Roger Dorn wrote:I think Ron Paul's point on the Civil Rights legislation was that both the federal and state governments should respect private property, and if a dining establishment or movie theater wanted to be bigots then it was their right to do so.

In a free society, people would then be able to say "Hey, I'm not going to patronize this establishment because they are run by bigots and racists and I want no part of it."

The national sentiment was turning against the Crow Laws at the time, and undoubtedly those establishments were going to fail because non-discriminatory businesses would attract more people. I respect a person's right to be a complete asshole, it's what you get in a free society.

Anyway, I like Ron because he speaks the truth and is non-establishment.

Can you honestly say Obama is different than Bush? If so, how? And how will Rick Perry or Mitt Romney be any different?

They are all the same. Our two party system is a joke.

Eddie Jordan wrote:These Republican debates are incredibly entertaining

This is fantastic, Rick Perry goes with company line "the terrorists hate us for our freedom", everyone goes wild.

Ron Paul states reasonable truths to suggest that a small group does not dictate the beliefs of all Muslims, crowd boos him.

cartersDad26 wrote:

Eddie Jordan wrote:These Republican debates are incredibly entertaining

This is fantastic, Rick Perry goes with company line "the terrorists hate us for our freedom", everyone goes wild.

Ron Paul states reasonable truths to suggest that a small group does not dictate the beliefs of all Muslims, crowd boos him.

Seriously. What a bunch of fucking hicks. santorum says American fuck yeah and he wins the debate. I feel bad for Ron Paul, why isn't he an independent?

TenuredVulture wrote:

cartersDad26 wrote:

Eddie Jordan wrote:These Republican debates are incredibly entertaining

This is fantastic, Rick Perry goes with company line "the terrorists hate us for our freedom", everyone goes wild.

Ron Paul states reasonable truths to suggest that a small group does not dictate the beliefs of all Muslims, crowd boos him.

Seriously. What a bunch of fucking hicks. santorum says American fuck yeah and he wins the debate. I feel bad for Ron Paul, why isn't he an independent?

If he were an independent, he wouldn't be in the House of Representatives.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.
...
It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
...
Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."
...
It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.

Televangelists have long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. If you are wealthy, it is a sign of God's favor. If not, too bad! But don't forget to tithe in any case. This rationale may explain why some economically downscale whites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.

The GOP's fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset. The Old Testament abounds in tales of slaughter - God ordering the killing of the Midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population, the divinely-inspired genocide of the Canaanites, the slaying of various miscreants with the jawbone of an ass - and since American religious fundamentalist seem to prefer the Old Testament to the New (particularly that portion of the New Testament known as the Sermon on the Mount), it is but a short step to approving war as a divinely inspired mission. This sort of thinking has led, inexorably, to such phenomena as Jerry Falwell once writing that God is Pro-War.

It is the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an imminent Armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this country into conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought Saddam was the Antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but also in the realm of domestic political controversy. It is hardly surprising that the most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problem was Michele Bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. What does it matter, anyway, if the country defaults? - we shall presently abide in the bosom of the Lord.

jerseyhoya wrote:I read that a week or two ago, and unsurprisingly thought it was mostly garbage

Honestly my biggest question coming out of it was wondering why that guy was ever a Republican

He appears to agree with literally nothing the party stands for, much of which were things the party stood for back when he started working for it in the 80s

jerseyhoya wrote:Why does Perry keep talking about needing to have a conversation about Social Security but not laying out any sort of a plan for fixing it?

jerseyhoya wrote:When you're explaining, you're losing

Another tough debate for Perry

(I mostly just followed on Twitter)

jerseyhoya wrote:I read that a week or two ago, and unsurprisingly thought it was mostly garbage

Honestly my biggest question coming out of it was wondering why that guy was ever a Republican