espouses pretty core Democrat values and views. As I believe you have noted before, Clinton and he are almost indistinguishable on most issues that Democrat voters care about.

He espouses them, but doesn't practice them. He's talking a nice centrist path, but he is on the left wing of the democrat party. And, of course, the whole 'rural folk are bitter, clingy people' thing. Then the crazy pastor who just won't shut up.

And the Obama scandals in waiting that haven't made the news yet, some of which are listed in an old article somebody posted a bit back.

That's a fair point.

Indeed.

CR

Evil_Maniac From Mars

05-01-2008, 22:21

And, of course, the whole 'rural folk are bitter, clingy people' thing.

Give it a rest. As a conservative-leaning Roman Catholic who has lived in a rural community for much of his life, and owns a gun too boot, not only was I not offended, but I felt he hit a key issue.

Tribesman

05-01-2008, 23:52

Give it a rest. As a conservative-leaning Roman Catholic who has lived in a rural community for much of his life, and owns a gun too boot, not only was I not offended, but I felt he hit a key issue.
Come on mars , you must understand it isn't about if its an issue or if its true , its about upsetting people by saying things they don't want to hear .
Now if you do upset some people by saying what they don't want to hear and include some magic words like guns and god then its gonna run and keep on running .
I fully expect some muppets to be prattling on about "he said we cling to guns" by the time the next presidential election comes round after this one , just as we still get the "he voted for it before he voted against it " nonsense regularly .
I doesn't matter that those repeating it make no sense , its just something they get stuck on .

Xiahou

05-02-2008, 00:23

Give it a rest. As a conservative-leaning Roman Catholic who has lived in a rural community for much of his life, and owns a gun too boot, not only was I not offended, but I felt he hit a key issue.
What key issue? It was just a glib dismissal of voters who didn't "get" him. There was nothing profound in his statement. I swear, Obama could blow his nose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmkNblT1A7M&feature=related) and people would praise him for having the courage to shed light on such a serious issue. :dizzy2:

I should note that I am still in awe of the United States for enabling us to even have this conversation, as the Republic of Ireland (and I suspect much of Europe) is light years away from being able to consider a coloured leader. So I'm not criticising, just reflecting.I don't think I'm in some enlightened minority when I say I don't care about a politician's race. I think most American's are in the same boat- obviously there are some racists in the US who would never vote for a black man, but I don't think they're a significant voting block. I would suspect that for every person who wouldn't vote for someone because of race, there are 1 or more who does vote for someone based on race. Both reasons are stupid, imo.

I just find it really galling when people say 'America isn't ready for a black/woman president because Obama/Hillary isn't going to win.' All it means is America isn't ready for (or doesnt want) Obama or Hillary. I don't see the need to read any more into it than that.

Lemur

05-02-2008, 00:26

Gentlemen, please, if the rightwing Orgahs want to comfort themselves with repetitive talking points about Obama, please don't take it away from them. They're saddled with the most unpopular President in modern history (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/01/poll-bush-most-unpopular-in-modern-history/). Their chosen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_thompson) candidates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_romney) tanked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani) in the Repub primary. The current nominee is talking about global warming and ending torture.

Their entire agenda is turning into ashes in '09 no matter who wins. They've lost already, and there's no pulling a win out of the current situation. So if they want to believe that chanting the same three or four lines about Obama over and over again makes a difference, who are you to take that away from them? They've lost so much, and they stand to lose more. Be kind to them, please.

Xiahou

05-02-2008, 00:29

Lemur

05-02-2008, 00:31

I think most American's are in the same boat- obviously there are some racists in the US who would never vote for a black man, but I don't think they're a significant voting block.
Sixteen percent is the estimate I've consistently heard concerning people who will not vote for a non-white candidate. Whether that constitutes as "significant voting block" is arguable.

Your entire post is nothing more than taunting- let's see if anyone takes the bait.:coffeenews:
You can count on Vladimir. He'll take any bait offered by anyone. As for trolling, lad, check your own hyperbolic criticisms of all things Dem before you check back in under the bridge.

Xiahou

05-02-2008, 00:39

Sixteen percent is the estimate I've consistently heard concerning people who will not vote for a non-white candidate. Whether that constitutes as "significant voting block" is arguable.Estimates based on what (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/02/black_president_more_likely_than_mormon_or_atheist_/)?

Lemur

05-02-2008, 00:43

Googling the articles, I see they all pertain to your home state, not to nation-wide statistics. So I'll happily retract the number until I can find something more substantive.

Crazed Rabbit

05-02-2008, 01:36

Give it a rest. As a conservative-leaning Roman Catholic who has lived in a rural community for much of his life, and owns a gun too boot, not only was I not offended, but I felt he hit a key issue.

What issue? That he's a condescending snob? Not to mention that he's wrong, to boot.

What's up your *** tonight, Lemur? Having a whole thread
for you to wallow in trolling not enough for ya?

CR

Lemur

05-02-2008, 01:39

Hi Crazed Rabbit, I love you too. Sorry to upset everyone by interrupting the anti-Obama love-in. What's the thread dedicated to my trolling to which you refer?

Crazed Rabbit

05-02-2008, 01:50

The thread you said you started just to troll people.

CR

Lemur

05-02-2008, 01:57

Dude, I can do circular reasoning too, don't think you've got a lock on it. Are you talking about the Toe-Tapping thread? Are you still sore about that one? I let that go months and months ago. There have been some really juicy Republican pedophilia and crossdressing scandals since I let that thread die. And that thread was more about laughs than about trolling, so maybe you're referring to something else ...

woad&fangs

05-02-2008, 01:59

What issue? That he's a condescending snob? Not to mention that he's wrong, to boot.

CR

Obama is right. People do cling to ideals when times are hard economically. Ask an average person how the economy should be fixed and they'll stare blankly back at you. Now ask that same person a question on guns, religion, or immigrants and they will :daisy: sure tell you what they think should be done about it and how every other opinion on the topic is complete and utter bollox.

Lemur

05-02-2008, 02:09

woad&fangs, please, the point is not anything Obama was talking about. That's just gobbledygook. The point is how what he said can be used to paint him as a threat to all that's good and just in America. Character assassination has worked for two Presidential cycles, don't expect it to stop now, just because it's a familiar tune.

Just stop addressing issues, please, for all our sakes. None of our rightwingers care in the slightest about the spiritual/emotional characteristics of rural areas where the jobs have gone bye-bye. They're just into defining Obama with their little sound bytes.

And as I said earlier, it's all they've got left to them, so leave them to it.

woad&fangs

05-02-2008, 02:17

O yes, quite right. Lets try a different tactic.

Senator Obama has attended the sermons of Rvd Wright for many years now. Now, A person obviously can not listen to someone for so long without absorbing that other persons beliefs as their own. Now then, Rvd Wright is both a preacher(Yay RELIgioN!!) and he served for 6 years in the army(Horray GuNS!!!, HOray PatrIOTSIm!!) Therefore, Obama is a devoutly religious, gun loving, patriotic, average joe just like you. Obviously you should vote for Obama!!! /idiocy

Is that better, Lemur?

Seamus Fermanagh

05-02-2008, 03:03

...Character assassination has worked for two Presidential cycles, don't expect it to stop now, just because it's a familiar tune.

Two? :shocked2: Mais non!

2004 -- Kerry is a lib snob and isn't the war-hero he claims to be v. Bush and Cheney are draft-dodging chickenhawks.

2000 -- Gore is a boring turd v Bush is an idiot and Cheney's almost dead.

1996 -- Dole is a angry bitter old man v Clinton is a lying scumbag (bonus = Perot is a tinfoil-hat whackjob)

1992 -- Bush (41) is an out-of-touch patrician v Clinton is just another liberal (bonus = Perot is a dork and Stockdale's gone senile)

1988 -- Dukakis is a criminal-coddling woos who'd stand by while people gang-raped his wife v ....actually, Dukakis really never attacked Bush (41) and heaped most of his stuff on Reagan, which didn't work.

1984 -- Mondale is just Carter redux (not much of a slame, but Reagan didn't need any extra zing) v Reagan is a senile warmonger

1980 -- Carter is a whiner with no backbone v Reagan is a crackpot warmonger

1976 -- Ford is a bumbling idiot v Carter is a dumb hick with a big smile

1972 -- McGovern would surrender to the Vietnamese and the Soviets v Nixon is the personification of tyrannical evil and malfeasance.*

All in all, I think you'd have to go back to 1936 to find a race where neither side did much in the way of characterization.

* Please Note (and Kukri can confirm), for those of you who didn't get to live through/watch this era, no politician since then has been loathed by the political left and the media as much as Nixon, INCLUDING Bush 43 and Reagan. To get to someone loathed as much by the political left/Democrat side, you have to go all the way back to Harding. For the political right/GOP side, Wilson, FDR, & Clinton have been the ones to hate.

ICantSpellDawg

05-02-2008, 03:05

Lemur - I'm defending Obama on this one and, last time I checked, i'm on the "right-wing orgah's list". The has been no "anti-Obama love-in" as far as I can tell.

The Wright thing might work to screw him in the general, but it would be for the wrong reasons. It doesn't even make sense as a deal breaker.

Seamus Fermanagh

05-02-2008, 03:42

...The Wright thing might work to screw him in the general, but it would be for the wrong reasons. It doesn't even make sense as a deal breaker.

In any substantive sense, of course it doesn't. Guilt by association never really does. Obama was in the man's church for 20 years (at least part time) but does that mean he shares these views or that he'd act on them? Of course not, it's no more of a causal link than asserting that cops are scum because they spend all of their time with criminals.

However, given the thin degree of difference between Clinton and Obama on a policy level, much of this nomination race has hinged on identity politics pure and simple.

Obama consciously chose to portray himself as someone new and different, as the "radiant future" who looked so shiny and clean standing next to that known politico power broker Clinton. The "Wright Stuff" may have no substance of itself, but it -- and more importantly Obama's response thereto -- have caused him to appear more like her, like just another politician, and that has people wondering if the image is a mirage.

I hear some of the outlier polls even have Hillary ahead in NC???!

CrossLOPER

05-02-2008, 03:47

This is how I'm starting to feel about how the subject of elections is being treated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJL_svLk34c

No porn. Sorry.

Crazed Rabbit

05-02-2008, 04:12

Obama is right. People do cling to ideals when times are hard economically. Ask an average person how the economy should be fixed and they'll stare blankly back at you. Now ask that same person a question on guns, religion, or immigrants and they will :daisy: sure tell you what they think should be done about it and how every other opinion on the topic is complete and utter bollox.

He implied they only care about those things because they going through hard economic times. Or that the only reason those simple rural folk don't toe the liberal line Obama believes in is because they are poor off, that if they had more money of course they'd agree with you.

None of our rightwingers care in the slightest about the spiritual/emotional characteristics of rural areas where the jobs have gone bye-bye.

What the **** do you know about me? Oh, wait, you're not getting enough oxygen for the same reason your nose is brown, so its just a bunch of dailykos style attacks from you.

CR

Lemur

05-02-2008, 04:21

Crazed Rabbit, if we could just lower the level of this discussion even further, I'd like to respectfully point out that I am, in fact, made of rubber, whereas I have it on good authority that you are constructed from glue. Clearly this means that a majority of objects will bounce off of me and—unable to gain purchase—they will likely to adhere to you.

-edit-

Very amusing summary of the Dem primary in seven minutes (http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271557392/bctid1531283112).

Xiahou

05-02-2008, 04:26

Obama is right. People do cling to ideals when times are hard economically. Ask an average person how the economy should be fixed and they'll stare blankly back at you. Now ask that same person a question on guns, religion, or immigrants and they will :daisy: sure tell you what they think should be done about it and how every other opinion on the topic is complete and utter bollox.What does that have to do with the question he was supposedly answering? He was asked about why he had difficulty connecting with a certain group of voters and his response, as I've said, was little more than a glib dismissal. He essentially said he wasn't connecting well with them because they were poor, out of work, hated minorities and were clinging to guns and religion- that was his explanation.

Other than the obvious, erroneous stereotyping (which has been well covered elsewhere), that was also a moronic response because it flies in the face of what Obama's campaign is supposedly all about- "Change you can believe in", "We are the ones we've been waiting for" ect.

If he's the fresh face of politics who's brining "change", why can't he reach these voters? He didn't answer the question- he dodged it by dismissing them as bigoted gun nuts. And people praise him for that. :dizzy2:

seireikhaan

05-02-2008, 04:29

As a side note to this highly intellectual discussion currently raging: Obama did, in fact, win the states of Kansas and Iowa. Not exactly beacons of urban culture, if I must say...

Edit: Oh, btw, in case folks forgot, Hillary ain't exactly Suzy Schmoe he's running against. Clinton's already had a strong loyalty and base built up in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania; he was pretty much starting from scratch.

KukriKhan

05-02-2008, 05:21

Please Note (and Kukri can confirm), for those of you who didn't get to live through/watch this era, no politician since then has been loathed by the political left and the media as much as Nixon, INCLUDING Bush 43 and Reagan...

Confirmed. The hue and cry was the loudest and most persistent I've ever seen/heard, leading to the unprecedented (to me) experience of hearing senior NCO's and Field-Grade officers, usually determinedly a-political, wondering out loud whether we had the wrong guy in the job, and, if so, what that meant for us GI's.

I remember that just before Nixon trumped the Watergate committee by resigning, FORSCOM quietly issued instructions through Logistics channels, for units to confirm their inventories of bayonets (which had been locked away since '72 - "Hey you could put an eye out with that thing!"), and other dusty riot gear. Big trouble seemed to be looming on the horizen.

-----------------------
Moderator's Note: Let's keep this prolonged discussion about: the candidates, the issues, and the electoral process, and not about each other.

Xiahou

05-02-2008, 06:19

Here's an article I just finished reading that I thought the Obama faithful would enjoy: Obama and Me (http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/1)
It's a very lengthy but interesting article. Here's one small excerpt.He was just 35 when in 1996 he won his first bid for political office. Even many of his staunchest supporters, such as Black, still resent the strong-arm tactics Obama employed to win his seat in the Illinois Legislature.

Obama hired fellow Harvard Law alum and election law expert Thomas Johnson to challenge the nominating petitions of four other candidates, including the popular incumbent, Alice Palmer, a liberal activist who had held the seat for several years, according to an April 2007 Chicago Tribune report.

Obama found enough flaws in the petition sheets — to appear on the ballot, candidates needed 757 signatures from registered voters living within the district — to knock off all the other Democratic contenders. He won the seat unopposed.

Crazed Rabbit

05-02-2008, 06:25

Gee, Xiahou, you and your evil conservative talking points! Why can't you just focus on the issues like: Obama; Great or Really Great?

CR

Tribesman

05-02-2008, 07:49

What issue?

What key issue?
"Its the economy stupid"
Or perhaps you think the rust belt is a term used in the fashion industry .

He implied they only care about those things because they going through hard economic times.
No he said they cling to them because its all they have left to cling to .

Seamus Fermanagh

05-02-2008, 13:08

"Its the economy stupid"
Or perhaps you think the rust belt is a term used in the fashion industry .

No he said they cling to them because its all they have left to cling to .

"Rust belt" is a bit outdated. Our manufacturing economy has preferenced the higher tech end of manufacturing for some time now -- 20+ years.

Obama is correct, at least to a point. There is a segment of our society that is pissed that their High School diploma is no longer enough to guarantee them a 30+k job in a factory nearby. This is because the factory either closed when the union labor costs went too far and/or went high tech. If you refuse to up stakes and move to where your skills will work, or refuse to uptech your head, the US economy will leave you behind. Some of these folks are bitter about it, no doubt.

Where he was wrong was the "clinging to guns and religion thing." A majority of folks in this country do NOT presume that religion = fantasy. A majority also agree with the right to own firearms, and many of them do -- as is their right. Therefore, this are viewed not only as personal rights, but as a benefit to their lives.

Now, had Obama been clearer in making his point -- which I believe was meant to be that letting some of the less savory elements of the political right whip you up in a fervor over these issues when they are NOT really threatened is nothing but a distraction -- he might have made a good argument. That's not what came out, and the tone of his response was a bit petulant.

Not normally much of an issue, unless you've built your entire campaign on being "the radiant future." "Angels" don't stoop to petulance....

ICantSpellDawg

05-02-2008, 13:34

Watch Hillary steal the election. She will be the Dem nominee and Obama will be her VP - in spite of what everyone says and thinks. THey will devastate McCAin in the general.

We are like pedestrians watching a horrific car crash.

Lemur

05-02-2008, 13:36

Gee, Xiahou, you and your evil conservative talking points!
Hey, at least Xiahou has the time and energy to bring something new to the anti-Obama festival. I hadn't heard that one before, so bravo!

KukriKhan

05-02-2008, 14:42

...If you refuse to up stakes and move to where your skills will work, or refuse to uptech your head, the US economy will leave you behind. Some of these folks are bitter about it, no doubt...

True enough, and a valid observation. It should be noted that both those 'solutions' (up stakes & uptech) require temporarily removing oneself from wage-earning work, plus an investment of capital, plus a risk of failure if the move location is guessed wrong, or uptech field is.

Tribesman

05-02-2008, 18:34

True enough, and a valid observation. It should be noted that both those 'solutions' (up stakes & uptech) require temporarily removing oneself from wage-earning work, plus an investment of capital, plus a risk of failure if the move location is guessed wrong, or uptech field is.

Yes but even if it does turn to failure you still can have your religion and your gun ..unless things get that bad that you have to pawn the gun , but even then you would still have a right to have a gun .

Xiahou

05-02-2008, 20:25

Yes but even if it does turn to failure you still can have your religion and your gun ..unless things get that bad that you have to pawn the gun , but even then you would still have a right to have a gun .
Don't be ridiculous.
Why pawn it when you could use it to rob a convenience store or mug someone? :clown:

ICantSpellDawg

05-02-2008, 23:41

I swear that I will marry this lady. She is totally on the level. Tell me that it doesn't seem like the feminine, educated version of what I wrote... Even the Irish-American flavour!

Loyal to the Bitterness (http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html)
By PEGGY NOONAN
May 2, 2008

I am out of step. There is something that is upsetting others whom I care about and whose thoughts are often not unlike my own. And it's not hitting me the same way.

I am referring to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I disagree with and disapprove of the things he says. The U.S. government did not spread AIDS among the black community, 9/11 was not the chickens coming home to roost, etc. He seems like a bright man, warm, humorous and compelling, but also needful and demanding of the spotlight, a showman prone to crackpottery, and I have to wonder how much respect he has for his congregation. He shows a lot of fury and does a lot of yelling for a leader of the followers of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
[Loyal to the Bitterness]
AP

When he is discussed on news shows, pundits are asked what they think Mr. Wright's political impact will be, which is another way of saying: What will people think of this?

I always wish they'd say what they themselves think. I think what Mr. Wright has been saying is extreme and radical, and people don't like extreme and radical when they're pondering who their next leader will be, and as Mr. Wright has been Barack Obama's friend and mentor for 20 years, this will hurt Mr. Obama. This is borne out in the week's polls. From the New York Times: 48% of Democrats say he can best beat McCain, down eight points since April. The proportion of Democrats who say Mr. Obama is their choice for the nomination is now 46%, down six.

I also think that if Hillary Clinton wins because of the Wright scandal, it will leave a sad taste in the mouths of many. Mr. Obama reveals many things in his books, speeches and interviews but polarity and a tropism toward the extreme are not among them. What happened with Mr. Wright should not determine the race. Mr. Obama's stands, his ability to convince us he can make good change, his ability to be "one of us," that great challenge for a national politician in a varied nation, should determine the race.

But I am finding it hard to feel truly upset about what Mr. Wright has said. This is the out-of-stepness I referred to. So here I will talk not about how people will respond to him but how I do.

* * *

I do not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks, in part because I don't think his views carry deep implications for our country. I have been watching America up close for many years – if you count a bright childhood, for half a century. I have seen, heard and respected the pain of a people who were forced to come here when they did not want to and made to live in a way that no one would want to. Who could deny them their grief or anger? I have seen radicalism and extremism, too. I have seen Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, the Black National Anthem, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan. I came to see their radicalism as, putting the morality of policy based on rage aside, essentially unhelpful and impractical. It wouldn't work as an American movement, not long-term. Hatred plays itself out, has power in the short-term but is nonsustaining in the long. America, and this is one of its glories, has a conscience to which an appeal can be made. It may take a long time, it may take centuries, but in the end we try hard to do the right thing, and everyone knows it. Hatred is a form of energy that does not fuel this machine and cannot make it run.

And all the time I was watching the old days of rage, blacks in America were rising, joining the professions, becoming middle class, assuming authority, becoming professors and doctors. No one is surprised anymore to meet a powerful man or woman who devises systems by which others should live – that would be a politician – who is black.

I came to think all the talk of radicalism and extremism amounted to little, and was in the end rejected by the very people it was meant to rouse. They didn't buy it.

This week I talked to a young man, an Irish-American to whom I said, "Am I wrong not to feel anger about Wright?" He more or less saw it as I do, but for a different reason, or from different experience.

He said he figures Mr. Wright's followers delight in him the same way he delights in the Wolfe Tones, the Irish folk group named for the 18th-century leader condemned to death by the British occupying forces, as they say on their Web site. They sing songs about the Brits and how they subjugated the Irish and we'll rise up and trounce the bastards.

My 20-year-old friend has lived a good life in America and is well aware that he is not an abused farmer in the fields holding secret Mass in defiance of the prohibitions of the English ruling class. His life has not been like that. Yet he enjoys the bitterness. He likes going to Wolfe Tones concerts raising his fist, thinking "Up the Rebels." It is good to feel that old ethnic religious solidarity, and that in part is what he is in search of, solidarity. And it's not so bad to take a little free-floating anger, apply it to politics, and express it in applause.

He knows the dark days are over. He just enjoys remembering them even if he didn't experience them. His people did.

I know exactly what he feels, for I felt the same when I was his age. And so what? It's just a way of saying, "I'm still loyal to our bitterness." Which is another way of saying, "I'm still loyal." I have a nice life, I'm American, I live far away, an Englishman has never hurt me, and yet I am still Irish. I can prove it. I can summon the old anger.

Is this terrible? I don't think so. It's human and messy and warm-blooded, as a human would be.

The thing is to not let your affiliation with bitterness govern you, so that you leave the Wolfe Tones concert and punch an Englishman in the nose. In this connection it can be noted there is no apparent record of people leaving a Wright sermon and punching anyone in the nose. Maybe they're in search of solidarity too. Maybe they're showing loyalty too.

* * *

Few voters will be more inclined to vote for Barack Obama because his friend, mentor and pastor is extreme. They will think it makes Mr. Obama less attractive. They will not think Mr. Obama handled the challenge with force, dispatch and the kind of instinct that turns dilemma into gain.

And yet . . . it doesn't get my blood up. It doesn't hurt my heart. It doesn't make me feel I need to defend my country. Because I don't see it as attacked, only criticized in a way that is not persuasive.

Mr. Wright seems to me to be part of the great "barbaric yawp," as Walt Whitman called the American people fighting, discussing, making things and living. I like the barbaric yawp. I don't enjoy it when it makes me wince, but at least when I am wincing, I know the yawp is working.

Louis VI the Fat

05-02-2008, 23:45

I am almost late to the anti-Obama love fest!

Somebody mention yet that Obama's brother (http://www.feedchief.com/topic/Abongo-Obama) Abongo "Roy" Obama is a Luo activist, trying to install sharia law in the once promising African nation of Kenya? And that Obama's cousin (http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-obamas-cousin-charged-with-ethnic.html) Raila Odinga is a brutal terrorist, accused of ethnic cleansing, and waging a dirty war for power in Kenya?

Did somebody ask Obama yet whether he supported the bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi? One wonders what Obama meant when he said that American foreign policy should pay closer attention to Africa...

Will Obama severe ties with his nearest relatives, or will these terrorists have direct access to the White House?
[/fear-mongering :whip: ]

ICantSpellDawg

05-02-2008, 23:54

CountArach

05-03-2008, 00:24

You guys call Republican's fear mongering. Hillary Clinton needs to be stopped. She is the worst of the worst.
Something we can definitely agree on.

Tribesman

05-03-2008, 00:36

Why pawn it when you could use it to rob a convenience store or mug someone?
Because if you got caught you would lose your right to keep guns .

Xiahou

05-03-2008, 18:01

Here, I'll throw a bone to the Clinton haters:
Washington, D.C., Group Accused of High-Tech Dirty Tricks to Suppress Black Vote (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/north-carolin-1.html)

A D.C. advocacy group called Women's Voices, Women Vote is being accused of waging a high-tech voter suppression campaign, after voters in predominantly black districts in North Carolina began receiving automated phone calls implying that they hadn't properly registered to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary.
The Institute for Southern Studies notes that North Carolina isn't the only state in which Women's Voices, Women Vote has caused a ruckus among voters and election officials, and that many of its officials have connections with Hillary Clinton, either by having worked in President Bill Clinton's administration or through campaign donations.:bow:

woad&fangs

05-04-2008, 01:03

Obama has won the Guam (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24441932) primary

4 more delegates for the side of sunshine and happiness:beam:

FactionHeir

05-04-2008, 01:17

Eh, you mean he "won" it by 7 votes.

And both he and Hillary get 4 delegates each. So where is the big deal?

Lemur

05-04-2008, 01:33

And both he and Hillary get 4 delegates each. So where is the big deal?
Incorrect -- Guam sends a total of four pledged delegates to the convention. That's the big money, baby! As Guam goes, so goes America!

And actually, some Superdelegates were elected, so it looks like Senator Obama netted slightly today.

The territory sends the equivalent of four pledged delegates and five superdelegates to the National Convention in August in Denver although U.S. citizens on the island have no vote in the November election.

Voters also picked two superdelegates by electing a new party chairman who is uncommitted and a vice chairman who supports Obama.

-edit-

P.S.: Were you aware that the Clinton years were the best eight years in modern history (http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/03/976949.aspx)?

FactionHeir

05-04-2008, 01:38

I happened to read that the territory sends 8 pledged delegates each of who have 0.5 votes, so 4 pledged votes total. Or did I misunderstand something?

Marshal Murat

05-04-2008, 02:05

Candidate Picks for the Kentucky Darby (http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080502/SPORTS08/80502008)

I particularly liked the
First, all the U.S. flags fell down behind Clinton as she spoke in Iowa. Now, the horse she bet on is destroyed in the race. These are symbolic foreshadowings from the Lord of the doom in store for the nation when Clinton wins in November.
5/3/2008 8:45:01 PM

Lemur

05-04-2008, 15:34

The Economist goes there: Clinton = Nixon (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2008/04/clinton_nixon_nixon_clinton.cfm).

Clinton, Nixon; Nixon, Clinton

Economist.com | NEW YORK

SIX days ahead of the North Carolina primary comes a story of real sleaze—not Jeremiah Wright-style buffoonery, but Nixon-style illegality designed to dupe and disenfranchise voters—that should surprise precisely nobody who has been following and covering this campaign. A group called Women's Voices Women's Vote (WVWV), which claims to have been "created to activate unmarried Americans in their government and in our democracy" has been placing robocalls to voters across North Carolina that seem designed to fool them into thinking they have not yet registered to vote. Many of the voters who received those calls are black. Voters in 11 states have complained about similarly deceptive calls and mailings that have been traced back to WVWV this primary season.

Guess which Democratic candidate WVWV's founder and president, Page Gardner, has donated $6,700 to (hint: it's not Barack Obama). Guess whose election campaign Joe Goode, WVWV's executive director, worked for (hint: it was in 1992, and it was a winning campaign). Guess whose chief of staff sits on WVWV's board of directors (hint: it was the president who served between two Bushes). And guess whose campaign manager was a member of WVWV's leadership team (hint: it's Hillary Clinton).

It's an odd story: a recording of someone named Lamont Williams calls voters to tell them a voter-registration packet is on its way. It's unclear whether anything arrives; what isn't unclear is that the call is well after the registration deadline. It's not too hard to imagine this call coming to an unsophisticated voter (and let me make this clear: I am in no way saying black voters, who seem to have received the lion's share of the calls, are all unsophisticated; I'm simply positing a scenario), and that voter becoming confused. Perhaps he thinks he's not registered, and calls his state's board of elections who tells him it's too late so he stays home on election day. Perhaps the board of elections doesn't know what he's talking about, and he gets frustrated and stays home, assuming he's unregistered.

If this were a one-time event, I might be less suspicious, but it's happened in state after state, always after the registration deadline has passed, and always shortly before the primary. This is an organisation stuffed with Washington insiders; incompetence like this simply doesn't happen over and over again, not in the same way like this. Something stinks.

Again, perhaps if the Clinton campaign hadn't shown itself to be quite so sleazy (remember those photos of Barack Obama in Somali garb?); perhaps if the calls weren't going to the constituency least likely to vote for Mrs Clinton; perhaps if Mrs Clinton's supporters weren't so heavily represented among WVWV's board, it wouldn't set off as many bells as it does. But something isn't right here, and it's not a simple error either. As a scam, it seems just Rube Goldberg-ish enough to provide plausible deniability for anyone involved, but just authoritative enough to work on some voters. If it does trace back to Mrs Clinton's campaign, it will provide further evidence that her cronies have abandoned every shred, everything that ever got them into politics in the first place. The end (Mrs Clinton's victory) will justify the means. From flower children of the 1960s to deceivers of black voters in North Carolina in 2008. A long, strange trip indeed.

Banquo's Ghost

05-04-2008, 16:46

I think the comparison is harsh on President Nixon.

IIRC, he could have contested the rather dubious result of JFK's win but didn't. Must've had some integrity.

KukriKhan

05-04-2008, 23:20

I think the comparison is harsh on President Nixon.

:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

That's all, just

:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

so funny, on so many levels. :thumbsup:

Lemur

05-05-2008, 02:25

Man, The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/063kvafy.asp?pg=2) is getting weird. Why should Rove Republicans love Hillary Clinton? Because she's hated by the right people. You know, them.

If this weren't enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York Times is having hysterics about her.

Food, drama and lifestyle critics? Oh dearie oh me.

Banquo's Ghost

05-05-2008, 15:27

The battle lines of this election get ever more confusing. Here's a right wing commentator from the Telegraph weighing in for Obama (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/politics/danielhannan/may08/obamaforpres.htm) - and for fascinating reasons too.

Deep down, Wright knows that Obama’s election would falsify his narrative of race relations in America. And so he struggles, perhaps subconsciously, to keep Obama out of the White House, and thereby to keep his world-view intact.

Flip that argument around and you get a pretty good argument for supporting Obama. His election would but the Sharptons and Wrights and Farrakhans out of business. It would broaden the expectations of a new generation of black children, expanding their sense of what was achievable. It might cause some white Americans, too, to rethink their attitudes. And, of course, it would immediately cancel out a lot of the prejudice that has built up against the US, however unfairly, in the rest of the world.

Xiahou

05-06-2008, 01:33

Here's as story from the WSJ on Obama and the Teamsters (http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120994756511766395.html):

Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.

It's an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union.

ICantSpellDawg

05-06-2008, 17:16

Here's as story from the WSJ on Obama and the Teamsters (http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120994756511766395.html):

If you prefer Clinton over Obama, I am seriously concerned with your political direction. I prefer McCain over Obama, but Clinton? Never. I am surprised by those on this forum who consider themselves conservative and would even entertain the idea of supporting Clinton. If conservatism means anything at all, it means keeping people like Hillary out of office.

FactionHeir

05-06-2008, 17:24

Actually, besides her usual politician lies, why do you hate (yes hate, not dislike) her anyway? She done something to your personally?

Ronin

05-06-2008, 17:44

If you prefer Clinton over Obama, I am seriously concerned with your political direction. I prefer McCain over Obama, but Clinton? Never. I am surprised by those on this forum who consider themselves conservative and would even entertain the idea of supporting Clinton. If conservatism means anything at all, it means keeping people like Hillary out of office.

Don´t tell me you haven´t noticed the right-wing game of trying to askew the Democratic race this year...and supporting Clinton.

I think it comes down to this, Clinton is so hated by the right that McCain is almost guaranteed to beat her, there is a lot of the GOP base that absolutely hates Hilary (I don´t like her myself but I see no basis for the absolute hate some people show for her) and that base is bound to show up and vote more to defeat Hilary than to vote for McCain.

A McCain - Obama race is a much more complicated affair....you can agree with Obama or not but the man has created a movement around him (especially with young voters) that McCain will ignore at his own peril.

On top of that some GOP voters won´t vote for McCain without the 'Hilary-hate' red meat in the water to drive them into a frenzy.

so it´s no wonder we see 'support' for Hilary coming from the right....she's the softer target come November.

FactionHeir

05-06-2008, 18:21

Redleg

05-06-2008, 19:34

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Clinton more of a conservative Democrat while Obama is a liberal? From that reasoning, you could understand why more of her supporters would cross over to support McCain.

Hillary Clinton is often looked at as best an american left leaning moderate, at worst a socialist liberial. More then likely she is mostly a left leaning moderate, but favors government solving of everyone's problems. (that is how she is protrayed in the media, most of the time by the right.)

Myself I think she is more conservative then Obama, probably smarter in foreign policy, but her domestic agenda is to close to Obama's to really tell without delving into her record.

Now the problem with this election will be - can McCain capture the so-called Reagan Democrates. The reading I have done, postulates that he will not capture them because while he more moderate then the other two candidates, he is not a fiscial conservative, and he is hurting himself with his strong rethoric about Iraq.

Now today's primary elections will develop the next round for the Democrates, my thoughts is that if Obama doesn't win both North Carolina and Indinia the rethoric will become even more heated with the dirt and mud being slung with equal abandoment - like two chimps in a cage filled with feces, crap will be flung everywhere.

Now while I am not to happy with the Republican Frontrunner, I am awaiting the selection for VP to determine if I vote for him, or throw my vote away on Mickey Mouse - he gets a very small % every election, and might actually do better then some of the Yahoo's we have in office now.

I would love to see the democratic party just destroy itself this election and split into two parties - an american liberial party and a moderate party. I think that a truely moderate party that runs on fiscial consersativism with a minor socialist agenda could do well in the elections. Nothing sounds better then a balanced budget that promotes the public welfare first and foremost. In fact I think a whole bunch of moderate republicans - would flock to a new such party that throws the baggage off that has swamped the two current parties.

I even think eventually the Republicans will destroy themselves in an upcoming election. Heard some talk that the Ron Pual delgates are still pushing for thier candidate to be the nominee. But havent seen to much of it lately.

Ironside

05-06-2008, 20:01

Now while I am not to happy with the Republican Frontrunner, I am awaiting the selection for VP to determine if I vote for him, or throw my vote away on Mickey Mouse - he gets a very small % every election, and might actually do better then some of the Yahoo's we have in office now.

Wouldn't Mickey be stuck in too many adventures to be a good president? Can't you pick a good leader fantasy figure instead? :thinking: Then again if he only needs to beat some of the candidates he might have a shot.

I would love to see the democratic party just destroy itself this election and split into two parties - an american liberial party and a moderate party. I think that a truely moderate party that runs on fiscial consersativism with a minor socialist agenda could do well in the elections. Nothing sounds better then a balanced budget that promotes the public welfare first and foremost. In fact I think a whole bunch of moderate republicans - would flock to a new such party that throws the baggage off that has swamped the two current parties.

I even think eventually the Republicans will destroy themselves in an upcoming election. Heard some talk that the Ron Pual delgates are still pushing for thier candidate to be the nominee. But havent seen to much of it lately.

While I think that this would actually be quite good for US politics, the main question is if the US system can handle 3 strong parties, without getting a merge of 2 parties fairly quickly (to secure the electorates)?

Lemur

05-06-2008, 22:38

However much fun it is to watch the Dems tear themselves apart, it's even more fun to see what pariahs the Repubs have become. From the desk of Newt Gingrich (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26376):

The Republican loss in the special election for Louisiana's Sixth Congressional District last Saturday should be a sharp wake up call for Republicans: Either Congressional Republicans are going to chart a bold course of real change or they are going to suffer decisive losses this November.

The facts are clear and compelling.

Saturday's loss was in a district that President Bush carried by 19 percentage points in 2004 and that the Republicans have held since 1975.

This defeat follows on the loss of Speaker Hastert's seat in Illinois. That seat had been held by a Republican for 76 years with the single exception of the 1974 Watergate election when the Democrats held it for one term. That same seat had been carried by President Bush 55-44% in 2004. [...]

The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.

This model has already been tested with disastrous results.

In 2006, there were six incumbent Republican Senators who had plenty of money, the advantage of incumbency, and traditionally successful consultants.

But the voters in all six states had adopted a simple position: "Not you." No matter what the GOP Senators attacked their opponents with, the voters shrugged off the attacks and returned to, "Not you."

The danger for House and Senate Republicans in 2008 is that the voters will say, "Not the Republicans."

CountArach

05-06-2008, 22:50

Now for a break in the petty quibbling...

An incredibly useful tool for us Firefox users has been released:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Comparison/Maps/May06.html

In the first paragraph there is a link that shows the Electoral College score, based on polling, for both Obama and Clinton against McCain. This is shown in the bottom right hand corner, just next to the no-script thing (Which you should use :P)

Thought some of you would be interested. Currently it reads:
Obama 264, McCain 263, Ties 11
Clinton 291, McCain 236, Ties 11

Largely due to Flordia and Ohio.

woad&fangs

05-06-2008, 23:11

GeneralHankerchief

05-07-2008, 00:14

ICantSpellDawg

05-07-2008, 00:58

Hmm, according to McCain if Obama doesn't blindly follow the Republicans then he is being an Elitist.:dizzy2: link (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24480857/?GT1=43001)

And to think I actually thought McCain was above all this :daisy:

O Tuff!!! I want Romney back!!! I wish I had seen the light sooner :bigcry:

Romney was the true right leaning moderate. McCain is just a confused old man. I still think that the GOP has a better shot with him, but that the course will change should he make it. Less ideological is not always the best thing for a party - but who knows?

I would rather get either a rightist who was a decent guy/gal or a leftist who was a decent guy/gal. I will vote against bad people no matter what. After that comes bad ideas. I believe Hillary has the amazing combo of those virtues.

I think Obama is a reasonable guy. I think that McCain is a bit of a jerk but relatively is well intentioned. I have seen too many lies from the Clintons and too few legitimate ethics. They were a terrible pair in the white house and Hillary is too polarizing to be a uniter. She is the democratic equivalent to GWB in the rotten stereotype department.

Put her in to office and you will have learned nothing from the past administration.

Louis VI the Fat

05-07-2008, 01:02

Thought some of you would be interested. Currently it reads:
Obama 264, McCain 263, Ties 11
Clinton 291, McCain 236, Ties 11Well there you have it. :idea2:

This whole Obama-flirt is an exercise in Democratic Party irresponsibility. Again, just like in 2004, the party hardliners are more interested in making a political statement than in picking an electable candidate. It's all well and good that college activists and latte liberals prefer hawt sexy Obama, as some sort of hip fashion statement, but there is a presidency at stake.

Obama will lose to McCain, Clinton will wipe the floor with him. :yes:

I would rather get either a rightist who was a decent guy/gay or a leftist who was a decent guy/gal.Freudian slip...? ~;)

ICantSpellDawg

05-07-2008, 01:09

Well there you have it. :idea2:

This whole Obama-flirt is an exercise in Democratic Party irresponsibility. Again, just like in 2004, the party hardliners are more interested in making a political statement than in picking an electable candidate. It's all well and good that college activists and latte liberals prefer hawt sexy Obama, as some sort of hip fashion statement, but there is a presidency at stake.

Obama will lose to McCain, Clinton will wipe the floor with him. :yes:

Hillary is the electable one? Gimmie a break. The only way she could recover from stealing the election from Obama with her tricks is if she put some black guy on her ticket. It doesn't need to be Obama. Does anybody disagree?

Freudian slip...? ~;)

Yes. I can barely say guy/gal:whip:

Louis VI the Fat

05-07-2008, 02:07

Now while I am not to happy with the Republican Frontrunner, I am awaiting the selection for VP to determine if I vote for him, or throw my vote away on Mickey MouseCan I ask you a favour? If you are undecided by November, will you vote 'Louis VI' for president?

I'd be really proud. I'd tell my grandchildren that I once received a vote for President of the United States. I actually really mean that. It would be so cool. :jumping:

Anybody, please! Bear me in mind! Don't waste your vote, vote me!!

:unitedstates: Vote Louis for a better America! :unitedstates:
Remember - just like you, I think abortion, guns and the economy are mightely important issues! :sweatdrop:

Hillary is the electable one? Gimmie a break. The only way she could recover from stealing the election from Obama with her tricks is if she put some black guy on her ticket. It doesn't need to be Obama. Does anybody disagree? I'd say that millions of Reagan Democrats disagree.

Don Corleone

05-07-2008, 02:12

Louis, I don't need to wait for Vice-president. You have my vote now. :yes:

Divinus Arma

05-07-2008, 03:45

I actually heard this phrase on CNN today. A commentator was talking about Hillary Clinton.

I just about died.

So, is it time for the Democrats to take their pet to the vet?

CrossLOPER

05-07-2008, 03:59

wat

Divinus Arma

05-07-2008, 04:03

Euthanize her (figuratively speaking).

ICantSpellDawg

05-07-2008, 05:50

Why figuratively?

CountArach

05-07-2008, 07:48

It is all over. Obama has come 2 points from Clinton in Indiana and he won by 12 points in North Carolina!

Indiana Results (http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#IN)
North Carolina Results (http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#val=NC)

Banquo's Ghost

05-07-2008, 08:28

It is all over. Obama has come 2 points from Clinton in Indiana and he won by 12 points in North Carolina!

"All over" and "Clinton" may never appear in the same sentence unless it also contains the qualifying noun, "dress".

woad&fangs

05-07-2008, 13:24

Redleg

05-07-2008, 14:54

The best election coverage website I have found..

http://www.theonion.com/content/whitehousewar/

Crazed Rabbit

05-07-2008, 18:34

Can I ask you a favour? If you are undecided by November, will you vote 'Louis VI' for president?

I'd be really proud. I'd tell my grandchildren that I once received a vote for President of the United States. I actually really mean that. It would be so cool. :jumping:

Anybody, please! Bear me in mind! Don't waste your vote, vote me!!

:unitedstates: Vote Louis for a better America! :unitedstates:
Remember - just like you, I think abortion, guns and the economy are mightely important issues! :sweatdrop:

Will you protect my God-given right to keep and bear arms? I'm awfully clingy, you know.

The question now is; will Clinton bow out? Or a more appropriate question would be - what chance has she got of getting the nomination if she keeps fighting? Any chance? It seems terribly improbable she'd get the nomination, even if theoretically possible.

CR

Seamus Fermanagh

05-07-2008, 20:23

Remaining Primaries:

West Virginia, with 28 delegates on May 13;-Woad's prediction-Hillary Win

Oregon with 52 Woad's prediction- Obama win

Kentucky with 51 a week later;- Woad's prediction- Hillary Win

Puerto Rico with 55 delegates on June 1- Woad's predicition- Obama win

Montana with 16 and South Dakota with 15 on June 3.-Woad's prediction- 50/50

Assumption #1 is that Clinton does NOT bow out, as she's stated she's in it until the primaries etc. conclude.

MSNBC claims its:

Obama = 1844; Clinton = 1695; Edwards = 18 [2025 needed (2210 if FL/MI go in)]

WV roughly 10 point win for Clinton, so 12 for O & 16 for C.

OR about a 15 point win for Obama, so 29 for O & 22 for C.

KY roughly 6 point win for Clinton, so 24 for O & 27 for C.

PR* roughly 10 point win for Clinton, so 25 for O & 30 for C.

MN 60/40 for Obama so, 10 for O & 6 for C.

SD 52/48 for Obama so, 8 for O & 7 for C.

This suggests that Obama will be at 1952 and Clinton at 1803 based on committed delegates.

* Woad, no chance she'll lose PR. Clintons have put a lot of effort into the PR political community for some time, and Obama is having trouble with Hispanics as it is.

Adding in Super Delegates [CNN currently says 254 for O, 267 for C] there are 275 not "aligned" as yet.

If Clinton retains the same percentage of SD's as she has thus far, she'll pick up 140 and Obama 135.

This will bring the totals to Obama (2058) and Clinton (1943).

Unless MI and FL are seated AT THEIR CURRENT DELEGATE PROPORTIONS, the Clinton campaign is concluded.

She'll stay in so that Obama ONLY wins on SD's deciding after the last primary. She wants the VEEP slot -- which Obama does NOT want to give to her. As the VEEP nominee, she'll campaign hard, but her eye will be on 2012 since she believes Obama will go down to a narrow defeat this time with McCain picking off Hispanic votes and Reagan Democrats enough for the win.

She'll be well positioned following a McCain admin unless McCain wins the WoT (which doesn't seem likely in a mere 4 years).

Sasaki Kojiro

05-07-2008, 20:29

Yeah, hillary isn't campaigning to win this time. She just wants to show that she can campaign hard. Also, after all her talk about the voters of michigan and florida she can't really ditch them now. It'll end up in convention unless the superdelagates make an early move. Which they really should. Especially since she only took indiana by 13,000 votes while obama took north carolina by 220,000 or something like that.

ICantSpellDawg

05-07-2008, 20:52

It is not only conceivable that Hillary will be the nominee, I don't think that the democrats will be able to stop her. I firmly believe that Hillary will be the next president. Some demonic force has propelled her this far. We're not talking about the party with the hardest spine here, we're talking the pushover dems.

Why would she donate another 6.5 million of her OWN MONEY to a campaign that she is planning on suspending? She will take this to the end and I will put money of her being on the ticket. I will even put money on her being on the top of the ticket.

The Clinton's will lie, cheat, steal and kill their way back into the White house with all of the power of Hell behind them. The most powerful position on earth and you don't think some bad guy isn't going to do ANYTHING it takes to get it?

I hope I'm wrong

She should be stopped by any means necessary. Whining and complaining by Howard Dean probably won't do it.

drone

05-07-2008, 21:15

Why would she donate another 6.5 million of her OWN MONEY to a campaign that she is planning on suspending? She will take this to the end and I will put money of her being on the ticket.
:yes:

She should be stopped by any means necessary. Whining and complaining by Howard Dean probably won't do it.
I think it will take garlic, holy water, silver, and a stake through the heart.

She'll continue on. The convention is going to be entertaining, must-see-TV for all non-Dems as they try to sort out the mess. Hyenas around a kill will look like finishing school graduates by comparison.

Lemur

05-08-2008, 03:02

Best article title of the season: Torture Supporter Lectures Nuns (http://vox-nova.com/2008/05/07/torture-supporter-lectures-nuns/).

-edit-

Man, the Mike Gravel videos just keep getting weirder. Gravel lobbies Obama girl. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI6PA4v6dZg)

Sasaki Kojiro

05-09-2008, 21:15

Rasmussen to stop tracking Obama vs Hillary (http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll)

Rasmussen Reports has been tracking the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination daily for nineteen months… since November 2006. For the last few months, the most remarkable feature of the race has been its consistency and stability. Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both running historic campaigns and both have captured the votes and hearts of distinct and important constituencies within the Democratic Party. Obama has won Primaries in states where the demographics favor his campaign and Clinton has won in the states that favor her campaign.

However, while Senator Clinton has remained close and competitive in every meaningful measure, she is a close second and the race is over. It has become clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee.

At the moment, Senator Clinton’s team is busily trying to convince Superdelegates and pundits that she is more electable than Barack Obama. For reasons discussed in a separate article, it doesn’t matter. Even if every single Superdelegate was convinced that the former First Lady is somewhat more electable than Obama, that is not enough of a reason to deny him the nomination.

With this in mind, Rasmussen Reports will soon end our daily tracking of the Democratic race and focus exclusively on the general election competition between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

~:cheers:

Evil_Maniac From Mars

05-09-2008, 22:34

As of 1800 BST he had received the backing of 267 superdelegates to Mrs Clinton's 271.5, it said.

I'm not as well-versed in Democratic structure as I could be, but...

:inquisitive:

GeneralHankerchief

05-09-2008, 22:36

Something about there being a tie in a minor US territory, IIRC.

Privateerkev

05-09-2008, 22:47

Something about there being a tie in a minor US territory, IIRC.

I think your talking about Guam. Which Obama won by 7 votes. But the half delegate imbalance comes from Democrats Abroad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrats_Abroad_primary%2C_2008

CountArach

05-10-2008, 01:25

Something about there being a tie in a minor US territory, IIRC.
Nope, Democrats Abroad has 8 Super delegates, each with Half a vote. 1 of them remains uncommited, hence there is a 'half delegate'.

Seamus Fermanagh

05-11-2008, 00:20

Nope, Democrats Abroad has 8 Super delegates, each with Half a vote. 1 of them remains uncommited, hence there is a 'half delegate'.

Uncommited or unimpressed?

KukriKhan

05-11-2008, 03:32

Speaking of impressed, I gotta say: I'm stunned and amazingly impressed that non-US posters take any interest at all in our labyrinthian candidate selection process. It's enough to make a respectable statistician grow a beard, move to Norway, and paint landscapes the rest of his life.

So, let me ask you non-US fellas (who have no horse in this race), a question:

Do you think it is important, in a democracy, how a party's candidate is selected?

Because, for the Dems, it looks like it's gonna come down to a situation where neither prospect has a clear, indisputeable popular or delegate number of votes; and it's therefore gonna go to the smokey backrooms of Rules and Credentials committees. In other words: a small-ish group of politico's deciding who the party's candidate will be.

I lean toward: no. It's not important. Let 'em decide by arm-rassle, tequila-shot drinkin', or whatever process they choose.

What's important, I think, is that the General Election, after all the parties have decided who is on the ballot, gets conducted on a 'one-man-one-vote' basis (putting aside arguments for/against the Electoral College, for now).

Now that I ponder, I wonder also what US members think.

Sasaki Kojiro

05-11-2008, 06:52

Obama leads popular vote, pledged delegate vote, and superdelegate vote. He can't be passed up in the first two and it's doubtful he'll be passed up in the last. The nomination is his.

CountArach

05-11-2008, 08:42

To answer Kukri's question I would say that it is not important for how a democracy works at all. Parties are an entity that cannot be controlled by the state, because of various vested interests. In fact I would say for this reason it is important that a party's internal decision-making is not interferred in at all. However, I would have much more respect for a completely democratised party, as it is much more likely to believe in such a grasssroots process when in power (I like to think so anyway :tongue: ). So, no it is not important to the state - however it is important to some voters.

To give you an idea, down here we have only two parties that could boradly be considered Democratised. Neither of our two major parties are (Liberals and Labor), nor are the third largest (Nationals - basically a rural offshoot of the Liberals) however two minor left-wing parties are demcoratised, with members choosing their local nominee. I respect those two parties more than the others (though that could just be my overlapping policy views).

Geoffrey S

05-11-2008, 09:18

Do you think it is important, in a democracy, how a party's candidate is selected?
Yes, it's important. And the good thing about these elections is that all those shady, backroom deals dealings are brought to the fore. The always exist, and in theory at least are against the spirit of democracy - just usually they are concealed, whereas this time this aspect of democracy is set to become a very public affair. Might set a few minds thinking if that is the way they want their president chosen.

Banquo's Ghost

05-11-2008, 09:53

Now that I ponder, I wonder also what US members think.

I think Matthew Norman answers (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-american-democracy-in-all-its-filthy-glory-824285.html) much more eloquently than I could.

The nomination race which effectively ended on Tuesday has been as ugly and brutal as anything you're ever likely to witness in democratic politics, and it showcased democracy in all its filthy glory. How wondrous it has looked to those lumbered with an untried, untested, unseasoned third-rate PM through a silent coronation. And how grievously we'll miss it once Hillary officially recognises that fighting without limbs is a step beyond even her legendary resilience.

Adrian II

05-11-2008, 10:36

KukriKhan

05-11-2008, 15:40

Obama leads popular vote, pledged delegate vote, and superdelegate vote. He can't be passed up in the first two and it's doubtful he'll be passed up in the last. The nomination is his.

Well, yeah. That convinces me. But I'm not a Democrat, just an interested citizen. Two months ago, talk was all about the "race to 2025", 2025 being the 'magic' number of delegates needed to decisively wrap up the nomination.

But neither Barry nor Hil are gonna get to that number, partly because the Dem Nat'l Cmte decided to spank Florida and Michigan for holding their primaries too early, by not counting their votes, and not seating their delegates.

So 2025 is no longer magic. Obama pleads: "Scoreboard", while Clinton counter-claims: "Count 'em all", and failing that, asserts an appeal (to count Michigan and Florida) to the 181-member Credentials Committee (who she apparently thinks she has in her pocket).

She could take the nomination based on the secret, unpublicized vote of a small, relatively obscure group of party loyalistas - and it would be perfectly legal. If she attempts that "technicality strategy", what happens to the Dem party as a whole should make pretty interesting TV entertainment.

It could end up with a schism not unlike having 2 Popes back in the middle ages, each with what they see as legitimate claims to the position.

Xiahou

05-12-2008, 02:03

Well, yeah. That convinces me. But I'm not a Democrat, just an interested citizen. Two months ago, talk was all about the "race to 2025", 2025 being the 'magic' number of delegates needed to decisively wrap up the nomination.

But neither Barry nor Hil are gonna get to that number, partly because the Dem Nat'l Cmte decided to spank Florida and Michigan for holding their primaries too early, by not counting their votes, and not seating their delegates.

So 2025 is no longer magic. Obama pleads: "Scoreboard", while Clinton counter-claims: "Count 'em all", and failing that, asserts an appeal (to count Michigan and Florida) to the 181-member Credentials Committee (who she apparently thinks she has in her pocket).

She could take the nomination based on the secret, unpublicized vote of a small, relatively obscure group of party loyalistas - and it would be perfectly legal. If she attempts that "technicality strategy", what happens to the Dem party as a whole should make pretty interesting TV entertainment.

It could end up with a schism not unlike having 2 Popes back in the middle ages, each with what they see as legitimate claims to the position.
I'm certainly looking forward to it. :beam:

CountArach

05-12-2008, 10:36

If you thought a 50 state strategy was impressive... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws)

drone

05-12-2008, 17:35

Seamus Fermanagh

05-12-2008, 22:21

If you thought a 50 state strategy was impressive... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws)

Limbaugh had a blast noting that there ARE 57 states in the Organization of Islamic States Council....

:laugh4:

Not that Limbaugh is trying to cause anyone any grief....

:smartass:

His "operation chaos" effort is seeking to keep the Democrats at each others throats as long as possible -- and I think he has aided that end.

I put Obama's mistake down to a brain-numbing schedule that has gone on for more than a year. The only value to this prolonged Democrat contest is that, should either of them win the general, there can be little doubt as to their stamina.

TB666

05-12-2008, 22:23

And now for something completely different, Clinton stating that Obama can't win because white people don't support him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfidftLe5Z0

Tribesman

05-12-2008, 22:48

Clinton stating that Obama can't win because white people don't support him.

Even better , uneducated white people prefer her:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

CountArach

05-13-2008, 01:25

Now for something different, your third party candidates!

Bob Barr has announced his intention to become the Libertarian party candidate. He must first win the nomination at the convention. Next Thursday. Talk about an accelerated schedule....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051200889.html?hpid=topnews
He will easily win.

I can do a write-up on each of the third party candidates if anyone wants me to - I had to research them for a mod for an American politics game I play. Its a great game.

http://www.theoryspark.com/political_games/president_forever/info/index.htm

drone

05-13-2008, 03:06

Lemur

05-13-2008, 14:10

[Rush Limbaugh's] "operation chaos" effort is seeking to keep the Democrats at each others throats as long as possible -- and I think he has aided that end.
Actually, every time I've seen someone break down the Republican crossover vote, it's been pretty evenly divided between Clinton and Obama, much along the lines of the Dems in each state. So it's very difficult to say that Limbaugh's jihad is having any measurable effect. It has, however, been excellent theater for himself and his faithful, so on that level it's a roaring success -- and Limbaugh is all about preaching to the converted, so hey, mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, it looks as though Senator Clinton may get back to her day job within three weeks (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/13/superdelegates-put-obama-_n_101443.html). Fantastic if true. Also it appears that due to FEC rules, the most she will be able to recoup from her $11 million loans to her campaign may be $250,000 (http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/05/the_time_bomb_in_hillary_clint.html). Even for people on the Clintons' level of wealth, that's a hit.

If she loses this race, and hasn't raised enough to pay herself back by the time Obama becomes the official nominee at the Democratic Convention in August, she's out for all but $250,000 of it.

Sasaki Kojiro

05-13-2008, 19:34

Actually, every time I've seen someone break down the Republican crossover vote, it's been pretty evenly divided between Clinton and Obama, much along the lines of the Dems in each state. So it's very difficult to say that Limbaugh's jihad is having any measurable effect.

I'm pretty sure than in the early states the crossover vote went heavily for Obama,

Xiahou

05-13-2008, 22:35

It will probably finally lay to rest the rumors that Dr. Paul is going to run as the Libertarian candidate. Barr used to be GOP, but thinks they have lost their way. I wonder if this will hurt McCain any. Probably not if Hillary scams her way to the Dem nomination, but maybe against Obama.
I'd be more likely to vote for a 3rd party if Hillary were the Democrat nominee. Hillary's presidency might be bad, but I firmly believe an Obama presidency could be near disastrous.

Either way, I don't want to vote for McCain- but I would be more likely to do so if it might mean keeping Obama out of office. I don't know a whole lot about Barr, but what I have seen would make him a better choice than McCain. :shrug:

Lemur

05-14-2008, 05:06

George Will said we should watch the special election in Mississippi to gauge how deep the anti-Republican sentiment has set in. Here are the results. (http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0508/Childers_wins_Miss_special_election.html)

Democrats picked up a northern Mississippi House seat in one of the most conservative-minded districts in the country Tuesday night -- an upset that will reverberate darkly through a House Republican caucus already reeling from losses in special elections in Illinois and Louisiana.

With all precincts reporting, the Democratic nominee, Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers, defeated Republican Greg Davis, 54 to 46 percent. Childers was able to expand his three-point margin of victory from the race's first round of balloting last month -- even as he faced an onslaught of Republican attacks. [...]

The results amount to a rebuke of the Republican strategy of trying nationalize the race by tying Childers to Sen. Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Obama held low approval ratings in the district, but the nearly $2 million that GOP groups poured into northern Mississippi failed to make the race a referendum on the national political landscape.

Republicans dispatched a lineup of heavy hitters in the campaign’s final week, including a pre-election stop Monday by Vice President Dick Cheney. President Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and First Lady Laura Bush recorded automated calls urging voters to support Davis.

A GOP House leadership aide told Politico last week that “if we don’t win in Mississippi, I think you are going to see a lot of people running around here looking for windows to jump out of.”
-edit-

Bonus video clip: McCain versus O'Reilly on torture (http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=5ddb656c-2508-4d2f-af7c-a12803a075ed). Naturally, McCain comes off as a classy guy, while O'Reilly comes off like a sweaty idiot.

Geoffrey S

05-14-2008, 11:55

(contains swearing)

Saw this (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vvy8LNooQFo) on tv yesterday. Is it real? What a nutter.

KukriKhan

05-14-2008, 13:50

:laugh4: :laugh4: That clip has to be 15 years old, at least (from his old gig at Inside Edition, before anyone knew he had a political opinion).

Lemur

05-14-2008, 14:19

Besides, that clip is an obvious imitation of the original. (http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=168451)

Xiahou

05-15-2008, 01:36

Sasaki Kojiro

05-15-2008, 01:53

Edwards endorses obama.

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=:ePkh8BM9E8JpByvQDgMWTFuMBMKWGyjOfbV4Z8FmmxN-mXKLAFWQDus/0-0-0&fp=482b7c8128f8e2d5&ei=d4krSISBN4O2-QHbwoGIBg&url=http%3A//abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story%3Fid%3D4857067%26page%3D1&cid=1212897348&usg=AFrqEzd965BcZEYp9biRZotbmUH5jiHaTQ

CrossLOPER

05-15-2008, 02:59

KukriKhan

05-15-2008, 03:33

Beirut

05-15-2008, 04:22

*Full Disclosure: I've had a few beers.

I checked with my sources; you're allowed. ~;)

Lemur

05-15-2008, 04:53

I'm old enough to remember the time when wearing a flag pin indicated that you were a military veteran. I distinctly remember the first time I saw a politico who wasn't a vet wearing one, and thinking, hey now ...

Tribesman

05-15-2008, 11:38

Big whoopsie there.
Not at all , since the pre invasion studies by the US military on Afghanistan stressed the importance of arabic in Afghanistan ,though for the life of me I can't think why but at a really wild guess I think that just possibly it has something to do with the students:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:
Oh and another so called gaffe the article Xiahou posted picks up on , agriculture . Before the coilition turned Iraq into a basket case wasn't it known as the bread basket of the middle east .
So is it Obama making mistakes or is it Abc being dumb ?

Geoffrey S

05-15-2008, 12:02

Last I checked, Iraq was indeed the bread basket of the Middle East. At least, before Saddam ruined an up-and-coming economy by attacking first Iran and then Kuwait in attempts to shore up his regime - not a great idea when the opponents can blow up all the recently made infrastructure from a distance.

Tribesman

05-15-2008, 12:32

Last I checked, Iraq was indeed the bread basket of the Middle East.
Yep and the coilition countries are spending a fortune and sending lots of specialists in an attempt to get Iraqs second biggest industry back on track , but of course if they are sending so many to Iraq they cannot send them to Afghanistan , so Obamas "gaffes" were not gaffes at all .
So not only does it show that Abc reporters are indeed the clueless ones but it also shows xiahou as clueless for siezing on its report as an example:yes:

Adrian II

05-15-2008, 12:57

Obama (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/05/obama-gaffes-on.html), again shows his inexperience and general cluelessness by claiming that the war in Iraq is draining much needed Arabic translators from Afghanistan... where they don't speak Arabic. :inquisitive:McCain made similar mistakes, for instance when he said that Iran is training Al Qaeda terrorists and sending them into Iraq.

These are bloopers. Big deal. Politicians make bloopers, particularly during campaigns when they are asked to hop, skip and jump from one subject to the next and the public demands clear-cut answers on every one of them. But they aren't specialists. Look at past Presidents. Ronald Raegan for instance didn't have a clue about foreign policy, economics and a host of other subjects when he took office.

What is important is how they handle the real experts once they are in office: will they put the right people in the right spot to make sure they get the information they need to make the right decisions and to make sure that these decisions are carried out properly.

Lyndon Baines Johnson used to give people what was known as 'the Treatment'. His Wiki quotes two journalists about it:

Central to Johnson's control was "The Treatment",[20] described by two journalists:[21]

The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours. It came, enveloping its target, at the LBJ Ranch swimming pool, in one of LBJ's offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate itself — wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach.
Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat. It was all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was breathtaking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.They might have added that one of Johson's favourite punchlines used to be: 'I badly need your help on this one, you see. I can't run this country on my own.'

Could any of you Americans who follow this campaign tell me how the candidates compare when it comes to the quality of the people they appoint? Are they good judges of character? Can they work with people with whom they disagree?

Lemur

05-15-2008, 14:07

Crazed Rabbit

05-15-2008, 20:58

The California Supreme Court does its part to help the GOP by declaring a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080515174435.xgo31cvp&show_article=1

CR

PanzerJaeger

05-15-2008, 21:15

Yep and the coilition countries are spending a fortune and sending lots of specialists in an attempt to get Iraqs second biggest industry back on track , but of course if they are sending so many to Iraq they cannot send them to Afghanistan , so Obamas "gaffes" were not gaffes at all .

Can you back this up? I have no idea, but it seems as though you are making a leap. What if, and this may sound crazy, we have enough agricultural advisors for both countries?

Adrian, all three candidates have good records of working with people whom they disagree. You can quibble with all three, but the truth of the matter is that they're all on record doing well in the bipartisan area.

Now I know he is looking forward to shaking the hands of every dictator who has called for the death of America and Israel, but his record in the Senate has been quite partisan on all major issues and on most of the minor ones as well.

John McCann, on the other hand, seems too eager to work with liberals. He doesn't seem to have an affinity for terrorists though. +1

Tribesman

05-15-2008, 21:23

The California Supreme Court does its part to help the GOP by declaring a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional:

So they ruled that the ban was unconstitutional as it was discrimanatory and that a tradition of discrimination doesn't make that discrimination constitutionaly legal ...and that helps the GOP eh .
Says a lot about the GOP doesn't it since the basis of the ruling is the case that said you cannot ban legal unions based on the colour of someones skin .:oops:

But hey Rabbit I thought you loved the constitution , surely you should be in favour of this ruling:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

Xiahou

05-15-2008, 21:30

The California Supreme Court does its part to help the GOP by declaring a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080515174435.xgo31cvp&show_article=1

CR
Yeah really. We'll be seeing more "ban" amendments on the ballots in the near future I predict. :shrug:

McCain made similar mistakes, for instance when he said that Iran is training Al Qaeda terrorists and sending them into Iraq.Well first of all, I'd readily agree that McCain's comment made him look stupid too. But at least Iran is sending fighters into Iraq- just not Al Qaeda. He accidentally (apparently) said "Al Qaeda" instead of "terrorists" or "insurgents".

However, what could Obama have possibly meant? It wasn't just one term that was off the mark, it was the entire notion. By and large, Iraq and Afghanistan use entirely different sets of translators because they speak different languages. His entire point was erroneous as opposed to just misplaced verbage. It was definitely a gaffe.

Going back to the Republican malaise, I found this comment poignant:

The Republican Party does not represent conservatives.

Conservatives support Constitutionally-limited government, fiscal prudence, respect for individual rights, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and peaceful international relations.

The Republican Party currently supports unlimited government, runs catastrophic deficits, disdains individual rights, sees law as a tool for the powerful to crush the powerless, espouses an omnipotent and un-American “unitary executive,” and seeks to enrich its patrons with unlimited wars of aggression around the globe. It is conservative only in its rhetoric.

At least the Democrats are relatively honest about their philosophy of government.

I worked on Capitol Hill during the 1980s and I still revere President Reagan.

I’m supporting Barack Obama in 2008.I guess that's the benefit of being a blank slate candidate. The easily-duped can put whatever values they want into his mold. Obama is the virtual antithesis of Reagan- Obama and Hillary even were insultingly accusing each other of supporting Reagan's policy at a debate and they both vociferously denied it. Yet a person who "reveres" Reagan endorses Obama. :dizzy2:

Crazed Rabbit

05-15-2008, 21:41

Tribesy, are you being purposely obtuse or do you really not understand?

I can see a lot of conservative discontent with the GOP, well put if exaggerated by the comment Lemur posted, but saying "McCain isn't close enough to my values so I'll vote someone much farther from my values" doesn't make sense. Throw your vote away in a manner that will make the GOP say "Hey, there's a bunch of people unhappy with us" by voting Libertarian or something.

CR

Spino

05-15-2008, 21:42

Adrian, all three candidates have good records of working with people whom they disagree. You can quibble with all three, but the truth of the matter is that they're all on record doing well in the bipartisan area.

I don't know about the quality of McCain's hires and appointees, and would be glad to hear anyone with solid info. Sen. Clinton's campaign has been a long, tawdry tale of in-fighting, wasted money, lack of communication, everybody pulling in different directions, etc. Does not look good. Sen. Obama's campaign, on the other hand, has been a first-rate operation from top to bottom. In all three candidate's cases, the campaigns are the largest organizations they've ever run.

Going back to the Republican malaise, I found this comment (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/house-of-gloom/index.html?ref=opinion) poignant:

The Republican Party does not represent conservatives.

Conservatives support Constitutionally-limited government, fiscal prudence, respect for individual rights, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and peaceful international relations.

The Republican Party currently supports unlimited government, runs catastrophic deficits, disdains individual rights, sees law as a tool for the powerful to crush the powerless, espouses an omnipotent and un-American “unitary executive,” and seeks to enrich its patrons with unlimited wars of aggression around the globe. It is conservative only in its rhetoric.

At least the Democrats are relatively honest about their philosophy of government.

I worked on Capitol Hill during the 1980s and I still revere President Reagan.

I’m supporting Barack Obama in 2008.

You posted a quote from an anonymous blog poster named 'Miles'?!? What would Frasier say? :inquisitive:

https://img528.imageshack.us/img528/6020/aaaaaaaahydeui7.jpg

I think 'Miles', the poster of that comment is deluding himself thanks to his inability to differentiate substance from the hype. Either that or he's a lifelong Democrat or internet troll having a laugh at the expense of his fellow posters.

Ok so modern Republicans do not demonstrate Republican values. Granted. So how do the legions of pro-NAFTA Democrats stack up in this equation? What about those large number of Democrats who voted in favor of the first and second Gulf War (it's about the oil and... the oil!)? Where was their solidarity and outcry about The Dept. of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act? Were they all under the spell of Bush & Cheney's black magic or were they hedging their bets so as not to alienate their constituency who were in the throes of anti-Islamic Fundie bloodlust post-9/11? What about those Democrats who readily tacked on their own porkbarrel projects to bills passed during GW Bush's administration? And are modern Democrats living in denial about their foreign policy past? What about the generations of aggressive, proactive foreign policies based on a projection of liberal ideology? WW1, Korea, Vietnam, all wars begun or captained by beloved figures of the Democratic Party's past (Wilson, Truman, Kennedy & Johnson). Thanks to the Neo-Conservative movement the Republicans certainly showed themselves capable of bucking the trend with Iraq but why are the Dems still so gunshy about a strategy of nation building and global liberalism that they conceived and practiced for the better part of the 20th century? Where was their proactive interventionism & rabidly pro-UN stance on behalf of human rights when the massacre in Rwanda took place in 1996?

So if the cynics are right (and they often are when it comes to politics) and both parties really are mild variations on a theme then how does a Democratic controlled Congress & White House offer an assurance to the American people that they won't be just as contradictory, reckless and irresponsible as the Republicans were during GW Bush's administration? Can we please get something in writing? If Democrats are true to their creed then we're guaranteed to be in for a tax and spend ride the likes of which might actually rival that of the Republican Presidency & Congress which preceded them. We need proof and we're getting nothing but speeches, promises and cries of 'no more GW Bush blah blah' rhetoric. My hometown, a bastion of American liberalism and Democrat stronghold, spent itself to near bankruptcy thanks to bloated social welfare programs and corruption during the 70s and our leading Democrats had the nerve to beg the Federal Government to bail them out of the mess.

Ok, let's say either one of the Democratic candidates win this Fall and we pull out of Iraq lickety split (or so they say) and immediately cut defense spending. Now where will that money formerly spent on the military and Iraq campaign go? To pay back our debt? Yeah right. This is not to say that a small percentage may not be put towards paying back the debt but we are dealing with polticians, not accountants. Keeping in mind that a much bigger percentage of our tax dollar is spent on Medicare and other social programs than on Defense does anyone honestly think that the lion's share of the money formerly spent on Defense will be put into infrastructure, green programs and alternative power sources? Fat chance. Cynic rules say it will immediately be diverted towards social programs and universal healthcare (i.e. that new $290 billion farm subsidy & food stamp bill proposed by the Democrats). And does anyone honestly believe that an American borne universal healthcare system will cost less than the existing Medicare system which is itself a bloated, money sucking model of incompetency, government waste and corporate graft? And do we have any assurance that the Democrats are even serious about universal healthcare and not just using it to pander to the 15 million (or is it 30 million?) or so who are uninsured? Gosh, that doesn't sound like a shameless political ploy to get votes in an election year does it? How in the world does any of that sound attractive to a pro-Reagan conservative?!?

A conservative voting for Obama as a punishment or protest vote against the sins of the modern Republican party is like putting your kid's hand in boiling water because he disobeyed your ministrations about standing too close to the stove. 'Miles' comment is ridiculous because it demonstrates a decidedly superficial grasp of the current candidates. Obama has demonstrated nothing but scripted speeches and photo opportunities to offer up as proof of his 'moderate appeal' (read as Reagan Democrat appeal). Saying you'll do something and shaking hands with other politicians during an election year means absolutely nothing (i.e. "Read my lips, no new taxes!"). The real test of a politician is their record during non-election years, most of which is either unknown or indecipherable voodoo magic to the average voter. What little pre-election political record Obama has is decidedly liberal to an extreme (drivers licenses for illegals?!?). Socialized healthcare is not a traditionally conservative issue, nor is a weak position on illegal immigration. And I guess the fact that the typically unbiased National Journal voted Obama as the most liberal politician in Congress is somehow reassuring to a pro-Reagan, 'true' conservative? I say 'Miles' is talking out of his ascot.

'Miles' shenanigans aside anyone who considers themselves a true conservative and/or unabashed Reaganite is certainly in a bind this election year. A true protest vote would be for a write-in candidate such as Ron Paul or some other Republican or Conservative Party candidate with greater ideological and political credibility. The idea of Obama bringing fresh new ideas into the arena is laughable, especially when you consider the fact that his platform practically mirrors that of Hillary Clinton and that countless entrenched, unreformed, veteran Democrats who were part of the problem (i.e. they voted for the Iraq war and other Bush era policies) are supporting him. Things are clearly rotten in Denmark but nobody is noticing the smell. The only thing new about Obama is his racial makeup and his penchance for speechcraft, both of which have seemingly won over the overwhemling majority of blacks and the youthful ADD crowd.

Seriously now, if Obama was the genuine article for change and hope and pink happy gooey goodness then he'd be doing the bold and noble thing by running as an independent. However a symbolic run for the nation's highest office won't get him elected and would do nothing to sate that delicate and bloated ego with a voracious appetite for affirmation. I say again, does anyone not find it interesting why someone with absolutely nothing to show for the time between when he graduated law school and when he first ran for political office felt compelled to write two books about himself and what he intimated he would do if he ran the country... all before the age of 45?!? The truth is Obama is simply more of the same from Democrats albeit in a carefully marketed, pop culture friendly package. A Republican voting for Obama only demonstrates a sign of ideological self-loathing or delusional thinking. Traditional conservatives have every right to be disgusted with the current state of their party. However any true conservative or Republican living in a state where their vote will actually count ought to realize that selling out the entire family to the whackos next door because of the actions of a few crazy uncles is sheer madness.

Last but not least I am a bit puzzled by your indecisiveness for this election year Lemur. I naturally assumed you would be voting for a Republican this November. Some time ago (could be a few years) I distinctly remember you posting about the need (or desire) for political gridlock in Washington, the result of having Republicans behaving like non-Republicans when given the keys to the capitol. Now that we're faced with the prospect of having the Democrats in the same position you're still undecided? Change of heart?

Sasaki Kojiro

05-15-2008, 21:49

However, what could Obama have possibly meant? It wasn't just one term that was off the mark, it was the entire notion. By and large, Iraq and Afghanistan use entirely different sets of translators because they speak different languages. His entire point was erroneous as opposed to just misplaced verbage. It was definitely a gaffe.

I don't know, maybe the point he was making was that we are sending resources to iraq that should be in afghanistan? :juggle:

PanzerJaeger

05-15-2008, 22:05

The idea of Obama bringing fresh new ideas into the arena is laughable, especially when you consider the fact that his platform practically mirrors that of Hillary Clinton and that countless entrenched, unreformed, veteran Democrats who were part of the problem (i.e. they voted for the Iraq war and other Bush era policies) are supporting him.

:2thumbsup:

Tribesman

05-15-2008, 22:27

Can you back this up?
of course :yes:

I have no idea
really I would never have guessed , but it does explain that first question doesn't it .

but it seems as though you are making a leap
That would be speculation of a slightly unwise nature wouldn't it Panzer given that you have said you have no idea .

But I will get back to you once I give this little nugget the consideration it deserves.......
It wasn't just one term that was off the mark, it was the entire notion. By and large, Iraq and Afghanistan use entirely different sets of translators because they speak different languages. His entire point was erroneous as opposed to just misplaced verbage. It was definitely a gaffe.
:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:
Ok Panzer thats Xiahous nonsense sorted most definatively and may I say so myself , rather eloquently with all the due consideration it deserves due to its content .
So now , you do ask a good question ...
What if, and this may sound crazy, we have enough agricultural advisors for both countries?
a damn good question , and undoubtably the answer would be of course you have enough for both countries , the problem is you can only send so many and only commit the finances for so many (plus another problem that I shall return to) , the main focus of that commitment has been Iraq . Which might be justified by noting that agriculture is Iraqs biggest employer and second biggest potential revenue earner ...so it does kinda make sense to pour the available and usable(fundable) resources into Iraq .
I mean seriously they are doing all sorts there from fish farming , forestry , irrigation all the way down to machinery replacement and overhauls .

But heres the bugger , while 25% of the Iraqi population are involved in agriculture 80% of the Afghanis are , that does kinda suggest that investment in that field (sorry Gregoshi)should be more directed to afghanistan right :yes: Yet the effort is only being directed towards 10% of the agriculture area there (linked in part to that problem I shall come back to) . Now of course there are other problems , part of the effort in Iraq is to push for more cash crops , afghanistan has a big cash crop and some (very major part) of it is run by your "allies" , it a real struggle to get them to turn away from lucrative trade and as such would require lots more effort and lots more money(plus some new allies) .
There is also the problem with land mines everywhere and several decades worth of unexploded munitions making farming a bit of a high risk occupation . That stuff is very labour intensive and very expensive to get rid of .

Now of course to get back to that elusive problem I mentioned , which surprise surprise is security:yes: There is a reason why only 10% of the land in Afghanistan is recieving the assistance , its because that is about all the coilition can claim to hold any sort of reasonable control over, apart from that held by your allies who have no interest whatsoever in diversifying away from their cash crop of choice .

So to sum up Panzer , Obama was spot on with his comments , your government is attempting to fight two wars and two reconstruction efforts when it only has the finances and resources for one , and the effort is being mainly focused on the country where it is least important .(But there is a reason why the focus is there , it could even be described as a good reason , but the reason when properly examined is pretty futile almost to the verge of pointless)

Now perhaps you may well believe that I am making all this crap up , but a quick perusal of the aid project targets , finances and programs from your own (and other)government agencies will lay that belief quickly to rest .

Of course I could go on about the translator issue that xiahou thinks is a gaffe , but bloody hell that would be just too easy and the answer so obvious that only someone lacking in perception couldn't see it for themselves .

Lemur

05-15-2008, 22:37

Ok so modern Republicans do not demonstrate Republican values. Granted.
So let's just move on, okay? That's enough about that.

I am a bit puzzled by your indecisiveness for this election year Lemur.
It shouldn't be terribly confusing. My main hope has been for Hillary Clinton to be denied the White House. Of the three remaining candidates, she's the one I really, really want to keep away from power.

I like Senator McCain and I like Senator Obama. Once Clinton is out of the picture, I will relax and luxuriate. Yeah, I am a big fan of divided government. The only thing that might tempt me to pull the lever for Obama is a desire to see the Republicans take as hard a hit as possible. They deserve a serious spanking for the last seven years. Punishment should be meted out, for it is surely deserved.

(But I'll probably go for McCain anyway.)

The truth of the matter is that the neocon, imperialist agenda is dead now that Clinton cannot become President. Torture? Done with. Imperial executive branch bound by no law and no counterbalance? Kaput. Karl Rove's "permanent majority"? A hallucination. It's time for the grown-ups to take charge, and in the two remaining candidates, I see two grown-ups.

I expect this will earn me extra-bonus grief, since I will now be trolled by people who despise both men. Surely taking Xiahou's I-hate-everyone-and-will-only-vote-based-on-fear approach would be more restful. But that's where I'm at.

P.S.: The Republican's disgusting behavior was not the origin of my admiration of divided government. Single-party control of the entire Federal gov has always been a bad idea. And no doubt if Obama takes the White House the Dems will make a mess in their usual style, and balance will be restored. My only question for myself is how hard the Republican party needs to get hit for what it has done.

Xiahou

05-15-2008, 22:39

Of course I could go on about the translator issue that xiahou thinks is a gaffe , but bloody hell that would be just too easy and the answer so obvious that only someone lacking in perception couldn't see it for themselves .
Yes, please do. Although, "go on" would imply that you addressed the issue in the first place- which you didn't. Doubtless, you'll take your argument directly from the Obama campaign itself and mention something about their being foreign fighters in Afghanistan- some of who speak Arabic. ~:handball:

Or just as likely, you'll continue to obfuscate and state the obvious, yet unrelated talking points about how there isn't as much money and troops available for Afghanistan as we'd like since there's a war on in Iraq. It's funny how people will completely re-write something stupid that Obama said in an intelligent manner and then proclaim, by evidence of the new statement that he never made, he was "spot on". :laugh4:

Edit: Oh, and before it's swept away under the inevitable torrent of Tribes's emoticons, Spino (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1921072&postcount=901), excellent post. :yes:

PanzerJaeger

05-15-2008, 22:44

Now perhaps you may well believe that I am making all this crap up , but a quick perusal of the aid project targets , finances and programs from your own (and other)government agencies will lay that belief quickly to rest .

.

Thanks for the (mostly) civil response. I first tried to follow the link by Obama's campaign chairman in response to the blog, and it was broken. I then googled "shortage of agricultural advisors iraq afghanistan", "agricultural advisors iraq afghanistan", "farming aid iraq afghanistan", etc with no substantial results mentioning a shortage of advisors or a diversion of advisors to Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan. :shrug:

Tribesman

05-15-2008, 23:00

Yes, please do. Although, "go on" would imply that you addressed the issue in the first place- which you didn't.
:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:
Oh dear , might I suggest you read the first post I wrote in response to your newsarticle , its all there .
Is it a lack of perception you have ?:inquisitive:
BTW , I understand your pain , it must be very hard when faced with the problems of seeing Afghanistan slide into failure due to the ballsup in iraq that you support most vocally despite all reason .

Panzer , forget google its crap even when you narrow down the parameters you end up with a list of irrelevant rubbish to wade through in the hope of finding reliable relevant information .
Go straight to the source .....your government , they do make some damn good and easy to use sites and publish lots of reports on current and recent programs , and future ones and their aims and financing.....and their results .

Damn I do think I just called the US a government a reliable source:oops:

Xiahou

05-15-2008, 23:26

:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:
Oh dear , might I suggest you read the first post I wrote in response to your newsarticle , its all there .I saw your typical unsubstantiated nonsense. Nothing that struck me as particularly noteworthy. :shrug:

I will take advantage of the opportunity to highlight more of the article though.
The vast majority of military translators in both war zones are drawn from the local population.

Naturally they speak the local language. In Iraq, that’s Arabic or Kurdish. In Afghanistan, it’s any of a half dozen other languages — including Pashtu, Dari, and Farsi.Obama totally missed the ball on this one. It's not that one couldn't easily make the argument that resources are short in Afghanistan because they're being utilized in Iraq. The "gaffe" comes in when he picks an erroneous example like this that underscores his lack of experience and knowledge when it comes to foreign policy.

Edit: I also wanted to link a few articles about how stupid McCain's "cap and trade" plan to fight global warming is- but this said it so much better...:beam:
https://img208.imageshack.us/img208/6858/toon051508ys0.gif

Adrian II

05-16-2008, 00:06

There is a severe shortage of Arab translators on all 'fronts', in the U.S. itself as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan (where Arab combtants are among the most active, well-organised and well-connected), and even in Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. government often had to make do with contractors. As a result, intelligence has been compromised and there have even been several arrests of apparently perfidious translators in Guantanamo Bay.

This is all over the media and all over the web since 9/11 and more so since the Iraq invasion. Already in January 2002, the General Accounting Office warned that the Army was short of translators fluent in Arabic and other difficult languages and that it "does not have the linguistic capacity to support two concurrent major theaters of war."

And oh look, since last year the Arabs are returning (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/24/AR2007062400750.html) to Afghanistan where they occupy leading roles again.

Instead of working on this problem your army is kicking out Arab translators by the dozens because they are gay. Apparently religious nuttery takes precedence over national security.

Tribesman

05-16-2008, 01:41

I saw your typical unsubstantiated nonsense. Nothing that struck me as particularly noteworthy.
It didn't strike you as you lack perception and as you call it unsubstatiated you clearly lack basic knowledge .
A simple trawl of your national security archives on Afghanistan policy shows the relevance and need for arabic translators and even the most dense warmongering buffoon should know what "students" means in relation to Afghanistan , or Pakistan for that matter neither of which is an "arabic" country :dizzy2:
But hey keep piling it on
I will take advantage of the opportunity to highlight more of the article though.
oh please....The vast majority of military translators in both war zones are drawn from the local population.

OMG absolutely unbelievable , since it is the arabic speakers in the local population in Afghanistan that you are fighting against then how on earth do you recruit the local arabic speakers as translators ?

So once again your post deserves another :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4: and no further comment other than that you make dumb remarks about Obama missing the ball when the "gaffe" was non existant and you still attempt to kick the ball long after it has been thouroughly punctured and the game is well and truly over .:thumbsdown:

And oh look, since last year the Arabs are returning to Afghanistan where they occupy leading roles again.

But Adrian surely the Armys plan should have worked out by now , the arabic speakers that were there would have lost the pashtun respect and the new arabic speakers sent over would be giving the new message from the west~;) You know the old hearts and minds and working within the local cultural and religeous set up .
Oh I forgot , the muppets from the GOP decided to ignore the army and intelligence assessments on "how to do Afghanistan" didn't they and instead perversly followed the army and inteligence "what not to do in Afghanistan" reports instead .
But remind me again Adrian , as I seem to be missing the basics, this afgany place sort of thing its got a sorta like fighting thingy going on right and there are these groupy like group things where one of them sorta like comes mainly from a places where they have this language thing and another group is scholars specialises in this languagy thing and both have this attitude that this language is like sort of essential in their and everyone elses everyday life so would it be kinda good idea to have some peoples like pehasps who know a little of this language whatsitthingamy ...or would that be a gaffe ?
Though I personally believe that they need more maps because in the Iraq and such like they don't have enough maps as USamericans .

Adrian II

05-16-2008, 01:49

But Adrian surely the Armys plan should have worked out by now [..]Oh but they have, dear Tribesman.

The answer to all their problems is the IBM Masturb Mastor (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061012-7972.html), a speech-to-speech laptop utility. It enables U.S. units to "communicate effectively with speakers of different languages in real-world tactical situations". Would you believe it!

It has Mandarin Chinese as well. Someone is thinking ahead. :yes:

Xiahou

05-16-2008, 03:14

So Adrian, you're now saying that calling Obama's statement a "blooper" was a blooper? Even Obama recognized his error and corrected himself. It's probably worth noting that Arabic fighters, especially leaders who are returning to Afghanistan are also going to be fluent in the local dialects, otherwise they wouldn't have much luck recruiting their suicide bombers. Communicating with them in the local language isn't likely to be a problem complicated by Iraqi Arabic interpreters in Iraq.

Having translators for the local populace is always going to be of fundamental importance. There will never be enough military linguists to fill the role, nor are they familiar with local cultures the way local translators would be. You can point out problems with them, but that will never change the fact that local talent is always going to be a necessity that will be used extensively. Gitmo, as a prison camp where translators are also intelligence officers is really in a different class from translators that the troops in the field need to speak.

What's really unfortunate though, is that I found a transcript of Obama's offending statements and they weren't nearly so sexy as they were originally billed- certainly no 'bitter clingers':

"Right now, we don't have enough troops, and NATO hasn't provided enough troops because they are still angry about us going into Iraq.

So we just don't have enough capacity right now to deal with -- and it's not just troops, by the way. It's like Arab -- Arab -- Arabic interpreters, Arab language speakers, we only have a certain number of them, and if they're all in Iraq, then it's harder for us to use them, and -- and obviously they may not speak Arabic, but the various dialects that they speak in Afghanistan, oftentimes people who speak Urdu or Pashtun or whatever the languages are, they're going to be needed in those areas, and a lot of them have ended up being placed elsewhere."Apparently he realized it as soon as he said it and then just trailed off into something about Urdu, Pashtun ect. That changes the statement in my mind from one that made him look profoundly ignorant to a statement who's point fell apart halfway in when he realized his own mistake. Not quite a gaffe the level of which I had previously been led to believe.

OTOH, when McCain made his Al Qaeda in Iran comment, it took a whispering Joe Lieberman to make McCain correct what he said. How disappointing. :shame:

Crazed Rabbit

05-16-2008, 03:29

I think some of Obama's big troubles are going to come from his associations with certain people, like Bill Ayers, who's support for Obama has already been pointed out. IIRC, Hilary didn't pound that issue at all (surprising in a way), so it'll be fresh meat for the GOP machine come fall.

CR

CountArach

05-16-2008, 04:44

The truth of the matter is that the neocon, imperialist agenda is dead now that Clinton cannot become President. Torture? Done with. Imperial executive branch bound by no law and no counterbalance? Kaput. Karl Rove's "permanent majority"? A hallucination. It's time for the grown-ups to take charge, and in the two remaining candidates, I see two grown-ups.
Actually McCain is a continuation of it. One could make an argument that Obama is as well.

Tribesman

05-16-2008, 09:05

Well done Xiahou you showed an Obama blooper in your last post without even spotting it , it really shows his inexperience .

Geoffrey S

05-16-2008, 10:17

What, that Pashtun isn't even a language? :juggle2:

Adrian II

05-16-2008, 10:35

So Adrian, you're now saying that calling Obama's statement a "blooper" was a blooper?Xiahou, don't be so terribly childish. Read (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1920633&postcount=894).
And Tribesman probably means to say that Urdu (mentioned by O.) is not a local Afghan language, but given the presence of many Pakistani fighters and the intensive cross-border traffic I believe it may be relevant to have Urdu translators there.

Geoffrey S

05-16-2008, 11:10

Yeah, far as I know there are a whole lot of Urdu speakers in the Pakistan border area.

Tribesman

05-16-2008, 11:43

What, that Pashtun isn't even a language?

No , its in the first line . He takes a simplistic approach , adds in an emotional and fails to deliver .

Adrian II

05-16-2008, 11:47

No , its in the first line . He takes a simplistic approach , adds in an emotional and fails to deliver .You are right, 'wary' would have ben a better word than 'angry'.

Tribesman

05-16-2008, 13:50

Indeed so Adrian , they would be wary about the lack of resources , the seperation of the command structure , the lack of clear and obtainable objectives , theuse of extremely dubious drug lords as allies and the fact that Afghanistan has the real potential to be a major long lasting balls up .
Anger wouldn't come into it , that would be the realm of those that talk of cheese eating surrender monkeys when others question their plans and thoughts .
So Obama did make a big booboo he likened other countries to the current bunch of muppets in the white house ...not a very diplomatic thing to do eh:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

Adrian II

05-16-2008, 15:14

Indeed so Adrian , they would be wary about the lack of resources , the seperation of the command structure , the lack of clear and obtainable objectives , theuse of extremely dubious drug lords as allies and the fact that Afghanistan has the real potential to be a major long lasting balls up .I don't think so. I think that since 'Iraq' they are wary of large joint operations with the U.S. in general. What keeps them back is their unwillingness to be dragged into new conflicts (for instance war against Iran) by a U.S. government that consults less then before with its allies and maintains that 'the mission defines the coalition'. Any new president will have to restore confidence in this area.

Tribesman

05-16-2008, 15:55

Well adrian , that raise a new question , are any of the candidates even remotely able for that job ?

Adrian II

05-16-2008, 17:03

Well adrian , that raise a new question , are any of the candidates even remotely able for that job ?As our American members have already agreed among themselves, there is little cause for happiness about the avaliable rage of choice this time round.

Of the 'big three' I think McCain is the only one who might command enough respect. If only he wouldn't commit so many bloopers. Like saying that General Petraeus drives around Baghdad in an unarmored Humvee. Or like saying that there are neighborhoods in Baghdad where he himself could walk freely when everyone could see the Kevlar vest he wore, the large security detail protecting him, the attack choppers above his head. The only one to best him lately was Israeli Defense minister Amir Peretz who was photographed overlooking a battlefield with the caps still on his binoculars.

Of course everybody understands that McCain is putting a brave face on a Bush-legacy that he didn't ask for. But any more of this crap and he will look like a wilful liar even before he takes office.

P.S. Having just read his latest speech (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080515/D90LUK4G6.html) where he mentions a withdrawal in 2013 when Iraq will be a 'functioning democracy', I don't know what to think of him any more. Yeah right, and in 2013 every Iraqi will have a pony in his garage. This from the same man who said the U.S. would be 'welcomed as liberators' or that 'there's not a history of violent clashes between Sunnis and Shias'. It is getting too much, it looks as if he is in Lalaland with Bush and all the rest. But none of the candidates seem to have a clue about Iraq and frankly I don't believe I have one. What a mess.

Then again, McCain favours a 'Ligue of Democracies' to replace the UN. Now that's an excellent idea that may help to swing round American foreing policy to multilateralism again and restore confidence in two ways. It isn't enough to restore foreign confidence, it is also necessary to restore the American public's confidence in multilateral foreign policy.

Crazed Rabbit

05-16-2008, 18:54

An article on what went wrong with Hilary's campaign, from campaign insiders, who all are, unfortunately, anonymous, but it does seem to jive with what we've heard so far:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f7a4a380-c4a4-4f84-b653-f252e8569915

CR

Lemur

05-16-2008, 21:31

Here's your weekly Peggy Noonan (http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html) fix, with a more nuanced take on Teh Reupiblicanz Iz Ded meme:

Pity Party

May 16, 2008
By PEGGY NOONAN

Big picture, May 2008:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid – detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came back to Alger Hiss.

They are also – Hill leaders, lobbyists, party speakers – successful, well-connected, busy and rich. They never guessed, back in '86, how government would pay off! They didn't know they'd stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you're safe, and that everyone else is. A party can lose its gut this way.

Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they've publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

The Bush White House, faced with the series of losses from 2005 through '08, has long claimed the problem is Republicans on the Hill and running for office. They have scandals, bad personalities, don't stand for anything. That's why Republicans are losing: because they're losers.

All true enough!

But this week a House Republican said publicly what many say privately, that there is another truth. "Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures," said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is "an airplane flying right into a mountain." Analyses of its predicament reflect an "investment in the Bush presidency," but "the public has just moved so far past that." "Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis." Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: "He can't articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it." The party, said Mr. Davis, must admit its predicament, act independently of the White House, and force Democrats to define themselves. "They should have some ownership for what's going on. They control the budget. They pay no price. . . . Obama has all happy talk, but it's from 30,000 feet. Energy, immigration, what is he gonna do?"

* * *

Could the party pivot from the president? I spoke this week to Clarke Reed of Mississippi, one of the great architects of resurgent Republicanism in the South. When he started out, in the 1950s, there were no Republicans in his state. The solid south was solidly Democratic, and Sen. James O. Eastland was thumping the breast pocket of his suit, vowing that civil rights legislation would never leave it. "We're going to build a two-party system in the south," Mr. Reed said. He helped create "the illusion of Southern power" as a friend put it, with the creation of the Southern Republican Chairman's Association. "If you build it they will come." They did.

There are always "lots of excuses," Mr. Reed said of the special-election loss. Poor candidate, local factors. "Having said all that," he continued, "let's just face it: It's not a good time." He meant to be a Republican. "They brought Cheney in, and that was a mistake." He cited "a disenchantment with the generic Republican label, which we always thought was the Good Housekeeping seal."

What's behind it? "American people just won't take a long war. Just – name me a war, even in a pro-military state like this. It's overall disappointment. It's national. No leadership, adrift. Things haven't worked." The future lies in rebuilding locally, not being "distracted" by Washington.

Is the Republican solid South over?

"Yeah. Oh yeah." He said, "I eat lunch every day at Buck's Cafe. Obama's picture is all over the wall."

How to come back? "The basic old conservative principles haven't changed. We got distracted by Washington, we got distracted from having good county organizations."

Should the party attempt to break with Mr. Bush? Mr. Reed said he supports the president. And then he said, simply, "We're past that."

We're past that time.

Mr. Reed said he was "short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic." He has seen a lot of history. "After Goldwater in '64 we said, 'Let's get practical.' So we got ol' Dick. We got through Watergate. Been through a lot. We've had success a long time."

Throughout the interview this was a Reed refrain: "We got through that." We got through Watergate and Vietnam and changes large and small.

He was holding high the flag, but his refrain implicitly compared the current moment to disaster.

What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.

Mr. Bush has squandered the hard-built paternity of 40 years. But so has the party, and so have its leaders. If they had pushed away for serious reasons, they could have separated the party's fortunes from the president's. This would have left a painfully broken party, but they wouldn't be left with a ruined "brand," as they all say, speaking the language of marketing. And they speak that language because they are marketers, not thinkers. Not serious about policy. Not serious about ideas. And not serious about leadership, only followership.

This is and will be the great challenge for John McCain: The Democratic argument, now being market tested by Obama Inc., that a McCain victory will yield nothing more or less than George Bush's third term.

That is going to be powerful, and it is going to get out the vote. And not for Republicans.

Sasaki Kojiro

05-16-2008, 21:43

Out of touch? Desperate? Who would say that about the RNC?

“Barack Obama’s pledge to stop Executive agencies from implementing laws passed by Congress raises serious doubts about his understanding of what the job of the President of the United States actually is. His refusal to enforce the law reveals that Barack Obama doesn’t have the experience necessary to do the job of President, or that he fundamentally lacks the judgment to carry out the most basic functions of the Executive Branch. What other laws would Barack Obama direct federal agents not to enforce?”

:laugh4:

75% of Americans support medical marijuana, and states rights is supposed to be a republican issue.

Crazed Rabbit

05-17-2008, 00:24

So we have the dems and the GOP, one is winning a civil war and the other is in meltdown mode. Heck, if I was president I'd direct fed agents not to bother with medical marijuana.

Here's a bigger 'gaffe' for Obama, which perhaps might be a meme that Obama's an ordinary politician who lies as it suits him (if fact, it's like Hilary's Bosnia thing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDn_QoVfMpk&eurl=http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=97003
A video of Obama saying no one clapped at my Detroit speech telling automakers and the like they'll have to get higher emissions, and then a segment of that 2007 Detroit speech with people giving him a standing ovation.

I wouldn't mind the GOP getting a beatdown for what they've become, but why must the victor then be such a lefty? If we get national healthcare, talk about a huge government program that would take ******* decades to get rid of. gah

CR

drone

05-17-2008, 01:47

The GOP is likely going to get pounded in November, I figured they would lose several seats, but with that Mississippi vote it might be worse than I first thought. Can't say I'll be sad to see it, but I do hope McCain pulls out the win. A Dem president with a large Dem majority in Congress would be a disaster (just as the last GOP domination was).

KukriKhan

05-17-2008, 03:28

It isn't enough to restore foreign confidence, it is also necessary to restore the American public's confidence in multilateral foreign policy.

Deep wisdom, written by a Dutcher. Kudo's :bow:

It will be a huge leap for yanks to consent to our "blue helmets" being commanded by non-yank Generals. But, if we can re-establish a sufficient level of trust, both ways, militarily and politically, America will accept the idea.

To get there, we're gonna need a different structure for problem-solving and action-directing.

I was against the idea of a League of Democracies at first (I think the concept was floated 2 years ago here in the backroom by Pindar), thinking it would shut out (the few) good ideas coming out of the screaming left-and-right-fields, as it were. However, on reflection, properly structured and sourced, I can see its value as an action agency, and a 'clique' to which like-minded folks and governments might aspire.

It would probably kill the UN, a noble effort gone fallow nowadays, IMO.

Which candidate in the US's prez contest is up to that challenge? I hold my nose, and squint my eyes in distaste, while typing the name: clinton. I don't like her, her domestic agenda suxorz, her hubby (the de-facto VP if she is elected) is a lyin', cheatin', whorin' opportunist. But she's not afraid of the foreign policy field, and she knows the players, and though she's not inspirational, I'll bet she can garner more trust from democratic nations than the other two, combined. And after she's worked up that trust, she can present it to America as "the new way", or some such.

And we'll all be in a better place in 2012, for that. Providing we give her Lemur's beloved gridlock, in the form of a Loyal Opposition party majority in either the House or Senate, to thwart her more totalitarian domestic ambitions.

GeneralHankerchief

05-17-2008, 05:38

I've decided that I'm voting for Barr.

The GOP is going down hard either way. When it eventually does rise from the ashes, hopefully it will see mine and others' votes for the Libertarians and mold itself to properly acclimate our interests. When it finally gets strong again a decade or so down the road, it will do things right this time.

Sasaki Kojiro

05-17-2008, 06:03

Here's a bigger 'gaffe' for Obama, which perhaps might be a meme that Obama's an ordinary politician who lies as it suits him (if fact, it's like Hilary's Bosnia thing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDn_QoVfMpk&eurl=http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=97003
A video of Obama saying no one clapped at my Detroit speech telling automakers and the like they'll have to get higher emissions, and then a segment of that 2007 Detroit speech with people giving him a standing ovation.

Yep sounds like an embellishment to me. Can't say I'm impressed with the applause though--the speeches I've seen of his he had to pause for lengthy periods while people quieted down. But I don't believe his speech went over very well in detroit so the implication is still accurate.

Crazed Rabbit

05-17-2008, 08:39

That essential quality of 'truthiness' Dan Rather fruitlessly pursued, eh?

Oh, and apparently some people are really thick. There's been a recent brush-up when Bush scorned appeasement in a speech and Obama took it personally. A Seattle Times editor wrote to defend...Hitler and said his demands were reasonable for the time.

The narrative we're given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. From the view of 1938, what Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable, according to the prevailing idea of the nation-state.
...
When the British let Hitler have a slice of Czechoslovakia, they were following the historical lesson they had learned 1914-1918: avoid war. War produces results far more horrible than you expected. War is a bad investment. It is not glorious. Don’t give anyone an excuse to start one.

In a few months, in early 1939, Hitler ordered the invasion of what is now the Czech Republic—that is, territory that was not German. Then it was obvious that a deal with him was worthless.
...
In September 1939, when Germany started the war, it had no just claim to any more territory. But the Palestinians who fight Israel do have a just claim to territory. We can argue what it is; we can argue about the justness of their military tactics, and so on. And the same for the Israeli side, which is equally arguable.

The step that must be taken now is for the two sides to talk, so that they can make a deal that both will accept, and that each side will enforce against its radical elements.

And of course, once the Palestinians have secured their just claims, they'll stop fighting and become peaceful, just like the historical example used earlier in the...oh, wait. :wall:

If you're going to defend appeasement, why not try and search for, oh, something other than the greatest example of why not to use appeasement?

GH - Barr might be a very good choice, especially for a democratic-all-the-way state (for Pres, at least) like mine.

CR

Adrian II

05-17-2008, 11:54

There's been a recent brush-up when Bush scorned appeasement in a speech and Obama took it personally.Yes. And here is what McCain had to say about it:

"Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain," McCain said. "I believe that it's not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States," he said, referring to the release of U.S. hostages by extremists in Iran on the first day of the Reagan presidency.

Asked if he thought that former President Jimmy Carter, who struggled with the hostage crisis, was an appeaser, McCain replied: "I don't know if he was an appeaser or not, but he terribly mishandled the Iranian hostage crisis."
Source (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/15/america/prexy.php)
We all know why the hostages were released. They were released because the U.S. negotiated with terrorists (Hezbollah) and because it delivered weapons to Iran. In Reagan's own words of March 4, 1987:

"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and to the original strategy we had in mind."Is McCain becoming senile? :inquisitive:

Tribesman

05-17-2008, 12:02

Is McCain becoming senile?
No he is just another of those politicians who live in the big egyptian river .

Adrian II

05-17-2008, 12:35

No he is just another of those politicians who live in the big egyptian river .No, I think it's just a pose when he says he will be 'Hamas' worst nightmare' and all that. McCain ain't no fool. Here is what he said about the issue two years ago (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/15/exclusive-video-mccain-wa_n_102031.html)in a much more relaxed atmosphere and without right-wing idiots breathing down his neck. Like Reagan and most other Presidents he is quite able to play to the gallery and at the same time act like a realist on the basis that foreign policy is the art of the possible.

But to make that public statement about Reagan and the Iran hostage crisis is a major booboo. He'll be very lucky if he gets away with it. Go figure, what kind of message to Hamas is this? Was he actually saying: "Just like Reagan, I'll vilify you in public and trade with you behind the screens"?

Or maybe he is indeed losing (some of) his marbles. The mildest explanation would be that the statement was actually a Freudian slip, signalling that, like Reagan, he is quite aware of the difference between public persona and policy.

PanzerJaeger

05-17-2008, 13:57

Is McCain becoming senile? :inquisitive:

Most Americans aren't aware of the specifics.

I think the issues with Obama are his willingness to meet with Iran's president and to do it unconditionally.

As a citizen, I would have a major problem with my president having a friendly meeting with the leader of a nation arming, training, and funding groups that are killing American soldiers. There is a big difference between that and targeted negotiations through surrogates.

Tribesman

05-17-2008, 14:16

I think the issues with Obama are his willingness to meet with Iran's president and to do it unconditionally.

There is the problem with your thinking , it can only be unconditionally , if you want to attach pre-conditions then they attach pre-conditions and the pre-conditions never get met so there are no talks and you are left carrying on with the same perpetual cycle of crap from the past decades .

CrossLOPER

05-17-2008, 14:19

As a citizen, I would have a major problem with my president having a friendly meeting with the leader of a nation arming, training, and funding groups that are killing American soldiers. There is a big difference between that and targeted negotiations through surrogates.
"We don't talk to evil" isn't a foreign policy.

PanzerJaeger

05-17-2008, 14:39

There is the problem with your thinking , it can only be unconditionally , if you want to attach pre-conditions then they attach pre-conditions and the pre-conditions never get met so there are no talks and you are left carrying on with the same perpetual cycle of crap from the past decades .

That is why it should not be done at all. I see no reason whatsoever our President would have for meeting with a government that is not only funding terrorist organizations throughout the middle east, but directly killing American troops. We have other methods of communicating with the regime without lending them that level of legitimacy.

On the other hand, meeting with Kim Jong Il might be beneficial. It certainly wouldn't be insulting to the families of dead soldiers.

Every nation is different, and Obama's broad declaration doesn't take that into account.

"We don't talk to evil" isn't a foreign policy.

Legitamizing it is, I guess, but not a very good one.

Tribesman

05-17-2008, 18:28

That is why it should not be done at all. I see no reason whatsoever our President would have for meeting with a government that is not only funding terrorist organizations throughout the middle east, but directly killing American troops.
Sorry Panzer but your argement falls apart with the fact that your government is also funding terrorist organisations . You could take that moral high ground if it wasn't for the fact that your country is also a state sponsor of terrorism...and your preferred party of government is trying to remove blocks to funding more terrorists throughout the middle east .
But since that moral; high ground is lost you have no choice but to meet as equal scumbags in negotiations .:shrug:

Xiahou

05-17-2008, 19:19

Adrian II

05-17-2008, 19:30

If you look at the actual video (http://video.news.sky.com/skynews/video/?&videoSourceID=1316314) of McCain speaking about Hamas, he doesn't say anything that suggests talks without preconditions- he said their relationship would be based on Hamas' actions. Not really the gotcha that Obama tried to paint it as. :shrug:I was talking about McCain. It would be nice if more Orgahs could snap out of the sniper mode occasionally and discuss candidates instead of sound bites and point scores.

Xiahou

05-17-2008, 19:37

I was talking about McCain.
Uhhh, so was I. Did you notice him? He was featured pretty prominently in the video I posted.

The Huffintonpost link you posted didn't say anything about McCain advocating talks without pre-conditions and the full video further illustrated that. If pointing that out is considered sniping by you, you'd better get used to alot more.

Tribesman

05-17-2008, 20:43

he said their relationship would be based on Hamas' actions
Well thats a bit of a bugger since he said the relationship would be based on Hamas actions not the United States actions ...but then some muppets decided to back Dahlan in the failed attempt to get rid of the government so now Hamas actions are based on the united states actions ...which means perpetual cycle of crap again and McCain needs to make a new statement to clarify his old message .
Unless of course he meant that the relationship would be based on if their coup attempt failed or not and in the case of a loss how they could approach Hamas as someone with any credibility about being interested in a settlement

Adrian II

05-17-2008, 21:22

For me the baseline is political skill. Is McCain the Serious Foreign Policy candidate he is made out to be, or is he the Original Cave Man who believes in some of his own silly statements about, for instance, Iraq.

McCain is the candidate who reportedly told a group of wealthy Republican fundraisers last year:
“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bull****’.”Is this the real McCain or not? That's what ya wanna know, man. Who gives a hoot about Obama-gotcha's or anyone else's gotcha's?

Crazed Rabbit

05-17-2008, 22:48

Adrian II

05-17-2008, 23:13

Unfortunately, the 'gotchas' have an impact on who's elected. After all, if masses of voters were like the backroom, we'd be left with Thompson and Romney and Richardson and maybe Leiberman? And of course Ron Paul.

CRBut this is the Backroom. And I am disappointed if we can't see sound-bites and gotcha's for what they are: ploys.

Like I said before, bloopers are bloopers and all candidates will commit them. George Bush Sr. once said on nation-wide television that he'd had 'sex' with Ronald Reagan (what he meant to say was 'setbacks'). Is anyone holding that against him?

All candidates make all sorts of promises as well, which should really be taken as statements of principle, not as contractual obligations. Ronald Reagan came to power promising that he would cut back government, but government continued to grow steadily in his eight years in office. George Bush Sr. said 'Read my lips, no more taxes' and he soon had to raise taxes anyway because of the Gramm-Rudman Balanced Budget Act of 1985 which he himself had supported.

Now where is the battle of ideas? What I want to know is if the candidates have a vision of foreign policy and the character to pursue it. I don't know that Clinton has either of those. Obama has a rosy vision, probably too rosy. McCain appeared to me to have a more realistic appraisal of foreign relations, but what he says about Iraq lately makes no sense at all. Ten bloopers in a row -that's a pattern, man. Like I said above, one more of the kind he committed yesterday (about Reagan and Iran) and I'll have to believe that he is truly out of his depth. That worries me.

CountArach

05-18-2008, 00:25

PanzerJaeger

05-18-2008, 04:43

Sorry Panzer but your argement falls apart with the fact that your government is also funding terrorist organisations . You could take that moral high ground if it wasn't for the fact that your country is also a state sponsor of terrorism...and your preferred party of government is trying to remove blocks to funding more terrorists throughout the middle east .
But since that moral; high ground is lost you have no choice but to meet as equal scumbags in negotiations .:shrug:

Who said anything about a moral high ground?? :inquisitive:

Tribesman

05-18-2008, 09:42

Who said anything about a moral high ground??
Oh sorry Panzer , my mistake ...so now what exactly would be an accurate descrition of not doing business with someone because they say and do nasty stuff ?
If you can come up with a better phrase than those 3 words I used that is applicable you might have a point .

PanzerJaeger

05-18-2008, 11:27

Oh sorry Panzer , my mistake ...so now what exactly would be an accurate descrition of not doing business with someone because they say and do nasty stuff ?
If you can come up with a better phrase than those 3 words I used that is applicable you might have a point .

As I said, a presidential meeting is far different than lower level negotiations. You should know, politics has nothing to do with morality.

Tribesman

05-18-2008, 13:15

Ah I see , so that means all the reasons given about why it is wrong to meet people , like for example they are terrorist supporting genocidal maniacs are clearly nothing to do with morals about dealing with terrorist supporting genocidal maniacs and all the attacks on certain candidates over the topic are a complete non-issue or as it is more commonly known...bollox:yes:
Hmmm...perhaps its a financial issue , that might be it , people shouldn't talk to terrorist supporting genocidal maniacs because bombing invasion regime change and rebuilding are far cheaper than talking so it is fiscally prudent for conservatives not to talk .:idea2:

Adrian II

05-18-2008, 14:03

You should know, politics has nothing to do with morality.The relation between morality and politics is complex ever since Christianity imposed the notion that rulers should respect ethics.

The resulting dilemma brought about, among other things, Machiavelli's famous book where he stated that in order to be effective, rulers should preferably be seen to do the right thing, even if they don't actually do the right thing.

In Machiavelli's time there were no general elections, no parties and no free media. In a democracy, the appearance of ethical behaviour in a ruler has become far more important as a criterium for effectiveness. Even so, a mature electorate acknowledges the elected leader's right to deceive and intimidate as long as these means serve a higher, legitimate purpose that does meet ethical criteria.

The concept of just war is a good example of this.

So there is a hierarchy to be respected when we discuss morality and politics. We can't condemn all negotiations with terrorists or dictatorial regimes on principle. We can only condemn them in the light of their stated or observed purpose.

PanzerJaeger

05-18-2008, 16:50

Ah I see , so that means all the reasons given about why it is wrong to meet people , like for example they are terrorist supporting genocidal maniacs are clearly nothing to do with morals about dealing with terrorist supporting genocidal maniacs and all the attacks on certain candidates over the topic are a complete non-issue or as it is more commonly known...bollox:yes:

Not exactly. Meeting unconditionally with the president of Iran a) legitimizes a regime we are trying to isolate and b) is extremely disrespectful to the soldiers who are dying at the hands of that regime - all for no gain. What does Barack Obama think he can personally say or do to sway Iran? Emulating JFK's persona is one thing, but he should also remember his failures, such as Vienna.

Tribesman

05-19-2008, 03:42

Sasaki Kojiro

05-19-2008, 03:47

Another Obama Gaffe! (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/politics/18campaign.html?bl&ex=1211256000&en=83eb4c2fe9254961&ei=5087%0A)

Mr. Obama appears so eager to return to Iowa that in an appearance Friday night in Sioux Falls, S.D., he mistakenly greeted the crowd that had come to see him as if they were from Sioux City, which is farther south, in Iowa.

Is this man really qualified to be president?

PanzerJaeger

05-19-2008, 07:33

Hold on there Panzer , "legitimizing the regime" ??????
Are you trying to say the government of Iran is not the government of Iran ?
Thats a bit of a bugger since even though unlike other countries America and Egypt still have severed diplomatic relations with Iran both have appointed Switzerland as the protective power recognising the Iranian government as the legitimate government .

I would think some sort of arguement could be made that the current regime is not the legitimate government of Iran, but thats not what I am saying.

A presidential meeting carries with it a degree of equity that goes against our efforts to isolate Iran. Whether we do have the high ground or not, its important to appear on a higher level - to be above the bombastic Hitler-types. Ahmadinejad would love a photo op with a US president - the Great Satan brought graveling to his knees. An American president forced to exchange niceties with an avowed Holocaust denier committed to the destruction of one of our most loyal allies.

Oh I don't know , perhaps he can talk about the Iranian offer of co-operation in stabilising Iraq which was tied in the the offer of co-operation on terrorism and the alledged WMD program....you know the offer Bush said bollox to when he decided to go it alone and lead your country into a big bloody mess .

Thats a little naive, don't you think? Ahmadinejad's attitudes are different, as you know.

Then again you might have a point since the offer came from when the moderates held more sway and were putting up a case that talking was a good option...

So we return to the original question.

of course the rejection gave the hardliners a boost as they were able to show that America didn't want to talk at all , which leaves you with the current mess with hardline idiots on both sides saying they cannot talk .

Rehashing past mistakes does not answer the question. Besides the excellence that is Persian food, what does Mr. Obama feel he can do to change Iran's position that cannot be done through surrogates?

And as for being disrespectful to the soldiers who are dying for nothing ?????bloody hell its disrespectful to not use every available avenue to sort the mess out and since your military is very nearly broken and you have no chance of getting any sort of coilition together then military street is firmly closed to traffic and dialouge drive is the only route open , and if you want to put up a pile of roadworks and diversions along that route then all you are doing is slowing the whole thing down and leaving your soldiers to keep dying in the quagmire for bugger all .

Your assessment of our military situation is debatable, but thats beside the point. Neither you nor Mr. Obama have shown that meeting with Ahmadinejad is an "avenue" for success. On the other hand, unconditional meetings of the past have been less than successful.

Adrian II

05-19-2008, 07:52

Is this man really qualified to be president?Look, last time I looked you guys elected someone who said '"If a frog had wings, he wouldn't hit his tail on the ground.' Since then, every man and his dog qualifies. The only question is who is the lesser idiot.

Tribesman

05-19-2008, 09:23

A presidential meeting carries with it a degree of equity that goes against our efforts to isolate Iran.
But your efforts to isolate Iran have failed , what is the point of trying to carry on a policy that is already in tatters , to make it even worse the policy continued into this century has spread Irans influence not diminished it .
Keep on pissing into the wind and eventually the dampness might sink in and inform you that perhaps you should turn round .

Whether we do have the high ground or not, its important to appear on a higher level
But you don't appear on a higher level , its like the cuba isolation thing , you just end up looking petty .

An American president forced to exchange niceties with an avowed Holocaust denier committed to the destruction of one of our most loyal allies.

What you mean like the house of King Fud or ? Yeah you are right that would be unthinkable :no:
Besides which , dinnerjacket will be out of office next year , by the time your next president gets his arse in gear it won't be dinnerjacket he talks to .:idea2:

Adrian II

05-19-2008, 09:39

Yay, finally some real journalism. The NYT has a big must-read-article-cum-interview on John McCain's foreign policy views in light of his personal and political history. It touches on all aspects, such as parallels and differences between Vietnam and Iraq, intervention elsewhere, and the need for multilateralism. Unfortunately it does not go into McCain's 'League of Democracies' idea. But this is - at least for me - the first article that properly explains McCain's idea of how to tackle the Iraq imbroglio, and why. And it provides some real insight into his underlying views or principles.

"McCain considers national values, and not strategic interests, to be the guiding force in foreign policy."

The New York Times
May 18, 2008

The McCain Doctrines

By MATT BAI

Whatever their disagreements on policy, United States senators, even in today’s hyperpolitical climate, are reluctant to impugn one another’s motives or integrity.

That’s doubly true among those who experienced combat in the Vietnam War, a group that now includes four sitting senators — the Republicans John McCain and Chuck Hagel and the Democrats John Kerry and Jim Webb — as well as former colleagues like Bob Kerrey, Max Cleland and Chuck Robb. These men share an obvious bond, and over the years they have more readily crossed partisan lines than other senators, constituting, in some ways, a party unto themselves. To outsiders, they give the impression of having seen things in their youth that confer a different kind of perspective on mere politics; they seem to know that there are worse things in life than losing an election and having to go home. In contrast to the insecurities of the many boomer politicians who avoided service in Vietnam or marched against it, the Senate’s former soldiers exude a confidence that goes beyond military matters.

The war in Iraq has tested some of these friendships, however. Last year, after House Democrats voted to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, McCain and Webb — both of whom were featured heroes in a classic book on the era, Robert Timberg’s “Nightingale’s Song” — became embroiled in an unusually public disagreement. After McCain pointedly said the enemy in Iraq was celebrating along with Democrats, Webb accused him of unfairly questioning other people’s patriotism. When Webb and Hagel (a close personal friend of McCain’s) proposed a bill to give troops leaving Iraq and Afghanistan more time at home before redeploying, McCain, whose 19-year-old son has served with the Marines in Iraq, forcefully opposed them, saying the troops were needed in the theater. More recently, McCain has found himself on the opposite side of Webb and Hagel again, this time over their “G.I. bill” that would offer education money to every returning veteran. McCain and others want a more limited bill that would encourage rank-and-file soldiers to re-enlist rather than return to civilian life.

In these skirmishes, McCain is the outlier. Among his fellow combat veterans in the Senate, past and present, he is the only one who has continued to champion the war in Iraq; by contrast, Kerry, Webb and Hagel have emerged in the years since the invasion as unsparing critics of American involvement there. (In a new book, Hagel, who voiced deep concerns about Iraq even as he voted for the war resolution in 2002, predicts that the war will turn out to be “the most dangerous and costly foreign-policy debacle in our nation’s history.”) This divide among old allies may be the inevitable result of a protracted war that has cleaved plenty of American households and friendships. But it may also be that the war is revealing underlying fractures among the Senate’s Vietnam coalition.

There is a feeling among some of McCain’s fellow veterans that his break with them on Iraq can be traced, at least partly, to his markedly different experience in Vietnam. McCain’s comrades in the Senate will not talk about this publicly. They are wary of seeming to denigrate McCain’s service, marked by his legendary endurance in a Hanoi prison camp, when in fact they remain, to this day, in awe of it. And yet in private discussions with friends and colleagues, some of them have pointed out that McCain, who was shot down and captured in 1967, spent the worst and most costly years of the war sealed away, both from the rice paddies of Indochina and from the outside world. During those years, McCain did not share the disillusioning and morally jarring experiences of soldiers like Kerry, Webb and Hagel, who found themselves unable to recognize their enemy in the confusion of the jungle; he never underwent the conversion that caused Kerry, for one, to toss away some of his war decorations during a protest at the Capitol. Whatever anger McCain felt remained focused on his captors, not on his own superiors back in Washington.

Not all of McCain’s fellow veterans subscribe to the theory that the singularity of his war experience has anything to do with his intransigence on Iraq. (Bob Kerrey, for one, told me that while he was aware of this argument, he has never believed it.) But some suspect that whatever lesson McCain took away from his time in Vietnam, it was not the one that stayed with his colleagues who were “in country” during those years — that some wars simply can’t be won on the battlefield, no matter how long you fight them, no matter how many soldiers you send there to die.

“McCain is my friend and brother, and I love him dearly,” Max Cleland, Georgia’s former Democratic senator, told me when we talked last month. “But I think you learn something fighting on the ground, like me and John Kerry and Chuck Hagel did in Vietnam. This objective of ‘hearts and minds’? Well, hello! You didn’t know which heart and mind was going to blow you up!

“I have seen this movie before, and I know how it ends,” says Cleland, who lost three of his limbs to an errant grenade during the battle of Khe Sanh. “With thousands dead and tens of thousands more injured, and years later you ask yourself what you were doing there. To the extent my friend John McCain signs on to this, he is endangering America’s long-term interests, and probably his own election in the fall.”

If it is true that McCain’s Vietnam experience left him with a different attitude about foreign wars from the one held by those who were on the ground, then it certainly wasn’t apparent earlier in his political career. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, after he arrived in the Senate, McCain was, in fact, an outspoken opponent of American intervention in faraway lands — at least in cases where the country wasn’t willing to lose thousands of lives to achieve its aims. But during the post-cold-war 1990s, as America’s foreign-policy establishment struggled to define the nation’s obligations to the rest of the world, McCain went through his own kind of inner journey, seeking some balance between the legacy of Vietnam and the pull of new crises around the globe — crises born of savagery and rife with human consequence. That journey led him inexorably toward Iraq, where McCain’s resolve hardened to the point that now, as he prepares to run the climactic campaign of his life, he finds himself carrying the weight of another war, one that has divided the country and devastated his party. One way or the other, Iraq will determine this last phase of McCain’s political life, as surely as the war in Vietnam defined its beginning.

WHEN CAPTAIN McCAIN returned home from Hanoi in 1973, a grateful Navy gave him and his fellow P.O.W.’s their choice of assignments. McCain rather audaciously chose one normally reserved for higher-ranking officers: study at the prestigious National War College. The war in Vietnam collapsed during the five-plus years of his imprisonment, and McCain needed to understand what happened. He absorbed the writings of military historians, most notably Bernard Fall, a veteran of the French resistance who was a sharp critic of the American military in Vietnam. Fall, who lived (and died) among American troops in Vietnam, didn’t quibble with America’s strategic decision to intervene in the country, but he did lambaste its tactics: hunting down guerrillas in search-and-destroy patrols, trying to draw the Vietcong into traditional military battles. Fall believed the Americans did not learn from the failure in Indochina of the French, who insisted on fighting a jungle insurgency as if it were the Second World War.

In his book, Chuck Hagel writes of listening to declassified tapes from the mid-1960s in which Lyndon Johnson admitted to advisers that Vietnam probably couldn’t be won but rued that withdrawal would make him the first American president to lose a war. “I wish someone had told me when I was sitting on a burning tank in a Vietnamese rice paddy that I was fighting for a lost cause just to save a president’s legacy,” Hagel observes acidly. Although McCain was held and tortured for the same cause, he never saw the situation the way Hagel did. In his view, the American effort began to turn around with the promotion in 1968 of Gen. Creighton Abrams, who adopted the tactics favored by counterinsurgency experts like Fall. Abrams pulled back the search-and-destroy teams and instead focused on winning the “hearts and minds” of South Vietnamese villagers. His goal was to encourage the South Vietnamese military to take over their own defense — the process that came to be known as “Vietnamization.” McCain maintains that Abrams’s strategy was working, but it was undercut by the fact that, by that point, the American public had already rendered its verdict, and the drawdown of troops continued until the war’s chaotic end.

The lesson McCain and other conservatives took away from this version of history is that America was driven from Vietnam principally because the voters, discouraged by dire reports from a skeptical media, lost their will. McCain has said in the past that he felt the war could have been won had the right strategy been followed sooner. When I met with McCain last month for a far-ranging conversation about Vietnam and Iraq, I asked him whether he still felt this was the case. “These are all hypotheticals,” he replied. “But I think that if we had employed the strategy that Creighton Abrams put into effect when he relieved General Westmoreland” — that is, if the Abrams strategy had been used years earlier — “then at least the casualties would have been dramatically different.”

As a new congressman in 1983, among the first of his generation of vets to serve in Washington, McCain brought with him an attitude toward American intervention similar to what would later come to be known as the Powell Doctrine, for its author, Colin Powell: simply put, if you were going to use the American military to end a dispute or displace a foreign government, then you had to have the American public firmly on your side and you had to be prepared to use overwhelming force to achieve your aims. Late that year, when his party’s popular president, Ronald Reagan, proposed to extend the deployment of the Marines in Beirut, McCain was one of just 27 Republican representatives to object. The soldiers didn’t have a clear mission, McCain said, nor enough numbers to affect the outcome of the conflict. (Ultimately, 241 American servicemen died when a suicide bomber struck the Marine compound there, and American forces were withdrawn.)

McCain strongly supported other operations, like the American-led invasion of tiny Grenada in 1983, as well as the first gulf war in 1991. But his first term in the Senate, which began in 1987, was marked mostly by extreme caution when it came to inserting American troops into foreign wars. As a newly arrived senator serving on the Armed Services Committee, McCain opposed Reagan’s plan to fly the American flag on Kuwaiti oil tankers that were coming under fire from Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf. In August 1992, when the Bush administration and its allies were trying to get humanitarian aid to Bosnians caught in a multiethnic civil war, McCain broke with the majority of Republicans and voted against a resolution that authorized “demonstrations of force” in the region; he called it recklessly provocative. After the ambush in Somalia that claimed the lives of 18 American soldiers in October 1993, a frustrated McCain introduced a resolution to bring the troops home immediately. Bob Dole, a staunch internationalist and then the Republican minority leader, persuaded other senators to defeat it.

McCAIN’S CRITICS HAVE pointed to this early part of his political career to make the case that he later underwent a radical change in his philosophy, veering from a cautious approach to military force to a more hawkish, even bellicose mentality. His own aides, meanwhile, contend that McCain’s philosophy has been entirely constant; they say his opposition to limited and ill-defined operations like Somalia and Bosnia wasn’t at all inconsistent with his willingness, later, to use overwhelming force against a tyrant like Saddam Hussein.

The problem with these narratives is that neither reflects the context of the time. As two former national security officials in the Clinton administration, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier, explain compellingly in “America Between the Wars,” a book to be published next month, the period between the cold war and the war on terror — the 90s, roughly speaking — was a decade when foreign-policy thinkers across the ideological spectrum were groping about in darkness, trying to feel out the limits of American power and to balance the twin risks of action and inaction. During that time, the United States bounced from one unforeseen crisis to another, undertaking a military intervention every 18 months, on average — a staggering pace compared with that of the years that came before. Old ideological alliances in Washington were shattered and reformed, as pacifists lined up with conservative isolationists to battle liberal hawks and neoconservatives. New terms — “failed state,” “humanitarian intervention,” “ethnic cleansing” — entered the American lexicon. It’s fair to say, then, that McCain did evolve in his views on when and how to use American force over the course of the decade, but it’s misleading to separate his evolution from the larger transformation that was happening all around him.

During the cold war, the guiding framework for military intervention was built around a pretty straightforward set of questions: were American forces needed to stop the expansion of Soviet ideology or territory, and if so, were the potential casualties worth the risk? When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, however, that framework disappeared almost overnight. Ecstatic policy makers slashed the size of the military and hoped for a “peace dividend.” In a famous article in 1989, Francis Fukuyama posited that we were witnessing “the end of history”; from that time forward, the theory went, mankind would drift inexorably away from totalitarianism toward individual freedom and democracy. Fukuyama didn’t actually advocate that the United States retreat from its assertive global role, but that’s what many in Washington — and especially conservatives — chose to hear. The long war was over, and America could now focus on defending its own borders, using technologies like missile defense, rather than sending its soldiers abroad to “police the world.”

McCain explicitly rejected this idea, and yet he wasn’t eager to commit American troops to humanitarian missions that could easily turn into military nightmares like Somalia. For him, as for others, the defining dilemma of this new terrain was Bosnia. In July 1995, after years of debate in Washington about how to stop Serbian forces from wiping out the Bosnian Muslims, the Serbs overran the town of Srebrenica and, while Dutch peacekeepers stood by, mowed down thousands of Muslim boys and men. Coming not long after the mass killings in Rwanda, the slaughter in Srebrenica again brought the moral implications of inaction home to American politicians — especially those who, like McCain, previously opposed armed intervention.

NATO responded with a series of airstrikes against Bosnian Serbs, which ultimately pushed the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, to negotiate a settlement to the war. Clinton then urged Congress to approve the deployment of 20,000 American troops to help enforce the agreement. At the time, McCain was supporting the presidential campaign of his friend Phil Gramm, who was running against Dole in the Republican primaries. Gramm opposed the intervention, and he pleaded with McCain to stand by him; instead, this time, McCain decided to partner with Dole to ensure passage of the supporting resolution, stifling significant Republican opposition. It was a turning point, both for McCain and American consensus as a whole. “The Bosnian intervention was life-changing for a lot of people,” Bob Kerrey told me. “It caused even some liberals to go from opposing intervention to supporting it.”

Throughout the late ’90s, McCain criticized what he called Clinton’s “feckless photo-op foreign policy,” but he also emerged as an important bulwark for the administration against Republicans who reflexively opposed Clinton’s every move as commander in chief. McCain strongly supported airstrikes against Sudan and Afghanistan, in retaliation for terrorist attacks on two American Embassies, and against Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was obstructing weapons inspectors. In 1999, McCain took the lead in supporting the bombing of Serbia to prevent another genocide in Kosovo. His tone had changed considerably since the days before Srebrenica. “Our interests and values converge clearly here,” McCain said in a speech from the Senate floor. “It seems clear to me that Milosevic knows no limits to his inhumanity and will keep slaughtering until even the most determined opponent of American involvement in this conflict is convinced to drop that opposition.”

By the time McCain ran for president in 2000, he was the one arguing in debates for a more robust military presence in humanitarian crises, while George W. Bush forswore “nation building” and vowed a more “humble” foreign policy. During that campaign, McCain introduced the closest thing he had found to a doctrine for foreign intervention: the “rogue-state rollback,” under which he proposed arming and training internal forces that might ultimately overthrow menacing regimes in countries like Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

McCain’s more ambitious view of American power made him a natural ally of neoconservative thinkers like William Kristol, the editor of the fledgling Weekly Standard (now a New York Times columnist), and Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Empowered during the Reagan era, the neocons were largely shoved aside during the ’90s by the more isolationist, anti-Clinton voices who dominated Republican politics. By the time McCain expanded his circle of influence to include Kristol and other neocons in the late ’90s, they had rallied around a single unifying cause: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In 1998, McCain was one of the sponsors of the Iraq Liberation Act, signed into law by Bill Clinton, which officially changed American policy from containing Hussein to deposing him, and he became a leading figure in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a lobbying group founded by Randy Scheunemann, who is now his chief foreign policy adviser. McCain met with Ahmad Chalabi, the smooth Iraqi dissident who was a favorite of the neocons, and supported him publicly.

After the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the sudden elevation of Al Qaeda as a defining national security threat, McCain never had any doubt that Iraq, with its supposed capability to unleash or share weapons of mass destruction, posed an existential threat to the United States. Reading his statements from the time, there is no indication that he ever judged the invasion of Iraq by the standard he had used earlier in his career — whether it had the potential to become another Vietnam. Instead, as American troops swarmed Baghdad, McCain repeatedly compared Hussein to Adolf Hitler and predicted that the occupation of Iraq would be remembered in much the same way that history celebrated the liberation and rebuilding of Europe and Japan.

I ARRANGED TO TALK with McCain during the last week of April, before a fund-raising event at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Tampa. When he strode, an hour late, into the conference room his campaign had reserved, his gait was rushed and purposeful and his manner decidedly businesslike. Having survived the sadism of the Vietcong and, more recently, skin cancer, McCain these days shows the wear of his 71 years. His face is more topographically interesting than it was when he first ran for president eight years ago, the skin folding into small craters and valleys as it runs into his neckline. His eyes look warier and less mischievous than they did back then. You can imagine, looking at him, how McCain spent much of these last few years: beseeching and indulging Republican power brokers, many of whom he does not like, all the while tolerating their lectures, bridling his infamous temper, keeping the irritation pent up. Perhaps repression exacts its cost.

Sitting down at the end of a long granite table, he greeted me warmly, and then, before I could ask a question or even introduce the subject at hand, he dove headlong into a five-minute soliloquy. He told me that he had just driven in from the airport on Eisenhower Boulevard, and that Eisenhower was a man he very much admired, because Eisenhower understood the costs of war and strove to keep America out of it. He then made reference to a “rather hysterical” column by Fareed Zakaria in that morning’s Washington Post about McCain’s views on foreign policy. His voice was tight and measured.

“I’ve seen other stories and I’ve seen comments about my national-security speech,” McCain said, referring to an address he gave in Los Angeles a few weeks earlier. “The story line is as follows: ‘McCain’s not the same McCain. He’s changed, and now he’s become a hawk, and he is dramatically different from what he was.’ ” He recited this narrative as if repeating the nonsensical words of dullards. “And anybody is free to write whatever they want and form whatever opinions they want to form. But facts are facts. And the fact is that I know war, and I know the tragedy of war. And no one hates war more than veterans.”

From here, McCain went on to list for me some of the military actions he supported (Grenada, Panama) and some that he opposed (Beirut, Somalia). He had always followed the same set of values, he said, grounded in the premise that all people, not just Americans, were created equal and had inalienable rights. And when America could intervene militarily to further those values around the world without needless sacrifice in lives and money, he was all for it, and where we couldn’t, he was not, and there was nothing extreme about that.

“As far as people who advise me,” McCain went on, though I still hadn’t asked a question, “probably one of my most trusted advisers for the last 30 years is Henry Kissinger, not known as a hawk or a neocon.” McCain infused the word with sarcasm. “I also remember the days when Ronald Reagan was portrayed as a hawk and a neocon. I remember the near hysteria in response to his ‘tear down this wall.’ I remember the ‘Oh, you can’t do that, when you call the Soviets an evil empire.’ I remember all those things. Same people who are now saying — ” He stopped himself midsentence, then began again. “I’m always open to new ideas and new thoughts, but my principles were grounded many years ago in places like the National War College and other places where I have learned and studied and talked to people I admire and respect.

“So,” McCain said finally, “with that preface, I’d be glad to answer any questions you might have, and again, it’s always good to be with you.”

It’s rare to see a presidential candidate vent in quite this way, but clearly some of the criticism over his policies on Iraq and foreign policy in general — mild criticism, to this point — had wounded McCain. When he looks in the mirror, he does not see a reckless or belligerent leader, and yet that was the man his detractors claimed to see. A few weeks earlier, the liberal radio host Ed Schultz made headlines by calling McCain a “warmonger” and then happily repeating the charge on CNN. As McCain and I talked, the Democratic National Committee had begun broadcasting an ad that repeatedly showed him saying at a New Hampshire campaign event that he would be fine with keeping American troops in Iraq for 100 years. The quote had been ripped out of context — he went on to say that such a troop presence would be possible only without casualties, in the same way that American soldiers had remained quietly for decades in South Korea and Europe — but it had already become a staple of Democratic attacks, and McCain could expect to see it about half a million more times before November.

McCain’s major Los Angeles address seemed to have been written in part to reverse this perception. The speech began with McCain’s hatred of war, then moved on to stress his commitment to multilateralism and to ending global warming. McCain called, again, for a “League of Democracies” to foster cooperation among free nations. Only in the final minutes did he get around to even mentioning Iraq. Clearly, the campaign was starting to worry about McCain being Reaganized in this way — that is, of having the fall campaign become a referendum on whether he was stable and rational enough to be trusted with the nation’s nuclear codes.

McCain described himself, in that speech and in his preamble to our interview, as a “realistic idealist” — a phrase meant to bridge a divide inside his party. While there haven’t really been neat camps into which you can divide Republicans in the post-cold-war era, some rough labels did emerge throughout the ’90s. On one extreme were the isolationists, led most noisily by Pat Buchanan, who essentially believed that the end of the cold war should also have meant the end of America’s military involvement in distant lands. In the middle were the group known as realists, who were willing to use force, but only where the country’s vital strategic interests were at stake and where an international consensus could be forged. The realists identified with leaders like Kissinger and James Baker, the former secretary of state, who famously declared of Bosnia, “We do not have a dog in that fight.” And then, on the other end of the spectrum, you had the idealists, including most of those known as neocons. The idealists believed that American force could and should be used to promote American values abroad, whether or not the countries involved posed an immediate danger to national security and whether or not the rest of the world agreed.

McCain has never been confused for an isolationist, but neither can he be confined to either of the other factions. One reason is temperamental; McCain just doesn’t like labels, and he isn’t very good at sticking to orthodoxies — a personality quirk he has tried hard to control during the campaign. “He’s not a guy who drinks Kool-Aid easily,” says Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator who was once close enough to McCain to have been a groomsman in his wedding. “He’s suspicious of any group who sees the world that simply.” Lorne Craner, a foreign-policy thinker who worked for McCain in the House and Senate in the 1980s, told me that McCain had a standing rule in his office then. All meetings were to be limited to half an hour, unless they were with either of two advisers: Jeane Kirkpatrick, the Reaganite idealist, or Brent Scowcroft, the former general who was a leader in the realist wing. McCain loved to hear from both of them at length.

It’s clear, though, that on the continuum that separates realists from idealists, McCain sits much closer to the idealist perspective. McCain has long been chairman of the International Republican Institute, run by Craner, which exists to promote democratic reforms in closed societies. He makes a point of meeting with dissidents when he visits countries like Georgia and Uzbekistan and has championed the cause of Aung San Suu Kyi, the imprisoned leader of the Burmese resistance. Most important, as he made clear in his preamble to our interview, McCain considers national values, and not strategic interests, to be the guiding force in foreign policy. America exists, in McCain’s view, not simply to safeguard the prosperity and safety of those who live in it but also to spread democratic values and human rights to other parts of the planet.

McCain argues that his brand of idealism is actually more pragmatic in a post-9/11 world than the hard realism of the cold war. He rejects as outdated, for instance, a basic proposition of cold-war realists like Kissinger and Baker: that stability is always found in the relationship between states. Realists have long presumed that the country’s security is defined by the stability of its alliances with the governments of other countries, even if those governments are odious; by this thinking, your interests can sometimes be served by befriending leaders who share none of your democratic values. McCain, by contrast, maintains that in a world where oppressive governments can produce fertile ground for rogue groups like Al Qaeda to recruit and prosper, forging bonds with tyrannical regimes is often more likely to harm American interests than to help them.

As we spoke in Tampa, I asked McCain if it was true, as his friend Joe Lieberman and others suggested to me, that he had been brought to a more idealist way of thinking partly by the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica. “I think so, I think so,” he said, nodding. “And Darfur today. I feel strongly about Darfur, and yet, and this is where the realist side comes in, how do we effectively stop the genocide in Darfur?” He seemed to be genuinely wrestling with the question. “You know the complications with a place that’s bigger, I guess, than the size of Texas, and it’s hard to know who the Janjaweed is, who are the killers, who are the victims. It’s all jumbled up.

“So I’ve always tried to make a case for the realist side,” he continued. “And I think it was pretty clear that in Kosovo, we could probably benefit the situation fairly effectively and fairly quickly. And yet I look at Darfur, and I still look at Rwanda, to some degree, and think, How could we have gone in there and stopped that slaughter?”

McCain is known for being a gut thinker, averse to overarching doctrines or theory. But as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values. Why then, I asked McCain, shouldn’t we go into Zimbabwe, where, according to that morning’s paper, allies of the despotic president, Robert Mugabe, were rounding up his political opponents and preparing to subvert the results of the country’s recent national election? How about sending soldiers into Myanmar, formerly Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest by a military junta?

“I think in the case of Zimbabwe, it’s because of our history in Africa,” McCain said thoughtfully. “Not so much the United States but the Europeans, the colonialist history in Africa. The government of South Africa has obviously not been effective, to say the least, in trying to affect the situation in Zimbabwe, and one reason is that they don’t want to be tarred with the brush of modern colonialism. So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism.”

The United States faced a similar obstacle in Myanmar, McCain went on, shaking his head sadly. “First of all, you’d have to gauge the opinion of the people over time, whether you’d be greeted as liberators or as occupiers,” McCain said. “I would be concerned about the possibility that if it were mishandled, we might see an insurgent movement.” He talked a bit about Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he called “one of the great figures of the 20th century,” but then wondered aloud if the American public would support a military intervention.

“It goes back to the Vietnam thing,” McCain told me. “I’m just not sure the American people would support a military engagement in Burma, no matter how justified the cause. And I can’t tell you exactly when it would be over. And I can’t tell you exactly what the reaction of the people there would be.”

Most American politicians, of course, would immediately dismiss the idea of sending the military into Zimbabwe or Myanmar as tangential to American interests and therefore impossible to justify. McCain didn’t make this argument. He seemed to start from a default position that moral reasons alone could justify the use of American force, and from there he considered the reasons it might not be feasible to do so. In other words, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, while most politicians looked at injustice in a foreign land and asked, “Why intervene?” McCain seemed to look at that same injustice and ask himself, “Why not?”

“I think we’ve learned some lessons,” McCain told me. “One is that the American people have to be willing to support it. But two, we need to work more in an international way to try to beneficially affect the situation. And you have to convince America and the world that every single avenue has been exhausted before we go in militarily. And we better think not a day later or a week later, but a year and 5 years and 10 years later. Because the attention span, unfortunately, of the American people, although pretty remarkable in some ways, is not inexhaustible.”

WHAT WAS STARTLING about this conversation was that, while McCain was talking about the dangers of intervening in a Zimbabwe or a Burma, he might just as well have been talking about the invasion of Iraq. Didn’t that country, too, have a colonial history that had been carelessly considered, to say the least? Didn’t the war’s proponents fail to plan more than a few weeks out or to ask the hard questions about how their soldiers might be greeted in the streets?

“Yes, I agree with you,” McCain said, nodding again, when I put this question to him directly. “It was one of the penalties that we paid. But remember, the major reason to go into Iraq were the weapons of mass destruction. That was the conventional wisdom at the time, not only held by the United States but certainly many other nations.”

This was, of course, an arguable point, and that argument, with the benefit of hindsight, will probably continue to rage in Washington and in political-science departments around the country for decades. But the invasion of Iraq is now five years past, and the question at the heart of the 2008 campaign — or one of them, anyway — is bound to revolve around a more current dilemma. Why, given all the lessons of military intervention that McCain himself had just laid out, does he think it still makes sense to stay? Having bemoaned the impact of Vietnam on the nation, why is McCain — alone among the veterans of that war in the Senate — determined to settle in for another long and costly counterinsurgency?

The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq can be too readily overstated. The very nature of the wars is markedly different, for better or worse; Vietnam was a Communist uprising against an autocratic government, while Iraq represents a multiparty, ethnic conflict more similar to that of the Balkans. The casualties, to this point, aren’t nearly analogous, either. The United States lost some 58,000 soldiers in Vietnam, compared with a death toll, after five years in Iraq, of about 4,000.

Still, in this current conflict there are echoes of Vietnam that have grown too loud to easily ignore. Both conflicts were entered into under pretenses that were later widely discredited. Reports from the front in Iraq depict American soldiers who find it difficult to discern friends from enemies as they try to navigate an unfamiliar culture, language and landscape. American leaders are talking yet again about transferring responsibility for the war to local forces and the police, but Iraqization doesn’t seem to be faring a whole lot better than Vietnamization did; last month, some 1,000 Iraqi troops deserted during a crucial battle in Basra. Veterans return from their tours with missing limbs and deep psychological trauma. Pro-war officials frame the conflict as a central front in a longer struggle against an evil ideology, and they warn ominously of the proliferation of terrorist cells that will ensue if the insurgents aren’t defeated in Iraq, just as the architects of Vietnam once promised a lethal fall of dominoes throughout Southeast Asia.

Like the war planners themselves, McCain made some assumptions before the invasion that turned out to be seriously flawed. He spoke in favor of the de-Baathification of the Iraqi government and military, a decision now widely considered to have been a disaster, and he predicted that American soldiers would be hailed as conquering heroes in Baghdad. But to his credit, he was also the first of the Iraq hawks to sound the alarm on the flailing occupation, singling out Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for stinging criticism. After visiting Baghdad and Basra in the summer of 2003, McCain labeled Rumsfeld’s military strategy a failure and began a long and lonely crusade for an influx of new troops to secure the capital and outlying areas — the tactic that came to be known as “the surge” when the president finally changed course three and a half years later and ordered another 20,000 troops into the theater.

The surge is unpopular with a lot of military leaders, mainly because of what they call “strategic stretch” — the resulting shortage of troops available to fight unforeseen conflicts in other parts of the globe. (There are now about 160,000 American troops tied down in Iraq, and those troops are already facing both extended tours and shorter intervals in between redeployments.) Some of the Pentagon’s top commanders — most recently Richard Cody, the vice chief of staff of the Army, who testified before Congress last month — have voiced concern about the military’s overall readiness at a time when the troop level in Afghanistan may soon reach 40,000 and when leading politicians, McCain prominently among them, have vowed to use military action if necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weaponry. McCain maintains that the military can increase its ranks by offering cash and other incentives to recruits, but it has already significantly lowered its recruiting standards and may not be able to stoop much lower. As Gen. James Jones, the former NATO commander and a close friend of McCain’s, told me, “You can buy the numbers of troops, but you may not be able to buy the quality you need.”

Even so, McCain insists that the surge and the Pentagon’s new counterinsurgency strategy, which centers on a “hearts and minds” approach, can ultimately drive out insurgents and reduce American casualties in Iraq to virtually nothing. “Is it long and hard and tough? Yes,” McCain told me. “Has Al Qaeda been beaten? No, but they certainly have been diminished.” (To the dismay of many of his critics, McCain often uses “Al Qaeda” as a shorthand for the Iraqi insurgent group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.) “And it’s obviously not just Al Qaeda,” he went on. “It’s Shiite militias. It’s former Baathists who are still unhappy. It’s corruption within the police that we have to worry about.

“All I can say is, the surge is succeeding,” he said. “If someone wants to disagree with that, they’re free to, but I have statistics — whether they be instances of violence, whether it be U.S. casualties, whatever it may be — that prove that this new tactic is succeeding. So I’m willing to stick with it.”

A LOT OF McCAIN’S fellow veterans in Washington seem confounded by what they see as his obvious failure to absorb the lessons of Vietnam. Jack Murtha, the Pennsylvania congressman and decorated Vietnam vet who became an early and outspoken critic of the war, told me that watching Iraq unfold convinced him, for the first time, that American troops could never have prevailed in Vietnam, no matter how long they stayed. “These kinds of wars cannot be won militarily,” he said flatly. Another Democratic congressman with a Purple Heart, Mike Thompson of California, told me that promises of victory in Iraq sounded painfully familiar. “When I was in Vietnam, the members of Congress knew that we weren’t going to be there forever, that we would have to redeploy, and in the time between when they knew that and when we redeployed, a lot of boys were injured and killed,” Thompson said. “I think Senator McCain has been an outstanding public servant, but I think he’s wrong on this.”

In McCain’s mind, however, there is a different kind of symmetry linking Vietnam and Iraq. Talking to him about it, you come to understand that he has, indeed, applied lessons from the first war to the second — but they are the lessons that he learned not in combat or in the Hanoi Hilton but in the pages of the books he read at the National War College in the 1970s. To McCain, the first four years of the Iraq war, as prosecuted by the Bush administration, seem strikingly similar to the years in Vietnam before Creighton Abrams arrived on the scene.

“It’s a little bit eerily reminiscent, in that search-and-destroy is basically the same tactic that Rumsfeld, Casey, Sanchez, et al. employed,” McCain told me, referring to George Casey and Ricardo Sanchez, the two previous generals to command coalition forces in Iraq. “Go out, kill bad people and then go back to base. That’s basically what search-and-destroy was. We obviously failed to learn that lesson in history.” In McCain’s war, then, David Petraeus, the more innovative general who took over in 2007, is now playing the part of Abrams, pursuing a winning strategy that needs only the patience of the American people and their government to ultimately succeed.

“After nearly four years of a failed strategy, the difference in one year is dramatic,” McCain says. “If they make that same progress in the next year,” he predicts, “I think it’s going to be quite impactful on American public opinion, as well as, more importantly, events on the ground.”

The lesson McCain drew from Vietnam all those years ago is that you cannot turn your back on a war when at last you figure out how to win it, and he is determined not to let that happen again. Far from having failed to internalize the legacy of Vietnam, as some of his friends in the Senate suspect, he is, if anything, entirely driven by it. “I don’t think you can isolate John’s views in Iraq from his experience in Vietnam,” Gary Hart told me. “Whether he is aware of it or not — and I want to tread carefully here, because I don’t like psychologizing people — I don’t think he can separate those things in his mind. In a way, John is refighting the Vietnam War.”

JOHN McCAIN HAS NEVER been very good at political artifice. Like every politician I’ve known, McCain will sometimes surrender to the cheap ploy or prevarication when the moment demands it, but it is often with a smirk or a wince, some hard-to-miss signal that he knows he’s up to no good. In the more serious instances when he knows he has put expedience over principle (his reversal on the Bush tax cuts just in time for the campaign season may well turn out to be one of them), he has an almost therapeutic need to acknowledge it later, as he did when he told South Carolinians, weeks after losing the brutal primary there in 2000, that he had been wrong to defend the Confederate flag just to win their votes. And so, whether you agree with him or not, there is a notable honesty to his position on the war in Iraq. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have spent the primary season competing over who’s more eager to ship out of Iraq, but everyone associated with their campaigns knows that withdrawal will not happen quickly or without peril. McCain’s pitch, on the other hand, is as straightforward as it is stripped of political charm. We made a mess in Iraq, he says, but it’s our mess now, and we have to stay on and fix it.

Ultimately, McCain is relying on the same strategy to achieve success both in Iraq and in the November election. In each endeavor, McCain is staking everything on the notion that the public, having seen the success of a new military strategy, can be convinced that the war is, in fact, winnable and worth the continued sacrifice. Absent that national retrenching, McCain admits that this war, like the one in Vietnam, is probably doomed. Near the end of our conversation in Tampa, I asked him if he would be willing to change course on Iraq if the violence there started to rise again. “Oh, we’d have to,” he replied. “It’s not so much what McCain would do. American public opinion will not tolerate such a thing.”

The problem is that there’s actually no evidence to suggest that a reduction in casualties in Iraq will translate into a greater public tolerance for a protracted engagement there. According to Gallup, Americans’ confidence that the surge is improving the situation on the ground rose sharply between last summer and this spring; 40 percent of those polled in March said the surge is working, compared with 22 percent last July, while 38 percent said it was making no difference, down from 51 percent last year. For McCain, that’s no small measure of vindication. And yet, during the same period, even as optimism about the new strategy grew, the percentage of Americans who say they want a timetable for gradual withdrawal — those, in other words, who agreed primarily with the two Democratic candidates — remained almost exactly the same, rising to 41 percent from 39 percent. (Another 18 percent have consistently said they want to get out right away.) Nor has the success of the surge in reducing American casualties done a thing to convince the public that the invasion made sense in the first place. According to another Gallup poll released a few weeks ago, 63 percent of Americans now believe it was a mistake to go to war — an all-time high.

It doesn’t help that McCain has never put his argument for staying into some larger context that might explain what he really means by “winning” the war in Iraq. If you ask him to define victory, his answer is that Americans soldiers will have stopped dying, and that the Iraqi military and government will be functioning on their own. That would be a great day, no doubt, but surely the overarching purpose of a war can’t be to stop more soldiers from dying in it. (On the one notable occasion when McCain tried to put a more hopeful spin on progress in Iraq, during a visit there last spring, the result was an unqualified public-relations debacle: strolling through an outdoor market in Baghdad market wearing a flak jacket and surrounded by what seemed liked a regiment of U.S. soldiers, McCain declared that life for Iraqis was at last returning to normal. The next day, by some accounts, 21 Shiite workers at the market were abducted and killed.) McCain’s main reason for continuing on in Iraq seems to be that we’re already there and must not accept defeat, and that’s an argument that probably feels all too familiar to many Americans who lived through a decade of aimless war in Vietnam, to no discernible end.

Undaunted, McCain soldiers on toward November and what could be his final campaign. When he ran in 2000, his philosophy of national greatness — the importance, as he always puts it, of “serving a cause greater than one’s self” — found its expression in ideas like national service and campaign reform, proposals that independents and even many liberals could embrace. For a time then, McCain, adrift within his own party, was almost certainly the most popular politician in America. This time, his theme of selflessness is bound up, irrevocably, with Bush’s unpopular war. Democrats, alarmed over their own disunity, can hardly wait to start pummeling McCain with Iraq. While I was working on this article, the Center for American Progress, the left’s leading policy center in Washington, took the liberty of sending over a 10-page litany of McCain’s selected comments on Iraq since 2002, delineated by helpful subheadings like “The War Begins — Rosy Outlook” and “The Critical Time Is Always Right Around the Corner.”

McCain shrugs this off and insists that he will never waver from his support of the war, no matter what the personal cost. “As I said a year ago,” he told me, “I would rather lose a campaign than a war.” If he doesn’t make the most persuasive argument of his life, he risks losing both.

Source (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/magazine/18mccain-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print)

CountArach

05-19-2008, 10:38

Look, last time I looked you guys elected someone who said '"If a frog had wings, he wouldn't hit his tail on the ground.' Since then, every man and his dog qualifies. The only question is who is the lesser idiot.
Ah the infinite joys of a Democracy...

Adrian II

05-19-2008, 11:52

Ah the infinite joys of a Democracy...Honest, I don't want to go off on a rant, but it bothers me that the candidates for the most powerful position in the world are so - opaque.

If it were any other job or any other country I wouldn't be concerned about it. But we have now had eight years with the blithering queen of mediocrity in the White House. He has his father's lack of talent for 'the vision thing' and he lacks his father's experience, diplomatic skills or courage to accept and confront unwelcome facts to compensate for it. I am sure that George W. Bush isn't an evil, stupid or insensitive man. But he gave the impression that he left domestic policy to the likes of Karl Rove and foreign policy to the likes of Dick Cheney. And you know what? I think that's what he actually did. In all of those eight years I don't believe George W. Bush has ever been in command of anything except his own bladder.

In short, I would rather not face another four or maybe eight years with an American President who doesn't have a clue.

Now when it comes to foreign policy, I think McCain may be someone who knows what he is doing; at least he does not appear to favor government-by-opinion-poll.

Lemur

05-19-2008, 20:27

I found this amusing -- a type specialist (http://designinfo.tumblr.com/post/35033265) compares Clinton, Obama and McCain based on the fonts they use in their campaigns.

The designer of the typeface used by Obama, Gotham, is one of the United States greatest living type designers (seriously, there is a renaissance in type design happening right now and Toby is one of the leaders). Gotham is simultaneously urban and working class but also high end as well. It was carved on the cornerstone of the new World Trade Center complex but is based on urban san serif type made by local sign shop guys. Toby is a native New Yorker.

John Baskerville (Clinton’s type choice) lived during 18th Century in England. Baskerville is respectable but conservative and more an early 1990s choice.

Optima (McCain) was designed by Hermann Zapf, a well regarded soft spoken German type designer known for his calligraphic inspired type designs. Zapf is 90 years old and still hard at work (like McCain?) [...]

I’m not saying there is any connection between the candidates and type history but, well, you decide….

Devastatin Dave

05-19-2008, 20:40

I'm voting for Obama...
Shock?
Here's my reasoning...
Look, this country is swirling down the socialist toilet so why not give it an extra flush. Atleast Obama understands Marxism and will be able to properly guide us into the socialist abyss.
Anyway, McCann's a POS...
http://journals.aol.com/sazzylilsmartazz/TheConscientiousObjector/entries/2008/02/18/the-sad-story-of-carol-mccain/2289
No way in hell am I voting for this "war hero". Face it citizens, if these two are the best we can get out of 300 million we're screwed anyway. I cannot believe these are our choices.

Vote Obama 08
Socialism done right!!!:yes:

woad&fangs

05-19-2008, 22:15

Vote Obama 08
Socialism done right!!!:yes:

Yep, basically.

LittleGrizzly

05-19-2008, 23:15

Really dave your voting for obama or am i just missing the sarcasm... ?

Lemur

05-20-2008, 02:36

Xiahou

05-20-2008, 03:39

Obama says Americans can't drive what cars we want, eat what food we want, or be comfortable in our own homes.

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.

"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.:no:

Sasaki Kojiro

05-20-2008, 03:44

Xiahou...what strange filter do you put these quotes through before you read them?

Devastatin Dave

05-20-2008, 04:03

What I'd like to know is why our dear Dave feels it's appropriate to put quotes around the phrase war hero in regards to McCain. Are you suggesting that he's not a war hero? If so, don't be a wuss and let your punctuation do the talking, come out and say what's on your mind.

Are we going to see a Swiftboating of McCain, now? I'll say what I've said before; among Republicans, experience in a shooting war appears to be a handicap rather than an advantage.
I'm not swift boating anyone. I put in in quotes because it seems, atleast in this election, one must constantly put on the kiddy gloves when criticizing Obama, Hillary, or McCain. Obama, before any attack on McCain will always draw attention to McCain's "war hero" status. The quotes were not meant derogatorally, although he isn't much of a man when it comes to the way he treated his wife when returning from captivity.

I'll say this about McCain the "maverick". He's closer to the moderate democrat stance than Osama Bin Obama. All of McCain's major legislation has been unconstitutional gang bangs with the most dispicable commie loving liberals that infect the Senate. Yes, I dislike McCain, maybe not as much as Barry Hussien, but if the country is going to be pushed into a Marxist Statehood, then I want a man that understands how to do it right. That man is the Obama Mamma. He's a chip off the old block, you should have a gander at Dreams From my Father. Daddy was a big time socialist, unbelievable that this man is going to be our President. Even more unbelievable that I'm voting for the d-bag...

Devastatin Dave

05-20-2008, 04:09

Obama says Americans can't drive what cars we want, eat what food we want, or be comfortable in our own homes.

:no:
Man, i can't wait!!! Maybe he'll impliment forced abortion like the Chinese!!! Goody...

Greetings Comrades!!!!

Adrian II

05-20-2008, 09:14

[..] although he isn't much of a man when it comes to the way he treated his wife when returning from captivity. Your link is to a page by Justin Raimundo, a patent fruitcake who never gets his facts right
Even if McCain treated his wife badly, that is none of our business as long as his behaviour wasn't criminal
I don't think McCain was a war hero so much as a war victim, and victims of the sort of horrendous treatment he recieved are known to understandably have 'issues' - with their wives as much as with everyone else
For a victim of the sort of circumstances he had to suffer, McCain has made a remarkable come-back which in itself is evidence of extraordinary character

LittleGrizzly

05-20-2008, 09:53

Obama says Americans can't drive what cars we want, eat what food we want, or be comfortable in our own homes.

Think maybe this is something to do with increased prices for food and energy and increased competition for resources and maybe global warming as well, i heard all three of the major candidiates have some kind of plan on global warming

Dave is it just because of his treatment of his wife, i read that link and how he treated her sounds pretty harsh and the 2nd marriage did seem based of ambition (im assuming the facts were basically spot on) but i generally don't vote for or against a candidiate based on thier personal history but for thier policys, I know you don't like McCain's policys but im assuming thier closer to your position than that of Obama's, so why vote obama over mccain ? thier both clearly no marxists so theres not a case of going for the one who 'knows' his ideaology, in terms of america ones a right leaning centerist the other one probably left wing.

So is it a vote for obama to get a decent candidate for GOP next time ? a vote for obama so he messes up and the whole country turns more right wing ? what is the reasoning as i cannot see it (and refuse to take the marxist answer as a real one)

Adrian II

05-20-2008, 10:51

i generally don't vote for or against a candidiate based on thier personal history but for thier policysQuite right. But this does not apply if and when a candidate's character or personal history interferes with his ability to carry out those policies. McCain for instance is known to suffer from bouts of uncontrollable rage. Understandable as that may be in the light of his personal history, it is a reason for some concern as these tantrums may cloud his judgment. I don't think they will, but I couldn't vouch for it.

CrossLOPER

05-20-2008, 12:17

Obama says Americans can't drive what cars we want, eat what food we want, or be comfortable in our own homes.

:no:
So you think the US must somehow be immune to the issues that affect the rest of the world?

In either case, that's not what he said. He just pointed out that countries around the world are not going to cut down on resource usage while the US overuses resources. You do realize that resources are finite, right?

LittleGrizzly

05-20-2008, 12:21

It is quite difficult to seperate what can affect a presidency and what is personal, using McCain and his ex wife as the example, him ditching her because she had the crash and affected her looks, that would make him quite shallow in his choice of partner, which isn't my concern, but the fact he has a short temper is a issue, and they are part of my concern when choosing a candidiate as a short tempered person can think things through less rationally when the red mist descends, which could affect presidential decisions.

Adrian II

05-20-2008, 12:50

I can imagine why DevDave and other Americans feel that there is too little to choose from. But a democracy is not a supermarket where, if you don't like the available choice, you can walk out and go to the competition. There is no competition. You have only one country. And if it were a supermarket, it would be the only supermarket around and you would be a shareholder in it, along with millions of other Americans. So if the management stinks, what does that say about your own choices as a shareholder?

In other words, shouldn't we ask ourselves to what extent we are responsible for the bad or mediocre leaders we get? I know I do. God knows we have our share of idiots, philistines, nincompoops and populists for leaders in The Netherlands, and I have been racking my brains for years trying to find out how we got here.

I haven't figure it out, but one thing I know is that we have a totally skewed image of what a politician should be. Fallacy No 1: a politician should "listen to the people". No way Jose. A good politician knows what he wants, is clear about what he wants, and sticks to it. He refuses to give in to opinion polls, popularity contests, human interest, sound-bite contests and all the other media crap. He should be uniquely concentrated on the job in hand, which is running the god**** country. The people, in turn, should listen to their (prospective) leaders more and decide who is most qualified and worthy of their vote. Hence Adrian's Rule No 1: Any politician who promises to 'listen' to me after being elected will not get my vote.

In short, it's your country. If your politicians stink, it's your problem. Figure out why and deal with it.

Tribesman

05-20-2008, 14:10

It is quite difficult to seperate what can affect a presidency and what is personal, using McCain and his ex wife as the example
Yeah they should have used his current wife as a example , its one thing to moan about people propping up the regime in Sudan with their investments , its quite another to actually get round to getting rid of your investments isn't it ~;)

ICantSpellDawg

05-20-2008, 14:41

Obama says Americans can't drive what cars we want, eat what food we want, or be comfortable in our own homes.

:no:

He said that we couldn't do it IF we cared what the rest of the world thought. The reality is that the more we have, the harder we will have to fight to keep it. Currently, the U.S. has a disproportionate amount of the world's finite resources. In a globalized economy of equalizing ground, they will take it away from us throught trade or war. We can either give it to them or fight to keep it.

We just need to decide what is worth keeping. Sovereignty? check. Up-turned noses at the European philistines? check.

I'm not so sure that we need SUV's that just hemmorage wealth to the muzzies and despots. Let's only use the fossil fuel that we NEED to use from them so that they choke on sand faster. Plus, the environment might yada yada yada...

I'm interested in the most powerful America possible so that we can more sucessfully uproot injustice internationally. If we have to convince ourselves not to light our precious fuel and money in a big pointless bonfire, so be it. Let's take that money and re-invest into American business and interests. I've decided that for myself a long time ago.

Devastatin Dave

05-20-2008, 15:29

Devastatin Dave

05-20-2008, 15:54

PanzerJaeger

05-20-2008, 17:10

The taxpayers, not the turds that are wanting handouts, get sick of it and stop try to achieve because its easier to just live off the government tit. Then you are controlled by outside governments (Middle East countries, China, etc) because you rely so heavily on them for imports because the citizens are becoming too incompetent and uneducated (public "education") to create or maintain jobs. Then those resourses become unaffordable because no one has decent paying jobs and everyone is too busy blaming the democrats or the republicans while both parties pit each citizen against each other to a point of hatred for their fellow citizen.

… The country falls into economic turmoil with growing public unrest, as weak and ineffective governments from both parties fail to change the situation or stay in power. Then, a new, inspiring young leader backed by wealthy, corporate interests emerges, and rightfully enlightens the American people of the facts that their problems are first and foremost the results of greedy Middle Eastern countries and the evil Chinese communist state. He’s elected president, but congress is keeping him from solving America’s problems. He demands more and more power for the administrative branch, and congress – caring more for their jobs than their principles – cedes to the demands of a public now addicted to massive social welfare programs. Now the new president, with no limits on his power, takes control of America’s massive military and fixes things…

Excellent, excellent. :fortune:

Xiahou

05-20-2008, 17:54

I'm not so sure that we need SUV's that just hemmorage wealth to the muzzies and despots. Let's only use the fossil fuel that we NEED to use from them so that they choke on sand faster. Plus, the environment might yada yada yada...
That's a false dilemma. As long as people have the money to buy SUVs and are willing to pay the astronomical gasoline prices now associated with operating one, they are free to do so. The same goes for people's diets and their thermostat preferences within their own homes.

For Obama to imply that we need to give these things up (read: the government needs to take them away) shows how completely wrong-headed his thinking is. He obviously has no understanding of the benefits or functions of capitalism and doesn't seem to have many qualms about chucking it in the dustbin. That's what "leadership" is to him. :dizzy2:

CrossLOPER

05-20-2008, 18:52

Lemur

05-20-2008, 19:02

This country will fail. There is no shining city upon a hill. Our fallen condition will never be overcome, no matter how well someone delivers a speech or shakes a hand. We're ####ed and what many here on this board does not realise is that when the United States fails, it won't be just us that goes down the toilet. :no:
Why do you hate freedom?

Spino

05-20-2008, 19:41

One more note...
The United States will be the greatest example of why democracies fail. You start off with a great idea of a representative government. It works for a long while because the people want limited government in there lives. Then the problem comes that people vote to benifit themselves and the government grows and grows as more and more legislation is passed by the ignorant masses. This is how Clinton and GW got 2 terms a piece. Thats 16 years folks!!! Then you have lifelong Senators who pork up with give aways. The taxpayers, not the turds that are wanting handouts, get sick of it and stop try to achieve because its easier to just live off the government tit. Then you are controlled by outside governments (Middle East countries, China, etc) because you rely so heavily on them for imports because the citizens are becoming too incompetent and uneducated (public "education") to create or maintain jobs. Then those resourses become unaffordable because no one has decent paying jobs and everyone is too busy blaming the democrats or the republicans while both parties pit each citizen against each other to a point of hatred for their fellow citizen.

This country will fail. There is no shining city upon a hill. Our fallen condition will never be overcome, no matter how well someone delivers a speech or shakes a hand. We're ####ed and what many here on this board does not realise is that when the United States fails, it won't be just us that goes down the toilet. :no:

And a very special thanks to the Org's resident Irishman, Ray O'Sunshine! :laugh4:

Just kidding! Coincidentally a good friend of mine desires the same exact thing as you and actually practiced what he preached! Despite his ideological beliefs my decidedly Libertarian leaning friend registered as a Democrat and cast a vote for Obama in the Connecticut primary. And if Obama gets the nomination my friend plans on voting for him again in the Fall. He wants nothing less than a full fledged economic and social collapse followed by a bloody reboot of the entire system. I think that's a bit extreme and unneccessarily pessimistic/optimistic. But more on that later...

… The country falls into economic turmoil with growing public unrest, as weak and ineffective governments from both parties fail to change the situation or stay in power. Then, a new, inspiring young leader backed by wealthy, corporate interests emerges, and rightfully enlightens the American people of the facts that their problems are first and foremost the results of greedy Middle Eastern countries and the evil Chinese communist state. He’s elected president, but congress is keeping him from solving America’s problems. He demands more and more power for the administrative branch, and congress – caring more for their jobs than their principles – cedes to the demands of a public now addicted to massive social welfare programs. Now the new president, with no limits on his power, takes control of America’s massive military and fixes things…

Excellent, excellent.

You're operating under the assumption that such a leader(s) exists or will actually exist when the time comes. When the Roman Republic was on the verge of collapsing there were some extraordinarily talented & skilled men vying for control and were capable of leading and running the nation. This may sound odd but Rome was rather fortunate to have men like Julius Caesar, Pompey & Augustus to be the ones to nail the lid on the Republic's coffin. However let us not forget the terrible Julian emperors that followed Augustus (Claudius excepted). The problem with your crystal ball is that it's slightly out of tune. The generation of Americans that contained such men is dying or on its way to the grave. Referring to greatness when speaking of the Baby Boomers or Generation X'ers or Y'er is quite laughable; these generations are simply not made of such heady & hardy stuff. I honestly think the window of opportunity has passed and we are too late for a dramatic turnaround. We seem to be well past that pivotal period where we actually had the option (let alone the ambition and ability) to maximize our potential. A more accurate comparison would be with the latter day Western Roman empire where even great men like Aetius could not reverse Rome's path down the slippery slope (and we all know how poor Aetius was rewarded for his efforts).

As to a solution I firmly believe we are nearing the time when the discussion of a schism should be put on the table. Think about it; there still remains a vocal, disgusted & defiant percentage of Americans who do not desire the trappings of modern America and are sickened by the bureacratic and social offerings of the post-war generation landscape. What if these millions of people were to exercise a Constitutional right enjoyed by States prior to the Civil War and 'go their own way'? Imagine a smaller, more efficient nation conceived in the spirit of the original USA with sense of entitlement or mammoth debt hanging over its head? So long as we're invoking ancient Rome we should draw upon the spectacular success that the Eastern Empire enjoyed after the empire was divided. The Western empire continued its inevitable decline until barbarians eventually sat on the throne while the Eastern empire went on to flower and dominate for a thousand years.

Furthermore the chance that such a schism would occur peacefully seems quite great in this day and age. After all, does anyone think that millions of young Americans will put down their credit cards, consoles and reality TV and risk sacrificing their lives to keep the Union intact? Fat chance.

Devastatin Dave

05-20-2008, 20:31

Why do you hate freedom?
Why do you believe in it?

Xiahou

05-20-2008, 21:00

Obama is not going to take your Hummer and your Doritos stash away. Relax.I don't even like SUVs- but if other people want to blow the cash to keep gas in them, they should be perfectly free to do so.

Now as for my Dorito stash, all I can say is "from my cold dead hands". :beam:

Devastatin Dave

05-20-2008, 21:13

Obama is not going to take your Hummer and your Doritos stash away. Relax.
Tell that to the Cubans after they supported "change".

PanzerJaeger

05-20-2008, 21:35

As to a solution I firmly believe we are nearing the time when the discussion of a schism should be put on the table. Think about it; there still remains a vocal, disgusted & defiant percentage of Americans who do not desire the trappings of modern America and are sickened by the bureacratic and social offerings of the post-war generation landscape. What if these millions of people were to exercise a Constitutional right enjoyed by States prior to the Civil War and 'go their own way'? Imagine a smaller, more efficient nation conceived in the spirit of the original USA with sense of entitlement or mammoth debt hanging over its head? So long as we're invoking ancient Rome we should draw upon the spectacular success that the Eastern Empire enjoyed after the empire was divided. The Western empire continued its inevitable decline until barbarians eventually sat on the throne while the Eastern empire went on to flower and dominate for a thousand years.

Furthermore the chance that such a schism would occur peacefully seems quite great in this day and age. After all, does anyone think that millions of young Americans will put down their credit cards, consoles and reality TV and risk sacrificing their lives to keep the Union intact? Fat chance.

Why cede so much land? Simply disenfranchise those millions who don't give a **** anyway, through right-to-vote tests or some other method. The same people who wouldn't put down their Cheetos to preserve the Union certainly wouldn't do so to preserve their right to vote - which most don't exercise anyway. (These people are actually preferable to those that form their opinions from forwarded emails, the Daily Show, or what George Clooney believes. :laugh4: )

I've always wondered why voting was a right anyway. It should be a privilege.

In any event, I believe there are smart, capable people left in America. The system doesn't attract them, however. What brilliant leader wants to go through an election cycle - with such an emphasis on personal scrutiny instead of policies - when he/she can make millions in the private sector?

Devastatin Dave

05-20-2008, 21:46

I've always wondered why voting was a right anyway. It should be a privilege.

Ahh, my young friend. Look into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution....
THERE IS NO RIGHT TO VOTE. Its true. Everyone is always screaming about the "right to vote" but there is no provision that states there is a right to vote. Look it up. The are provisions that prohibit people from discrimination with voting rights, but not a clear right to vote.:book:

Lemur

05-20-2008, 21:58

And now we know that Devastatin' Dave is really ... Alberto Gonzales. I know this because you used the same line of reasoning re. Habeas Corpus, namely that there is no right to it since the Constitution only talks about how it can't be taken away.

I was sorry to hear about how nobody wants to hire you (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/washington/13gonzales.html?_r=1&oref=slogin), Mr. Gonzales. Just keep posting resumes, and something good will happen, sir.

-edit-

And congratulations on your well-earned seniority, Mr. Gonzales.

drone

05-20-2008, 22:17

Ted Kennedy's brain tumor, a side effect of his support of Obama? Witchcraft by the Hildabeast, I had no idea her juju was so strong. :inquisitive:
:creep:

As an aside, can I request that the mods change the title of this thread? Back at it's inception, we figured the primaries would be a formality, and actual cross-party campaigning would be in full swing. "Race to the Conventions" is not descriptive, can we switch it to the Daily Show's "The Long, Flat, Seemingly Endless Bataan Death March To The White House"? :bow:

ICantSpellDawg

05-20-2008, 22:22

That's a false dilemma. As long as people have the money to buy SUVs and are willing to pay the astronomical gasoline prices now associated with operating one, they are free to do so. The same goes for people's diets and their thermostat preferences within their own homes.

For Obama to imply that we need to give these things up (read: the government needs to take them away) shows how completely wrong-headed his thinking is. He obviously has no understanding of the benefits or functions of capitalism and doesn't seem to have many qualms about chucking it in the dustbin. That's what "leadership" is to him. :dizzy2:

I think that we should give them up. I havn't heard about any mandates that he would force us to give them up. I think the more people that you can convince that SUV's are for morons, the better.

The president shouldn't force us to do things, but he also shouldn't ignore what is best - and tell us. It is best to ditch gas guzzlers.

I want to see more moralyzing and less mandates.

PanzerJaeger

05-20-2008, 23:17

Ahh, my young friend. Look into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution....
THERE IS NO RIGHT TO VOTE. Its true. Everyone is always screaming about the "right to vote" but there is no provision that states there is a right to vote. Look it up. The are provisions that prohibit people from discrimination with voting rights, but not a clear right to vote.:book:

Now we're talking. :yes:

I think that we should give them up. I havn't heard about any mandates that he would force us to give them up. I think the more people that you can convince that SUV's are for morons, the better.

The president shouldn't force us to do things, but he also shouldn't ignore what is best - and tell us. It is best to ditch gas guzzlers.

I want to see more moralyzing and less mandates.

Try fitting a family of 4 plus all their luggage in a Prius. Then try taking that Prius to their favorite camping spot in the country.

If all the families replaced their SUVs with large wagons, the old standard, fuel savings would be minimal.

Similarly, if we took all the prestige SUV buyers (those driving Range Rovers, Escalades, etc) and put them in equally priced BMWs and Cadillacs, the MPG savings are negligible.

The petroleum problem is not as easy as the SUV versus the car. The platform changes that must take place are far more endemic.

Devastatin Dave

05-21-2008, 03:00

Crazed Rabbit

05-21-2008, 03:11

Ok, so how many of us are considering the 'Atlas Shrugged' option?

Tell you what, if society crumbles I'm going to try to forge a libertarian Republic out of Washington.

In Kentucky news, Hilary whipped Obama 65-30%.

CR

Lemur

05-21-2008, 03:12

Then, Mrs Ginsberg, could you please point out in the Constitution the "right to vote". And while you're at, just for grins and giggles, the right to an abortion?
It's in the small print, right next to your right to own a hummer and pig out on Doritos. None of which matters, since you've already pointed out that Obama will turn America into a Communist hellhole where God is banished and our children study the words of the Great Leader.

-edit-

Interesting article about the GOP convention in Hawaii (http://www.hawaiireporter.com/storyPrint.aspx?952d1664-7578-4c49-9626-d551e7560920). It's clear from reading the reporting that no matter how much Republicans hate Obama, they hate Ron Paul supporters more.