VoxOrion wrote:

dajafi wrote:I didn't watch the Republicans last night. Were any celebrities there? Aside from Ahnuld, of course.

I didn't see it, so I don't know. The novelty of the debates has worn off, I have trouble believing I'm going to hear anything shocking. Watching the dem debate would just get me all invested in Obama winning the nomination, or worse, I'll start to dislike him.

I had this attitude back in 2000 when I was all "I could live with Al Gore" then I started following him and learning about him and realized that I was really, really wrapped up in "zOMG AL GORE CANNOT WIN". I learned my lesson and I'm not digging too deep into what Obama's all about. I know he's a liberal, I know I don't like that, but I'm keeping it vague. It's kind of in self defense, because I feel pretty certain he'd win if he can get through Tuesday and win the nomination.

VoxOrion wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:I'm not accusing either of you of anything, but your comments got me thinking about something (that's been thought of before).

Why are liberals so attracted to (dare I say even invested in) celebrities and comedians?

Did you ever go to redstate and read what amounted to man-crush statements regarding Fred Thompson?

You're totally reaching if you are trying to compare five fingers worth of notable conservative celebrities with the consteallation of stars in Hollywood. Plus, as I said before, the conservative celebrities at least run for office.

Monkeyboy wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:None of this gets to the question I posed - why are liberals so attached to celebrities and comedians? It's not a question of hypocracy, the argument is always about the cultural influence within entertainment.

I tried to address that, but obviously failed. I don't think lefties are any more attached to celebrities than righties. There are more liberal stars in Hollywood than conservative ones, so it may seem like there's more of an interest from lefties, but I don't think that's the case. If a conservative celebrity shows up at a GOP event, the crowd gets just as excited about the celebrity as the lefties do at a Dem event. What are you basing this on?

It sure would be nice to think that the base of the dwindling GOP is not as... insane as the nutters at the NRO, Red State, etc., but I have not seen much evidence of it. The thing that needs to be said, over and over, though, is that Rush Limbaugh and those guys simply aren’t conservatives. They just aren’t. Radically restructuring government to create an unaccountable executive is not conservative. Building a security apparatus that is designed to spy on citizens is not a conservative principle. Runaway spending and bloated budgets are not conservative ideas. Torture and permanent aggressive wars are not conservative principles. Fearmongering and keeping the electorate scared is not a conservative principle.

td11 wrote:also, with regard to celebs and liberals-- isn't orange county a relatively celebrity filled region, yet they haven't elected a democrat in a long time?

don't beat me if i'm wrong.

jerseyhoya wrote:

td11 wrote:also, with regard to celebs and liberals-- isn't orange county a relatively celebrity filled region, yet they haven't elected a democrat in a long time?

don't beat me if i'm wrong.

Orange County is one of the most Republican big counties in America. Probably it and Maricopa County (Phoenix) are the only two mega counties in America that consistently vote Republican. I'm not sure how celebrity filled it is. More so that the rich people that live there are "interesting" so shows are made about them.

TenuredVulture wrote:What about Nassau County in NY? Did the financial collapse there (unlike in Orange County, CA) actually undo the Republican machine? (And what a wonderful machine it was--evidently, a connected ass't prof at Nassau Cty Community College could pull down 6 figures.)

Monkeyboy wrote:Will there be any other debates before super Tuesday?

dajafi wrote:Nassau has drifted toward the Dems in recent years--Tom Suozzi, their county exec, challenged Spitzer in the gubernatorial primary two years ago and is still considered a comer in state Democratic politics. If Hillary wins, he's got a great shot to be the replacement Senator.

And didn't Kerry (narrowly) win Orange County in 2004? I thought I remembered that, just because it seemed so counterintuitive.

TenuredVulture wrote:County politics can be funny things though. My county is utterly and totally dominated at the local and state level by the Democrats--the election that matters for county and state legislative offices here is the Democratic primary. However, Bush carried the county probably by 10 points. Even though Beebe trounced Hutchison statewide, it was sort of close here as well.

Monkeyboy wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:None of this gets to the question I posed - why are liberals so attached to celebrities and comedians? It's not a question of hypocracy, the argument is always about the cultural influence within entertainment.

I tried to address that, but obviously failed. I don't think lefties are any more attached to celebrities than righties. There are more liberal stars in Hollywood than conservative ones, so it may seem like there's more of an interest from lefties, but I don't think that's the case. If a conservative celebrity shows up at a GOP event, the crowd gets just as excited about the celebrity as the lefties do at a Dem event. What are you basing this on?

Post-mortem preview? With Mitt Romney on the ropes, the post-mortems are inevitable; call them O-Mitt-uaries. Anyway, we're starting to hear from a lot of smart Republican strategists about what happened. And the thing that everyone seems to come back to is Romney's religion. Why? Ask yourself: Without the issue of Romney's religion, does Mike Huckabee ever take off? Because Mike Huckabee is the single biggest obstacle to Romney coalescing economic and social conservatives behind him to take on McCain. Take a close look at the Florida results by county from Tuesday night. In more than half of Florida's 67 counties (37 to be exact), the Romney-Huckabee combined vote total equaled or surpassed 50%. And in those counties, 17 of them tipped to McCain. Well, extrapolate this out to, say, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee or Georgia this Tuesday. Will the combined Romney-Huck total surpass 50% while delivering all four states to McCain? Now, if Romney hadn't given evangelicals second thoughts simply over his religion, would Mike Huckabee have happened? It may be Romney needs another four years to convince evangelicals his religion won't interfere with their priorities.

jerseyhoya wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:County politics can be funny things though. My county is utterly and totally dominated at the local and state level by the Democrats--the election that matters for county and state legislative offices here is the Democratic primary. However, Bush carried the county probably by 10 points. Even though Beebe trounced Hutchison statewide, it was sort of close here as well.

I'm from Burlington County, NJ originally. We haven't had an elected Democratic freeholder (the five person board that governs the county for you non-Jersey folk) since the election immediately after Watergate. I think the Dems won the county clerk's office two years ago, and that was a huge deal.

Gore won my county by 15%, Kerry by 7%.

Monkeyboy wrote:Jon Voight, Dennis Miller, Bruce Willis, Joe Pesci, Sylvester Stallone , Curt Schilling, Danny Aiello, Mel Gibson, Tom Clancy. There are others, but these are the ones that I could think of off the top of my head..

Given how the right responds when a celebrity goes their way, it's not that they don't like celebrities involved in politics, it's that they don't like celebrities involved in politics when they are helping the other side.
So the real main difference is that the dems don't embrace celebrities and then complain when reps do it. Only one group is being hypocritical.