Free Republic

Woody wrote:Free Republic

FREEPER!

The guy has no money, is getting attacked from all sides for his policy positions, and he spends his money on this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xn7uSHtkuA&e[/youtube]

gotta hope this guy goes up against Obama

Obama might get 60% that way

jerseyhoya wrote:The guy has no money, is getting attacked from all sides for his policy positions, and he spends his money on this:

.. and he's still leading in the polls

Meanwhile Ron Paul's Wicked Idiots can't stop raising money for him, and there's nothing he can do with it and it isn't buying him any support.

VoxOrion wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:The guy has no money, is getting attacked from all sides for his policy positions, and he spends his money on this:

.. and he's still leading in the polls

Meanwhile Ron Paul's Wicked Idiots can't stop raising money for him, and there's nothing he can do with it and it isn't buying him any support.

But... but... he has a blimp!

jerseyhoya wrote:The guy has no money, is getting attacked from all sides for his policy positions, and he spends his money on this:

You beltway elitists types still aren't getting it. Go ahead, nominate Romney. See what happens.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:The guy has no money, is getting attacked from all sides for his policy positions, and he spends his money on this:

You beltway elitists types still aren't getting it. Go ahead, nominate Romney. See what happens.

I love being an elitist. I'm 23, make around 30k a year, but I do live in the Beltway, and my bosses are rich, so maybe it's a push.

I think Huckabee and Romney would both lose, but Romney wouldn't fracture the Republican coalition and bury any chance we have of being competitive in large parts of the country for a while.

I think I want us to nominate McCain now, even though I've been rooting for Giuliani all along. I actually don't know what I think, but I know I hate Mike Huckabee a lot.

VoxOrion wrote:.. and he's still leading in the polls

He just started really getting hit a week or so ago. I imagine the numbers will start to show some pain in the next bit. I wouldn't be surprised if he still won Iowa or finished a solid second, but I think (hope?) his long term prospects for success are dim.

At this point people don't know all that much about him. For as much as people have been saying "once people know Rudy's pro-choice, he'll plummet," at least a good chunk of people already knew that. Up till this point, few people had any reason to know Huckabee has raised taxes, or his immigration position or whatnot. I think he's gotten a lot of soft support because he's been good in debates and people are looking for a guy they want to like.

Paul, I think, seems to believe this is some sort of uprising by the populist masses. Maybe. I hope not. I don't like people.

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:The guy has no money, is getting attacked from all sides for his policy positions, and he spends his money on this:

You beltway elitists types still aren't getting it. Go ahead, nominate Romney. See what happens.

I love being an elitist. I'm 23, make around 30k a year, but I do live in the Beltway, and my bosses are rich, so maybe it's a push.

I think Huckabee and Romney would both lose, but Romney wouldn't fracture the Republican coalition and bury any chance we have of being competitive in large parts of the country for a while.

I think I want us to nominate McCain now, even though I've been rooting for Giuliani all along. I actually don't know what I think, but I know I hate Mike Huckabee a lot.

It's one thing to hate Huckabee (though I probably disagree with him more than you do, and I'll never vote for him but I can't say I hate him) but it's quite another thing to dismiss him and his supporters entirely. The conservative coalition is itself an elite idea, one that has largely depended on more or less non-ideological evangelicals voting Republican. These are are church going middle income people who don't like abortion and are uncomfortable with public homosexuality and are generally patriotic--they support the troops, but would like them to come home sooner rather than later. They don't see themselves as having benefited from free trade (though in many cases they probably have) and they're more worried about grandma paying for heart medicine than jeremiads like socialized medicine.

Most importantly, I think they increasingly suspect that elites like Hillary and Cheney may appear to be political enemies, they in fact have a lot more in common with each other than they do with ordinary Americans. But with Huckabee (and the attacks are evidence of this) they see one of their own.

jerseyhoya wrote:I don't like people.

Elitist! You should be a liberal Dem. I've been telling people for years that I'm a Wilsonian liberal: love people in the abstract, hate them in the reality.

McCain's the Republican I'd have the least horror of seeing in the presidency. I just wish he wasn't so into war--though he comes by it more honestly than anyone else in the race, on either side.

I have no idea at all what's going to happen next year. If this is a "change" election, it's tough to see how any of Clinton, Romney, McCain, or Giuliani make it to the general--but it's also easy to see Obama and Edwards canceling each other out, and so much carnage on the Republican side that eventually someone just wins by attrition. If that's the case, it won't be Huckabee.

Republican guys--if Bush were eligible, do you think he'd be nominated again?

Huckabee will get slaughtered in the general election, which means he has no shot at getting the nomination. I wouldn't vote for Huckabee or Romney for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is their pandering to the overly and overtly religous.

The only way I could see myself voting Republican is a McCain-Clinton matchup.

a word from President Huckabee:

Code: Select all

In Kids Who Kill, Huckabee argued that school shootings were the product of a society in decline, a decline marked (and caused) by abortion, pornography, media violence, out-of-wedlock sex, divorce, drug use, and, of course, homosexuality. Huckabee and his coauthor bemoaned the "demoralization of America," observing, "Despite all our prosperity, pomp, and power, the vaunted American experiment in liberty seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes." Huckabee, who was governor at the time and a well-known social conservative, blasted away at those whom he held responsible for America's ills, and he took a rather tough stand against government social programs and their advocates. In lamenting the "cultural conflicts" besetting the country, he wrote,


"Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities."

Why was he lumping environmentalism with activities he considered sinful? He did not explain further. A few pages later, Huckabee complained,


"It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia."

Huckabee did not say what public endorsement of pedophilia or necrophilia he had in mind. But he did seem to be equating homosexuality with both.

Throughout the book, Huckabee warned of going soft on immorality. He slammed those Christians who accept a "misguided version of 'tolerance'" and do not voice outrage at cultural deterioration. Mocking such Christians, he huffed, "We don't want to offend anyone." He denounced what he termed "radical ideological secularism," and he declared, "in the name of civil liberties, cultural diversity, and political correctness, a radical agenda of willy-nilly moral corruption and ethical degeneration has pressed forward." Without identifying any secularists by name, he wailed,


"The legal commitment of ideological secularism to any and all of the fanatically twisted fringes of American culture—pornographers, gay activists, abortionists, and other professional liberationists—is a pathetically self-defeating crusade that has confused liberty with license."


I liked this take on Huckabee going forward, even though it's from a Mets fan (Dan=Baseball Crank, a website perhaps you've come across)

I think right now he's in a different though somewhat similar position to where Thompson was when he entered the race. People know a few things about him and want to like him. Thompson's problem is that he's running a terrible campaign/seemingly doesn't want to win. Huckabee's is that he's out of step with a big portion of the party, and unfortunately, it's the part that writes the checks he's going to need to win when you get to states you can't just drive around and go to coffee shops to win votes.

jerseyhoya wrote:I liked this take on Huckabee going forward, even though it's from a Mets fan (Dan=Baseball Crank, a website perhaps you've come across)

I think right now he's in a different though somewhat similar position to where Thompson was when he entered the race. People know a few things about him and want to like him. Thompson's problem is that he's running a terrible campaign/seemingly doesn't want to win. Huckabee's is that he's out of step with a big portion of the party, and unfortunately, it's the part that writes the checks he's going to need to win when you get to states you can't just drive around and go to coffee shops to win votes.

More accurately, he's out of step the moneyed kingmakers.

Well yeah, and anyone who votes Republican for the small government, lower taxes. These people write the checks, which is important, but they're also allowed to vote in this amazing political system we have.

That wasn't Dan's point, which was that he can't run a noncampaign talking about things like having a nice Christmas forever.

Trent Steele wrote:

CrashburnAlley wrote:

Trent Steele wrote:My honest opinion is that anyone who doesn't believe in evolution should not be allowed to vote let alone be President.

As much as the quality of our political system would go up as a result of restricting morons from voting, it'd be going against what this country was founded on.

I'd rather live in a god-fearing country where creationists vote, than live in a secular country where you have to be of a certain grade of intelligence to vote.

Hmmm. You may be right, but I like the sound of that country.


According to some guy who wrote some article, the 20 happiest nations in the World are either among the least religous or next to the ocean with chicks in bikinis or Malaysia:

1. Denmark
2. Switzerland
3. Austria
4. Iceland
5. The Bahamas
6. Finland
7. Sweden
8. Bhutan
9. Brunei
10. Canada
11. Ireland
12. Luxembourg
13. Costa Rica
14. Malta
15. The Netherlands
16. Antigua and Barbuda
17. Malaysia
18. New Zealand
19. Norway
20. The Seychelles

That's weird. I read somewhere that Iceland has one of the highest depression rates in the world. I believe they also rank highest in TV viewing and have the highest literacy rate. I believe they're also all forced to give blood as part of some big genetic experiment payed for by some pharmaceutical company. I've been to their main airport a few times as a stopever on Iceland Air. It's a bizarre looking place and I hope to spend some time there one day. That is all.

jerseyhoya wrote:Well yeah, and anyone who votes Republican for the small government, lower taxes. These people write the checks, which is important, but they're also allowed to vote in this amazing political system we have.

That wasn't Dan's point, which was that he can't run a noncampaign talking about things like having a nice Christmas forever.

Where are these small government conservatives of which you speak? I've heard legends of such people, but I've never actually seen solid evidence of one.

People who make big contributions to candidates expect a return on their investment. Something a bit bigger than a tax cut (which they can mostly avoid anyway.

TenuredVulture wrote:Where are these small government conservatives of which you speak? I've heard legends of such people, but I've never actually seen solid evidence of one.

Jim Demint, Tom Coburn, Jeff Flake to name a few. It's not easy to get elected and stay elected without giving lots of free crap to old people or other groups that band together and whine, I guess, but some people manage it.

To deny that voters like that exist is nuts, IMO. They are overrepresented in conservative punditry and online, I'll grant you, but they're real. Not to get overly anecdotal, but my dad is a lifelong Republican who doesn't go to church and isn't religious. I have no idea if he'd vote for Huckabee in the general or if he'd just sit out.

He bitches about taxes and spending, and is all keen on energy independence so we don't have to ever talk to Arabs, Venezuela or Russia ever again. I'm not sure it works like that, but he seems pretty set on the idea. He doesn't make tons of money, but he's all about privatizing social security. I don't think he cares much about abortion, but I'm almost certain he's pro choice.

I'd describe myself as a small government conservative, or conservative leaning libertarian or something like that. But I'm too much of a party hack ever to actually leave over one nomination.

Do you doubt they exist because their policies tend to lose? Do you believe there's a strong pro life movement in the country? They're still aborting fetuses last I checked.

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Where are these small government conservatives of which you speak? I've heard legends of such people, but I've never actually seen solid evidence of one.

Jim Demint, Tom Coburn, Jeff Flake to name a few. It's not easy to get elected and stay elected without giving lots of free crap to old people or other groups that band together and whine, I guess, but some people manage it.

To deny that voters like that exist is nuts, IMO. They are overrepresented in conservative punditry and online, I'll grant you, but they're real. Not to get overly anecdotal, but my dad is a lifelong Republican who doesn't go to church and isn't religious. I have no idea if he'd vote for Huckabee in the general or if he'd just sit out.

He bitches about taxes and spending, and is all keen on energy independence so we don't have to ever talk to Arabs, Venezuela or Russia ever again. I'm not sure it works like that, but he seems pretty set on the idea. He doesn't make tons of money, but he's all about privatizing social security. I don't think he cares much about abortion, but I'm almost certain he's pro choice.

I'd describe myself as a small government conservative, or conservative leaning libertarian or something like that. But I'm too much of a party hack ever to actually leave over one nomination.

Do you doubt they exist because their policies tend to lose? Do you believe there's a strong pro life movement in the country? They're still aborting fetuses last I checked.

No, I doubt they exist because most people who argue that line are disingenuous or hopelessly naive. Those who oppose legal abortion may live to see the day abortion is outlawed, at least in some states (that won't do much to stop abortions, but that is another matter) Small government (and simply calling for decreases in domestic spending does not equal small government) is not happening. The real power in modern industrial and post-industrial economies lies in a corporate/government nexus--Eisenhower called it a military industrial complex, C. Wright Mills called it a power elite, but regardless of what you want to call it, government and corporate power are simply two sides of the same coin.