The Republican Party has finally gotten to reinvent itself. I'm so proud.

[rvg]

Finally, a Republican candidate whom I back up on every issue, and he'll be the governor of my state! Lucky me.
http://blog.mlive.com/capitolchronic...08/post_7.html

We need more republicans of this type across the country.

[Husar]

Aww, and here I was hoping it was Mr. Cressbeckler.

Also, is that a blog?
I mean she makes him sound good but I didn't get too much about his plans, it generally reads a bit like she is praising him.

[drone]

Haven't heard anything about him, but he sounds like a normal, rational dude. I guess this is our baseline then. Things must get Michigan-bad before we start getting electoral sanity. I'm not sure the country can survive that!

[Reenk Roink]

Might as well put this here.

Is this for real?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyxn...eature=related

http://politics.freesitenow.com/basi...uxforgovernor/

I mean he's actually on the ticket, but please tell me this is a joke.

[Veho Nex]

VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE! (Except violating a citizen rights this would be a special punishment )

He has my vote... lol

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

We need more third party governors :).

[PanzerJaeger]

The party is struggling to find its footing again after the Bush years. The GOP may seem ascendant now, but that is only because Obama is screwing up so horribly. Hopefully a strong performance in November won’t engender complacency. There is still a lot to figure out. There are libertarians, evangelicals, neocons, and many others vying for support and control.

Hopefully the party follows the McDonnell/Christie template - fiscal responsibility, smaller, more efficient government, lower taxes, and a distinct disinterest in wedge issues. That casts a big net and I think most right-leaning people plus many independents can get behind it. Rove also needs to come out of retirement to work on messaging... his predecessors have not matched up.

We'll know where the party is headed for sure when someone rises to challenge Obama. As of now, imo, Pawlenty>Romney>Gingrich>Palin. Empty right-wing rhetoric (as much as I enjoy it ) isn't enough, people want credibility and management skills. The former governors of Minnesota and Massachusetts have plenty.

[Xiahou]

We'll know where the party is headed for sure when someone rises to challenge Obama. As of now, imo, Pawlenty>Romney>Gingrich>Palin. Empty right-wing rhetoric (as much as I enjoy it ) isn't enough, people want credibility and management skills. The former governors of Minnesota and Massachusetts have plenty.

Eh, I think Romney is almost as big a flip flopper as Kerry was. His rhetoric often runs counter to his actions. The only thing you can count on him to say is what will get him ahead politically. Smart guy, but I don't trust him.

[PanzerJaeger]

Eh, I think Romney is almost as big a flip flopper as Kerry was. His rhetoric often runs counter to his actions. The only thing you can count on him to say is what will get him ahead politically. Smart guy, but I don't trust him.

He also hasn't been able to come up with a plausible difference between what he did in Massachusetts and what Obama has done in terms of health care. It doesn't completely discredit him in my eyes as the people of the state he was governing wanted it by a pretty wide margin, but it definitely doesn't help either.

What do you think of Pawlenty? He seems to check all of the boxes, but I haven't wikied him yet to get the dirt.

[a completely inoffensive name]

It's not a reinvention when it's the same people in key positions within the organization. This is simply a re branding unless these new candidates take charge from the neoconservatives that have been talking on Fox News since 2000.

[Skullheadhq]

The Republican party reinvented itself? Are they liberal again?
Also, what's the hate against trade unions in America? Without it you'll probably be in the same working conditions as in the Industrial Revolution.

[Lemur]

Also, what's the hate against trade unions in America? Without it you'll probably be in the same working conditions as in the Industrial Revolution.

In fairness to Republicans, we Americans have really screwed the union thing up. I know, I know, it works fine in Japan and South Korea and Germany, but somehow we got the whole union concept upside down. I'm not sure how we did it.

Most of the things we thank unions for are now matters of law (no 90-hour workweeks, child labor, etc.), so maybe our unions just got lost once they won. Or something. I don't really know, and haven't studied the subject in depth. But I do know that other countries make the union thing work, and we don't.

[jabarto]

so maybe our unions just got lost once they won. Or something.

Not quite. I know it's common for people to assume that unions just phased out because they weren't needed anymore, but the fact that productivity has skyrocketed over the last 40 years while wages have largely stagnated turns that theory on its head. The real reason unions don't hold much sway is because they've had their power forcibly stripped from them by conservative leglislation; i'ts not like America has some unique trait that stops unioins from being doable like they are everywhere else.

[Centurion1]

Bull jabarto. Unions have way to much power and its not good. Its a legitimate economic belief unions aren't needed when workers gain a voice and protection.

in other news I like bobby jindall.

[Crazed Rabbit]

The real reason unions don't hold much sway is because they've had their power forcibly stripped from them by conservative leglislation; i'ts not like America has some unique trait that stops unioins from being doable like they are everywhere else.

What laws, exactly, are you talking about?

The reason unions are nigh on useless in the US is because they are greedy for power and money and influence. Workers left them because they realized unions protect useless people with seniority at the expense of those who are more competent.

Teacher's unions protect those who sexually harass students and make it impossible to fire them in some cases.

Police unions protect those dangerously incompetent or violent.

CR

[a completely inoffensive name]

I don't know what is worse, working in a place with corrupt unionizing or working in a country without unions period.

[jabarto]

Bull jabarto. Unions have way to much power and its not good. Its a legitimate economic belief unions aren't needed when workers gain a voice and protection.

in other news I like bobby jindall.

How the hell do you think they get that protection in the first place?

in the US is because they are greedy for power and money and influence.

Just like the employers they oppose! Isn't it funny how that works?

Workers left them because they realized unions protect useless people with seniority at the expense of those who are more competent.

Unions don't exist to determine guilt. They exist to ensure that workers are treated fairly during the termination process.

Teacher's unions protect those who sexually harass students and make it impossible to fire them in some cases.

Where do people keep getting this stupid notion that unions make it impossible to fire people? Again, they only make sure that the employer can't cut corners in firing them.

[Husar]

Employers also have unions, they just call them lobby groups or networks.

[Tellos Athenaios]

A picture says a thousand words:

[Crazed Rabbit]

Where do people keep getting this stupid notion that unions make it impossible to fire people? Again, they only make sure that the employer can't cut corners in firing them.

Because in some cases they do:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.

He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.

Polanco looked at the cuts and said they "were weak," according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. "Carve deeper next time," he was said to have told the boy.

"Look," Polanco allegedly said, "you can't even kill yourself."

The boy's classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.

"See," Polanco was quoted as saying, "even he knows how to commit suicide better than you."

The Los Angeles school board, citing Polanco's poor judgment, voted to fire him.

But Polanco, who contended that he had been misunderstood, kept his job. A little-known review commission overruled the board, saying that although the teacher had made the statements, he had meant no harm.
...
The district wanted to fire a high school teacher who kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school, but a commission balked, suggesting that firing was too harsh. L.A. Unified officials were also unsuccessful in firing a male middle school teacher spotted lying on top of a female colleague in the metal shop, saying the district did not prove that the two were having sex.

The district fared no better in its case against elementary school special education teacher Gloria Hsi, despite allegations that included poor judgment, failing to report child abuse, yelling at and insulting children, planning lessons inadequately and failing to supervise her class.

Not a single charge was upheld.

And in New York City...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school—typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off. The city’s contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved—the process is often endless—they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.
...
Seven of the fifteen Rubber Room teachers with whom I spoke compared their plight to that of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or political dissidents in China or Iran.

It’s a theme that the U.F.T. has embraced. The union’s Web site has a section that features stories highlighting the injustice of the Rubber Rooms. One, which begins “Bravo!,” is about a woman I’ll call Patricia Adams, whose return to her classroom, at a high school in Manhattan, last year is reported as a vindication. The account quotes a speech that Adams made to union delegates; according to the Web site, she received a standing ovation as she declared, “My case should never have been brought to a hearing.” The Web site account continues, “Though she believes she was the victim of an effort to move senior teachers out of the system, the due process tenure system worked in her case.”

On November 23, 2005, according to a report prepared by the Education Department’s Special Commissioner of Investigation, Adams was found “in an unconscious state” in her classroom. “There were 34 students present in [Adams’s] classroom,” the report said. When the principal “attempted to awaken [Adams], he was unable to.” When a teacher “stood next to [Adams], he detected a smell of alcohol emanating from her.”

Adams’s return to teaching, more than two years later, had come about because she and the Department of Education had signed a sealed agreement whereby she would teach for one more semester, then be assigned to non-teaching duties in a school office, if she hadn’t found a teaching position elsewhere. The agreement also required that she “submit to random alcohol testing” and be fired if she again tested positive. In February, 2009, Adams passed out in the office where she had to report every day. A drug-and-alcohol-testing-services technician called to the scene wrote in his report that she was unable even to “blow into breathalyzer,” and that her water bottle contained alcohol. As the stipulation required, she was fired.

Oh, and please tell me what 'conservative anti-union legislation' you're talking about.

It's nice to see GOP'ers running with an actual agenda, not opposition to Obama, not parroting Reagan and then abandoning all those principles when in power. I still don't trust 'em though.

EDIT: Some of his ads refer to Snyder as "One Tough Nerd". Awesome.

CR