Is the Republican Party making it easier for another term of Democrat presidency?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by chelloveck, Nov 11, 2015.


  1. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    for the full article...Conservatives in crisis: the rise of Donald Trump and Ben Carson shows a party in decline

    The article is written by US born, Tom Switzer Tom Switzer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
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  2. Altoidfishfins

    Altoidfishfins Monkey+++ Site Supporter+

    One must wonder.
    But the Democrats aren't exactly a success story either, when something like over 60% of those Americans surveyed cited trustworthiness issues (and rightfully so) with the leading Democratic candidate.
     
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  3. pearlselby

    pearlselby Monkey++

    Yes, I am afraid so, chelloveck. Good post.
     
  4. 3M-TA3

    3M-TA3 Cold Wet Monkey

    My take is that it shows the support of Republicans for career politicians on the decline. The last time that happened we elected a President who won the cold war and created the longest lasting US economic growth period on record. I'm certain charts and graphs are forthcoming that will show the Reagan era as a failure, but having actually lived it, those were the peak years for America.... so far.
     
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  5. Dunerunner

    Dunerunner Brewery Monkey Moderator

    So, you have one of the Democratic front runners openly admitting he is a Socialist and this author thinks the Republican Party is in decline... :rolleyes: :whistle:
     
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  6. 3M-TA3

    3M-TA3 Cold Wet Monkey

    And the other front runner in serious jeopardy of wearing an orange pantsuit for the next several years...
     
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  7. ditch witch

    ditch witch I do stupid crap, so you don't have to

    LOL@graphic on that article. Trump looks like Heat Miser.

    It's all a dog and pony show. The winner has already been chosen and will take the stand at the appropriate time.
     
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  8. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus

    I don't disagree with you Aft, the Democrats don't exactly have a strong field either....Sanders and Clinton are the only notable contenders, and both carry quite a bit of negative baggage. The other Democrat contenders from my far off perspective are probably not so well known outside of their own States, and don't have the media money bags, or the wacko antics to suck much media coverage from the Republican freak show.

    I think the 2016 Presidential election will come down to the least worst on both sides duking it out for the title of being least worst President 2016.
     
  9. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    Looks more like this every day.

    [​IMG]
     
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  10. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    @Tobit It was created when Walker was still in the race.

    [​IMG]
     
  11. stg58

    stg58 Monkey+++ Founding Member

    When you get down to it the two US political parties are like being given a choice between
    syphilis and Gonorrhea.
     
  12. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    Either way you get screwed, and wake up feeling icky......
     
  13. TailorMadeHell

    TailorMadeHell Lurking Shadow Creature

    They'd have bigger voter turnout if they assured people that after you voted you'd get a free shot of penicillin.
     
  14. Motomom34

    Motomom34 Monkey+++

    Like you said, the election is a year off. What people need to ask is why people are leaning towards to non-politicians verses people who have some knowledge of the workings of DC. IMO the party no longer represents the people. The people have been speaking but the party is not listening. Thee party acts like they know what is best and is waiting for the conservative voter to fall in line. It is not happening. The war inside the conservative party will kill itself.
     
  15. TailorMadeHell

    TailorMadeHell Lurking Shadow Creature

    Also factor in the fact that the electoral college doesn't help either. If your vote, the popular vote, counted then we would have more turnout. The electoral needs to go. Then the system needs to be fixed. No more carrying states. Make it by populace of the U.S. not of the state. The system is unnecessarily over complicated. Then again politicians believe they know what is best and we commoners have no clue.
     
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  16. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    The system is over complicated... to eliminate the common man's/woman's vote if it serves the purpose of TPTB....
    Ultimately it is either by the ballot box or the bullet..... they need to decide if F'ing with our vote at some point is worth them paying the ultimate price.... for their choice. ;)
     
  17. Mindgrinder

    Mindgrinder Karma Pirate Ninja|RIP 12-25-2017

     
  18. chelloveck

    chelloveck Diabolus Causidicus


    * Inserting Ronnie Raygun into the conversation is a bit of a red herring. A hagiography of Ronald Reagan's presidential economic and fiscal legacies is a subject for a different thread. I don't think that careerism in politics is such a great concern for the electorate...given the continuing re-election of many career politicians in many cases for decades, and given that many Presidents (though less often Vice Presidents) have generally had substantial exposure to executive and legislative public service at local, state and national government before they put themselves forward for Presidential candidacy.


    1.Ronald Reagan had been a career politician for many years, since the early 1940's in beginning with union politics (Screen Actors Guild), followed by Democrat political activism in the late 40's, then Republican politics thereafter, including a lengthy term as Republican Governor of California. An amateur or dilletente in the world of politics he wasn't.

    2. I'm not so sure that Reagan won the cold war. It's more a case of Russia and the Warsaw Pact losing the cold war by imploding through economic failure, internal disintegration of communist party control, and satellite nations taking advantage of Russia's economic and social bankruptcy. Reagan's star wars initiative and large expenditures on military spending prompted an arms race that the Russians could not sustain...added to that, the huge drain on human, financial and social resources that Russia's war in Afghanistan represented in the early to mid '80's, contributed significantly at the time to the demise of Russia's experiment with communism. That was an own goal by the Soviet Union, rather than anything of Reagan's doing, other than training and equipping the Mujahidin, that gave rise to Al Qaeda, and the Taliban: which was something of an own goal for the USA down the track when G Dubya eagerly grasped the Afghanistan tar baby that also had contributed to the ruin of the Soviet Union. Afghanistan is draining the USA of precious lives and huge amounts of national treasure that could be better used in trimming the national debt....but what the hey, investors in the military industrial complex aren't complaining.

    3. I suspect that his administration's budgetary contributions to the military industrial complex via increased defence spending at the expense of welfare programs produced a different set of stimulus spending winners and losers. Spending on guns tends to benefit some investors, and wage earners, and spending on butter benefits a different set of investors and wage earners focussed on domestic retail consumption. Yes Reagan reduced the ill effects of inflation quite dramatically in part, by redistributing the proportions of the spending cake, among a number of other economic and fiscal reforms, but he also left a large fiscal deficit at the end of his term as president for his successor to have to deal with.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2004-06-20/the-real-economic-legacy-of-ronald-Reagan

    4. You are probably right, and similarly, depending on one's perceptions and biases, one may see Reagan as a saint or a sinner or both simultaneously, regardless of who is spinning the Reagan story, from either ends (or centre) of the ideological spectrum.

    5. Whether or not the Reagan era represented the peak years of America may be a matter of personal perspective. Each person might have different metrics for what constitutes peak years and whether or not they were beneficiaries of those years.


    There is no point in Bernie trying to conceal that evident fact. The Democrat Party and the US electorate at large will have to decide whether identification with socialism is in itself a crucial disability to his being given the keys to the Whitehouse. My own view is that it is a big ask of an electorate that has a cultural distrust and fear of anything or anyone who has any tinge of pink, let alone radical red. Switzer is not making the case that the Democrat party and its field of presidential candidates are better alternatives than the GOP by comparison. As a journalist with conservative inclinations, Switzer's concern is with the health of the GOP as it presently is, in the lead up to 2016 and beyond. The GOP and conservatism has a number of challenges presently and in the near to long term.

    Although that may be a possible eventuality, but it doesn't save the GOP from its own weaknesses and failings. If the GOP's strategy is not to appear "worserer" than the Dems, then that bodes badly for the health, vitality and future of the GOP.

    Dog and pony shows are what presidential election campaigns are all about. The outcome often is decided by the candidate who offers the bigger bag of gold to the judges of the D&P show. The thing is the bag of gold has been filled with coin lent to the contestants by donors that have a vested interest in the outcome of the show. The donors expect a very lucrative return on their investment, which is not necessarily in the interests of the general public.:(

    Wearing the condom of critical scepticism is highly desirable: as well as ignoring the claim that the party hookers are clean and FFI. :LOL:



    The Dems and the GOP might fare better if they administered antibiotics on themselves if they want to tout their own ideological hooking. It's not very bright of johns to keep going back to a hooker that keeps on reinfecting them. o_O



    I think you are on the right track. (y) Neither the Dems nor the GOP represents the people more broadly. Both parties tend to sing the songs, and roll out the pork barrels that will appeal most to their core constituencies, and respective voter bases. Such an approach offers little incentive for those not belonging to those constituencies to show much interest in the electoral process.:sleep:



    The college electoral system is almost as simple to understand as a five test match cricket series, where a 5 match series can be lost or won by a single run...or worse still, drawn. :rolleyes: Result (cricket) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2015
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  19. Tikka

    Tikka Monkey+++

  20. Dunerunner

    Dunerunner Brewery Monkey Moderator

    I have to say that many folks, especially those who are not as tapped into politics as you and I, had never heard of Bernie Sanders. I didn't even know the Don Knots impersonator (can't remember his name) who was in the Democratic debate either. They could have brought in a bar owner, a skid row bum, a former school janitor and Bernie to debate Hillary and they probably would have done better.

    My issue with the Switzer piece is that he focuses on the GOP alone, and not the overall deterioration of party politics in the United States as a whole. To me, it was a hit piece on the GOP, which makes Switzer a shill for the Left.
     
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