TenuredVulture wrote:

cshort wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:
I support this effort (1) because I agree with it, but also (2) because I think this is an issue that with wider exposure can bring moderate white female voters back into the Democratic fold.

The fact that Palin's town charged women for rape kits and the Alaska legislature had to step in to ban the practice also won't help her with women. In fact, as women find out about her actual policies, I see more and more of them turning back to Obama. Certainly that's the case with the people I know.

I love when you drop these bombs. Here'sthe other side of the story to balance things out

You know, that response from National Review was really weak.

Laexile wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:The second one is funny. A bit mean, perhaps, but right now, what Democrat cares about that? Hit them, and hit them hard, I say. The Republicans like red-meat campaigns - fine by me. McCain and Palin are pretty easy targets - so get to it.

Cool. Just don't complain when the GOP hits you higher and harder.

According to an internal GOP email, "There are numerous definitions of and aspects to the Bush Doctrine. They include democracy promotion, no safe harbor for terrorists, and willingness to act first." If you go back to Bush's speeches in late 2001 and 2002 all three of these items are in there. Obama supports the first two, so it's reasonable to ask which part? Interesting.

The email also says, "Governor Palin most certainly did not take Barack Obama's position on Pakistan." Um, yeah. Right.

jeff2sf wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

Grotewold wrote:

dajafi wrote:But, really, would you feel very confident with this woman in the presidency? Is it that you think she'd be guided by more senior/knowledgeable/responsible Republicans? That she'd just be a figurehead?

Let's definitely give that eight more years...

and with the crazies from Bush's first term, too. The craziest of the neocons will be running the show, which means more war and lots of it.

Please, just please.

cshort wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:
I support this effort (1) because I agree with it, but also (2) because I think this is an issue that with wider exposure can bring moderate white female voters back into the Democratic fold.

The fact that Palin's town charged women for rape kits and the Alaska legislature had to step in to ban the practice also won't help her with women. In fact, as women find out about her actual policies, I see more and more of them turning back to Obama. Certainly that's the case with the people I know.

I love when you drop these bombs. Here'sthe other side of the story to balance things out

Monkeyboy wrote:There's no defense for her performance. She's the VP pick. This isn't freshmen political science class. She shouldn't be graded on a curve -- oh, not bad for a beginner, give her a chance to learn as she goes, etc.

Laexile wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:There's no defense for her performance. She's the VP pick. This isn't freshmen political science class. She shouldn't be graded on a curve -- oh, not bad for a beginner, give her a chance to learn as she goes, etc.

That's exactly how we're grading Obama.

Laexile wrote: understand that increasing capital gains taxes and corporate taxes would have a negative impact on the economy.

Monkeyboy wrote:

cshort wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:
I support this effort (1) because I agree with it, but also (2) because I think this is an issue that with wider exposure can bring moderate white female voters back into the Democratic fold.

The fact that Palin's town charged women for rape kits and the Alaska legislature had to step in to ban the practice also won't help her with women. In fact, as women find out about her actual policies, I see more and more of them turning back to Obama. Certainly that's the case with the people I know.

I love when you drop these bombs. Here'sthe other side of the story to balance things out

And I love when you post a link that does nothing to dispute what I said. She was mayor of a freak town that charged for rape kits. The Alaska legislature stepped in to ban the practice. If the legislature had to step in to stop it, how could she not know about it? And if she didn't somehow know about it, what does that say about her?

And I have no idea what Illinois' laws on the matter have to do with it. Obama wasn't mayor or governor in Ilinois. I'm sure you know this because the right enjoys pointing out that Obama doesn't have executive experience (a fair criticism).

Let’s concede the worst, which was that this was an unforgivably stupid policy, and that Palin should have overturned it during her tenure. I’ll let Obama fans explain why that error in judgment is superior to voting "present" when dealing with "a bill permitting the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to report suspected child abuse while protecting the identity of the facility or person providing the information."

seke2 wrote:

Laexile wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:There's no defense for her performance. She's the VP pick. This isn't freshmen political science class. She shouldn't be graded on a curve -- oh, not bad for a beginner, give her a chance to learn as she goes, etc.

That's exactly how we're grading Obama.

I disagree with that so much. Who is taking it easy on Obama because of his inexperience and making excuses for his inability to even converse fluently about any sort of relevant political topic? Nobody took it easy on Obama after his "above my pay grade" comment which I suppose is the closest recent parallel to Palin's interview flubs.

mpmcgraw wrote:

Laexile wrote: understand that increasing capital gains taxes and corporate taxes would have a negative impact on the economy.

it's not black and white, but since you are a republican i am sure you wish it was

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies (such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage the national interest for partisan advantage.

But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.
...
This research led me to two conclusions. First, when gut feelings are present, dispassionate reasoning is rare. In fact, many people struggled to fabricate harmful consequences that could justify their gut-based condemnation. I often had to correct people when they said things like "it's wrong because… um…eating dog meat would make you sick" or "it's wrong to use the flag because… um… the rags might clog the toilet." These obviously post-hoc rationalizations illustrate the philosopher David Hume's dictum that reason is "the slave of the passions, and can pretend to no other office than to serve and obey them." This is the first rule of moral psychology: feelings come first and tilt the mental playing field on which reasons and arguments compete. If people want to reach a conclusion, they can usually find a way to do so. The Democrats have historically failed to grasp this rule, choosing uninspiring and aloof candidates who thought that policy arguments were forms of persuasion.

The second conclusion was that the moral domain varies across cultures. Turiel's description of morality as being about justice, rights, and human welfare worked perfectly for the college students I interviewed at Penn, but it simply did not capture the moral concerns of the less elite groups—the working-class people in both countries who were more likely to justify their judgments with talk about respect, duty, and family roles. ("Your dog is family, and you just don't eat family.") From this study I concluded that the anthropologist Richard Shweder was probably right in a 1987 critique of Turiel in which he claimed that the moral domain (not just specific rules) varies by culture. Drawing on Shweder's ideas, I would say that the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way.

When Republicans say that Democrats "just don't get it," this is the "it" to which they refer. Conservative positions on gays, guns, god, and immigration must be understood as means to achieve one kind of morally ordered society. When Democrats try to explain away these positions using pop psychology they err, they alienate, and they earn the label "elitist." But how can Democrats learn to see—let alone respect—a moral order they regard as narrow-minded, racist, and dumb?

Camp Holdout wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:I guess there's no point in saying that a strict definition of the Bush Doctrine doesn't exist (what would be considered a slam on the doctrine any other time) and that the people who helped develop it don't even agree on what it means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine

I feel redeemed. CampHoldout's surprise can go suck on that.

However, the doctrine was articulated more fully in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when President Bush declared that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor terrorist groups as terrorist states themselves.

dude are you serious?

im saying i could answer a question about the bush doctrine for 5 years now... i was somewhat surprised that you couldnt (because i consider you pretty well informed and intelligent based on other posts here). and i wanted to throw up that a VP candidate couldn't either. i hold her to a slighlty higher standard than you sorry...

oh and hey, maybe sarah could have clicked on that little wikipedia link you have in your post. maybe then she would have been able to some kind of answer that had some kind of relevance to the question.

sorry, im getting worked up here, and i promised to stay away from politics until the debates. and i do enjoy JH's posts and tend to learn things from them. but if anyone is defending that answer... whew... okay... deep breaths... i might need to enact some bush doctrine and sit on the john for an hour.