Sure, websites like that can be a good resource. But, let's be honest, only the smallest minority of voters actually use such resources in helping them to make their choice. The vast majority just vote the way their parents, church leader, or news network tells them to, because ain't nobody got time for researching the real facts and making informed decisions. Like I said before, I think if the ballots got changed to use something more like isidewith.com to determine votes, things would be a lot different, and we would probably have a better government and country for it.
sebster wrote: There's a pretty strong story going around that Republicans have told Obama they'll confirm Garland in the lame duck congress, if a Democrat wins the presidency. Which is a bit like telling the enemy you'll surrender if they defeat your army and take your capital. But more importantly it shows how completely dishonest the Republicans are in refusing confirmation hearings, it was never about 'letting the people decide', it was just about hoping that a Republican would win the presidency and pick someone different.
The Republicans are basically making a big gamble that two coin tosses are both going to go their way this year: a Republican wins the White House, and the Republicans retain control of the Senate. Right now, the Republicans have the power to get someone into SCOTUS that they can at least tolerate (a moderate), but not someone they actually want (a conservative). They've sworn up and down that the next president should decide, and they'll just have to suck it up if the next president is a Democrat (which is highly likely, Trump is just a disaster, and Cruz is such an avatar of disunity that he wouldn't even be able to get his fellow Senators to convict his own murderer).
I'm slightly wondering if we'll see anymore Supreme Court nominations again while the Senate and White House are controlled by opposing parties. If they don't need to hold nomination hearings in Year 4, why would they have to in Year 1-3?
jasper76 wrote: I'm slightly wondering if we'll see anymore Supreme Court nominations again while the Senate and White House are controlled by opposing parties. If they don't need to hold nomination hearings in Year 4, why would they have to in Year 1-3?
A few of my colleagues and I were discussing that. There also doesn't appear to be anything from stopping the president from making recess appointments.
It's a ramping up of politics as bloodsport that probably won't end well. The GOP has spent eight years pouting, waiting until they control the White House. I think that has hurt their brand, and is leading in some ways to anger with the GOP establishment among their own party.
In some ways, it's a continuation of a trend that began with Robert Bork, who was the first judge really rejected on ideological grounds, as opposed to qualifications or extraneous factors. That was, in many ways, when partisan politics became involved in SCOTUS nominations. But... and this is a pretty major but... it wasn't strictly partisan! Two democrats voted to approve Bork, while five Republicans voted against him. Still, the fight against Bork was ugly, it was in the media, and it bordered on defamation.
jasper76 wrote: I'm slightly wondering if we'll see anymore Supreme Court nominations again while the Senate and White House are controlled by opposing parties. If they don't need to hold nomination hearings in Year 4, why would they have to in Year 1-3?
Nothing is stopping them, unless the President nominate someone more agreeable.
I know you don't like the outcome of this, but both sides *are* doing their duties.
jasper76 wrote: I'm slightly wondering if we'll see anymore Supreme Court nominations again while the Senate and White House are controlled by opposing parties. If they don't need to hold nomination hearings in Year 4, why would they have to in Year 1-3?
A few of my colleagues and I were discussing that. There also doesn't appear to be anything from stopping the president from making recess appointments.
Incorrect.
The Senate must be in recess, and if I'm not mistaken, there was even a Supreme Court case that Obama lost when he tried to "determine" that the Senate was in recess.
It's a ramping up of politics as bloodsport that probably won't end well. The GOP has spent eight years pouting, waiting until they control the White House. I think that has hurt their brand, and is leading in some ways to anger with the GOP establishment among their own party.
Their brand is already damaged as they've made promises they wouldn't keep.
...
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that President Obama exceeded his constitutional authority in making high-level government appointments in 2012 when he declared the Senate to be in recess and unable to act on the nominations.
...
jasper76 wrote: I'm slightly wondering if we'll see anymore Supreme Court nominations again while the Senate and White House are controlled by opposing parties. If they don't need to hold nomination hearings in Year 4, why would they have to in Year 1-3?
Nothing is stopping them, unless the President nominate someone more agreeable.
I know you don't like the outcome of this, but both sides *are* doing their duties.
Well just agree to disagree here. I see one branch of government performing their constitutional duty, and one branch of government abdicating theirs. I believe the duty the Senate owes to the Constitution is greater than what individual elected officials owe to party politics.
And it's not like they have to nominate the guy, that's what makes all of this a joke.
jasper76 wrote: I'm slightly wondering if we'll see anymore Supreme Court nominations again while the Senate and White House are controlled by opposing parties. If they don't need to hold nomination hearings in Year 4, why would they have to in Year 1-3?
A few of my colleagues and I were discussing that. There also doesn't appear to be anything from stopping the president from making recess appointments.
Except the Senate not going into recess... If I recall correctly, Obama already tried to declare a recess so he could appoint, and that did not work out well for him.
The Senate must be in recess, and if I'm not mistaken, there was even a Supreme Court case that Obama lost when he tried to "determine" that the Senate was in recess.
It's a ramping up of politics as bloodsport that probably won't end well. The GOP has spent eight years pouting, waiting until they control the White House. I think that has hurt their brand, and is leading in some ways to anger with the GOP establishment among their own party.
Their brand is already damaged as they've made promises they wouldn't keep.
...
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that President Obama exceeded his constitutional authority in making high-level government appointments in 2012 when he declared the Senate to be in recess and unable to act on the nominations.
...
Obviously a recess appointment requires a recess. I suppose the senate can pretend to be in session indefinitely from now on, which would prevent it.
I don't see anything unconstitutional about the Senate refusing to consider any Obama nominee. SCOTUS is beyond cautious against interfering with what they call "political questions," and frankly if the Sentate refuses to consent to any nominee, than I suppose we just don't get a justice.
But there will be political retribution for this. If this is how things works now, good luck to the next GOP president getting any nominees approved. If an opposition party has even 40 votes to prevent cloture, why not deny every single nominee, for any position, a vote?
jasper76 wrote: I'm slightly wondering if we'll see anymore Supreme Court nominations again while the Senate and White House are controlled by opposing parties. If they don't need to hold nomination hearings in Year 4, why would they have to in Year 1-3?
Nothing is stopping them, unless the President nominate someone more agreeable.
I know you don't like the outcome of this, but both sides *are* doing their duties.
Well just agree to disagree here. I see one branch of government performing their constitutional duty, and one branch of government abdicating theirs. I believe the duty the Senate owes to the Constitution is greater than what individual elected officials owe to party politics.
And it's not like they have to nominate the guy, that's what makes all of this a joke.
I'm talking about the powers afforded to the Senate and President via the Constitution.
As written, they're both doing their job.
In 40k lingo, both sides are RAW in their views.
Why does any nominee deserve a hearing? If the party says... naw, that candidate doesn't work for us... why would you be okay with the selection committee to "go through the motions" and waste everyone's time, if we know that person won't even get to a floor vote?
So, because the Senate is choosing to use it's Advise portion in this manner, maybe Obama need to go back to the drawing board and pick someone else.
The Senate must be in recess, and if I'm not mistaken, there was even a Supreme Court case that Obama lost when he tried to "determine" that the Senate was in recess.
It's a ramping up of politics as bloodsport that probably won't end well. The GOP has spent eight years pouting, waiting until they control the White House. I think that has hurt their brand, and is leading in some ways to anger with the GOP establishment among their own party.
Their brand is already damaged as they've made promises they wouldn't keep.
... The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that President Obama exceeded his constitutional authority in making high-level government appointments in 2012 when he declared the Senate to be in recess and unable to act on the nominations.
...
Obviously a recess appointment requires a recess. I suppose the senate can pretend to be in session indefinitely from now on, which would prevent it.
I don't see anything unconstitutional about the Senate refusing to consider any Obama nominee. SCOTUS is beyond cautious against interfering with what they call "political questions," and frankly if the Sentate refuses to consent to any nominee, than I suppose we just don't get a justice.
But there will be political retribution for this. If this is how things works now, good luck to the next GOP president getting any nominees approved. If an opposition party has even 40 votes to prevent cloture, why not deny every single nominee, for any position, a vote?
Of course there will be political retribution.
Hell, it was further exacerbated by Reid nuking the filibuster on all appointee instead of the Supreme Court. Now THAT cat is out of the bag, just watch a slim majority Democrat Senate nuke that too.
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jasper76 wrote: There's even a [I]possible[I] scenario where the Supreme Court could be widdled down to 0, right?
No, there's actually a law that there must be "x" number of justice on the bench. I can't remember the number and google-fu is failing me at the moment.
Just curious, has this particular trick ever been executed before, in a lame duck session or otherwise?
Like I said, we can just agree to disagree. I can read. The Constitution says the Senate will perform a function. When the Senate does not perform that function, you'll be hard pressed to convince me they are doing their duty. If my job is to dig a ditch, and I tell my boss I'm not going to dig a ditch under any circumstances, but I'll perform my duty.. you get he point and it's not even something worth arguing over
Ref 'trick',.I was referring to Mitch McConnell Supreme Court nomination policy.
The senate is performing a function. Their 'advise' function. The Constitution does NOT lay out the procedure, the Senate does. And they seem to have decided in this case their advise function consists of saying 'Sorry POTUS, ain't gonna happen.' And they are within their job description to do so.
You don't have to like, but to declare them unconstitutional and not doing their job is silly, there is no legal precedent to make that call on, and there is precedent for their actions (or lack there of).
Sure fine, I agree to disagree with you. I just don't think the abdication of a functio is synonymous with its fulfillment. I haven't really been saying that this tactic is unconstitutional. I fully admit it's within the Senate's power to abdicate their responsibility to provide advice and consent to the president.
Like we were talking earlier, I can even see that it's possible that this tactic could take hold indefinitely, and in principle at least we could see it used for the duration of entire presidential terms from day 1. And certainly the Democrats are not above this behavior, as others have noted.
Jacob Adler (University of Arkansas -- Philosophy) writes:
I just have been reading your response to the Law Professors' Letter on Supreme Court Appointments. One comment. You say that there is plausibly an implied duty to provide advice. The advice provided so far has been, "Do not nominate anyone." That surely is advice, but it seems to me that the Senate in that case is advising the President to act unconstitutionally. The Constitution says that the President shall nominate Justices of the Supreme Court. How can they reasonably suggest that he should not?
Of course, that by itself doesn't mean that they have to approve his nominee, or vote, or even hold hearings. But it seems to show little respect for the Constitution.
I responded:
I agree that the Senate could not advise the President to not make a nomination ever, for the reasons you say. But here, the advice is just to wait until after the election. I don't think the President is required to make a nomination in any particular time frame. He could decide that it would be better to wait, or he might have other more important things to do. In the past, Presidents have sometimes waited a long time before making a nomination, without being accused of acting unconstitutionally. So although there is a duty to make a nomination (eventually), there is a lot of discretion in when the nomination is made. If that's right, then it seems fine for the Senate to advise delaying the nomination a bit. '
Professor Adler then offered this further comment:
[T]he issue is not just a slight delay. Rather, Senator McConnell is advising the President to make no nomination at all.
Obviously, in some cases that's reasonable. If a Justice were to die or resign on the last day of a President's term, I can't imagine anyone objecting to the President's deferring the appointment to his or her successor.
But suppose the next President is a Democrat. Could the Senate advise the new President-elect, "Don't nominate anyone to the Supreme Court for all four years of your term. And if you're re-elected, don't nominate anyone then, either." That doesn't seem right, though I can't say I know enough Constitutional law to say if it's really wrong.
My further response: I think I must concede that in Professor Adler's last hypothetical, the Senate is giving unconstitutional advice. In effect, Senate is saying, we really need just eight Justices. But it is Congress' power, not the Senate's, to decide the size of the Court. If there is a vacancy, the President is under a constitutional duty to (eventually) make a nomination ("he shall nominate..."), and the Senate should not advise him (or her) otherwise. But I think the current situation is different because the Senate is not saying to refrain from nominations indefinitely, for no apparently reason, but rather is saying refrain from nominations for a fairly short defined period (until after the election) for a specific articulated reason (to provide popular input on the type of Justice to be selected).
Thanks to Professor Adler for raising the question, which I think is an important one.
(To be clear, none of this goes to the question whether the Senate may refuse its consent indefinitely due to political disagreement with the President).
The text plainly empowers the President to nominate, at his discretion, possible Supreme Court justices, ambassadors, public ministers and consuls, and other "officers of the United States." The text also requires, in a straightforward and unambiguous way, Senate "advice and consent" (sometimes called "confirmation"), before the President may appoint such a nominee to the office in question. The clause does not, however, mention or impose any duty to consent to such nominations or, for that matter, to consider the nomination in any particular way. The Vice President's assertion to the contrary is just that, an assertion, which attempts to transform a requirement of Senate consent before appointment into a constitutional mandate of an (unspecified) amount and type of "consideration" before granting or withholding such consent. Far from "plainly" requiring such process, the language of Article II, Section 2 simply does not bear this construction, which would assign the phrase "with the advice and consent" two entirely different functions. As Ed Whelan explains over at Bench Memos. "the Constitution says nothing about how the Senate should go about exercising its power to advise and consent-or-withhold consent, and it thus leaves the Senate entirely free to exercise that power as it sees fit." In the same way, it should be added, the Constitution leaves the President entirely free to determine how to go about deciding whom to nominate in the first place.
Hell, it was further exacerbated by Reid nuking the filibuster on all appointee instead of the Supreme Court. Now THAT cat is out of the bag, just watch a slim majority Democrat Senate nuke that too.
Bill Frist let that cat out of the bag back in 2004 when he threatened to nuke the Democratic filibuster of Bush judicial appointees.
Hell, it was further exacerbated by Reid nuking the filibuster on all appointee instead of the Supreme Court. Now THAT cat is out of the bag, just watch a slim majority Democrat Senate nuke that too.
Bill Frist let that cat out of the bag back in 2004 when he threatened to nuke the Democratic filibuster of Bush judicial appointees.
You mean, the time when Biden previously killed 32 Bush's nominees to the bench without giving them so much as a hearing?
This isn't done in a vacuum to shiv the other side.
It's all about the control dynamics between the majority and minority party. Both parties has always 'threatened' to change the rules. But don't whitewash what Reid did when he actually nuked filibuster on all non-SC appointees. Which effectively loaded the courts of more liberal jurists that favored the Democrat's polices.
Besides, I'm pretty sure the majority has always complained of the minority's gratuitous use of the Filibuster. The Civil Rights Act comes to mind...
TheMeanDM wrote: If the Dems did the same in the 90's, it certainly doesn't make it right then....nor does it make it right now.
That'd the kind of gak that NEEDS to stop.
Sure... just vote for the other guy.
Not that it'll change much as the Democrats would be doing the exact same thing if the role were reversed.
:shrugs:
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skyth wrote: Plus it's a proven lie that keeps on being brought up that the Democrats did the same thing in the 90's.
You keep saying that... but you would be wrong. In the link I posted earlier:
... The bottom line is that what Republicans are doing today is far from unprecedented. To the contrary, it is the norm. There is a graveyard filled with judicial appointments killed without a hearing by both Republicans and Democrats in an election year.
TheMeanDM wrote: If the Dems did the same in the 90's, it certainly doesn't make it right then....nor does it make it right now.
That'd the kind of gak that NEEDS to stop.
Sure... just vote for the other guy.
Not that it'll change much as the Democrats would be doing the exact same thing if the role were reversed.
:shrugs:
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skyth wrote: Plus it's a proven lie that keeps on being brought up that the Democrats did the same thing in the 90's.
You keep saying that... but you would be wrong. In the link I posted earlier:
...
The bottom line is that what Republicans are doing today is far from unprecedented. To the contrary, it is the norm. There is a graveyard filled with judicial appointments killed without a hearing by both Republicans and Democrats in an election year.
TheMeanDM wrote: If the Dems did the same in the 90's, it certainly doesn't make it right then....nor does it make it right now.
That'd the kind of gak that NEEDS to stop.
Sure... just vote for the other guy.
Not that it'll change much as the Democrats would be doing the exact same thing if the role were reversed.
:shrugs:
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skyth wrote: Plus it's a proven lie that keeps on being brought up that the Democrats did the same thing in the 90's.
You keep saying that... but you would be wrong. In the link I posted earlier:
...
The bottom line is that what Republicans are doing today is far from unprecedented. To the contrary, it is the norm. There is a graveyard filled with judicial appointments killed without a hearing by both Republicans and Democrats in an election year.
"Advise and Consent" does not mean "We won't even look at your candidate".
So please, stop pretending that such is the case. The President nominated someone and the Senate isn't "playing hardball", they're "playing noball".
It's like declaring yourself the winner of a baseball game by never throwing out a pitch the whole game--nobody but you and your ardent fans will say that such was the case.
skyth wrote: Like I said...same old discredited lie that the Republicans keep on repeating.
You and I won't see eye-to-eye on this.
And no, it isn't discredited. Why the hell would Biden bring it up at all?
The reason why is that it's an implicit threat.
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Kanluwen wrote: "Advise and Consent" does not mean "We won't even look at your candidate".
So please, stop pretending that such is the case. The President nominated someone and the Senate isn't "playing hardball", they're "playing noball".
It's like declaring yourself the winner of a baseball game by never throwing out a pitch the whole game--nobody but you and your ardent fans will say that such was the case.
Please stop perpetuating the idea that this is abnormality.
Ya'll are pissed because Obama won't like get *his* nominee through.
Justice Murnaghan of 4th Circuit Appellate Court, had died in August 2000. The election was a few months away. Bill Clinton nominated Judge Andre Davis anyways and didn't get it. So, for Bush's entire two terms in office, Democrat Senate blocked all Republican nominees on one pretext on another until Obama took office. So, by my math, that seat stayed open not for a year or two or even six, but for nine years.
I'm talking about the powers afforded to the Senate and President via the Constitution.
As written, they're both doing their job.
In 40k lingo, both sides are RAW in their views.
Why does any nominee deserve a hearing? If the party says... naw, that candidate doesn't work for us... why would you be okay with the selection committee to "go through the motions" and waste everyone's time, if we know that person won't even get to a floor vote?
So, because the Senate is choosing to use it's Advise portion in this manner, maybe Obama need to go back to the drawing board and pick someone else.
Quoting this so you can't go back and edit now that you've inadvertently hit on the truth: it's the PARTY making this choice, NOT the SENATE. The Senate consists of 100 members. By denying even one of those members the chance to have a say (which is what the appointed leadership is doing), then the Senate is not actually doing its job. I know you're going to trot out the elementary school playground excuse of "but the Dems did it first!", but we're not talking about elementary school kids here, but grown men and women who should be held to a higher standard.
Kanluwen wrote: "Advise and Consent" does not mean "We won't even look at your candidate".
So please, stop pretending that such is the case. The President nominated someone and the Senate isn't "playing hardball", they're "playing noball".
It's like declaring yourself the winner of a baseball game by never throwing out a pitch the whole game--nobody but you and your ardent fans will say that such was the case.
Please stop perpetuating the idea that this is abnormality.
Ya'll are pissed because Obama won't like get *his* nominee through.
I don't really care about that. What I care about is the Senate doing its flipping job.
Justice Murnaghan of 4th Circuit Appellate Court, had died in August 2000. The election was a few months away. Bill Clinton nominated Judge Andre Davis anyways and didn't get it. So, for Bush's entire two terms in office, Democrat Senate blocked all Republican nominees on one pretext on another until Obama took office. So, by my math, that seat stayed open not for a year or two or even six, but for nine years.
That was one of how many seats, Whembly? There are FIFTEEN SEATS in the 4th Circuit Appellate Court.
Clinton nominated Davis, no hearing was held and Clinton left office. The nominations go when the President goes. Bush opted not to nominate Davis.
HOWEVER, Clinton did establish a judge in the 15th seat which had not been used since its inception in 1990, installing Roger Gregory via a recess appointment---which meant it would have lasted only until the end of the 2001 Congressional session(from December 27th, 2000 for the recess appointment), BUT George Bush renominated him on May 9, 2001.
Anyways, reading the details of the 4th Circuit Appellate Court makes it clear that your entire statement is bunk. So what if that particular seat stayed up for 9 years? There were no less than four nominations that George Bush did for the 4th Circuit Appellate Court with three of them being approved with no real contest(G. Steven Agee, Dennis Shedd, and Allyson Kay Duncan).
Funny how the whole friggin' reason why she was immediately blocked had to do with Republicans refusing two Clinton nominations to even have hearings, huh?
Read your own articles sometime. They don't make the points you think they make.
After over two years, Miguel Estrada never even got an up/down vote.
Gee, I wonder why...
Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, noting Estrada's lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state, or federal level. Additionally, though a member of The Federalist Society, Estrada had never been an academic, so there was no record of his writing by which the Senate could review his record. He had worked in the Office of the Solicitor General under the senior President George Herbert Walker Bush. He had also been a partner in the same law firm as Ted Olson, working on the legal team that represented the younger Bush in the Bush v. Gore case. Thus he and his record were well known in conservative circles, and he was even known to be a friend of Ann Coulter who acknowledged him in her book.
Additionally? Filibustering a candidate for a Court of Appeals position != refusing to consider someone for a USSC position.
So spare me your indignation and your arguments to the contrary.
God forbid a co-equal branch refuses to be a rubber stamp for the President.
Do you actually read what you post links to, or are you just following names given out in a blog/article? Not a single one of the individuals you mentioned were considered for the USSC. They were all Court of Appeals.
He selectively reads them to find the points he wants them to make, sort of like repeating the "Biden rule" canard. The whole quote doesn't say what he wants it to, so he clips it to make it. As he said he "can play this game all day". Doesn't mean others have to play along.
I'm talking about the powers afforded to the Senate and President via the Constitution.
As written, they're both doing their job.
In 40k lingo, both sides are RAW in their views.
Why does any nominee deserve a hearing? If the party says... naw, that candidate doesn't work for us... why would you be okay with the selection committee to "go through the motions" and waste everyone's time, if we know that person won't even get to a floor vote?
So, because the Senate is choosing to use it's Advise portion in this manner, maybe Obama need to go back to the drawing board and pick someone else.
Quoting this so you can't go back and edit now that you've inadvertently hit on the truth: it's the PARTY making this choice, NOT the SENATE. The Senate consists of 100 members. By denying even one of those members the chance to have a say (which is what the appointed leadership is doing), then the Senate is not actually doing its job. I know you're going to trot out the elementary school playground excuse of "but the Dems did it first!", but we're not talking about elementary school kids here, but grown men and women who should be held to a higher standard.
You do know in the Senate you can have majority and minority party... no?
I'm talking about the powers afforded to the Senate and President via the Constitution.
As written, they're both doing their job.
In 40k lingo, both sides are RAW in their views.
Why does any nominee deserve a hearing? If the party says... naw, that candidate doesn't work for us... why would you be okay with the selection committee to "go through the motions" and waste everyone's time, if we know that person won't even get to a floor vote?
So, because the Senate is choosing to use it's Advise portion in this manner, maybe Obama need to go back to the drawing board and pick someone else.
Quoting this so you can't go back and edit now that you've inadvertently hit on the truth: it's the PARTY making this choice, NOT the SENATE. The Senate consists of 100 members. By denying even one of those members the chance to have a say (which is what the appointed leadership is doing), then the Senate is not actually doing its job. I know you're going to trot out the elementary school playground excuse of "but the Dems did it first!", but we're not talking about elementary school kids here, but grown men and women who should be held to a higher standard.
You do know in the Senate you can have majority and minority party... no?
But it is the job of the Senate as a whole to advise, is it not? It does not say that it is the role of the senate majority, it says the whole senate. By the majority party refusing to even hold hearings, even if the outcome is apparently a foregone conclusion, they make it impossible for the minority party to do their job, even if they want to.
That means that the people who are represented by those minority senators get absolutely no say in the process. The majority strip away their democratic voice just because they're too much of a bunch of goddamn children to suck it up and do what they're paid to do and also what is the right and democratic thing to do.
For a party which is constantly espousing democracy and freedom, the Republicans certainly have no hesitation in taking away peoples democratic right to have their opinions and beliefs heard just because they aren't getting their own way.
Kanluwen wrote: "Advise and Consent" does not mean "We won't even look at your candidate".
So please, stop pretending that such is the case. The President nominated someone and the Senate isn't "playing hardball", they're "playing noball".
It's like declaring yourself the winner of a baseball game by never throwing out a pitch the whole game--nobody but you and your ardent fans will say that such was the case.
Please stop perpetuating the idea that this is abnormality.
Ya'll are pissed because Obama won't like get *his* nominee through.
I don't really care about that. What I care about is the Senate doing its flipping job.
Sorry... I highly doubt you'll jump in the same way if the parties were reversed.
Justice Murnaghan of 4th Circuit Appellate Court, had died in August 2000. The election was a few months away. Bill Clinton nominated Judge Andre Davis anyways and didn't get it. So, for Bush's entire two terms in office, Democrat Senate blocked all Republican nominees on one pretext on another until Obama took office. So, by my math, that seat stayed open not for a year or two or even six, but for nine years.
That was one of how many seats, Whembly? There are FIFTEEN SEATS in the 4th Circuit Appellate Court.
Irrelevant.
Clinton nominated Davis, no hearing was held and Clinton left office. The nominations go when the President goes. Bush opted not to nominate Davis.
As it is his purview to nominate whomever he wants. Just like if it's Hillary Clinton in the whitehouse in 2017, she doesn't have to renominate Merrick Garland.
HOWEVER, Clinton did establish a judge in the 15th seat which had not been used since its inception in 1990, installing Roger Gregory via a recess appointment---which meant it would have lasted only until the end of the 2001 Congressional session(from December 27th, 2000 for the recess appointment), BUT George Bush renominated him on May 9, 2001.
OK... and? This does in now way invalidate my previous statements.
Anyways, reading the details of the 4th Circuit Appellate Court makes it clear that your entire statement is bunk. So what if that particular seat stayed up for 9 years? There were no less than four nominations that George Bush did for the 4th Circuit Appellate Court with three of them being approved with no real contest(G. Steven Agee, Dennis Shedd, and Allyson Kay Duncan).
Funny how the whole friggin' reason why she was immediately blocked had to do with Republicans refusing two Clinton nominations to even have hearings, huh?
Oh... so you *do* agree that it's du jour for the Senate to block Presidential appointees.
Thanks for unintentionally supporting my case!
Read your own articles sometime. They don't make the points you think they make.
Sure they do, you don't like the facts as presented.
After over two years, Miguel Estrada never even got an up/down vote.
Gee, I wonder why...
Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, noting Estrada's lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state, or federal level. Additionally, though a member of The Federalist Society, Estrada had never been an academic, so there was no record of his writing by which the Senate could review his record. He had worked in the Office of the Solicitor General under the senior President George Herbert Walker Bush. He had also been a partner in the same law firm as Ted Olson, working on the legal team that represented the younger Bush in the Bush v. Gore case. Thus he and his record were well known in conservative circles, and he was even known to be a friend of Ann Coulter who acknowledged him in her book.
But, he was imminently qualified as Elena Kegan was...
Additionally? Filibustering a candidate for a Court of Appeals position != refusing to consider someone for a USSC position.
The Constitution makes no distinction. My point was that the current Senate isn't doing anything out of the norm.
So spare me your indignation and your arguments to the contrary.
God forbid a co-equal branch refuses to be a rubber stamp for the President.
Do you actually read what you post links to, or are you just following names given out in a blog/article? Not a single one of the individuals you mentioned were considered for the USSC. They were all Court of Appeals.
Way to miss the point.
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Gordon Shumway wrote: He selectively reads them to find the points he wants them to make, sort of like repeating the "Biden rule" canard. The whole quote doesn't say what he wants it to, so he clips it to make it. As he said he "can play this game all day". Doesn't mean others have to play along.
But it is the job of the Senate as a whole to advise, is it not? It does not say that it is the role of the senate majority, it says the whole senate. By the majority party refusing to even hold hearings, even if the outcome is apparently a foregone conclusion, they make it impossible for the minority party to do their job, even if they want to.
Indeed.
That means that the people who are represented by those minority senators get absolutely no say in the process. The majority strip away their democratic voice just because they're too much of a bunch of goddamn children to suck it up and do what they're paid to do and also what is the right and democratic thing to do.
You only need 41 votes to stop the process. The minority has a VERY strong method to stop the majority.
For a party which is constantly espousing democracy and freedom, the Republicans certainly have no hesitation in taking away peoples democratic right to have their opinions and beliefs heard just because they aren't getting their own way.
You really should recalibrate that as that is not even remotely true.
I love all the finger pointing. "They started it!" "They did it first!" "Oh yeah, well this is payback!"
Politics are not blood sport. They are a giant pile of gak right now. Millions and millions of people depend on laws that provide them with necessities or determine what they are able/unable to do at any point of time.
Maybe the people we pay to pass and write these laws should be above the "he said/she said bullgak" and the "playground politics" that they are trying to push as the norm.
Maybe, just maybe the poor Americans who need these guys to make decisions that could impact welfare/job opportunities need them to rise above the Red vs. Blue mentality and actually do some work. I always found it funny how politicians put down poor Americans as lazy and drug addicted, then turn around and refuse to do their jobs/get caught in drug scandals.
In the end, whembly is right, in that the difference between now and prior nominations is one of degree, and not of kind.
What's changed isn't that the senate is refusing to consider a judicial nominee, that's not uncommon. What's changed is the high profile nature, as it's SCOTUS seat, and the fairly brazen nature of it. Prior refusals to consider have been quiet, while the GOP clearly hopes to make hay from their refusal.
You mean, the time when Biden previously killed 32 Bush's nominees to the bench without giving them so much as a hearing?
No, that was in 1992. The Frist incident was in 2004.
But that article is interesting because it specifically mentions Biden's term on the Senate Judicial Committee, but links to a CRS publication about his term on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. A publication which is conveniently behind a de facto pay-wall.
Besides, I'm pretty sure the majority has always complained of the minority's gratuitous use of the Filibuster. The Civil Rights Act comes to mind...
The Civil Rights Act broke down along geographic, not Party lines. All the primary supporters and opponents were Democrats. Indeed, the Democrats controlled both houses and the Presidency at the time.
The Civil Rights Act broke down along geographic, not Party lines. All the primary supporters and opponents were Democrats. Indeed, the Democrats controlled both houses and the Presidency at the time.
That the Civil Rights Act was passed at all owes a great deal to the divide between the Democratic Party, and a lack of opposition by the Republican party. Because sometimes, politics isn't about stabbing the other side in the back. Sometimes its about stabbing your own side in the foot
If you are not prepared to acknowledge the difference between turning down a candidate because he lacks the necessary experience and academic credentials, and refusing to consider any candidate proposed by a president of the other party, you are following the modern Republican approach to the governance of a once-great but now sadly diminished nation.
Kilkrazy wrote: If you are not prepared to acknowledge the difference between turning down a candidate because he lacks the necessary experience and academic credentials, and refusing to consider any candidate proposed by a president of the other party, you are following the modern Republican approach to the governance of a once-great but now sadly diminished nation.
Kanluwen wrote: "Advise and Consent" does not mean "We won't even look at your candidate".
So please, stop pretending that such is the case. The President nominated someone and the Senate isn't "playing hardball", they're "playing noball".
It's like declaring yourself the winner of a baseball game by never throwing out a pitch the whole game--nobody but you and your ardent fans will say that such was the case.
Please stop perpetuating the idea that this is abnormality.
Ya'll are pissed because Obama won't like get *his* nominee through.
I don't really care about that. What I care about is the Senate doing its flipping job.
Sorry... I highly doubt you'll jump in the same way if the parties were reversed.
You're right, I wouldn't.
Because the Democratic Party--despite your insistence to the contrary--has not shown a willingness to SHUT DOWN GOVERNMENT PROCEDURES BECAUSE THEY AREN'T GETTING THEIR WAY.
Continue though.
Justice Murnaghan of 4th Circuit Appellate Court, had died in August 2000. The election was a few months away. Bill Clinton nominated Judge Andre Davis anyways and didn't get it. So, for Bush's entire two terms in office, Democrat Senate blocked all Republican nominees on one pretext on another until Obama took office. So, by my math, that seat stayed open not for a year or two or even six, but for nine years.
That was one of how many seats, Whembly? There are FIFTEEN SEATS in the 4th Circuit Appellate Court.
Irrelevant.
Says you.
Clinton nominated Davis, no hearing was held and Clinton left office. The nominations go when the President goes. Bush opted not to nominate Davis.
As it is his purview to nominate whomever he wants. Just like if it's Hillary Clinton in the whitehouse in 2017, she doesn't have to renominate Merrick Garland.
HOWEVER, Clinton did establish a judge in the 15th seat which had not been used since its inception in 1990, installing Roger Gregory via a recess appointment---which meant it would have lasted only until the end of the 2001 Congressional session(from December 27th, 2000 for the recess appointment), BUT George Bush renominated him on May 9, 2001.
OK... and? This does in now way invalidate my previous statements.
If you can't see that your "previous statements" are equating nonsense with more nonsense, then I don't know what kind of a discussion you can expect to have with rational people.
Anyways, reading the details of the 4th Circuit Appellate Court makes it clear that your entire statement is bunk. So what if that particular seat stayed up for 9 years? There were no less than four nominations that George Bush did for the 4th Circuit Appellate Court with three of them being approved with no real contest(G. Steven Agee, Dennis Shedd, and Allyson Kay Duncan).
O.o There was an open seat. Took 9 years to fill.
That.Was.The.Point.
There were also three other seats that opened up and were filled.
Funny how the whole friggin' reason why she was immediately blocked had to do with Republicans refusing two Clinton nominations to even have hearings, huh?
Oh... so you *do* agree that it's du jour for the Senate to block Presidential appointees.
Thanks for unintentionally supporting my case!
Read what I post, not what you think I post.
She was blocked as retaliation for Republicans during the Clinton administration era pulling the exact same garbage that they're pulling now.
Read your own articles sometime. They don't make the points you think they make.
Sure they do, you don't like the facts as presented.
Funny you should say that.
After over two years, Miguel Estrada never even got an up/down vote.
Gee, I wonder why...
Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, noting Estrada's lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state, or federal level. Additionally, though a member of The Federalist Society, Estrada had never been an academic, so there was no record of his writing by which the Senate could review his record. He had worked in the Office of the Solicitor General under the senior President George Herbert Walker Bush. He had also been a partner in the same law firm as Ted Olson, working on the legal team that represented the younger Bush in the Bush v. Gore case. Thus he and his record were well known in conservative circles, and he was even known to be a friend of Ann Coulter who acknowledged him in her book.
But, he was imminently qualified as Elena Kegan was...
...Yeah, no he wasn't.
He had no prior judicial experience and while a member of The Federalist Society, he was not an academic so there was no record of his writing which the Senate could use to review his record.
Elena Kagan on the other hand had been nominated by Clinton to the DC Court of Appeals and taught at University of Chicago Law School, and when her nomination to the DC Court of Appeals expired without action she went on to teach at Harvard Law School and become its first female Dean.
Which meant there were records of her writings that the Senate could review.
Additionally? Filibustering a candidate for a Court of Appeals position != refusing to consider someone for a USSC position.
The Constitution makes no distinction. My point was that the current Senate isn't doing anything out of the norm.
Yes, they absolutely are.
This senate has made a mockery of the Constitution when it comes to their powers, and the fact that you keep trying to apologize for it or try to finger point it as "the other party started it!" is absolutely pathetic.
So spare me your indignation and your arguments to the contrary.
God forbid a co-equal branch refuses to be a rubber stamp for the President.
Do you actually read what you post links to, or are you just following names given out in a blog/article? Not a single one of the individuals you mentioned were considered for the USSC. They were all Court of Appeals.
Way to miss the point.
You, sir, missed the point. Not a single example you gave had to do with the situation of the Senate refusing to even hold a hearing regarding the nomination of an individual to the USSC.
The USSC is the body of the land when it comes to interpreting laws, and the Court of Appeals? They're generally going to have enough sitting judges that a seat can remain open until someone qualified comes along.
Kilkrazy wrote: If you are not prepared to acknowledge the difference between turning down a candidate because he lacks the necessary experience and academic credentials, and refusing to consider any candidate proposed by a president of the other party, you are following the modern Republican approach to the governance of a once-great but now sadly diminished nation.
Kanluwen wrote: "Advise and Consent" does not mean "We won't even look at your candidate".
So please, stop pretending that such is the case. The President nominated someone and the Senate isn't "playing hardball", they're "playing noball".
It's like declaring yourself the winner of a baseball game by never throwing out a pitch the whole game--nobody but you and your ardent fans will say that such was the case.
Please stop perpetuating the idea that this is abnormality.
Ya'll are pissed because Obama won't like get *his* nominee through.
I don't really care about that. What I care about is the Senate doing its flipping job.
Sorry... I highly doubt you'll jump in the same way if the parties were reversed.
You're right, I wouldn't.
Because it's okay when it's "your team".
Because the Democratic Party--despite your insistence to the contrary--has not shown a willingness to SHUT DOWN GOVERNMENT PROCEDURES BECAUSE THEY AREN'T GETTING THEIR WAY.
Funny interpretation on what's going on now.
The Senate has a lot of leeway on how to perform "Advise and Consent". So... let's recap:
1) President nominates Merrick Garland. So, that's satisfies the President's function in nominating 'political appointees'
2) Senate says "let's wait till after the November election as we want the people to have a say". So that fulfills the Senate "Advise" function as well.
It's all kosher.
Continue though.
Justice Murnaghan of 4th Circuit Appellate Court, had died in August 2000. The election was a few months away. Bill Clinton nominated Judge Andre Davis anyways and didn't get it. So, for Bush's entire two terms in office, Democrat Senate blocked all Republican nominees on one pretext on another until Obama took office. So, by my math, that seat stayed open not for a year or two or even six, but for nine years.
That was one of how many seats, Whembly? There are FIFTEEN SEATS in the 4th Circuit Appellate Court.
Irrelevant.
Says you.
Just presenting the idea that it's not unusual for seats to remain vacant for a stretch of time.
Clinton nominated Davis, no hearing was held and Clinton left office. The nominations go when the President goes. Bush opted not to nominate Davis.
As it is his purview to nominate whomever he wants. Just like if it's Hillary Clinton in the whitehouse in 2017, she doesn't have to renominate Merrick Garland.
HOWEVER, Clinton did establish a judge in the 15th seat which had not been used since its inception in 1990, installing Roger Gregory via a recess appointment---which meant it would have lasted only until the end of the 2001 Congressional session(from December 27th, 2000 for the recess appointment), BUT George Bush renominated him on May 9, 2001.
OK... and? This does in now way invalidate my previous statements.
If you can't see that your "previous statements" are equating nonsense with more nonsense, then I don't know what kind of a discussion you can expect to have with rational people.
Furthermore, if you can't see a situation where Bush nominated someone and the Democrats refused to fill it leaving the seat open for 9 years JUST BECAUSE. Then you and I won't see eye-to-eye on this.
Anyways, reading the details of the 4th Circuit Appellate Court mahkes it clear that your entire statement is bunk. So what if that particular seat stayed up for 9 years? There were no less than four nominations that George Bush did for the 4th Circuit Appellate Court with three of them being approved with no real contest(G. Steven Agee, Dennis Shedd, and Allyson Kay Duncan).
O.o There was an open seat. Took 9 years to fill.
That.Was.The.Point.
There were also three other seats that opened up and were filled.
Convenient how you forgot that, huh?
Irrelevant. Bush had a nominee, and the Democrat Senate refuses to confirm.
Funny how the whole friggin' reason why she was immediately blocked had to do with Republicans refusing two Clinton nominations to even have hearings, huh?
Oh... so you *do* agree that it's du jour for the Senate to block Presidential appointees.
Thanks for unintentionally supporting my case!
Read what I post, not what you think I post.
She was blocked as retaliation for Republicans during the Clinton administration era pulling the exact same garbage that they're pulling now.
So what the Senate doing today isn't that unusual. Glad you agree.
Read your own articles sometime. They don't make the points you think they make.
Sure they do, you don't like the facts as presented.
Funny you should say that.
Laugh away... I'm in a good place.
After over two years, Miguel Estrada never even got an up/down vote.
Gee, I wonder why...
Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, noting Estrada's lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state, or federal level. Additionally, though a member of The Federalist Society, Estrada had never been an academic, so there was no record of his writing by which the Senate could review his record. He had worked in the Office of the Solicitor General under the senior President George Herbert Walker Bush. He had also been a partner in the same law firm as Ted Olson, working on the legal team that represented the younger Bush in the Bush v. Gore case. Thus he and his record were well known in conservative circles, and he was even known to be a friend of Ann Coulter who acknowledged him in her book.
But, he was imminently qualified as Elena Kegan was...
...Yeah, no he wasn't.
He had no prior judicial experience and while a member of The Federalist Society, he was not an academic so there was no record of his writing which the Senate could use to review his record.
Elena Kagan on the other hand had been nominated by Clinton to the DC Court of Appeals and taught at University of Chicago Law School, and when her nomination to the DC Court of Appeals expired without action she went on to teach at Harvard Law School and become its first female Dean.
Which meant there were records of her writings that the Senate could review.
No... he was unquestioningly qualified who had excellent schools, had excellent clerkships, has a good work record and held the highest rating from the American Bar Association.
The Democrats didn't want him on the appellate court because he was labeled as the "Latino Clerance Thomas" and fears that he'd be fasttracked to the USSC.
Additionally? Filibustering a candidate for a Court of Appeals position != refusing to consider someone for a USSC position.
The Constitution makes no distinction. My point was that the current Senate isn't doing anything out of the norm.
Yes, they absolutely are.
This senate has made a mockery of the Constitution when it comes to their powers, and the fact that you keep trying to apologize for it or try to finger point it as "the other party started it!" is absolutely pathetic.
I'm going to say this again, but with feelings.
BOTH parties do this. It's a shame you refuse to acknowledge this. Where's this anger when it took Justice Priscilla Owen 4 years to get confirmed? Oh... wait, you just admitted previously that "she was blocked as retaliation for Republicans during the Clinton administration era...".
So is it:
-When Republicans does it, they're scum of the earth...
-When Democrats does it, they're taking a principled stand...
So spare me your indignation and your arguments to the contrary.
God forbid a co-equal branch refuses to be a rubber stamp for the President.
Do you actually read what you post links to, or are you just following names given out in a blog/article? Not a single one of the individuals you mentioned were considered for the USSC. They were all Court of Appeals.
Way to miss the point.
You, sir, missed the point. Not a single example you gave had to do with the situation of the Senate refusing to even hold a hearing regarding the nomination of an individual to the USSC.
Try... not a USSC cadidate. My point was for every Judicial positions (heck, even just political appointees in general).
The USSC is the body of the land when it comes to interpreting laws, and the Court of Appeals? They're generally going to have enough sitting judges that a seat can remain open until someone qualified comes along.
So the President have two options as I see it.
A) Wait till after the November election. or...
B) Nominate someone in Scalia's mold for the Senate to begin confirmation.
You have repeatedly insinuated, and some times stated, that the Republican Party is your team. Becoming defensive now doesn't do much to go against that.
You have repeatedly insinuated, and some times stated, that the Republican Party is your team. Becoming defensive now doesn't do much to go against that.
I've never denied that with how the current Democrat leader is constructed.
I've never denied that with how the current Democrat leader is constructed.
Point still stand.
No, your point does not stand.
You are attempting to conflate "Party" and "Leader", while using that conflation to characterize them all. This is team-based behavior and one of the central problems with American politics.
I've never denied that with how the current Democrat leader is constructed.
Point still stand.
No, your point does not stand.
You are attempting to conflate "Party" and "Leader", while using that conflation to characterize them all. This is team-based behavior and one of the central problems with American politics.
We're just going to disagree.
The party leaders wield considerable clout.
Part of the problem is not recognizing that the Senate/House is a deliberative body. Not a group where everyone needs to agree on everything.
So what you're saying is that the majority party (currently Republicans) get to marginalize the representation of the minority party and the constituents that they represent...or even if there is a majority of the population that supports a course of action but the majority party leaders do not.
Gotcha. ;-)
Automatically Appended Next Post: Really does tie in with this study then, doesn't it!
We already knew for a few years now that the Republican Party thinks that the wishes of the majority in the house is irrelevant, so why are people always acting surprised that party trumps majority?
TheMeanDM wrote: So what you're saying is that the majority party (currently Republicans) get to marginalize the representation of the minority party and the constituents that they represent...or even if there is a majority of the population that supports a course of action but the majority party leaders do not.
There no longer are any rules in the Supreme Court nomination process
By Miguel A. Estrada and Benjamin Wittes February 19
Miguel A. Estrada is an attorney in Washington, D.C. Benjamin Wittes, a former Post editorial writer, is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and editor in chief of Lawfare.
Here’s a simple piece of advice for anyone confused by the partisan politics of replacing Justice Antonin Scalia: Assume that anyone who claims to be acting out of a pristine sense of civic principle is being dishonest.
We have both argued for a world in which judicial nominees receive prompt hearings and up-and-down votes based solely on their objective qualifications — education, experience and temperament. But that has not been our world for at least two decades. The savvy citizen should recognize as much and heavily discount anyone who speaks in the language of principle about the rules or norms that do or should govern the treatment of either a judicial nominee or the president who sends that nominee to the Senate. As recent history demonstrates, the only rule that governs the confirmation process is the law of the jungle: There are no rules. There is no point in pretending otherwise, as much as many of us wish it were not so.
We have come by this view with extreme reluctance. One of us was a judicial nominee who never got a vote from the Senate but who nonetheless publicly encouraged the Senate to support President Obama’s appointees, including an overwhelmingly qualified Supreme Court nominee of the opposite party. The other wrote editorials for The Post for many years decrying unreasonable Senate treatment of nominees of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administration alike and also wrote a book arguing for a restoration of norms of expeditious and fair consideration of nominees. Both of us believe that when presidents nominate qualified nominees, the Senate should confirm them, and that courts should be fully staffed at all times to dispense justice to the litigants who come before them.
Rarely has either of us lost an argument more completely at the hands of the entire political culture than we have lost this one.
Republicans and Democrats put the blame on the other for the complete abandonment of rules and norms in the judicial confirmation process. Both are being insincere — whitewashing their conduct over a long period of time while complaining bitterly about the very same conduct on the part of the other side. Both have chosen, in increments of one-upmanship, to replace a common law of judicial nominations that was based on certain norms with one based on power politics alone.
Today, there is no principle and no norm in the judicial nominations process that either side would not violate itself and simultaneously demand the other side observe as a matter of decency and inter-branch comity.
This truth has consequences. In the judicial nominations process for which we argued, there were several good reasons for Republican senators to move a nominee advanced by Obama late in his tenure. One was that the Senate owed an institutional duty to the executive branch to consider presumptively qualified nominees in a fair process. Another was the knowledge that some day, the shoe would be on the other foot. A Senate of the opposite party would confront a late nominee of a president of the opposite party. We all seemed to agree that we would rather live in a world in which both nominees got considered than in a world in which neither got considered. In that world, comity, fairness and long-term self-interest of both parties all pushed towards a relatively predictable, relatively humane (to the nominee), relatively deferential (to the president) process.
In a world in which those norms do not have force, there is no reason in principle to demand that Republicans move a late-stage nominee from Obama.
Certainly, the Constitution doesn’t require it of them. All the Constitution gives the president is the power to nominate whomever he wishes for a judicial vacancy. The Constitution expressly provides that the power to appoint may be exercised only with the affirmative concurrence of the Senate. If the Senate does not act at all — for a good reason, for a bad reason, or for no reason at all — that is the constitutional equivalent of the Senate’s rejection of the nominee. The Constitution doesn’t require the Senate to engage in any process at all beyond sitting on its collective hands. All of those expectations were merely a matter of the norms the political parties have so cheerfully torn down.
If the president or a senator of either party tells you differently, ask him or her how is it that both parties have systematically blocked judicial nominees of the other party — using the filibuster and other parliamentary tricks — for the past two decades. The whole purpose of these maneuvers is to prevent the Senate from giving an up-or-down vote to qualified nominees in the expectation that the nominee will eventually go away and the Senate will not have to vote on the merits of his or her nomination. As a senator, Obama filibustered nominees. So did then-Senator Hillary Clinton. And, of course, the Republican caucus also filibustered Obama’s nominees early and often. Even before the filibuster had been normalized, both parties — when in the majority — refused to schedule hearings on the candidates nominated by presidents of the other party or did so only with lengthy delays. Each of those instances involved, in the current parlance, the Senate “not doing its job” and leaving judicial vacancies open for years. If all of that was unconstitutional, then both parties conspired to dispose of the document a long time ago.
Ah, you say, but the Supreme Court is different. Actually, it’s not.
The political infighting over staffing our courts is, in fact, less harmful when it affects one nominee who understands fully the political minefield he or she is walking into in accepting the nomination to the high court than when it affects dozens or hundreds of people who undertake to serve with only a limited sense of the blood sport the Senate will make of them. And more importantly, it is less harmful when it plays itself out over a single vacancy on the Supreme Court than when it manifests itself over and over in significantly understaffed federal appellate courts.
Unlike the Supreme Court, which gets to pick its cases and hears on average about 80 cases per year, only a few of which it decides on a 5-to-4 basis, the appeals courts must dispose of thousands of appeals each year. Over the past two decades, both parties have concluded that federal appellate vacancies are far preferable than fully staffed courts if full staffing requires confirming nominees of the other party. This has been the case even when appellate court after court has declared “judicial emergencies,” when vacancies result in intolerably high caseloads for the remaining judges. Since both parties have accepted (and ignored) those emergencies with equanimity, it is a bit late in the day now to cry crocodile tears over a single vacancy on a court that hears a few dozen cases and needs a tie-breaking vote only in a small handful of those. It’s symbolic, yes, but it’s symbolic in a non-acute setting of a reality that has long existed in acute situations elsewhere and about which the political culture plainly does not care.
Lest any reader think we are making a partisan point here, we hasten to emphasize that if the Senate and the presidency flip hands in November, we also think there will be no principled basis to demand that a Democratic Senate ever consider a nominee by President Trump, Cruz, or Rubio. The decision on the part of a future-Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer at that point is that a 4-to-4 court is a better long-term equilibrium for him than confirming a nominee of the other party will be exactly as defensible as current-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision today that a 4-to-4 court is a better short-term equilibrium for him than confirming a nominee from Obama.
Whatever elevated rhetoric anyone invokes to suit his or her convenience, the fact is that our real judicial nominations system is now one of raw power and nothing else.
“That is what this suit is about. Power. The allocation of power among Congress, the President, and the courts,” Scalia once wrote in an important separation of powers dissent. “Frequently an issue of this sort will come . . . clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing. . . . But this wolf comes as a wolf.”
Our new judicial nominations system also came as a wolf. There were many good reasons, knowable at the time, not to let the wolf through the door. Both parties had other priorities — most important the perceived urgent need to prevent the other party from confirming its nominees. Appeals to principle and precedent ring hollow now — particularly because the parties are still appealing only to principles that any sentient observer knows they would not follow themselves.
There were unwritten rules for a long time in Congress, and particularly in the Senate. the White House as well, for what it's worth.
I guess what surprises me the most about this strategy isn't how it violates norms, once you look at the trend this day was coming. It's how I'm not sure that this strategy is a good one.
When the Senate began it's noise about not holding a vote on any Obama nominee, I assumed that was tough talk to get a relative moderate candidate, keeping with ancient traditions about balance on the bench. That made sense. Make it clear that we're not going to trade Scalia for another ginsberg, but an O'Connor or Kennedy might be okay. That makes sense. When I noticed a lack of leaked names, when it looked like there was no back channel discussion between the Senate leaders and the White house, it became clear they simply wouldn't move on a nomination.
To what end? The most optimistic assessment of the GOP's odds of regaining the White House has it as a coin flip, usually predicated on some sort of horrific scandal that finally sinks Clinton. Further, the GOP's control of the Senate will weaken, and possible collapse.
I'm going to imagine that left wing Super PACs are going to bombard the states of Senators up for reelection with their refusal to act on this nomination, which most American's find distasteful.
So, not only does this strategy rely on keeping the Senate to have any payoff, it also makes holding the Senate less likely.
These aren't circuit court seats or district court judges. This is SCOTUS, and right or wrong, plenty of people are going to connect this with the government shutdowns and start painting a picture of the GOP as reckless in their obstructionism.
So... what do the GOP senate leaders know that I don't? Do they think that any collateral damage will be minimal? Do they think there's a better chance of taking the White House than nearly everybody sees?
Polonius wrote: So... what do the GOP senate leaders know that I don't? Do they think that any collateral damage will be minimal? Do they think there's a better chance of taking the White House than nearly everybody sees?
I'm not sure why you're giving them the benefit of the doubt on having sound judgement, or their fingers on the pulse of the electorate. After all, this is the party that was absolutely sure that Mitt Romney was winning up until the moment he didn't, and in at least one notable case, even after that. I see no reason to believe that they've rejected their operating mode of rejecting unpleasant realities for palatable fictions.
Switching gears a little bit...but still political....
What is up with the contunued "hate" for US relations with Cuba?!
It's been damn near 60 years of crap relations with a tiny little island country that with the exception of the missile crisis, and a flood of immigrants (due to the political climate there) has posed zero threat to us, as far as I can tell.
I just don't get why some are so against building a good relationship with Cuba.
I think McConnel is doing this to make it look to disaffected Republican voters that they can indeed stop Obama. There is a reason those voters are mad as for the past seven years they have been sold nothing but lies by their leaders in power (we are going to stop Obamacare, we are going to repeal Obamacare, we are going to not pass certain budgets, etc.). The leaders did this to gin up their base full well knowing they they did not have the power to actually do any of it. Their voters look at them and instead of getting angry that they were being told lies, believe the leaders were just weak and caved with what Obama wanted. Now McConnel sees one last chance to gin up support, but he doesn't evidently realize that it is too late and that support is gone. All of which leads us to Trump, whose voters are once again believing in lies about what he can/will do, but he lies with so much more panache and conviction and under the pretense that the leaders were weak all along. Of course the problem is McConnell's plan is doomed to failure. The people he is appealing to are no longer listening to him and those who oppose him will become more motivated to vote.
whembly wrote: I missed that and I admitted that I was speculating...
Sure, but I think it should be telling when your worldview leads you to believe something, such as oil and gas giving lots of money to Democrats, and reality shows something very different, that 91% of oil and gas money goes to Republicans.
It should lead you to perhaps rethink some of your assumptions. That perhaps the Democrats aren’t just cynically pushing for less coal because that’s what lobbyists are paying them for, that perhaps they’re taking that path because coal really is an environmental threat.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I think when your worldview leads you to consider something likely, and reality turns out to be 100% the opposite, it should cause some rethink of assumptions.
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Tannhauser42 wrote: The Republicans are basically making a big gamble that two coin tosses are both going to go their way this year: a Republican wins the White House, and the Republicans retain control of the Senate. Right now, the Republicans have the power to get someone into SCOTUS that they can at least tolerate (a moderate), but not someone they actually want (a conservative). They've sworn up and down that the next president should decide, and they'll just have to suck it up if the next president is a Democrat (which is highly likely, Trump is just a disaster, and Cruz is such an avatar of disunity that he wouldn't even be able to get his fellow Senators to convict his own murderer).
Yeah, and while I’ve always been critical of the cynicism the Republicans took to this issue, and their decision to risk precedent over the issue, as a political gamble there was a case for it. They had a good shot at the Whitehouse, and should have been confident of holding the senate. And by simply threatening the action, they forced Obama to potentially temper his selection, and pick someone closer to the centre of US politics.
In terms of pure political strategy, it had merit. But because this is the modern Republican party we’re talking about, they had to go as hard as they could as early as they could. So their early pronouncements that they’d refuse to consider anyone Obama selected have backed them in to a corner. Now as their odds in the general election are drifting, it’s hard for them back off their hardline position, and accept a centrist now, instead of the more leftwing candidate Clinton might nominate.
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whembly wrote: Nothing is stopping them, unless the President nominate someone more agreeable.
I know you don't like the outcome of this, but both sides *are* doing their duties.
McConnell said that they were refusing to hold any hearings, before a Obama possible shortlist of candidates had even been speculated about. We've done this countless times, and you still refuse to see the difference between 'we don't like that particular nominee, go get another' and 'we refuse to consider anyone you nominate, and will continue to refuse until you aren't president anymore'.
And if the rumour is true, that Republicans have sent back channel messages that they'll accept Garland in the lameduck period if a Democrat wins, that just shows this is nothing to do with Garland or anyone Obama would have nominated. It was just a calculated political gamble that they could hold out until a Republican won the presidency and could nominate a conservative.
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whembly wrote: In 40k lingo, both sides are RAW in their views.
RAW makes a mess of a simple boardgame. Applying that kind of culture to national politics… produces the shambolic state of congress we see today. Please stop making excuses for your team, they are acting in bad faith.
So, because the Senate is choosing to use it's Advise portion in this manner, maybe Obama need to go back to the drawing board and pick someone else.
Why are you pretending Obama’s nominee matters? From the very start of this thing McConnell said they were considering no-one that Obama picked.
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CptJake wrote: The senate is performing a function. Their 'advise' function. The Constitution does NOT lay out the procedure, the Senate does. And they seem to have decided in this case their advise function consists of saying 'Sorry POTUS, ain't gonna happen.' And they are within their job description to do so.
You don't have to like, but to declare them unconstitutional and not doing their job is silly, there is no legal precedent to make that call on, and there is precedent for their actions (or lack there of).
You don’t have to call it unconstitutional to understand it is a very dangerous precedent. Once we accept that any party with 51 seats in the senate can simply refuse any possible SC nomination until they win the presidency, why only wait one year? If Trump wins in 2016 but the GOP loses the senate, why wouldn’t Democrats claim they’re within their constitutional bounds to deny any nomination for four years?
The recklessness that Republicans are applying to this process, and willingness with which the party faithful is happy to go along, rationalising whatever they have to in order to keep cheering for their team, well it’s a bit scary.
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Polonius wrote: What's changed isn't that the senate is refusing to consider a judicial nominee, that's not uncommon. What's changed is the high profile nature, as it's SCOTUS seat, and the fairly brazen nature of it. Prior refusals to consider have been quiet, while the GOP clearly hopes to make hay from their refusal.
It seems to me the brazen nature is a massive change. Refusing a nomination, even doing so in a highly public Borking in order to score votes with your supporter groups, that's quite different to simply refusing any nomination. At least Republicans would have to go and find things about the nominated person to complain about. There'd be a game as they'd have to sell their complaints to the American people, or face a backlash as they refuse a candidate who seems qualified and reasonable.
But instead Republicans declared they won't review any nomination, before anyone was even rumoured to be shortlisted. That's a whole new thing, and one that opens up a dangerous precedent.
People have rightly pointed out that there's nothing stopping Democrats from doing the same thing for four years if they end up at some point holding the senate but not the presidency. But there's one thing that's stop them - if the electorate punished the Republicans for this. If their polling numbers tanked real bad because footsoldiers like whembly and CaptJake and a few million others said that accepted process was more important than team red, then that'd send a warning to every politician to never try these kinds of shenanigans.
Not happening though. Partisanship is more important that governance.
Compel wrote: Couldn't anyone who lives in a state with a 'red' Senator, irrespective of their own political alignments write a letter to their senator and say.
"I am a voter and I strongly disagree with your course of action in regard of the Supreme Court nominations and I believe... etc."
And presumably, if that person then gets their friends who can also write articulately to do the same...
Cause, you know, that's how this sort of thing is supposed to work, right?
Yes, folks can write or call. And many are. Of course, there are many saying 'Stick to what you promised us you would do this time, or find a new job next election'.
Except it doesn't work that way. As Romney famously said, it wasn't his job to care about 47% of the country. Politicians barely care about the people who voted for them; they don't care at all about the people who didn't vote for them. There was a time when an elected official actually cared about the concerns of his district, but now it's party first, everything else dead last.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Except it doesn't work that way. As Romney famously said, it wasn't his job to care about 47% of the country. Politicians barely care about the people who voted for them; they don't care at all about the people who didn't vote for them. There was a time when an elected official actually cared about the concerns of his district, but now it's party first, everything else dead last.
The Tea Party forced a lot of ugly primaries. The current R primary is sending the Party a pretty loud message. Maybe they stick their fingers in their ears and lalalalala. Maybe the message gets even louder next time.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Except it doesn't work that way. As Romney famously said, it wasn't his job to care about 47% of the country. Politicians barely care about the people who voted for them; they don't care at all about the people who didn't vote for them. There was a time when an elected official actually cared about the concerns of his district, but now it's party first, everything else dead last.
I've been hearing the same thing. I work in the Disability adjudication office for SSA, and we've actually seen a decrease in Congressional inquiries even as our backlog increases. Basically, members of congress aren't as involved in constituent engagement.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Except it doesn't work that way. As Romney famously said, it wasn't his job to care about 47% of the country. Politicians barely care about the people who voted for them; they don't care at all about the people who didn't vote for them. There was a time when an elected official actually cared about the concerns of his district, but now it's party first, everything else dead last.
I've been hearing the same thing. I work in the Disability adjudication office for SSA, and we've actually seen a decrease in Congressional inquiries even as our backlog increases. Basically, members of congress aren't as involved in constituent engagement.
Let's segue into a different direction...
Do ya'll think we need to expand the congressional critter counts? At least in the House to be more responsive?
The last time the House was increased was in 1912 to the current 435.
The 1910 US census was approx 92 million. So that works out to be ~211,500 people per House congressional seat.
With the current US census hitting approx 320 million... that works out to be ~735,600 folks per House congressional seat.
Nearly 3x as much now as it were since the last time House was expanded.
Would more House members be responsive? Or, would it have an opposite effect?
Not sure I'd advocate increasing the House 3x the size... but, I'm just spitballing here.
It's an interesting thought. I think modern communications and transportation have actually made it easier for a MoC to reach out. I think plenty still do, but compared to most of history, MoCs have moved from seeing themselves as representing the well being of their constituents to a more ideological or party loyalist position. This isn't unique (see Radical Republicans), it's just a shift in approach.
As always, this comes down to voters. yes, gerrymandering is an issue. There's obscene amounts of money for ads. But at the end of the day, people still file into church basements and middle school gyms and vote for these people.
Polonius wrote: It's an interesting thought. I think modern communications and transportation have actually made it easier for a MoC to reach out. I think plenty still do, but compared to most of history, MoCs have moved from seeing themselves as representing the well being of their constituents to a more ideological or party loyalist position. This isn't unique (see Radical Republicans), it's just a shift in approach.
As always, this comes down to voters. yes, gerrymandering is an issue. There's obscene amounts of money for ads. But at the end of the day, people still file into church basements and middle school gyms and vote for these people.
Indeed.
'Tis why events like the Tea Party in 2010 was so distruptive as it was a shock to the status quo.
Here's a chart I found:
Not sure if this is a bad thing... or just a "thing", but it sure is something to ponder.
I think expanding the house would be a good idea. That is a pretty revealing chart. Maybe we should tie the house numbers to population growth. I also think expanding the number or justices on the Supreme Court would help. That way the loss and replacement of a single justice might not seem like as big of a deal. How it would be done would be tricky in order to avoid not looking like you are artificially trying to pack it with you own nominees. Maybe expand it by ten and let each party pick five justices to be put forward.
But the problem with that is the parties have nothing ti do with the system. Unlike in a Parliamentary system, our system is designed without parties in mind, and decisions are supposed to by made by individuals voting the way they see best, not party elites.
Co'tor Shas wrote: But the problem with that is the parties have nothing ti do with the system. Unlike in a Parliamentary system, our system is designed without parties in mind, and decisions are supposed to by made by individuals voting the way they see best, not party elites.
You are correct, it wasn't supposed to be this way. But the way they designed the thing basically ensured it. Whether it's a good thing or not, it's what we have, and we had better figure out how to fit this round peg into the square hole.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Except it doesn't work that way. As Romney famously said, it wasn't his job to care about 47% of the country. Politicians barely care about the people who voted for them; they don't care at all about the people who didn't vote for them. There was a time when an elected official actually cared about the concerns of his district, but now it's party first, everything else dead last.
I've been hearing the same thing. I work in the Disability adjudication office for SSA, and we've actually seen a decrease in Congressional inquiries even as our backlog increases. Basically, members of congress aren't as involved in constituent engagement.
They seem only involved in fundraising at this point.
I think the problem with expanding the house is that it's already arguably so big as to be unwieldy (this is why membership was capped a century ago). Especially given its make up;
Spoiler:
Is it any wonder nothing gets done? Just look at the way it's laid out.
I'll... assess his list and make my determination.
Trump is really making me pine for Cruz to win... CRUZ! (egads!)
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LordofHats wrote: I think the problem with expanding the house is that it's already arguably so big as to be unwieldy (this is why membership was capped a century ago). Especially given its make up;
Spoiler:
Is it any wonder nothing gets done? Just look at the way it's laid out.
Polonius wrote: It's an interesting thought. I think modern communications and transportation have actually made it easier for a MoC to reach out. I think plenty still do, but compared to most of history, MoCs have moved from seeing themselves as representing the well being of their constituents to a more ideological or party loyalist position. This isn't unique (see Radical Republicans), it's just a shift in approach.
As always, this comes down to voters. yes, gerrymandering is an issue. There's obscene amounts of money for ads. But at the end of the day, people still file into church basements and middle school gyms and vote for these people.
I know it's already been mentioned, but the reason nothing gets done is that voters and politicians are acting like we are a parliamentary republic, but our system isn't set up for this kind of government. Heck, they claim that gaining control of the senate and house gives them a mandate over who the president should be. Maybe we should just get a prime minister instead.
We can end up with a government where one party controls 100% of all seats at the state or federal level without ever getting more than 51% of the entire vote.
Gordon Shumway wrote: I think expanding the house would be a good idea. That is a pretty revealing chart. Maybe we should tie the house numbers to population growth. I also think expanding the number or justices on the Supreme Court would help. That way the loss and replacement of a single justice might not seem like as big of a deal.
I actually like that idea. Lets go FDR and have 15.
I don't know if there is anything like an ideal proportion of representation. The UK has 650 elected MPs, compared to under 600 congressmen and senators for the whole of the USA which has five times the population. So, we are supposedly much better represented. However, people still feel a disengagement from democracy and government. I believe this is because of the First Past The Post system. This system always produces a definitive results, but at the cost of ignoring minority views, or even majority views that aren't represented on the ballot. I believe some form of proportional representation would help. All countries with PR have more parties, with governments consisting more often of coalitions.
The other thing I would like to see is a "none of the above" option on the ballot paper, to allow people to register dissatisfaction with all available options. Combined with a law requiring a "quorum" of perhaps 55% of the electorate not voting None.
Gordon Shumway wrote: I think expanding the house would be a good idea. That is a pretty revealing chart. Maybe we should tie the house numbers to population growth. I also think expanding the number or justices on the Supreme Court would help. That way the loss and replacement of a single justice might not seem like as big of a deal.
I actually like that idea. Lets go FDR and have 15.
I was thinking nineteen (let's make those high school civics students earn those A's), but baby steps are good too.
The other thing I would like to see is a "none of the above" option on the ballot paper, to allow people to register dissatisfaction with all available options. Combined with a law requiring a "quorum" of perhaps 55% of the electorate not voting None.
That's a fantastic idea. But, I wouldn't do that for elected positions, only for policy changes.
If you spend more time worried about getting fired than you do worrying about governing the system grinds to a standstill. Increase the threat of loosing your job and it only gets worse.
The House is already a joke. Two year terms, over half of which is spend campaigning for the next term, repeat for life.
Maybe if the congress critters didn't go into it as a career so that they are there for life, it would not be repeated for life....
They should be in constant fear for their jobs. The problem as I see it is that they are not, re-election has become almost automatic until the recent trend to primary some of these crap bags.
CptJake wrote: Maybe if the congress critters didn't go into it as a career so that they are there for life, it would not be repeated for life....
They should be in constant fear for their jobs. The problem as I see it is that they are not, re-election has become almost automatic until the recent trend to primary some of these crap bags.
When the fear leads to not governing, then it is a bad thing though.
Not sure I'd advocate increasing the House 3x the size... but, I'm just spitballing here.
I think that there'd be a few hurdles here. As others have mentioned, communications are more effective today, so it may not be entirely necessary to increase the size of the House.
But the hurdle, or hurdles I'd think would be hardest to get passed, first would be the cost. 3x more people making HoR pay is going to significantly increase tax burden on people. Where's that going to come from? With our current policy of legislating in favor of lobbying businesses, it wouldn't come from them.
That cost, as well as the increase in personnel is most definitely NOT going to go over well with the Libertarian/TEA Party crowds, as that is a visible increase in the size of government.
Personally, I could see a House being 3x the current size, if we had a more Federalist system, like Germany, where seats are allocated per party/population, but that would obviously necessitate a massive overhaul of our entire legislative system.
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djones520 wrote: So, term limits. 2 terms. No need for fear at that point, and you don't have to worry so much about guys looking for a career.
IIRC, it may have been whembly who posts on these comments that the party line drama BS would increase dramatically under such a system, and even less would get done.
I can see where that argument is coming from, and I'd be naive to dismiss it, but I also think that term limits need to be imposed on congress critters.
djones520 wrote: So, term limits. 2 terms. No need for fear at that point, and you don't have to worry so much about guys looking for a career.
IIRC, it may have been whembly who posts on these comments that the party line drama BS would increase dramatically under such a system, and even less would get done.
I can see where that argument is coming from, and I'd be naive to dismiss it, but I also think that term limits need to be imposed on congress critters.
When one party is refusing to even consider doing its job, how much less can get done?
djones520 wrote: So, term limits. 2 terms. No need for fear at that point, and you don't have to worry so much about guys looking for a career.
IIRC, it may have been whembly who posts on these comments that the party line drama BS would increase dramatically under such a system, and even less would get done.
I can see where that argument is coming from, and I'd be naive to dismiss it, but I also think that term limits need to be imposed on congress critters.
When one party is refusing to even consider doing its job, how much less can get done?
Ehh, it's more then just one side. The Senate is notorious for not doing its job no matter whose in charge. Senate Dems took 6 years to pass a budget, which is their most basic job.
djones520 wrote: So, term limits. 2 terms. No need for fear at that point, and you don't have to worry so much about guys looking for a career.
IIRC, it may have been whembly who posts on these comments that the party line drama BS would increase dramatically under such a system, and even less would get done.
I can see where that argument is coming from, and I'd be naive to dismiss it, but I also think that term limits need to be imposed on congress critters.
Term limit laws have created some clear winners and losers. Among the losers are the legislatures themselves.
Steven Rowe is a big proponent of early childhood interventions. He believes they can help reduce rates of mental illness, learning disability and, ultimately, criminal behavior. While serving as speaker of the Maine House six years ago, Rowe translated his ideals into a specific program, sponsoring legislation that expanded child care subsidies, provided tax breaks to businesses offering child care help to their workers and created a statewide home visitation network. When it came time for a vote, Rowe left his speaker's rostrum for the first time to argue for it, saying, "I have never felt more strongly about a bill."
With that kind of a push from the chamber's top leader, it's no wonder that his package passed by an overwhelming margin. It may have been Rowe's most important accomplishment as a legislator. It was also one of his last. After eight years in the House, including two as speaker, he was forced out of office by the state's term limits law. Rowe is now Maine's attorney general--a good job, but one that doesn't give him much leverage over the program he created. His cosponsors on the child care law aren't in the legislature anymore, either. They have been term-limited out as well.
In the absence of Rowe and his child care allies, funding for the package has already been slashed by a third, with more cuts likely to come. Plenty of programs have lost funding in recent years as Maine, like so many states, has suffered from fiscal shortfalls. But Maine, along with other term limit states, is experiencing an added phenomenon: the orphaned program, vulnerable to reduction or elimination because of the forced retirement of its champions. "We're probably seeing more neglect because legislators aren't there to babysit their own legislation," says Renee Bukovchik Van Vechten, a political scientist at the University of Redlands, in California. "We're seeing laws that need updating, and that's the least sexy part of the job."
Every generation of legislators and leaders wants its own initiatives to brag about and, as a result, sometimes neglects programs closely identified with a preceding group. Under term limits, however, a generation can be as short as six years. Legislators become like people who inherit large, complicated appliances for which the owner's manual has been tossed aside. "The imposition of term limits [is] the most significant--and some would say drastic--institutional change in state government in the last two decades," write the editors of a forthcoming study by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Council of State Governments.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that short-term legislators aren't prone to engage in long-term thinking. It's happening in all 15 of the states where term limits have gone into effect. In Arkansas several years ago, members of the legislature negotiated a solid waste fee to underwrite future environmental cleanups. After they all left office, a new group, not appreciating what the money had been set aside for-- or probably not even knowing--dipped into it, disbursing the funds into a newly favored program of their own.
Even during Maine's recent downturn, the legislature continued to innovate in the fields of health and social service. In 2003, the state created the Dirigo program, which seeks to provide universal health insurance coverage through subsidies to employer-based plans. But new legislators are already arguing about the complex law they inherited. A few months ago, some of them accused Governor John Baldacci's administration of pulling a fast one by imposing assessments on insurance companies. They hadn't been around when these particular charges had been negotiated through a long, drawn-out process--in the legislature itself. "That's a major issue that was fought over just two years ago," says Sharon Treat, a former Senate leader and sponsor of the program, now term-limited out. "You would have thought there would have been some awareness."
EXECUTIVE CLOUT
Not all the arguments made against term limits at their inception in the 1990s have proven valid. One of the most common predictions--that with the members serving so briefly, all power would accrue to lobbyists hoarding the institutional and policy knowledge--appears to have been off the mark. Term limits have been a mixed bag for lobbyists, who must introduce themselves to a new, skeptical set of legislators every couple of years, rather than rely on cozy relations with a few key chairmen. Nor is there much evidence that legislative staff have taken advantage of member turnover to impose their own views on inexperienced legislators. In many states, the rate of staff turnover matches or exceeds that of members.
In other ways, though, the revolving-door system created by term limits has reduced the influence of the legislature itself. In particular, it has lost influence to the executive branch. One southern legislator-turned-lobbyist, who prefers not to be identified, says that he sometimes bypasses his state's legislature altogether, taking his clients' business directly to agency officials--the people who actually know how to operate the machinery of government. "There are some legislators who know as much as agency people do, but they're few and far between and they'll be gone very quickly," he says. "Agency heads are the true winners. They can outwait and outlast anyone and everyone on the playing field and they have consolidated their power."
Some governors have complained that lack of experience and expertise among legislators leaves them without strong negotiating partners. "A lot of these issues have to be dealt with in consecutive legislatures," says Angus King, a former governor of Maine who initially supported term limits but came to disdain them after burning through four different speakers, including Rowe, during his eight years in office. "They're very complex and if you always have to go back to square one, you never get anywhere."
Still, almost everyone involved in the legislative process sees governors as big winners under term limits. In addition to their constitutional authority to sign and veto bills, governors in term- limited states control many top-level state jobs that legislators facing short stints will soon want. Whether it is a question of job ambitions, a shortage of information or sheer inexperience, the reality seems to be that legislators do a far less effective job of competing with governors for power once term limits take effect.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, that state's term-limited legislators make just half as many changes to the governor's budget as they did in the old days, representing many billions of dollars in legislative discretion that is no longer exercised. The NCSL/CSG study found similar budgetary effects in other term-limited states, including Colorado and Maine. "The crumbling of legislative power is clear across states," says Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and author of a book on term limits. "There's no more clear finding in the research than a shift in power where the legislature is becoming a less than equal branch of government."
EARLY DECISION
Kousser compares term-limited legislatures to airport terminals. Someone is always coming, someone else is going, and then there are the people who can't seem to find their way to the ticket counter. The state that best illustrates the who's-on-first confusion caused by term limits may be Florida, where House members last July picked Dean Cannon to serve as their future speaker. At the time, Cannon had served in the legislature all of six months. His term as speaker won't begin until 2010. But each freshman class in the Florida House has taken up the practice of choosing the person who will lead them once the class reaches its final two years in office.
One might assume that picking a House Speaker five years in advance reflects a healthy long-term perspective. In Florida, however, it reflects just the opposite: an almost manic habit of making premature decisions on the part of impatient members who know that the clock started ticking for them the day they were first sworn in. As absurd as it sounds, Florida's speakers-to-be in line ahead of Cannon are already being treated to some extent like lame ducks--even before they have a chance to take office. Influence in Florida is continually shifting to the next class coming through the pipeline. "With regard to Dean Cannon, he's a good friend of mine," says a House colleague, Baxter Troutman, "but for him to be speaker-elect-elect-elect--man, he gets inundated now because of the perception that he's going to have so much power handed to him."
Obviously the thinking in picking new speakers or Senate presidents well ahead of time is to give them some practical instruction before they take over the reins. As Sharon Treat, the former Maine Senate leader, points out, there are plenty of managerial challenges involved in running a chamber even before turning to the business of mastering issues, setting an agenda and getting a caucus to sign off on it. Other states have tried different approaches to the succession question. After burning through several speakers in its first few years following the arrival of term limits, the California Assembly gave the job to Fabian Nunez as a freshman, so there'd be at least a few years of stability at the top.
In some states, legislatures that recognize their weakness against the executive have tried to consolidate power in the hands of their leaders as a counterweight. Leadership, even when fleeting, still has its advantages. Leadership PACs have become the foremost source of campaign funds in some term-limited states, and leadership staff are the main in-house sources of information on process and policy for many confused legislators.
The Arkansas House has done away with its old seniority system--an obsolete concept anyway in a body whose members can serve only six years--and allows its speakers to pick committee rosters and chairs. Republican leaders in Michigan, who control both legislative chambers, have made a concerted effort to appeal early and often to newcomers, from the time they first express a tentative interest in running until they finally show up at Lansing. The argument is that by sticking together they can more effectively offset the power of Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm.
Similarly, legislative leaders in Ohio, widely credited with having done the best job of preserving their power under term limits in relation to the executive, have done so by involving junior members more fully in their decision-making process--for example, going over budgets practically line by line in caucus meetings.
Still, it's not like the old days, when speakers in many states held sway for more than a decade, far outlasting governors. "If leaders are there a short time, the idea of taking on the responsibility of preserving and protecting the institution is eroded," says Alan Rosenthal, of Rutgers University, who wrote a book about governors and legislatures as contending powers. "If the legislature and the governor are controlled by the same party, the legislature pretty much gives the governor whatever he wants--they view themselves as members of his team."
In many states, the committee process has suffered perhaps the greatest blows under term limits. There's necessarily less depth of knowledge, and the old idea that a bill should be fully crafted and in shape to become law the minute it passes out of committee has, in many instances, become a thing of the past. Instead, bills are kept continually moving, replete with the mistakes of inexperience, in the full expectation that they will be amended on the floor or in the other body. That way, more legislators get the chance to make their marks during the short time they have in office. No one wants to kill a bill and set a colleague back a year, when she may have only six years in office. "They're afraid to antagonize each other, so they're willing to pass legislation out of their committee when it's not fully cooked," says Paul Gladfelty, who lobbies for corporations in California.
Double and triple committee referrals, once rare in California, have become routine. It's the opposite of specialization--legislators want a piece of all the action, not wanting to miss out on anything important during their brief moment of power. The fact that committees are no longer viewed as authoritative in their jurisdictional areas further strengthens the hand of other players, notably executive branch officials.
CHANGING MESSAGES
If early predictions of lobbyists seizing power under term limits have turned out to be misplaced, the fact is that that many term- limited legislators still come into office worried about the issue. Quite a few are at least initially suspicious of lobbyists of all stripes. "We are noticing that a lot of the freshman members come in with preconceived ideas about lobbyists," says Bart McSpadden, a lobbyist in Oklahoma, "that they are all slick and wealthy and everything is carried out behind the scenes and under the table."
Whatever lobbyists have gained in legislatures through the power of institutional memory, they seem to have lost with the decline of enduring relationships. Clearly, they can take advantage of the knowledge deficit that exists in term-limited legislatures, but building the contacts that allow them to take such advantage has become a more time-consuming and expensive proposition. The stereotypical golf-buddy lobbyist who wields influence through personal friendship has clearly lost out under the term limits system.
In some ways, this has led to a diffusion of lobbying power, affording a wider range of lobbyists an equal opportunity to make a first impression on new legislators. On the other hand, the new system puts a premium on the ability to orchestrate those first impressions, and the consensus among lobbyists is that it's difficult for small practitioners to compete against bigger firms with the resources and personnel to introduce themselves and their issues on an ongoing basis to continual waves of new members.
"You not only have to get to know these people," says Marcie McNelis, of the lobbying firm MultiState Associates, "but you have to educate them on the issues from scratch." Part of the business of getting to know a legislator, of course, comes through fundraising, which has become even more critical since term limits have created so many more open seats. Here, too, the bigger, more institutionalized lobbying firms have an advantage over the smaller outfits and the old-fashioned solo gladhanders.
However term limits may be playing out, it's hard to find a lobbyist of any stripe who likes them. "I don't know one lobbyist who thinks it's a good thing," says Rick Farmer, who has written about term limits as an academic and now works for the Oklahoma House. "If term limits are such a good thing for lobbyists, why do so many lobbyists hate them?"
It's not just the lobbyists. Talk to people who work in any state capitol where term limits exist--members, staff and reporters as well as lobbyists--and you will encounter the nearly universal opinion that term limits are obstacles to careful legislation and effective oversight. Travel a bit farther from the capitol, though, and you get a different point of view: Most people on the outside still like term limits. Legislatures in Idaho and Utah have repealed their limits, but for the most part legislators have been unwilling to argue for repeal in the face of popular will as expressed by ballot initiative.
Baxter Troutman, the Florida representative, sponsored successful legislation last year to extend the state's limits to 12 years per chamber. That measure now goes before voters in November, but similar attempts haven't fared too well elsewhere. Ballot measures to extend limits were soundly defeated in Arkansas and Montana in 2004, while California voters had two years earlier rejected an attempt to let term-limited legislators run again if they could collect enough petition signatures in their districts.
No matter how strenuously legislators and lobbyists may argue that term limits have made elected representatives less powerful, and left constituents with a weaker voice in governmental affairs, people outside of government aren't ready to buy that. The main effects of term limits are procedural, and it's difficult to make a convincing case that they've made any one particular policy worse, let alone imperiled the quality of life in any state that observes them. It's impossible to prove that term limits have led to higher taxes, declining services or deeper fiscal shortfalls. And the notion that term limits make legislatures less powerful is, after all, one reason why many people supported them to begin with. "The public voted initially for term limits because they don't like politicians and political institutions," says Rosenthal, the Rutgers political scientist. "That disfavor has continued." As a result, the public has gotten what it asked for, if not what it deserves.
I get the appeal for term-limits, but like this article stated, it may generate some unintended consequences.
I'm more interested in better transparency between the lobbists and appointed officials.
Additionally, maybe incorporating some lobbyist surtax for "x number of years post retirement" to stem the revolving door a bit.
I think that there'd be a few hurdles here. As others have mentioned, communications are more effective today, so it may not be entirely necessary to increase the size of the House.
But the hurdle, or hurdles I'd think would be hardest to get passed, first would be the cost. 3x more people making HoR pay is going to significantly increase tax burden on people. Where's that going to come from? With our current policy of legislating in favor of lobbying businesses, it wouldn't come from them.
That cost, as well as the increase in personnel is most definitely NOT going to go over well with the Libertarian/TEA Party crowds, as that is a visible increase in the size of government.
In the grand scope of things, the increase in spending would be negligible. Though the TEA party is allergic to government spending any money at all on anything, so it would get blown out of proportion while forgetting the benefits it would bring.
It would bring better representation and less lobbying influence. The same amount of lobbyist money would have to be spread out among more people, so less per person so less effect.
Gerrymandering would be an issue, as every congressional district will need to be redrawn. But as long as all the districts in the state are close on the (Square root of) area divided by circumference formula it wouldn't have as much effect.
That's a pretty definitive statement... care to expound on that more?
Sure. Just look at State legislatures, they're nightmares. If you want the funny cliff notes I think John Oliver did a bit on them, but it has long been a rule of studying American politics that the closer you get to the people the worse the debate gets. This is because most people lack the time, capacity, and willingness to sit down and learn about politics and policy, but are more than willing to form an opinion; often a very emotional one. The closer a legislative body gets to those people, the more responsive it becomes, making said body more emotional pretty much by default.
I'm against Term Limits, both on theoretical and practical grounds.
Voters should have the representative they want, and shouldn't be denied that person because of a term limit.
More practically, term limits would ironically strengthen parties, as there would be more competitive primaries, and higher turnover. It would make non-elected partisans more powerful. It would also increase the potential for quid pro quo. A career politician wants to keep his job and possibly move up. A politician that knows he only has a job for a set time is going to be looking for his next job, which is a problem when there are lobbyists offering things.
Right now, there is surprisingly little outright corruption. Term limits would make it a lot more common.
Polonius wrote: Voters should have the representative they want
While I don't disagree with the point about term limits I find this point a bit pie in the sky. People have a pretty bad track record the last few decades overall when it comes to picking representatives. It is how we have Trump in the lead of the Republican primaries and how we get such dismal ratings for congress but ridiculous incumbency rates. I don't think there is an easy solution, and certainly Term Limits isn't a good answer.
More practically, term limits would ironically strengthen parties, as there would be more competitive primaries, and higher turnover. It would make non-elected partisans more powerful. It would also increase the potential for quid pro quo. A career politician wants to keep his job and possibly move up. A politician that knows he only has a job for a set time is going to be looking for his next job, which is a problem when there are lobbyists offering things.
One of the more famous examples of that is Mexico. PRI basically instituted term limits on the Presidency in order to ensure that no single politician could escape the Party machine.
That's a pretty definitive statement... care to expound on that more?
Sure. Just look at State legislatures, they're nightmares. If you want the funny cliff notes I think John Oliver did a bit on them, but it has long been a rule of studying American politics that the closer you get to the people the worse the debate gets. This is because most people lack the time, capacity, and willingness to sit down and learn about politics and policy, but are more than willing to form an opinion; often a very emotional one. The closer a legislative body gets to those people, the more responsive it becomes, making said body more emotional pretty much by default.
Yeah... I see what you mean.
Would it be your position as well, to rescind the 17th amendment, and go back to the state legislature's nominating the Senate? Wouldn't the current Senate shenanigan be muted a bit at least, if that had happened?
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Polonius wrote: I'm against Term Limits, both on theoretical and practical grounds.
Voters should have the representative they want, and shouldn't be denied that person because of a term limit.
More practically, term limits would ironically strengthen parties, as there would be more competitive primaries, and higher turnover. It would make non-elected partisans more powerful. It would also increase the potential for quid pro quo. A career politician wants to keep his job and possibly move up. A politician that knows he only has a job for a set time is going to be looking for his next job, which is a problem when there are lobbyists offering things.
Right now, there is surprisingly little outright corruption. Term limits would make it a lot more common.
I can certainly see this.
Man... our founding founders didn't have an easy time to creating our system.
Would it be your position as well, to rescind the 17th amendment, and go back to the state legislature's nominating the Senate? Wouldn't the current Senate shenanigan be muted a bit at least, if that had happened?
I think they would be worse. Senators would become more subject State politics, which are nightmarish.
Career politicians are only a "cancer" when the political culture is cancerous. It's easy to complain about politicians who've been campaigning for election for 30 years and have achieved visibly little. It's harder to admit that that has absolutely nothing to do with term limits, or a lack there of. Pretending term limits with fix anything here is engaging in easy fantasy fiction rather than reality.
Back when the US was founded and the federal government was fairly limited in scope, it made sense for Reps to have short two year terms. However the government has grown bigger and does a lot more things. With so much more on its plate, why is anyone surprised that 2 years just isn't enough time for anyone to get anything done? Of course they're campaigning for reelection all the time. It's the only way they can stay in office long enough to do anything. And of course, now you have politicians who treat the House as nothing more than a campaign platform, because if they're going to spend all their time campaigning anyway, they might as well campaign for higher office.
Campaign finance and lobbying reform, longer terms for elected officials, and perhaps instituting federal recall elections, will go much farther towards solving the complaints about Congress than term limits. The term 'career politicians' is nothing more than a scapegoat invented by some career politicians to use in their campaigns (which is why the term is so freaking hilarious).
Of course, so will not voting for the idiots who do nothing but grand stand their entire political careers, but the American electorate seems to eat up political grand standing like a 800 lb man eats calories (which is again, a problem of political culture which is much harder to fix).
I think they would be worse. Senators would become more subject State politics, which are nightmarish.
I'd propose state politics are nightmarish in part because no one really pays any attention to them. Making state politics relevant again for the general population might reduce the insanity.
That's a pretty definitive statement... care to expound on that more?
Sure. Just look at State legislatures, they're nightmares. If you want the funny cliff notes I think John Oliver did a bit on them, but it has long been a rule of studying American politics that the closer you get to the people the worse the debate gets. This is because most people lack the time, capacity, and willingness to sit down and learn about politics and policy, but are more than willing to form an opinion; often a very emotional one. The closer a legislative body gets to those people, the more responsive it becomes, making said body more emotional pretty much by default.
Yeah... I see what you mean.
Would it be your position as well, to rescind the 17th amendment, and go back to the state legislature's nominating the Senate? Wouldn't the current Senate shenanigan be muted a bit at least, if that had happened?
Not really, if anything it would be worse. State legislatures are a mess of corruption, gerrymandering, and petty partisan politics. Not only that, it's taking power away from the people and giving it to the government.
I'd also take that a lot more seriously if you didn't bring it up as a solution to any representation problem. You've even brought it up to deal with gerrymandering, when senate seats are basically immune to gerrymandering, whike state legislatures are rife with it.
Polonius wrote: Voters should have the representative they want
While I don't disagree with the point about term limits I find this point a bit pie in the sky. People have a pretty bad track record the last few decades overall when it comes to picking representatives. It is how we have Trump in the lead of the Republican primaries and how we get such dismal ratings for congress but ridiculous incumbency rates. I don't think there is an easy solution, and certainly Term Limits isn't a good answer.
There's a cynical saying: people get the government they deserve. At some point, whose job is it to save people from themselves? If there was evidence that term limits actually improved governance, than sure, but if there aren't? Let the people decide.
And I do think that president is different. The president has near absolute authority over the entire executive branch (aside from the VP), which includes all federal agencies and the military. That's a lot of authority in one man. Compared to that, even a senator is one of 100 in only one half of the legislative branch. Most presidencies tent to fall apart in the second term, with bad decisions and small scandals adding up. Even FDR was facing some heat about defense contracts in his third term, including a senate committee chaired by a then little known Harry Truman.
I think they would be worse. Senators would become more subject State politics, which are nightmarish.
I'd propose state politics are nightmarish in part because no one really pays any attention to them. Making state politics relevant again for the general population might reduce the insanity.
That's my position as well... but, dogma's point does have some merits.
Short answer is "I don't really know" if that other side of the fence would be greener if we did rescind the 17th, as I'm not sure it could get any worst.
However, your point about the house 2yr appointment is worth mentioning. Maybe make it a 4 year cycle where half is on mid-term and the other is during Presidential election season.
Functionally I think term limits don't even do much for presidents. However, the executive system is one that is very prone to becoming dictatorships (it's kind of amazing the US has gone 200 years without befalling this hurdle like so many others).
The first thing any would be dictator tries to do is get around their term limit
That's a pretty definitive statement... care to expound on that more?
Sure. Just look at State legislatures, they're nightmares. If you want the funny cliff notes I think John Oliver did a bit on them, but it has long been a rule of studying American politics that the closer you get to the people the worse the debate gets. This is because most people lack the time, capacity, and willingness to sit down and learn about politics and policy, but are more than willing to form an opinion; often a very emotional one. The closer a legislative body gets to those people, the more responsive it becomes, making said body more emotional pretty much by default.
Yeah... I see what you mean.
Would it be your position as well, to rescind the 17th amendment, and go back to the state legislature's nominating the Senate? Wouldn't the current Senate shenanigan be muted a bit at least, if that had happened?
Not really, if anything it would be worse. State legislatures are a mess of corruption, gerrymandering, and petty partisan politics. Not only that, it's taking power away from the people and giving it to the government.
I'd also take that a lot more seriously if you didn't bring it up as a solution to any representation problem. You've even brought it up to deal with gerrymandering, when senate seats are basically immune to gerrymandering, whike state legislatures are rife with it.
I don't think gerrymandering is "that big of a deal" as you make it sound like.
For years, in the south, it was mandated that you have to gerrymander the feth out some districts so that the minority blacks are strengthened. If you re-write the bounderies closer to a population city/county boundry... which logically makes sense, you'd invariable could impact the strength of minority voice in the region.
However, you point about the house 2yr appointment is worth mentioning. Maybe make it a 4 year cycle where half is on mid-term and the other is during Presidential election season.
I'd propose 6-8 year terms with institution of Federal recall elections. If someone is elected, let them govern for a time long enough for them to actually do something. If they're doing a bad job, or not adequetly representing the interests of the electorate, then the people can recall them. Otherwise, let them work and not have to worry about getting reelected in a few years.
lacking recalls, I'd say 5 years, but I like multiples of 5 and 10. They're my favorite numbers
However, you point about the house 2yr appointment is worth mentioning. Maybe make it a 4 year cycle where half is on mid-term and the other is during Presidential election season.
I'd propose 6-8 year terms with institution of Federal recall elections. If someone is elected, let them govern for a time long enough for them to actually do something. If they're doing a bad job, or not adequetly representing the interests of the electorate, then the people can recall them. Otherwise, let them work and not have to worry about getting reelected in a few years.
lacking recalls, I'd say 5 years, but I like multiples of 5 and 10. They're my favorite numbers
Mmmmm... me likey! The recall needs to be a high barrier though... like a simple majority (50.1%) at least to recall the candidate.
The sad thing, is this'll entail an amendment... which will likely only come from when the states invoke the Article V Convention... which opens the can-o-worms for any amendments.
That's a pretty definitive statement... care to expound on that more?
Sure. Just look at State legislatures, they're nightmares. If you want the funny cliff notes I think John Oliver did a bit on them, but it has long been a rule of studying American politics that the closer you get to the people the worse the debate gets. This is because most people lack the time, capacity, and willingness to sit down and learn about politics and policy, but are more than willing to form an opinion; often a very emotional one. The closer a legislative body gets to those people, the more responsive it becomes, making said body more emotional pretty much by default.
Yeah... I see what you mean.
Would it be your position as well, to rescind the 17th amendment, and go back to the state legislature's nominating the Senate? Wouldn't the current Senate shenanigan be muted a bit at least, if that had happened?
Not really, if anything it would be worse. State legislatures are a mess of corruption, gerrymandering, and petty partisan politics. Not only that, it's taking power away from the people and giving it to the government.
I'd also take that a lot more seriously if you didn't bring it up as a solution to any representation problem. You've even brought it up to deal with gerrymandering, when senate seats are basically immune to gerrymandering, whike state legislatures are rife with it.
I don't think gerrymandering is "that big of a deal" as you make it sound like.
For years, in the south, it was mandated that you have to gerrymander the feth out some districts so that the minority blacks are strengthened. If you re-write the bounderies closer to a population city/county boundry... which logically makes sense, you'd invariable could impact the strength of minority voice in the region.
What I'm talking about is politicians re-drawing districts to make it easier to win, which often leads to both mis-representation, and extremist candidates.
And it is a big problem, a huge problem in fact. But it's very hard to get rid of, as all parties do it, and have little incentive to stop.
Simple majority wouldn't work. There are two obviously foreseeable problems with federal recall elections. One is that under the threat of recall, an elected official might never stick their neck out or take risks while governing. That's a bad thing. The electorate is fickle and always will be. While public officials need to be answerable to the will of the people, they also need to be insulated from the 'mob' or nothing will ever get done or really stupid things might get done.
A recall that is near impossible to execute isn't very useful, but one that is too easy to execute is just going to become a political tool that doesn't serve any higher purpose.
I honest can't say I know what form the proposed recall should take to make it useful, but it definitely shouldn't be simple majority.
LordofHats wrote: Simple majority wouldn't work. There are two obviously foreseeable problems with federal recall elections. One is that under the threat of recall, an elected official might never stick their neck out or take risks while governing. That's a bad thing. The electorate is fickle and always will be. While public officials need to be answerable to the will of the people, they also need to be insulated from the 'mob' or nothing will ever get done or really stupid things might get done.
A recall that is near impossible to execute isn't very useful, but one that is too easy to execute is just going to become a political tool that doesn't serve any higher purpose.
I honest can't say I know what form the proposed recall should take to make it useful, but it definitely shouldn't be simple majority.
Hence why I said "at least"...
I'd be cool with recall votes of >= %60. That's what it takes to overcome a senate filibuster.
I saw one idea, which was to not alow them to work at any business their voting effects (so basically limiting them to teachings, or a buisness they, themselves, own) ,but giving them a decent wage after they leave office. Sort of pie in the sky, but I like the concept. That aoso had the idea of making their salaries be tried directly to median saleries (I think 1.5x) and things like healthcare only be what the government provided to everyonw else. Although it woukd be near impossible ro get that passed, it would keep their interests closer to americans, and would mean they would be directly effected by the decisions they make, rather tha, being shilded like they are now.
AFTER ALL THIS time, all these debates, all these primaries and caucuses, the pundits still don’t truly understand Donald Trump’s appeal. I have in mind the TV talking heads — highly paid, well-educated men and women, white, black, and Hispanic, who make their living trying to figure out what the average voter is thinking. As a political junkie and son of a one-time politician, I watch them obsessively, and I’m continually amazed at how distanced they are — with their laptops, Twitter feeds, and ‘‘inside sources’’ — from the millions of people who cast votes for Trump.
I should mention that I will not be one of those millions. I’m trying to explain his appeal here, not endorse it.
There is no question that bigots and racists have found a home in the Trump camp, and little question that he says things to give them fuel. But it’s a gross oversimplification to suggest that most of his appeal is bigotry and racial hatred. That line of reporting increases ratings, but also fans the flames of the country’s racial divide.
Likewise, it’s another oversimplification to assert that his appeal is purely the result of anger. In his Salt Lake City speech, former presidential candidate-turned-establishment-hitman Mitt Romney said, “I understand there is anger out there,” but it was said with about as much familiarity as a Martian saying, “I understand there is water on Earth.”
Trump’s appeal is not primarily grounded in racism or anger. It’s primarily grounded in humiliation. And this kind of humiliation is impossible for most of the talking heads and for someone like Romney to understand.
I grew up in the working class. We were not poor, but we knew people who were poor and, even now, with my upper-class education and the middle-class status it has afforded me, I’m close to people who are working, and poor. There is a particular kind of humiliation involved in their lives, though many of them are too proud to use that word.
They’re not hungry. They have a decent place to live. But every hour of every day they’re shown images of people who have things they will never have. Virtually every TV show and Internet site offers ads featuring relaxed families sitting in nice-looking dining rooms eating a meal together and laughing. These TV families own a home, have new cars, take cruise-line vacations, and use the kind of electronic gadgetry that would bankrupt the working poor.
If they are white and straight, the people who watch these ads are also continually hearing news reports about the difficulties of minorities and gay people. Here’s the key point: Most of the working class and poor people I know — and many of Trump’s wealthier supporters — have no objection whatsoever to the idea of African-Americans and gays getting fair treatment. They do not want innocent black men to be shot. They do not care if two gay people get married. As is true of just about everyone else on earth, while they do care about others, they care about themselves and their own families first. The idea that these people have what is commonly referred to as “white privilege” may be generally true, relative to the horrible plight of many nonwhites in this society. But imagine what it’s like to come home from working a job (or two jobs) you hate, that exhausts you, that leaves you five dollars at the end of the week for a child’s birthday gift, and hear someone call you “privileged.” Imagine what that feels like. This is a territory into which the Mitt Romneys and talking heads of this world cannot stretch their thoughts.
And then along comes a tremendously successful guy who speaks your language, not candidate-ese, and who tells you he’s going to make America (i.e., you) great. Most of his voters don’t have time to go to a political rally. So when they see protesters disrupting the speech of the candidate they hope can change their lives, and when they hear him say, “I’d punch that guy in the face”— the kind of language they grew up with — and when they listen to him talk about the decent-paying jobs that were moved to China (something Trump says more often than any other candidate), is it really a surprise that these people go into the voting booth and cast a ballot for The Donald?
But the pundits keep shaking their heads in amazement that this candidate — who doesn’t use the scripted language of Washington, who isn’t bursting with memorized, specific plans and knowledge of various bills, who says things they find offensive — keeps winning. To some of us, it’s no surprise at all. If James Carville were advising Trump in 2016, instead of Bill Clinton in 1992, he might say, “It’s the humiliation, stupid.” And he would be right.
Kilkrazy wrote: I don't know if there is anything like an ideal proportion of representation. The UK has 650 elected MPs, compared to under 600 congressmen and senators for the whole of the USA which has five times the population. So, we are supposedly much better represented. However, people still feel a disengagement from democracy and government. I believe this is because of the First Past The Post system. This system always produces a definitive results, but at the cost of ignoring minority views, or even majority views that aren't represented on the ballot. I believe some form of proportional representation would help. All countries with PR have more parties, with governments consisting more often of coalitions.
Not necessarily a good thing. More parties and coalitions can result in more American style gridlock.
Trump is obviously a reaction to the failure of neoliberal economics to provide a good quality of life for a fairly large section of the country. I wouldn't call it humiliation per se, but I agree that essentially the feeling of being "left behind" from all the good stuff (never seeing your wages go up, never being able to earn enough to dig yourself out of poverty etc) and then also being told you're basically the source of all of society's ills is a good way to piss people off and push them away from you.
Da Boss wrote: Trump is obviously a reaction to the failure of neoliberal economics to provide a good quality of life for a fairly large section of the country. I wouldn't call it humiliation per se, but I agree that essentially the feeling of being "left behind" from all the good stuff (never seeing your wages go up, never being able to earn enough to dig yourself out of poverty etc) and then also being told you're basically the source of all of society's ills is a good way to piss people off and push them away from you.
I think there's a lot of great points in that essay, but I think it tapdances around a key point: part of what angry working and middle class voters are nostalgic for was when their white privilege meant more. It's more apparent socially than economically, but for generations the white middle (even lower middle and working) classes were substantially better off than the black middle class. Add in the loss of Judeo-Chrisitan hegemony over public moral life, most notably in legalized gay marriage, and I think there is more of a feeling of loss in what demographers coldly refer to as "whites without college degrees."
Now, some of that has translated into anger towards the elites, but surprisingly little, in my view. Instead, the anger is translated at the minorities that have robbed them of their privilege. For again, while Trump may make a lot of broad statements about making America great, his few concrete plans have involved xenophobia.
Da Boss wrote: Trump is obviously a reaction to the failure of neoliberal economics to provide a good quality of life for a fairly large section of the country. I wouldn't call it humiliation per se, but I agree that essentially the feeling of being "left behind" from all the good stuff (never seeing your wages go up, never being able to earn enough to dig yourself out of poverty etc) and then also being told you're basically the source of all of society's ills is a good way to piss people off and push them away from you.
I think there's a lot of great points in that essay, but I think it tapdances around a key point: part of what angry working and middle class voters are nostalgic for was when their white privilege meant more. It's more apparent socially than economically, but for generations the white middle (even lower middle and working) classes were substantially better off than the black middle class. Add in the loss of Judeo-Chrisitan hegemony over public moral life, most notably in legalized gay marriage, and I think there is more of a feeling of loss in what demographers coldly refer to as "whites without college degrees."
Now, some of that has translated into anger towards the elites, but surprisingly little, in my view. Instead, the anger is translated at the minorities that have robbed them of their privilege. For again, while Trump may make a lot of broad statements about making America great, his few concrete plans have involved xenophobia.
I disagree that "the anger is translated at the minorities that have robbed them of their privilege...", it's more base than that.
It's simply that the folks are tired of being "the scapegoat" to all that ails.
My friends are worried about me. They insist something is not right and suggest prayer, counseling, even rehab. “Take a break,” they urge. “Get away for a few days and clear your head.”
They are wise and kind, and it would be foolish to dismiss their concerns. Truth be told, there are moments when I doubt myself. Am I making a huge mistake? Am I losing my mind?
Perhaps I am. My friends say that’s the only possible explanation for the fact that I might support Donald Trump for president.
The insanity defense is all that’s left now that the smart set has declared that it’s immoral and indecent to even think about voting for Trump. OK, call me immoral and indecent as well as crazy, because I’m thinking about it.
It’s been a long road to get here. When Trump’s name first popped up, I joked about moving to Canada. When he launched his campaign, I cursed him, certain he was going to create a circus just when Republicans finally had a strong field of candidates.
I was intrigued by many of them, starting with Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush. Others I admired while believing they wouldn’t get far — Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki and Carly Fiorina.
I like those Republicans even though I’m a registered Democrat, just not that kind of Democrat. I voted for President Obama in 2008, believing he meant it when he said no red states, no blue states, only the United States. The barrier he broke added to his appeal.
Six months later, I was off the bus. It was already clear Obama had no intention of building a consensus on anything, although few realized he would be such a radical and partisan polarizer. He may love America, but doesn’t seem to like actual Americans. Other than himself, of course.
With the world on fire thanks to his abdication of global leadership, and with the home front nervous and angry, the 2016 race couldn’t come soon enough. I hoped a Democrat would emerge who realized that Obama had set us on a course that was dangerous and unsustainable, with our national debt exceeding $18 trillion.
Clearly, neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton is that Dem, though I’ll vote for Sanders in the New York primary just to send her a message.
Following Obama, Clinton’s election would be a calamity. She would be beholden to him, and unable to shift much from his disastrous policies. And who knows what she really believes?
Besides, if the Clintons are rewarded with the White House again, it would be impossible to demand honesty from any public official in America. She’s thoroughly corrupt and, in the memorable words of the late William Safire, a “congenital liar.” Voting for her is a give-up on the future.
So I’m stuck with Republicans, but my favorites were rejected, with only Kasich surviving by a thread. Frankly, I don’t blame voters. They’ve had it with vanilla men who play nice and quietly lose elections. If the nominee is another Mitt Romney, Clinton would win in a landslide.
As noted, I do admire Cruz, but he strikes me as more Barry Goldwater than Ronald Reagan. He’s whip smart, but too rigid ideologically and personally joyless. If I were president, I would nominate him for the Supreme Court in hopes he could fill Antonin Scalia’s shoes as the leading constitutionalist.
Which leaves only Donald J. Trump. He’s weird, erratic and I have no idea what he will say or do next. His nasty put-downs of rivals and journalists, especially Megyn Kelly, diminish him. His policies are as detailed as bumper stickers and his lack of knowledge about complex issues scares me.
If he weren’t the GOP front-runner, the gaps in his game would make it easy to dismiss him. But dismissing him requires dismissing the concerns of the 7.5 million people who have voted for him. That I can’t do.
My gut tells me much of the contempt for Trump reflects contempt for his working-class white support. It is one prejudice gentry liberals and gentry conservatives share.
It is perhaps the last acceptable bigotry, and you can see it expressed on any primetime TV program. The insults don’t all seem good-natured to me. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, surrounded by the kind of people supporting Trump, and I sympathize with their worsening plight.
For generations, they went all in for the American dream. Their families fought the wars, worked in the factories, taught school, coached Little League and built a middle-class culture. Now they are abandoned and know it.
Nobody speaks for them. The left speaks for the unions, the poor and the nonwhite, even shedding tears for illegal immigrants and rioters and looters. The GOP speaks for the Chamber of Commerce, big business and Wall Street.
Trump alone is bringing many of these forgotten Americans into the political system, much as Obama did with millennials and black voters. Trump has done it with full-frontal attacks on lopsided trade deals and a broken immigration system. His message is a potent brew of populism and nationalism that reaches across the partisan divide, and the public response is stirring the country.
In fact, many who despise Trump concede he is right that globalization and the open-border flood of cheap labor, while benefitting many Americans, has hurt many others. But instead of working to fix a broken status quo, many on the left and right echo each other’s venomous attacks against him. One day he is Mussolini, the next he’s Hitler, and he’s routinely accused of hate speech and racism.
What is his great sin? Breaking the taboo about what ails the middle class? Daring to challenge a power system that only pretends to have the consent of the governed?
The shame is that others didn’t beat him to it.
For his chutzpah, tens of millions of dollars are being poured into attack ads against Trump, and the urgent blue-nosed concerns about dark pools of money in politics have vanished. As long as he’s the target, all is fair.
Often, the avalanche of sludge against Trump looks and sounds like a reactionary confederacy fighting to keep its power and privileges. Naturally, the mainstream media is slashing away.
A Washington Post editorial claims that stopping Trump is the only way to “defend our democracy.” In other words, those troublesome voters are the problem.
A New York Times columnist raised the prospect of assassination. Sure, it was a joke. Make that joke about Obama or Clinton and see who laughs.
I would be delighted to support a more conventional candidate who has Trump’s courage and appeal, but we don’t always get to pick our revolutionaries. And make no mistake, Donald Trump is leading a political revolution that is long overdue.
I think the author nailed it in a sense on why Trump is leading now...
I simply just don't see how Trump has a path over Clinton.
The idea that to dislike the idea of Trump means you hate the working class is, quite frankly, idiotic. I cannot express my contempt for that article or its author enough in written words.
motyak wrote: The idea that to dislike the idea of Trump means you hate the working class is, quite frankly, idiotic. I cannot express my contempt for that article or its author enough in written words.
I think you need to read that piece a little closer... unless you define contempt=hate.
Polonius wrote: Contempt is a form of hate, mixed with disgust. Either way, it's mighty fine hair splitting.
The premise of that article is to ascertain why Trump is popular now... that is, for all that ails the US Political Sphere, try bring up "the working class"...
and, you'll be met with various forms of derision.
The author is simply pointing out that Trump is tapping into this frustration.
I'm not sure I 100% agree with it, but it does have some merits to ponder this line of thinking a bit.
No, it doesn't. Trump mentions the working class the same way a sports star who has no connection to the real world beyond hearing cheers thanks 'the fans' he couldn't give two gaks about. They'd never do anything for the people supporting them beyond the most token of gestures, but they'll talk about them again and again so that some of those people fall in love and buy tickets and merchandise/vote for them.
His care for the working class will end the minute he wins the election, and start back up 2 days before beginning to run for reelection.
motyak wrote: No, it doesn't. Trump mentions the working class the same way a sports star who has no connection to the real world beyond hearing cheers thanks 'the fans' he couldn't give two gaks about. They'd never do anything for the people supporting them beyond the most token of gestures, but they'll talk about them again and again so that some of those people fall in love and buy tickets and merchandise/vote for them.
His care for the working class will end the minute he wins the election, and start back up 2 days before beginning to run for reelection.
I don't disagree with you.
In fact... that's like every politician... like ever.
d-usa wrote: Just look at his "made in China" stuff that he continues to manufacture in China while his working class supporters see their jobs outsourced.
which is often why I point out to people, love him or hate him, Sanders is pretty much the only candidate running right now with a record of actually helping the working class. I hate that I have to bring it up with Vet friends, but of the group, he's also the only one who consistently works to improve the VA, and to improve veterans' benefits in general.
Heck, you can even point out Sanders' and Trump's "Campaign hats" that you can buy. I saw on FB, that Trump's are (surprise, surprise) made in China, while Sanders' hats are made in the USA.
What might be called "transnational progressivism" is the ideology for an age once thought not to need one. President Obama, for example, was hailed as 'not a doctinaire liberal' and 'centrist and pragmatic'. The truth, as eight sorry years have shown, is very different.
For more than half a century leading global thinkers have heralded the death of ideology. Beginning with Daniel Bell’s famous 1962 book The End of Ideology, prominent scholars have repeatedly maintained that the role of ideology was diminishing and the exercise of pragmatism ascending throughout the Western world. In The End of Ideology (listed by the Times Literary Supplement as among the “100 most influential non-fiction books since World War II”), Bell declared that the “ideological age has ended” in the West (although it would intensify in the developing world).
Bell argued that the rise of affluence and the advance of social modernisation had led to a broad consensus on political values and an exhaustion with grand ideological debates in the developed world. Bell’s thesis was amplified by leading American social scientists including Edward Shils and Seymour Martin Lipset.
Decades later Francis Fukuyama declared that with the collapse of communism we had reached “the end of history”, meaning the great ideological issues of politics (who should govern and why) had been solved. Although (small h) history in the sense of wars and political upheavals might continue for hundreds of years, (capital H) History in the Hegelian sense was over, because liberal democracy had triumphed in the realm of ideas. Fukuyama maintained liberal democracy was the ideological endpoint of humankind’s age-old quest for the best regime. In the future, even autocratic rulers would claim to be democratic or cite democracy as their end goal.
In January 2009 as Barack Obama was being inaugurated as President of the United States, David Brooks wrote in the New York Times that “Obama aims to realize the end of ideology politics that Daniel Bell and others glimpsed in the early 1960s. He sees himself as a pragmatist, an empiricist.” Indeed, from the beginning of Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign to the present, scores of books, essays and blogs have been marshalled to argue that Obama eschews ideology and embraces pragmatism. Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein (who served in the White House from 2009 to 2012) wrote that Obama was “not a doctrinaire liberal”, that “his skepticism about conventional ideological categories is principled”, and that, above all, he is an empirical pragmatist who understands that “real change requires consensus, learning, and accommodation”. The journalist Fareed Zakaria declared that “Obama is a centrist and a pragmatist”. Academics and public intellectuals compared Obama’s thought to the tradition of the pragmatist school of American philosophy embodied by Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey.
In response, Hoover Institution scholar Peter Berkowitz noted that, in fact, Obama does share similarities with the pragmatist philosophers in the sense that he is, as they were, a progressive ideologue promoting a decidedly ideological agenda (think John Dewey), while masquerading as a rational non-partisan “pragmatist” committed to “what works” rather than to a progressive utopian vision of the future. Berkowitz quotes the late twentieth-century “new pragmatist” philosopher and progressive political theorist Richard Rorty, to the effect that the “new pragmatist” will make “shared utopian dreams” his guide to politics.
Whether one examines national health care, immigration, racial and gender politics, LGBT rights, executive orders, aggressive “diversity” initiatives promoting “substantive equality” throughout the federal government in education, housing, energy, defence and elsewhere, judicial appointments, and foreign policy openings to Iran and Cuba—after seven years, it is clear that the current American President is the most ideological since Ronald Reagan. After all, the stated goal of the Obama administration is the “fundamental transformation of the United States of America”, which suggests neither a “centrist” nor “pragmatic” agenda.
Obama’s ideology is progressivism, an American branch of a global ideology that could be described as transnational progressivism or global progressivism. The American wing of progressivism (sometimes confusingly called liberalism) shares a broad worldview with the Western Left generally.
The ideology of transnational progressivism has a strong base among Western elites. Its adherents can be found in the editorial offices of the Guardian, the BBC, the New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; among the politicians and global business leaders who gather at Davos; among human rights activists and NGOs; among the leadership of almost all EU, UN and international organisations; and among the “Sixty-Eighters”, the ageing politicians who cut their activist teeth in the protests of the 1960s.
At home, global progressives focus on promoting what they call “marginalised” groups, such as women, LGBT people, racial minorities, linguistic minorities, immigrants, particularly Muslims. For example, the Western Left calls for “gender parity” (imposed proportional representation) across the board in all institutions of civic life, by fiat if necessary (violating the tenets of a free society). They tout an adversarial multiculturalism or identity politics that problematises national patriotic cultures, traditional institutions (religion, family), the concepts of free speech, individual citizenship and equality under the law (because the marginalised groups are awarded special rights). Despite the recent popularity of Thomas Piketty’s neo-Marxist writings an with its cod Bernie Sanders’s speeches, the general trajectory of today’s Western Left is (as both Daniel Bell and his critics predicted) away from class conflict and towards new antagonisms. These new (post-1960s) fault lines are based on ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration, language, religion, globalism and other issues that are even more divisive for national cohesion than traditional class struggle.
Abroad, Western Leftists promote (in varying degrees and where politically possible) what they call “global governance”, meaning the building of supranational institutions and policies that diminish the role of the nation-state, including the democratic nation-state. The ultimate goal of this grand ideological project is the creation of an increasingly integrated global order with laws and institutions that are superior to those of the nation-state.
The problematic questions that this raises for consensual democracy, civic identity, individual rights, free speech, and even the practicality of day-to-day international relations are noted by globalist advocates, but not successfully addressed. Thus, for example, EU adherents have still not explained the union’s “democratic deficit” to the satisfaction of their citizens. In a powerful new book, Todd Huizinga of the Acton Institute labels the transnational progressive ideologists of the European Union “soft utopians”, distinguishing them from the “hard” utopianism of totalitarian movements.
Western progressives appear to approach external and internal politics with sharply different mindsets. International relations are viewed through the prism of “win-win”. The idea is that hostile ideological regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran or geopolitical adventurers like Vladimir Putin’s Russia can be won over through negotiations, bribery and appeals to what the Western Left considers the “real” (that is, material) interests of the outlier regimes, premised on a global progressive view of the world. In this view, anti-democratic adversaries can be persuaded into abandoning their zero-sum approach to international politics and embracing the globalist “win-win” or non-zero-sum scenario, as Robert Wright (Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny) argued more than a decade ago.
On the other hand, the progressives view domestic politics as strictly a zero-sum game. Their opponents at home, Western conservatives, are often excoriated as racists, xenophobes and reactionary retrogrades. The current President of the United States and the leaders of, for example, the European Parliament and European Commission, appear to expend much more vitriol on Republicans and Eurosceptics, respectively, than on the West’s anti-democratic enemies. This hostility is often reciprocated, hence the increasing polarisation of Western politics.
While international relations in Asia are focused on the geopolitical implications of the rise of China, ideology plays an oversized role in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Both the Shiite and Sunni wings of millenarian radical Islam exemplified by the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic State (ISIS) attest to the significance of ideology in the world of twenty-first-century global politics (as opposed to simply national interests, pragmatism, economics and material power). The Washington Post has reported that ISIS’s media-propaganda “emirs” receive higher pay than their combat officers, suggesting the supreme importance that ISIS attaches to ideology.
First and foremost, in the West today, an intense ideological struggle is raging non-stop over the most momentous issues of world politics, including the singular, primary political question: Who should govern? The current migrant crisis and the ongoing issues of mass immigration, multiculturalism and cultural assimilation highlight this ideological conflict throughout Western politics.
Who decides immigration policy: democratic nation-states or hundreds of thousands or millions of migrants on their own? Who accommodates to whom: host nationals or newcomers? What principles determine policy: government by consent of the governed or evolving concepts of global human rights? If the latter, who decides what those universal human rights are?
On these most basic of political questions, the West is polarised. On one side of this grand ideological conflict are the transnational progressives. On the other side are what could be called democratic nationalists. This counter-ideology could be divided into two wings: Reaganism-Thatcherism in the Anglosphere nations, and Gaullism in most of the non-English-speaking West and other Western-allied developed nations.
The spirit of Reaganism-Thatcherism is captured in a recent article by former Australian Prime Minister John Howard in National Review. Unlike progressive Western elites who focus on building a global order of transnational institutions, Howard emphasises national sovereignty and bilateral international relations as opposed to multilateralism. He explicitly rejects the “pooled sovereignty” touted by EU elites and notes that the British are justifiably angry that “their nation’s courts are subjugated to the European Court of Justice”. Howard insists that border control is “a basic element of national sovereignty” and proudly reminds National Review readers that in 2001 he declared: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
The spirit of contemporary Gaullism is exemplified in Poland’s new conservative Law and Justice Party government. Like the original French version of Gaullism, the new Polish government promotes the country’s patriotic and cultural traditions and favours strong and honest state institutions within a vibrant democracy. National sovereignty is emphasised over post-national EU institutions as party leaders insist that “the EU should benefit Poland, not the other way around”. As firm defenders of Poland’s often historically challenged national identity, the new Polish government takes a decidedly more cautious and sceptical approach to the current migration crisis than EU elites generally, or Frau Merkel in particular.
In a recent Telegraph essay, the Thatcherite Charles Crawford (the British Ambassador to Poland from 2002 to 2007) looks favourably on what he describes as Poland’s “carefully Eurosceptic etatist-patriots”. Crawford remarks that just as de Gaulle had “a certain idea of France”, today the Law and Justice Party leader Jaroslav Kaczynski “has a similarly subtle but powerful view of Poland”.
To be sure, Reaganism-Thatcherism and Gaullism differ on economic policy. In the Anglosphere, contemporary conservatives in the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have looked to Adam Smith, Hayek and Von Mises and placed free-market economics front and centre on their political agenda. Gaullists look more to the state and favour protectionist policies defending national industries and companies.
Nevertheless, the two blocs are united on the core issues of national sovereignty, national cohesion and patriotism, and oppose the Western progressives’ promotion of both an increasingly post-national global order externally, and an expanding multicultural ethos internally. Hence, principled democratic nationalists, whether Reaganite-Thatcherite or Gaullist, have more in common with each other than with their leftist opponents who emphasise identity politics, or with the non-ideological centre-Right politicians in their own parties who accommodate to the prevailing progressive media zeitgeist.
Thus, it is not surprising that the Polish Law and Justice Party sits in the European Parliament with the British Conservatives (whose intellectual leader in that parliament is the quintessential Reaganite-Thatcherite, Anglosphere conservative Daniel Hannan). Under the banner of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR), a centre-Right Reaganite-Thatcherite-Gaullist coalition is locked in ideological battle with the forces of Western transnational progressivism. To complicate matters, the Christian Democratic European People’s Party (EPP) standing to the left of the AECR, consists of both Gaullists and globalists, while to the AECR’s right, a group of parties usually labelled “populist”, contains both decent democratic Gaullists as well as unsavoury thuggish elements.
To further complicate matters, Western Left elites often attack British Tory allies, including the Law and Justice Party, as xenophobic and anti-Semitic, and given the party’s broad-based support they can find examples. But when, in a move to pressure Israel, the European Parliament voted by 84 per cent (525 out of 626 votes) to fix “labels” to goods produced by Jews from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights (Benjamin Netanyahu complained that “we already have a historical memory as to what happened when Europe marked products of Jews”) the Law and Justice Party, in opposition to the entire Left and the centre-Right EPP, stood with the 16 per cent that did not gang up against Israel. Daniel Hannan explains the hostility to the Law and Justice Party by Western progressives as: opposition to the Poles’ criticism of Brussels overreach; attempts to undermine the Tory-led AECR coalition; and rejection of the Law and Justice Party’s determined effort to check the influence of corrupt post-communist elites in Poland.
Adam Garfinkle, editor of the American Interest, portrays the European refugee crisis in particular (and by extension, immigration generally) as a clash of competing rights and moral arguments. The moral argument in favour of the admission of asylum seekers (and, for some, economic migrants) is met by the moral argument “for a community’s own sense of self-determination, which presumes the right of self-definition and self-composition”. Garfinkle is starting to put his finger on the main issue, but the stakes are even higher.
What is at stake in determining refugee-immigration-assimilation policy (which must be seen as one interdependent issue) is the right of societal preservation and societal reproduction: Does a free people have the right to perpetuate its way of life or not? That “way of life”, Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote, is based on particular political foundations (laws, institutions) and, most importantly, on cultural foundations (mores, manners, customs, habits, principles, religious and philosophical presuppositions).
Do the French, British, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Americans and Australians have the right to decide for themselves whether or not to perpetuate their cultures, institutions and ways of life? Or will these questions be decided for them (and against their will) by transnational elites (through ideologically partisan interpretations of global human rights) and/or by millions of migrants from the developing world “voting with their feet” and arriving without the consent of the host nation’s citizens? The American conservative thinker Willmoore Kendall once wrote that the greatest political “right” of all was not any individual right, but the right of a free people to rule themselves.
Whatever one’s political viewpoint, it is clear that we are facing, not pragmatism, but a question of ideology par excellence. Put otherwise, we are facing a capital W, capital H, World Historical question: Does Western-style government by consent of the governed have the moral right of societal reproduction in the twenty-first century? The immediate migration issue and the continuing immigration-assimilation question tells us that the contemporary West is not living in a Kojevian post-historical world with “pragmatic” civil servants adjusting bureaucratic post-national rules because all the big questions have been settled (Francis Fukuyama) or because “the ideological age has ended” in the West (Daniel Bell). Instead we are still addressing Hegelian big issues, specifically, the most important question of political philosophy: Who should govern, and by what moral authority?
Ideas have consequences. Ideology, whether democratic or non-democratic, Western or non-Western, positive or negative, continues to shape history as much as so-called material factors.
That is an interesting question... World Historical question: Does Western-style government by consent of the governed have the moral right of societal reproduction in the twenty-first century?
So from reading the replies from earlier, it does kinda seem from the outsiders point of view that the US is well, sorta huge that it is difficult to get the whole impact / influence thing across from individual normal people.
In the UK, I could, if I was motivated enough about an issue, pester my MP about something. - For example, I know where his office is in my town.
Alternatively, if I was in Scotland (which I used to be), I could literally walk up to the SNPMP candidate and chat to him while he was out walking his dog. - There was that kind of closeness.
Admittedly, the MP could still hypothetically be a twit that'd ignore everything you personally said or whatever. Yet, it was still enough to feel that you could be involved in something if sufficiently motivated.
But yeah, that diagram of the Senate, well, wow. I genuinely have nothing. Except maybe naively saying, 'maybe it is a case of trying to fix state politics first?' - Even though from the sounds of it, that's a whole other gigantic mess of different problems.
I dunno, as an outsider, I imagine if I were to map my politics onto the US system, I'd probably end up going for Hillary. I'd kinda want Sanders to be involved in the running of the country but I've never been able to shake my impression that there's kind of a naivete of 'realpolitik' about him that would see him run roughshod by not-friendly types (both externally and interally in the country) and potentially taken advantage of by those who are yet still kinda friendly inclined.
Anyhows, that's the impression I get of him. No idea whether that matches the reality, or it's a case of "if I study the stats" it's different.
Yet, of course, as we all know, when it comes to politics, impression counts for more than the reality.
whembly wrote: Not sure I'd advocate increasing the House 3x the size... but, I'm just spitballing here.
It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure that the size of districts is causing the lack of engagement. Given modern communications and the possible staffing levels a Representative could have, it wouldn’t be too hard to manage a district that size. The problem is a lack of focus, not a lack of ability.
I posted earlier about a change in Federal politics, the old district focus, which prioritised what pork a Rep can deliver for his district above all else, that culture is gone. It’s been replaced by a partisan focus on national issues. Now what matters is being in lockstep with the rest of your party. The idea of crossing the floor to vote with something against your own party’s wishes, even when it’s best for your electorate is rapidly disappearing.
This isn’t to say the old pork barrelling system was all sunshine and happiness, it wasted lots of government money, and meant many things clearly in the national interest were sunk by local interests. But for all its issues it was a functioning system, whereby things happened and progress stuttered forward.
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Kilkrazy wrote: I don't know if there is anything like an ideal proportion of representation. The UK has 650 elected MPs, compared to under 600 congressmen and senators for the whole of the USA which has five times the population. So, we are supposedly much better represented. However, people still feel a disengagement from democracy and government. I believe this is because of the First Past The Post system. This system always produces a definitive results, but at the cost of ignoring minority views, or even majority views that aren't represented on the ballot. I believe some form of proportional representation would help. All countries with PR have more parties, with governments consisting more often of coalitions.
I think that it is good to encourage more minority voices, and am concerned about the increasingly narrow set of viewpoints in the major parties in most modern democracies. But while increased democracy and representation is good, we have to be careful about how systems work in practice. The issue with proportional representation is that you end up with flimsy coalitions trying to exercise execution control. It’s hard enough to head up government at the best of times, let alone when your source of power is a flimsy coalition that’s likely to collapse at any given minute.
Some kind of mixed system will likely work best.
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Ensis Ferrae wrote: But the hurdle, or hurdles I'd think would be hardest to get passed, first would be the cost. 3x more people making HoR pay is going to significantly increase tax burden on people.
Another 870 Reps, with a salary of $174k each, would cost $151m. That's not a small number, but out of a Federal budget of $3.5t, it's 0.0043%. That's a very small cost, if it produced greater representation and a better mananged government.
The issue, of course, is whether tripling the size of the house will produce better representation and governance. If people were confident that were true, the 0.0043% increase in management costs would be immaterial.
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Gordon Shumway wrote: Or we could go full Aristotle (or was it Plato?) and not make the HORs elected but appointed randomly for a set term, sort of like jurors.*
*again, only said half in jest.
I was talking about this exact thing with some friends last night. We were talking about how Australia's recent of strange senate appointments has worked out*. Most of the guys elected were 'aussie battlers', which is a nice way of saying stupid, and there was lots of concern before they took office. However, in office they've performed really well. It turns out an independent voice, even a stupid voice, can provide a valuable contrast to the monotone voices of the major parties.
It led to us talking about lotteries that would appoint random people to public office. Not in an executive role, of course, but to a house of review like the senate I'm kind of a bit scared how much I like the idea compared to the current system.
*Some were voted in as part of Clive Palmer's nonsense party that quickly dissolved, but they all stayed on as independent senators, and a couple of others were voted in by a new trend in exploiting Australia's senate election laws to turn tiny primary votes in to senate seats. It produced a massive influx of independent voices in a system that previously had very few.
Gordon Shumway wrote: Or we could go full Aristotle (or was it Plato?) and not make the HORs elected but appointed randomly for a set term, sort of like jurors.*
*again, only said half in jest.
I was talking about this exact thing with some friends last night. We were talking about how Australia's recent of strange senate appointments has worked out*. Most of the guys elected were 'aussie battlers', which is a nice way of saying stupid, and there was lots of concern before they took office. However, in office they've performed really well. It turns out an independent voice, even a stupid voice, can provide a valuable contrast to the monotone voices of the major parties.
It led to us talking about lotteries that would appoint random people to public office. Not in an executive role, of course, but to a house of review like the senate I'm kind of a bit scared how much I like the idea compared to the current system.
*Some were voted in as part of Clive Palmer's nonsense party that quickly dissolved, but they all stayed on as independent senators, and a couple of others were voted in by a new trend in exploiting Australia's senate election laws to turn tiny primary votes in to senate seats. It produced a massive influx of independent voices in a system that previously had very few.
Maybe that's part of the reason Trump is doing well... in that, he's so different.
Not that he's necessarily right, wrong or flying rodent gak insane... he contrasts so much from the usual "run of the mill" politicians.
*on the campaign trail. As a politician, who knows what he'd be like.
LordofHats wrote: I'd propose state politics are nightmarish in part because no one really pays any attention to them. Making state politics relevant again for the general population might reduce the insanity.
I think that's a large part of it. The other part is that state politics are the second lowest rung on the totem pole*. Most of the ones who are any good use their state government representative position as a platform to higher office, moving to federal politics, or at least in to higher levels of state government. It's not an absolute system where only the most talented advance, but its a pretty strong general rule.
d-usa wrote: Just look at his "made in China" stuff that he continues to manufacture in China while his working class supporters see their jobs outsourced.
Pointing out Trump’s own stuff is made in China is a clever bit of ‘gotcha’, but that’s really all it is. The bigger and more important point is that Trump’s complaints about China, or about international trade in general are either dishonest, or so massively misinformed that it ends up in the same place.
US manufacturing is strong, and grows every year. It’s grown 20% in the last 6 years, that’s stronger growth than most sectors. But there’s been little benefit to working class people, because manufacturing is now heavily automated. While manufacturing grew 20%, manufacturing jobs grew 5%.
The decent paying manufacturing jobs weren’t replaced by China, they were replaced by robots. Trump has tuned in to the anger over those lost jobs, but his solution is smoke and mirrors.
That article is pretty much what happens you delve deep in to the crazy world of tribal politics. Anyone with any beliefs at all is declared to be an ideologue. And any two people who happen to align loosely on general goals are assumed to be part of the same transnational movement.
To show that kind of thinking produces a very silly understanding of the world, consider the author just blithely mentioning that this ‘transnational progressivism’ supports global governance. There’s no consideration that even among the far left that kind of idea is a minority of a minority. For the author and his warped view of the world, the fact that one left winger is in favour of global governance means they all are.
He produces a similarly nutty description of the movement that opposes the transnational progressive for control of the English speaking world. His description of the ‘democratic nationalists’ says they follow the economics of Von Mises and Hayek - who's work can now be best charitably described as utterly irrelevant to everything and everyone.
The two groups he describe are fractions of fractions of a minority of minor political parties. Both groups are almost completely irrelevant to those in real power.
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whembly wrote: Maybe that's part of the reason Trump is doing well... in that, he's so different.
Not that he's necessarily right, wrong or flying rodent gak insane... he contrasts so much from the usual "run of the mill" politicians.
Yeah, I think that is a huge part of the appeal. He talks like people talk. He uses direct sentences that get straight to the point. Nothing he says sounds like it's been managed and perfected by script writers.
I think that's what was so telling about Rubio's Rubiobot gaffe, it wasn't just that he was repeating a line over and over again, because everyone does that, including Trump (if anything he's quite repetitive). But Rubio's line was so obviously written deliberately, to sound just right. It showed a level of stage managing that Trump doesn't have.
That's all surface level stuff, of course. Underneath Trump is running a campaign that's at least as cynical as anyone else in this race. But on the surface his use of more aggressive and more crude language gives an appearance of something more genuine.
d-usa wrote: Usual "it's not xenophobia, we just want to keep our culture and everybody is welcome of they act just like us" article.
Although the "eight sorry years later" bit on the opening paragraph made it obvious what kind of article to expect.
My regard for the author's analysis was somewhat biased by the glaring typo in the opening paragraph. However, this guy has essentially invented an ideology he calls transnational progressivism so he can accuse Obama of being its foremost practitioner and then say he's a failure and this proves the ideology is bankrupt. That's a long way of saying it's a straw man argument.
d-usa wrote: Just look at his "made in China" stuff that he continues to manufacture in China while his working class supporters see their jobs outsourced.
Pointing out Trump’s own stuff is made in China is a clever bit of ‘gotcha’, but that’s really all it is. The bigger and more important point is that Trump’s complaints about China, or about international trade in general are either dishonest, or so massively misinformed that it ends up in the same place.
US manufacturing is strong, and grows every year. It’s grown 20% in the last 6 years, that’s stronger growth than most sectors. But there’s been little benefit to working class people, because manufacturing is now heavily automated. While manufacturing grew 20%, manufacturing jobs grew 5%.
The decent paying manufacturing jobs weren’t replaced by China, they were replaced by robots. Trump has tuned in to the anger over those lost jobs, but his solution is smoke and mirrors.
Honestly, I'd say it's a bit more than a gotcha. Trump is making a big show of threatening to force some companies (Ford, for example) to pay a 40% tax on any products that they don't produce in the US, whilst he simultaneously does the exact same thing. Is he going to add a 40% tax on his campaign merchandise?
d-usa wrote: Usual "it's not xenophobia, we just want to keep our culture and everybody is welcome of they act just like us" article.
Although the "eight sorry years later" bit on the opening paragraph made it obvious what kind of article to expect.
My regard for the author's analysis was somewhat biased by the glaring typo in the opening paragraph. However, this guy has essentially invented an ideology he calls transnational progressivism so he can accuse Obama of being its foremost practitioner and then say he's a failure and this proves the ideology is bankrupt. That's a long way of saying it's a straw man argument.
Ya mean... ya'll disagree with Bill Clinton too!!?!?*
*never thought I'd hear the Clintons say this during the election season. o.O
whembly wrote: Maybe that's part of the reason Trump is doing well... in that, he's so different.
Not that he's necessarily right, wrong or flying rodent gak insane... he contrasts so much from the usual "run of the mill" politicians.
Yeah, I think that is a huge part of the appeal. He talks like people talk. He uses direct sentences that get straight to the point. Nothing he says sounds like it's been managed and perfected by script writers.
I think that's what was so telling about Rubio's Rubiobot gaffe, it wasn't just that he was repeating a line over and over again, because everyone does that, including Trump (if anything he's quite repetitive). But Rubio's line was so obviously written deliberately, to sound just right. It showed a level of stage managing that Trump doesn't have.
That's all surface level stuff, of course. Underneath Trump is running a campaign that's at least as cynical as anyone else in this race. But on the surface his use of more aggressive and more crude language gives an appearance of something more genuine.
Wholeheartedly agree with you.
Which sucks 'cuz I'm terrified of a Clinton or Trump administration.
Trump has proven us political junkies wrong...
First we said: He's only doing this for attention... no way he'll last past Christmas.
Then, he caught on fire a bit, and still kicking arse in the primary...
Any major flub or controversy or old-dirt flung his way... he dishes back and still is left standing. It's like, he's Jason in Friday the 13th, where his victims scrambles away, but Jason nonchalantly catches up to them in the end. O.o
Cruz must trigger the winners-takes-all threshold in Utah tonight... at the minimum. Not sure if he can compete in Arizona...
whembly wrote: *never thought I'd hear the Clintons say this during the election season. o.O
He's trying to recapture those Democrat voters who are defecting to Trump.
"If you believe we can rise together, if you believe we've finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us and the seven years before that where we were practicing trickle-down economics, then you should vote for her,"
A Bill Clinton aide later clarified that the former President was "referring to the GOP's obstructionism and not President Obama's legacy."
Source Trying to find a complete transcript of the event(in Spokane, Washington) where the speech was made but haven't found one yet.
Don’t know that I’d call President Obama's 72 straight months of job growth an “awful legacy.” https://t.co/GUzlY6Wp4h
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 22, 2016
Two of those 8 years the Democrats held majorities in both the House and Senate.... so if Bill was referring to "the GOP's obstructionism and not President Obama's legacy", his math is off.
Nothing more than a little spin here... just a tiny bit.
Anyone who knows Billy-o-Clinton would've figured he's trying to attack the GOp and not Obama.
whembly wrote: Ya mean... ya'll disagree with Bill Clinton too!!?!?*
Spoiler:
*never thought I'd hear the Clintons say this during the election season. o.O
You know it's just a line that was taken out of context. So why did you post it?
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Goliath wrote: Honestly, I'd say it's a bit more than a gotcha. Trump is making a big show of threatening to force some companies (Ford, for example) to pay a 40% tax on any products that they don't produce in the US, whilst he simultaneously does the exact same thing. Is he going to add a 40% tax on his campaign merchandise?
Maybe. Trump's clothing line and the like are vanity projects anyway. The point is that there is simply no way that people are going to accept an increase in the price of consumer goods that could be as high as 40%, in order to create a pitifully small number of new manufacturing jobs.
And not only is the tax so obviously bad, it will also impact a whole lot of special interests. Does anyone on Earth honestly believe that Walmart and Target will tolerate a single Republican or Democrat congressman voting in favour of this, let alone sponsoring it?
EDIT - and now in writing my answer to whembly below, I've maybe talked myself in to being a lot less strong about that tariff never happening. Hmmm...
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Breotan wrote: He's trying to recapture those Democrat voters who are defecting to Trump.
Didn't we go over this, and establish the number of Democrats shifting 'en masse' was pretty small?
Which sucks 'cuz I'm terrified of a Clinton or Trump administration.
The answer is probably to be a lot less afraid. You were scared of Obama as well, and the end result was... well whether you liked his policies and approaches, I think we can all agree that the US didn't sink in to the sea. Same for the Bush admin really, I mean that's almost a poster child for everything I'd fear in a US president (pointless war, unfunded tax cut) but in the end the nation rolled along okay, it didn't sink in to the sea.
Trump has proven us political junkies wrong...
Time and again, yeah
I read an interesting thing a little while ago, an analogy that we understand what is possible by what has happened before. So we might be tricked in to saying the tallest a man can ever possibly be is 8'11", because that's the tallest a man has ever been. But before that guy, we would have thought the tallest a man could be was whatever the previous tallest man might have been.
I think we've fallen in to that trap with Trump. An outsider had never lasted long in to a primary, so we assumed Trump can't. A candidate has never grown his base with massive unfavourable scores, so we assumed Trump can't.
I'm not saying therefore all the rules get thrown out, Trump still has a lot of hurdles to overcome. But we maybe needed to regard that list of things that hadn't happened as things that were unlikely to happen, not things that couldn't happen. And we need to apply that same logic to Trump entering the general and maybe the presidency.
Which sucks 'cuz I'm terrified of a Clinton or Trump administration.
The answer is probably to be a lot less afraid. You were scared of Obama as well, and the end result was... well whether you liked his policies and approaches, I think we can all agree that the US didn't sink in to the sea. Same for the Bush admin really, I mean that's almost a poster child for everything I'd fear in a US president (pointless war, unfunded tax cut) but in the end the nation rolled along okay, it didn't sink in to the sea.
There will be a mourning period if it's between Clinton and Trump. Then, I'm gunna calvin-ball this gak.
Trump has proven us political junkies wrong...
Time and again, yeah
I read an interesting thing a little while ago, an analogy that we understand what is possible by what has happened before. So we might be tricked in to saying the tallest a man can ever possibly be is 8'11", because that's the tallest a man has ever been. But before that guy, we would have thought the tallest a man could be was whatever the previous tallest man might have been.
I think we've fallen in to that trap with Trump. An outsider had never lasted long in to a primary, so we assumed Trump can't. A candidate has never grown his base with massive unfavourable scores, so we assumed Trump can't.
I'm not saying therefore all the rules get thrown out, Trump still has a lot of hurdles to overcome. But we maybe needed to regard that list of things that hadn't happened as things that were unlikely to happen, not things that couldn't happen. And we need to apply that same logic to Trump entering the general and maybe the presidency.
Frankly... I'm still stunned.
Trump clobbered everyone in the AZ primary largely because if his "I'll build a wall" spiel.
Both Trump and Clinton has extremely HIGH unfavorables for completely different reasons.
I don't know what to think anymore and I'm litterally giving offerings to the Four Chaos Gods to have a Contested Convention.
whembly wrote: Because it was remarkably undisciplined of Bill...
"Undisciplined" refers to failing to maintain a consistent message, shifting focus or even changing the whole story to suit a new audience or new circumstance. Bill Clinton didn't do that. He gave a line which was edited and snipped out of its context, to make it seem like he was complaining about the Obama administration.
I understand why team red would twist the story, they’re trying to help their side. But you aren’t claiming the team red interpretation is true, so I don’t know why you’d post it.
There will be a mourning period if it's between Clinton and Trump. Then, I'm gunna calvin-ball this gak.
Seriously, now that we’re almost at the end, do you think the concerns you had about the Obama administration were grounded? Were the things you and other Republicans were scared about in 2008 borne out?
Both Trump and Clinton has extremely HIGH unfavorables for completely different reasons.
Everyone has extremely high unfavourables. Clinton is down by 12, but Cruz is down by around 18, and Trump is down by almost 30. The only people on the national stage with favourable ratings are Sanders, Biden and Kasich, and that’s because they’re kind of irrelevant. If anyone of the got closer to being president we could watch their favourability ratings plummet as well.
That’s just a reality of the political times. People take an immediate dislike to anyone who looks close to winning the presidency.
The deepening division between left and right in US politics makes it a certainty that anyone elected will be disliked by nearly half the population "just because".
Kilkrazy wrote: The deepening division between left and right in US politics makes it a certainty that anyone elected will be disliked by nearly half the population "just because".
I dislike everyone on general principle. You always start there. Then, you allow tolerance of people that you would play an RPG with. Unless they subscribe to ignorant 2nd edition D&D 10 coins per pound monetary systems. Then go back to hating them.
sebster wrote: I think we can all agree that the US didn't sink in to the sea. Same for the Bush admin really, I mean that's almost a poster child for everything I'd fear in a US president (pointless war, unfunded tax cut) but in the end the nation rolled along okay, it didn't sink in to the sea.
Well, under the Bush Administration the whole nation didn't sink into the sea, just New Orleans.
Let's not reduce the impact that Government policy has on people's lives. For some people during these administrations, their worlds did change dramatically with things like Medicare part D, Iraq/Afghan Wars, Obamacare, and a host of other smaller lower profile things. As a whole the nation keeps going, but individuals and regions are greatly impacted by Government Policy decisions. it is unavoidable really. To them, the decision is life-altering.
Politics matter way more than most people give it credit for.
It was/is quite a.... eyecatching ............. image.
Did wonder perhaps if the Mormons who posted it -- it was them right ? -- perhaps haven't quite got their finger on the pulse of what your average American thinks when they see such an image.
Presumably Trumps' "response" is just more of his usual bluster, and perhaps a reference to the SUPER SECRET INFO 111 that Annonymous et al were, apparently, claiming they had uncovered about Cruz/his wife, prostitutes and so on ?
Trump can push his tarrof/tax agenda all he wants.
It's Congress that sets those and if he (heaven forbid) were president, I think that it would be nearly a repeat of the blockage of Obama policies....vote this down, bote that down, etc.
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It's Congress that sets those and if he (heaven forbid) were president, I think that it would be nearly a repeat of the blockage of Obama policies....vote this down, bote that down, etc.
I wonder when the "Liberals and Conservatives United Against Trump" bus starts rolling? Maybe it will take a Trump primary victory before the David Brookes of the world start endorsing Clinton.
Does anyone still seriously think we are going to a brokered GOP convention? Seems more improbable each passing Tuesday. Sorry Lincoln, Trump just carjacked your party
jasper76 wrote: I wonder when the "Liberals and Conservatives United Against Trump" bus starts rolling? Maybe it will take a Trump primary victory before the David Brookes of the world start endorsing Clinton.
Check this endorsement image from 538:
Kinda neato...
See Trump? He's uncategorized!
Does anyone still seriously think we are going to a brokered GOP convention? Seems more improbable each passing Tuesday. Sorry Lincoln, Trump just carjacked your party
It's more possible than you think...
Trump needed 70 delegates last night (all of AZ, and proportional wins at UT) to "be on track" for the minimum requirement for the convention of 1237 delegates. He only got AZ (58 delegates) as Cruz triggered the take-all clause for UT.
According to 538, he's only on track at 96% of the needed delegates.
He's close, and there's plenty of winners-takes-all states left that could theoretically help Trump get the 1st ballot needed delegates. The bad news for Trump, many of those are closed primary/caucus... which has been his weakness so far...
Looking through that pile of amoebas is like looking at a political graveyard. In the end, this circus will have probably destroyed a lot of political careers. I'm a bit verklempt.
I hope it goes to a convention just so I can see it play out, but it's hard to see how that could possibly be a positive for the GOP's run for office. Either Trump comes out as the nominee, or a non-Trump. The non-Trump would then go into the fight against the opposition already as an illegitimate nominee in the minds of millions of voters. Don't get me wrong, if I was a GOP delegate and could hit the reset button on the primary results, I would do it in a heartbeat even if it meant losing the general election.
Looking through that pile of amoebas is like looking at a political graveyard. In the end, this circus will have probably destroyed a lot of political careers. I'm a bit verklempt.
I hope it goes to a convention just so I can see it play out, but it's hard to see how that could possibly be a positive for the GOP's run for office. Either Trump comes out as the nominee, or a non-Trump. The non-Trump would then go into the fight against the opposition already as an illegitimate nominee in the minds of millions of voters. Don't get me wrong, if I was a GOP delegate and could hit the reset button on the primary results, I would do it in a heartbeat even if it meant losing the general election.
Well, that solves the problem now but doesn't stop it from happening again.
They could be in the exact same position in four years time.
You know, I'm honestly a bit miffed that they didn't just cut 3 delegates across the states and make it 1234 as the required delegate count. For some reason 1237 just seems wrong
Should Trump be denied the nomination in a convention, all the historical precedent in the world won't erase the fact that in the current climate millions of people who already feel disenfranchised will feel that they have been shammed yet again by the party elite and will not regard the candidate as having been nominated legitimately. That would be a hard cross to bear going into the general election in this day and age.
Looking through that pile of amoebas is like looking at a political graveyard. In the end, this circus will have probably destroyed a lot of political careers. I'm a bit verklempt.
I hope it goes to a convention just so I can see it play out, but it's hard to see how that could possibly be a positive for the GOP's run for office. Either Trump comes out as the nominee, or a non-Trump. The non-Trump would then go into the fight against the opposition already as an illegitimate nominee in the minds of millions of voters. Don't get me wrong, if I was a GOP delegate and could hit the reset button on the primary results, I would do it in a heartbeat even if it meant losing the general election.
Well, that solves the problem now but doesn't stop it from happening again.
They could be in the exact same position in four years time.
I think there is alot of cult of personality going on with Trump (as there was with Obama). If he should win the general election, sure the GOP is with him for life. But if he doesn't win the Presidency this go around, I'm inclined to believe he wouldn't do well in the primaries in 4 years.
Should Trump be denied the nomination in a convention, all the historical precedent in the world won't erase the fact that in the current climate millions of people who already feel disenfranchised will feel that they have been shammed yet again by the party elite and will not regard the candidate as having been nominated legitimately. That would be a hard cross to bear going into the general election in this day and age.
Looking through that pile of amoebas is like looking at a political graveyard. In the end, this circus will have probably destroyed a lot of political careers. I'm a bit verklempt.
I hope it goes to a convention just so I can see it play out, but it's hard to see how that could possibly be a positive for the GOP's run for office. Either Trump comes out as the nominee, or a non-Trump. The non-Trump would then go into the fight against the opposition already as an illegitimate nominee in the minds of millions of voters. Don't get me wrong, if I was a GOP delegate and could hit the reset button on the primary results, I would do it in a heartbeat even if it meant losing the general election.
Well, that solves the problem now but doesn't stop it from happening again.
They could be in the exact same position in four years time.
I think there is alot of cult of personality going on with Trump (as there was with Obama). If he should win the general election, sure the GOP is with him for life. But if he doesn't win the Presidency this go around, I'm inclined to believe he wouldn't do well in the primaries in 4 years.
There's no reason for Trump supporters to feel disenfranchised if Trump isn't the nominee because he failed to win 1237 or more delegates. If Trump hits the magic number of delegates he wins the first floor vote at the convention and becomes the nominee. If he doesn't then it's up for grabs. A plurality of Republican primary voters have chosen Not Trump so far. He's averaging less than 50% of the vote. If Trump doesn't get 1237 delegates and doesn't win a plurality of the popular vote it's not unreasonable for him to lose the nomination.
Should Trump be denied the nomination in a convention, all the historical precedent in the world won't erase the fact that in the current climate millions of people who already feel disenfranchised will feel that they have been shammed yet again by the party elite and will not regard the candidate as having been nominated legitimately. That would be a hard cross to bear going into the general election in this day and age.
The majority of the Republican primary/caucus votes went to the non-Trump candidates.
Furthermore, if the Sander voters and Trump voters stays home during a Clinton vs. non-Trump General Election... Hillary's in trouble.
There's no reason for Trump supporters to feel disenfranchised if Trump isn't the nominee because he failed to win 1237 or more delegates. If Trump hits the magic number of delegates he wins the first floor vote at the convention and becomes the nominee. If he doesn't then it's up for grabs. A plurality of Republican primary voters have chosen Not Trump so far. He's averaging less than 50% of the vote. If Trump doesn't get 1237 delegates and doesn't win a plurality of the popular vote it's not unreasonable for him to lose the nomination.
You mean majority of popular vote... not plurality.
Trump being the frontrunner means he has at least the plurality of the delegates so far... but, he has yet to hit the majority and he's tracking a shade short of that 1237 needed.
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feeder wrote: I suspect that the reality of the political process and what Drumpf's mouthbreathers believe are two wildly different things.
True... only have to look at the PUMAS in the aftermath of the Obama vs Clinton primary.
Whether Sanders voters show up in the election, and what Sanders decides to do or not do with his clout, I think is highly interesting. He shouldn't be going after Clinton at all anymore if he believe that she'd be a better President than Trump. I think the best thing for Clinton to do is to just offer him the Vice Presidency, if she hasn't already done so, and assuming she doesn't have some firepower like Colin Powell or Bill Gates or some gak. In my opinion Sanders has developed somewhat of a mandate for the VP position if it's something he wants. Sanders in Vice Presidential debates means more Larry David. I'm all for it.
I think you guys underestimate how p'd off a good deal of people will be if Trump loses due to party machinations. Sanders people only stay home if he takes the lowroad and/or the youth can't be bothered to get out of bed, which is always a problem and certainly a big possibility if Sanders is not in the ticket and Clinton otherwise can't break through to youth voters.
The youth not being bothered to get out of bed is what has doomed Sanders so far, so why should it be any different in the future? Clinton will never pick him for the VP slot. She doesn't need to. VT is safe, and other possible nominees can being a lot more. Evan Bayh, Corey Booker, hell, put Elizabeth Warren on and she will have more youth voters than Sanders would net her.
Gordon Shumway wrote: . Evan Bayh, Corey Booker, hell, put Elizabeth Warren on and she will have more youth voters than Sanders would net her.
I would definitely vote for a ticket with Corey Booker on it. I've seen him speak on numerous occasions, various interviews, etc. and he's one of the few people up there in Washington that, when he opens his mouth, my BS alarm doesn't go off. In one of his more recent interviews, he said flat out that he reaches across the aisle, and has even worked with the anti-christ himself (Cruz) on a few bills.
I have no idea who Evan Bayh is, but I suspect with that last name, it may draw a bit of negative attention, no matter what he looks like. It simply looks a bit too foreign for Republicans to NOT go after.
I seem to recall Warren stating flat out that she would not take any offers for the VP, though to be fair, she could very well have been responding only to a potential Sanders offering.
I think you guys underestimate how p'd off a good deal of people will be if Trump loses due to party machinations.
Good.
As I Republican, I'm ready for my party to fething implode. Let all of the fundamentalist, evangelicals, and nut jobs either have the party (I'll likely go Libertarian) or they follow Trump to his Trump Party.
jmurph wrote: Or, perhaps, anyone who can make it close to winning the presidency in the current environment is going to be pretty unlikeable.
I like the wordplay I’m not sure it produces an alternative view that really works, though.
I mean, it’s not hard to conceptualise how a combination of circumstances and the political environment can lead to the public getting bitter and cynical, and automatically disliking anyone who gets close to the presidency. But I can’t figure out what kind of system would emerge that would mean in order to get close to the presidency a person had to be inherently unlikeable.
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Easy E wrote: Well, under the Bush Administration the whole nation didn't sink into the sea, just New Orleans.
Let's not reduce the impact that Government policy has on people's lives. For some people during these administrations, their worlds did change dramatically with things like Medicare part D, Iraq/Afghan Wars, Obamacare, and a host of other smaller lower profile things. As a whole the nation keeps going, but individuals and regions are greatly impacted by Government Policy decisions. it is unavoidable really. To them, the decision is life-altering.
Politics matter way more than most people give it credit for.
Yeah, government matters. I work in government, I don’t do it because I believe my work is pointless. I’ve experienced bad government in my own country, and I’ve seen some incredibly bad government in other countries. I’m not saying government doesn’t matter. I’m saying getting extremely worked up and fearful is a bad idea.
When you buy in to that kind of fear you lose context and critical decision making. That’s why I’m saying. Some people have spent so many years, possibly even two decades by now, believing everything that they heard about Hillary Clinton, that they think Donald fething Trump might actually be the better option. That’s barking mad.
The simple truth is that most mainstream politicians are… okay. I don’t agree with much that Jeb Bush thought about, well, anything, but at worst he would have been a toned down version of GW Bush. And I don’t like Kasich running a con job where he pretends to be moderate, but if he got in to office we’d see something similar to his time as governor – tight budgets with a neo-liberal foundation.
On the other side of the coin, Clinton is someone I just don’t like on a personal level, but as a president we’d see basically a continuation of the Obama administration. And I think Sanders’ platform is impractical enough to be bordering on dishonest, but I know that if he won his actual changes would be minor and most likely positive in most areas.
But we’ve gotten so whipped up getting all scared about those kinds of people that we can’t tell see the difference between politicians we don’t like, and actual lunatics who represent a real and lasting danger.
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jasper76 wrote: I wonder when the "Liberals and Conservatives United Against Trump" bus starts rolling? Maybe it will take a Trump primary victory before the David Brookes of the world start endorsing Clinton.
I'm very nostalgic for the days when David Brooks had any kind of influence on conservative politics.
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Prestor Jon wrote: There's no reason for Trump supporters to feel disenfranchised if Trump isn't the nominee because he failed to win 1237 or more delegates. If Trump hits the magic number of delegates he wins the first floor vote at the convention and becomes the nominee. If he doesn't then it's up for grabs. A plurality of Republican primary voters have chosen Not Trump so far. He's averaging less than 50% of the vote. If Trump doesn't get 1237 delegates and doesn't win a plurality of the popular vote it's not unreasonable for him to lose the nomination.
There are Sanders supporters complaining that it’s unfair and rigged because Clinton has all the superdelegates, when the plain and obvious reality is that Clinton is well ahead in pledged delegates and vote count. People are inclined to see systems as unfair if the result goes against them, no matter what the rules or reality says.
And in the case of Trump supporters, we’re talking about watching their candidate reach the convention clear delegate lead and in touch of the majority needed for an auto-win. If the convention then nominates someone else, it’s pretty clear there’ll be a lot of outrage.
Gordon Shumway wrote: . Evan Bayh, Corey Booker, hell, put Elizabeth Warren on and she will have more youth voters than Sanders would net her.
I would definitely vote for a ticket with Corey Booker on it. I've seen him speak on numerous occasions, various interviews, etc. and he's one of the few people up there in Washington that, when he opens his mouth, my BS alarm doesn't go off. In one of his more recent interviews, he said flat out that he reaches across the aisle, and has even worked with the anti-christ himself (Cruz) on a few bills.
I have no idea who Evan Bayh is, but I suspect with that last name, it may draw a bit of negative attention, no matter what he looks like. It simply looks a bit too foreign for Republicans to NOT go after.
I seem to recall Warren stating flat out that she would not take any offers for the VP, though to be fair, she could very well have been responding only to a potential Sanders offering.
Bayh was Indiana's governor for ten years and then a senator for ten more. He looks like a basketball coach from Indiana. About as Midwest American as one can get. Plus, I think Clinton has had a secret crush on him for the past twenty years.
whembly wrote: Furthermore, if the Sander voters and Trump voters stays home during a Clinton vs. non-Trump General Election... Hillary's in trouble.
There's a lot of internet talk about Sanders supporters, but we have to remember the Howard Dean lesson of how much internet hype matters (it doesn't).
And there's a lot of talk about Clinton's negative favourability among the general population. But that misses two important facts, the first and simplest is that Trump and Cruz have much stronger negative popularity. The second is that overall popularity doesn't really matter, what matters is how much your base likes you. Because whether Republicans like or dislike a Democrat doesn't really matter, they won't be voting for the other guy anyway.
You know the general rule that Democrats have a bigger base, but it's more likely to stay home on election day. I think that rule can be extrapolated, that in order to get the Democratic base out, they need to either really like their guy, or really dislike the other guy. 2008 is an clearest example of the former, Obama got 69m votes. 2004 is an interesting example of the latter, while it was in a losing effort, 59m people turned out to vote for the charisma vacuum John Kerry.
Clinton is certainly nothing like Obama in terms of likeability among the Democratic base, but she’s also not that far off. +35 to +40 is perfectly fine. But when the other side is likely to put up either Trump or Cruz*, it’s also likely that Clinton could see a lot of the base get out to vote against the other side.
*And remember Cruz has no declared already he won’t be moving back to the centre in general, his theory is all about making sure every conservative gets out to vote by appealing to them as much as possible, with no interest in how that might play to the centre, or energise the Democratic base.
sebster wrote: *And remember Cruz has no declared already he won’t be moving back to the centre in general, his theory is all about making sure every conservative gets out to vote by appealing to them as much as possible, with no interest in how that might play to the centre, or energise the Democratic base.
I'd argue that's been the downfall of the Republicans in the last two general elections.
The best thing in that article is a link that describes what 'clothespin' means in political ciricles. Not because that's a term people really need to understand, but because it links to a 2000 article from libertarian William Safire that's almost perfect in it's dramatic irony.
"Bush's lower taxation for all will better preserve prosperity, and Gore's deathbed conversion on campaign finance reform will better preserve democracy, if he can drop his class warfare long enough to make a deal with Republicans."
"...Bush confidently surrounds himself with more independent-minded people."
"push his (Bush's) disinclination to nation-build into outright isolationism"
"Partisanship sharpens debate and opens the possibility of grand compromise. "
How'd all those assumptions work out for you, Mr Safire?
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LordofHats wrote: I'd argue that's been the downfall of the Republicans in the last two general elections.
Yeah, a winning Republican right now needs to say enough to ensure the conservative base will turn out for election, but say as little as possible to energise the larger democratic base. It’s a tough balancing act. Bush did it masterfully in 2000. Compassionate conservatism is one of the best conceived platforms in recent years, because sold conservative to the base, while emphasising compassionate to everyone else.
Cruz doesn’t even want to play that game. And Trump is doing this whole other thing, that I don’t people have even figured out yet. I don’t think Trump has figured it out yet.
"push his (Bush's) disinclination to nation-build into outright isolationism"
To be slightly fair, Bush did run on a relatively isolationist platform, unfortunately he was surrounded by people who stood to get richer, and a number of people decided to "accidentally" put some airplanes into some American buildings.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: To be slightly fair, Bush did run on a relatively isolationist platform, unfortunately he was surrounded by people who stood to get richer, and a number of people decided to "accidentally" put some airplanes into some American buildings.
Absolutely. I’m not saying Safire was misleading us, or that he’d been misled by Bush. Bush reacted to events as they happened, in ways that even Bush probably wouldn’t have predicted of himself before the events.
And that’s the reality that makes the level of certainty with which people talk about politics or any reasonably complex event so comical years later. End of the day people are picking one candidate that they don’t know half as well as they think they do, who is about to react to 4 years of events that no-one can predict ahead of time. And yet we’re so certain that we know what we’re doing.
And it’s not just about candidates. That line from Safire about heated partisan politics producing better debate, that’s my favourite wrong thing. Because I would have believed that in 2000, but now it’s so clearly wrong.
To be fair, I think that depends on the nature of partisanship. I can envision a partisan divide that does produce better debate, but it requires a divide based on ideological grounds that are based in facts.
There is at least one party in the US that has this approach to facts;
It's one thing to debate what facts mean. It's another to build your platform around the conception they don't exist.
It has to just suck being a modern Republican.Your front runner was/is a reality TV star. And the fact he's not at all Republican, just saying what you want to hear (apparently) is just the icing on the cake. Conservatives are almost always at the fore to complain about the dumbing down of America through "liberal indoctrination". And here you are voting Trump brand vodka and TV!
How do you seriously not take a really thorough look at what got you here? Electing an (bad) actor wasn't enough, you needed reality TV!
LordofHats wrote: It's one thing to debate what facts mean. It's another to build your platform around the conception they don't exist.
Absolutely, and if Safire had said something along the lines of 'partisanship can produced informed debate if all parties stick to fact based reasoning and argue in good faith' then it would have been reasonable, and not funny at all.
But he didn’t. He didn’t even consider the possibility that partisanship might involve one party that is arguing from positions of an almost faithlike ideology, with no regard for facts.
And I’m not saying he’s wrong for failing to predict that. The warning signs were there, but they were only really clearly seen in hindsight. But it goes to show how much there is that we don’t or can’t see ahead of time, that makes so much of our analysis hopelessly wrong.
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DutchWinsAll wrote: Conservatives are almost always at the fore to complain about the dumbing down of America through "liberal indoctrination". And here you are voting Trump brand vodka and TV!
Most people are saying Trump is a sign of how badly things have gone wrong in the Republican party. Republicans are saying he's a sign of how badly things have gone wrong in America.
If Trump does get the nomination, then in November we'll know whether it's just a problem with the Republican party, or something much greater.
DutchWinsAll wrote: Conservatives are almost always at the fore to complain about the dumbing down of America through "liberal indoctrination". And here you are voting Trump brand vodka and TV!
Most people are saying Trump is a sign of how badly things have gone wtong in the Republican party. Republicans are saying he's a sign of how badly things have gone wrong in America.
If Trump does get the nomination, then in November we'll know whether it's just a problem with the Republican party, or something much greater.
No I know that, but it is the deep Republican base that is supporting him. They can't deny that. There aren't many people that were pro-Obama for years and suddenly didn't like the cut of his jib and are Trumpers now. It's the exact same crowd the Republicans have been catering to.
And it is wrong of me to conflate Conservative with Republican, but this is what it is. Whether or not his ideals are Conservative (they're not) he is attracting "Conservative" speaking voters in droves
Okay, here's a question... let's say Trump wins the next few states and comes within a hair's breadth of 1237 a week or two before the convention. So he's pretty much got a lock on getting all 1237 by the actual convention. There is no hope for Cruz and Kasich to last till a brokered convention, all that is left for them is to concede defeat. Given that situation, can Cruz and Kasich give those delegates they've already won to Hillary? Y'know... just to spite Trump.
Also: something a friend of mine told me tonight that I believe he saw on the internet... "Can we write in James T. Kirk on the ballot? Because this election is turning into a real Kobayashi Maru."
Gordon Shumway wrote: . Evan Bayh, Corey Booker, hell, put Elizabeth Warren on and she will have more youth voters than Sanders would net her.
I would definitely vote for a ticket with Corey Booker on it. I've seen him speak on numerous occasions, various interviews, etc. and he's one of the few people up there in Washington that, when he opens his mouth, my BS alarm doesn't go off. In one of his more recent interviews, he said flat out that he reaches across the aisle, and has even worked with the anti-christ himself (Cruz) on a few bills.
I have no idea who Evan Bayh is, but I suspect with that last name, it may draw a bit of negative attention, no matter what he looks like. It simply looks a bit too foreign for Republicans to NOT go after.
I seem to recall Warren stating flat out that she would not take any offers for the VP, though to be fair, she could very well have been responding only to a potential Sanders offering.
I like Booker, and I'd vote for Clinton/Booker, but I do have some pretty serious reservations about his experience. I don't really know much about what he's done or not done in his 2 years in the Senate. I'd prefer a candidate with a longer record.
squidhills wrote: Okay, here's a question... let's say Trump wins the next few states and comes within a hair's breadth of 1237 a week or two before the convention. So he's pretty much got a lock on getting all 1237 by the actual convention. There is no hope for Cruz and Kasich to last till a brokered convention, all that is left for them is to concede defeat. Given that situation, can Cruz and Kasich give those delegates they've already won to Hillary? Y'know... just to spite Trump.
Also: something a friend of mine told me tonight that I believe he saw on the internet... "Can we write in James T. Kirk on the ballot? Because this election is turning into a real Kobayashi Maru."
You hit on a point here, which is that Trump doesn't need to reach exactly 1237, but close enough that with released delegates and non-committeds, he gets there. If he does, well, he's the nominee, rules are rules.
I think we're finally seeing a coordinated effort to stop that. Cruz should clean up in the western states, especially those that caucus. All Ted need to do is stop a first ballot win by Trump, and he's in. Hell, if Kasich wants to be be VP I still think Cruz/Kasich should get enough delegates to win on the first ballot.
The GOP establishment has is sick of hearing people whine about a lack of true conservatives on the ticket. They'll nominate Cruz, he'll lose by 8 points in the popular vote and by 100 electoral votes, and the GOP can figure out what it wants to do.
Keep in mind that no matter how you define "safe state," the dems start the game with more electoral votes. In a Cruz/Clinton matchup, I think the Obama blue wall holds (including wisconson and Pennsylvania), while Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada are very much in play. Not that it matters, as Clinton would win Ohio and Florida against Cruz.
The electoral math is grim, and there's a reason the GOP has trotted out more moderate candidates since Goldwater: the election is won or lost in the battleground states.
Ok, so saying "conservative" in regards to GOP glosses over some pretty different groups:
Business conservatives who like deregulation and lower taxation- this group includes large corporate interests and wealthy elites. This is the big funder of GOP politics and seems to be in the crosshairs this primary.
Cultural conservatives who range from moderate to extreme fundamentalists. This group is the voting base of the GOP and seems to be increasingly hostile to the globalism of the first group. This is where you see the strong naturalism, populism, and protectionist rhetoric scoring big.
Now in order to win a national election, the GOP needs both these groups, plus enough political moderates that don't identify strongly as Democrats. The problem is that the second group is pushing against the other two blocs that the Repubs need to actually win.
Trump appeals to the second group, and possibly the crossover group, but not the first. He is also a nightmare to philosophical conservatives, but their influence is pretty minor.
jmurph wrote: Ok, so saying "conservative" in regards to GOP glosses over some pretty different groups: Business conservatives who like deregulation and lower taxation- this group includes large corporate interests and wealthy elites. This is the big funder of GOP politics and seems to be in the crosshairs this primary.
I disagree with part of this. I think the Large Corporate Interests don't want deregulation and lower taxation, at least not for everybody. They want regulation that gives them an advantage, and taxation rules that do the same. They can afford taxation and regulation compliance that allows them to dominate smaller business that cannot. They lobby not for deregulation for all, but for exemptions narrow enough that they retain an advantage. This is the crony capitalism some 'conservatives' rail against.
jmurph wrote: Ok, so saying "conservative" in regards to GOP glosses over some pretty different groups:
Business conservatives who like deregulation and lower taxation- this group includes large corporate interests and wealthy elites. This is the big funder of GOP politics and seems to be in the crosshairs this primary.
I disagree with part of this. I think the Large Corporate Interests don't want deregulation and lower taxation, at least not for everybody. They want regulation that gives them an advantage, and taxation rules that do the same. They can afford taxation and regulation compliance that allows them to dominate smaller business that cannot. They lobby not for deregulation for all, but for exemptions narrow enough that they retain an advantage. This is the crony capitalism some 'conservatives' rail against.
Yes, big corporations lobby for regulations that stifle competition against them from smaller innovative companies. Big corporations want to legislate themselves into a monopolistic position where they make plenty of money to afford to pay the costs of regulation and taxation because they have no fear from competitors. In those situations corporations win, consumers lose, the free market is obstructed and innovation is replaced with stagnation.
squidhills wrote: Okay, here's a question... let's say Trump wins the next few states and comes within a hair's breadth of 1237 a week or two before the convention. So he's pretty much got a lock on getting all 1237 by the actual convention. There is no hope for Cruz and Kasich to last till a brokered convention, all that is left for them is to concede defeat. Given that situation, can Cruz and Kasich give those delegates they've already won to Hillary? Y'know... just to spite Trump.
Also: something a friend of mine told me tonight that I believe he saw on the internet... "Can we write in James T. Kirk on the ballot? Because this election is turning into a real Kobayashi Maru."
You hit on a point here, which is that Trump doesn't need to reach exactly 1237, but close enough that with released delegates and non-committeds, he gets there. If he does, well, he's the nominee, rules are rules.
I think we're finally seeing a coordinated effort to stop that. Cruz should clean up in the western states, especially those that caucus. All Ted need to do is stop a first ballot win by Trump, and he's in. Hell, if Kasich wants to be be VP I still think Cruz/Kasich should get enough delegates to win on the first ballot.
The GOP establishment has is sick of hearing people whine about a lack of true conservatives on the ticket. They'll nominate Cruz, he'll lose by 8 points in the popular vote and by 100 electoral votes, and the GOP can figure out what it wants to do.
Keep in mind that no matter how you define "safe state," the dems start the game with more electoral votes. In a Cruz/Clinton matchup, I think the Obama blue wall holds (including wisconson and Pennsylvania), while Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada are very much in play. Not that it matters, as Clinton would win Ohio and Florida against Cruz.
The electoral math is grim, and there's a reason the GOP has trotted out more moderate candidates since Goldwater: the election is won or lost in the battleground states.
The electoral map is indeed pretty grim for the GOP. It's very hard to look at states that Obama won in 2008 and 2012 and find ones in which Trump or Cruz would have a good chance of defeating Hillary. The most pressing question for the GOP, IMHO, isn't figuring out which candidate would win the election, but is which candidate would do the least damage to the party by winning the nomination? Unfortunately for the GOP it's probably already too late. None of the candidates are unifying the party and getting the levels of support in the primaries that McCain and Romney got, those guys were winning primaries with 70% of the vote, far better performance than Trump, Cruz and Kasich are averaging. If primary voters continue to be divided and unenthusiastic it's not a good sign for turnout in the general.
Prestor Jon wrote: Unfortunately for the GOP it's probably already too late. None of the candidates are unifying the party and getting the levels of support in the primaries that McCain and Romney got, those guys were winning primaries with 70% of the vote, far better performance than Trump, Cruz and Kasich are averaging. If primary voters continue to be divided and unenthusiastic it's not a good sign for turnout in the general.
I agree, but honestly, I'm not sure what other outcome there could have been with these candidates. Never have I seen such a clown car of losers, has beens, and never-wases. It's the 2012 Anyone But Romney if there was no Romney.
Prestor Jon wrote: Unfortunately for the GOP it's probably already too late. None of the candidates are unifying the party and getting the levels of support in the primaries that McCain and Romney got, those guys were winning primaries with 70% of the vote, far better performance than Trump, Cruz and Kasich are averaging. If primary voters continue to be divided and unenthusiastic it's not a good sign for turnout in the general.
I agree, but honestly, I'm not sure what other outcome there could have been with these candidates. Never have I seen such a clown car of losers, has beens, and never-wases. It's the 2012 Anyone But Romney if there was no Romney.
The turnout has far exceeded 2012 for Republicans... the issue is that, there's more players in the field.
I think, when all said & done, if it's Clinton vs. not-Trump, both parties will unify.
Prestor Jon wrote: Unfortunately for the GOP it's probably already too late. None of the candidates are unifying the party and getting the levels of support in the primaries that McCain and Romney got, those guys were winning primaries with 70% of the vote, far better performance than Trump, Cruz and Kasich are averaging. If primary voters continue to be divided and unenthusiastic it's not a good sign for turnout in the general.
I agree, but honestly, I'm not sure what other outcome there could have been with these candidates. Never have I seen such a clown car of losers, has beens, and never-wases. It's the 2012 Anyone But Romney if there was no Romney.
The turnout has far exceeded 2012 for Republicans... the issue is that, there's more players in the field.
I think, when all said & done, if it's Clinton vs. not-Trump, both parties will unify.
There won't be much Republican unity this election. I don't see Trump voters suddenly deciding to vote for Cruz or somebody else just because of the R next to the candidate's name. Trump isn't much of a Republican and I don't see much crossover appeal there. Exit polls of Republican primary voters that have voted for other candidates have shown a high majority of them would be "dissatisfied" with Trump as the party nominee so that will probably depress turnout of Trump wins. The campaigns in the Republican primaries have also gotten even nastier and more rediculous and the leve of acrimony building up isn't good for unity in the general either.
Prestor Jon wrote: There won't be much Republican unity this election. I don't see Trump voters suddenly deciding to vote for Cruz or somebody else just because of the R next to the candidate's name. Trump isn't much of a Republican and I don't see much crossover appeal there. Exit polls of Republican primary voters that have voted for other candidates have shown a high majority of them would be "dissatisfied" with Trump as the party nominee so that will probably depress turnout of Trump wins. The campaigns in the Republican primaries have also gotten even nastier and more rediculous and the leve of acrimony building up isn't good for unity in the general either.
Trump supporters are mostly dissatisfied, and Cruz has pretty serious outsider credentials. He has no friends in the Senate and has worked harder than anybody to shut down government, both figuratively and literally. I wouldn't be surprised for Cruz to pick up a big chunk of the Trump supporters, especially those that had been Republicans consistently prior.
The problem for Cruz isn't in the party faithful. he's a hardline conservative with plenty of appeal to evangelicals. The problem he runs into is winning moderate and swing voters. Now, conventional wisdom is that attracting swing voters isn't a good strategy, because there simply aren't very many. the problem with that is that winning a swing voter is twice as effective as getting a base voter out to the polls, because you also denied your opponent a vote.
Cruz is by far the better choice for the GOP. I think you need to, barring an indictment, write off the next four years in the White House. Nominating Cruz would show that a "true conservative" doesn't fare any better (and likely will fare worse) than a more moderate candidate like Romney. The GOP base feels that they keep losing because they aren't conservative enough, which is almost certainly not true, but they may need to try with a true conservative.
Putting Kasich on the ticket would help, as Ohio is a legit swing state and Kasich is popular. It would also make him seem more prestigious, so that he can muster for a real run in 2020.
jmurph wrote: Ok, so saying "conservative" in regards to GOP glosses over some pretty different groups:
Business conservatives who like deregulation and lower taxation- this group includes large corporate interests and wealthy elites. This is the big funder of GOP politics and seems to be in the crosshairs this primary.
Cultural conservatives who range from moderate to extreme fundamentalists. This group is the voting base of the GOP and seems to be increasingly hostile to the globalism of the first group. This is where you see the strong naturalism, populism, and protectionist rhetoric scoring big.
Now in order to win a national election, the GOP needs both these groups, plus enough political moderates that don't identify strongly as Democrats. The problem is that the second group is pushing against the other two blocs that the Repubs need to actually win.
Trump appeals to the second group, and possibly the crossover group, but not the first. He is also a nightmare to philosophical conservatives, but their influence is pretty minor.
The GOP sowed the seeds of their current debacle back in the 1980's with the "Reagan Coalition." Bringing fiscal conservatives and social conservatives into the same party got Reagan elected but while the two groups share the "conservative" moniker they work at cross purposes. The GOP would be better off today if they were still a party championing fiscal conservatives, limited government, free markets and individual liberty. That would give them a good mix of being for gay marriage, against runaway deficits, unfunded wars, government surveillance and failed policies like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty.
The GOP messed up by trying claim to be for limited government while simultaneously trying to expand government to legislate morality in a pseudo theocratic manner. They should have focused on pushing ethics instead of morals. They should be advocating free markets regulated with laws that enforce good business ethics and fair competition instead of getting overtake by big business and creating a crony capitalist oligarchy. They let Big Business write their own regulations and twist ethics to fit the profit above all idealogy and then misconstrued the lack of ethics as a lack of morals to advocate fixing problems by expanding government to legislate morality which the govt has no business doing and opposes individual liberty.
It would be a boon for the country if the 2016 election cycle broke up both parties. They've become political institutions that mirror far too many of the negatives aspects of the too big to fail financial institutions. More parties providing more choices to voters and letting the myriad parties form coalitions to pass legislation when they find common ground would be so much better.
To be fair, Bush ran up a huge deficit by unfunded wars in Ganners and Iraq. The whole western world is still trying to figure out how to deal with the fallout from those disasters.
Prestor Jon wrote: Unfortunately for the GOP it's probably already too late. None of the candidates are unifying the party and getting the levels of support in the primaries that McCain and Romney got, those guys were winning primaries with 70% of the vote, far better performance than Trump, Cruz and Kasich are averaging. If primary voters continue to be divided and unenthusiastic it's not a good sign for turnout in the general.
I agree, but honestly, I'm not sure what other outcome there could have been with these candidates. Never have I seen such a clown car of losers, has beens, and never-wases. It's the 2012 Anyone But Romney if there was no Romney.
It's easy to forget 2012, but it was pretty much a clown show as well. Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and above all Michelle Bachmann. At least this time there were several sitting Senators and Governors to pick from (for all the good it did them).
Yeah, at least in 2012, Romney was a adult in the room. I didn't vote for him, but I could have said, well, he's my President had he won and not have been embarrassed and ashamed the way that Trump or Cruz represent. Trump or Cruz! It still blows my mind to say that's who it's down to.
Stephen King said it best: "Conservatives who for 8 years sowed the dragon's teeth of partisan politics are horrified to discover they have grown an actual dragon". The idea of no compromise at any cost is above all what led to this lineup.
Yeah, it's hard for me to think that the GOP has anyone me to blame but themselves for their current Trumptastrophe. You can raise a mob, but don't be surprised when it turns against you.
Ouze wrote: Yeah, at least in 2012, Romney was a adult in the room. I didn't vote for him, but I could have said, well, he's my President had he won and not have been embarrassed and ashamed the way that Trump or Cruz represent. Trump or Cruz! It still blows my mind to say that's who it's down to.
Trump would be an absolute embarrassment and wouldn't even come close to the WH... even against Clinton.
Cruz is an ideologue... but, he wouldn't embarrass you like Trump would. He'd have some serious uphill challenge to defeat Clinton, but he certainly wouldn't be worst that Clinton or (gasp) Trump.
Stephen King said it best: "Conservatives who for 8 years sowed the dragon's teeth of partisan politics are horrified to discover they have grown an actual dragon". The idea of no compromise at any cost is above all what led to this lineup.
That a whole lotta paint sniff'n BS there man...
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jasper76 wrote: Yeah, it's hard for me to think that the GOP has anyone me to blame but themselves for their current Trumptastrophe. You can raise a mob, but don't be surprised when it turns against you.
GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
Cruz is more dangerous than Trump IMO, mainly due to the fact that he's a religious zealot. Trump may be a con man but he wont try turn us into a Theocracy like Cruz would.
"It's not easy to tick me off. I don't get angry often," Cruz told reporters while campaigning in Wisconsin. "But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that'll do it every time. Donald you are a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone."
I'm liking *this* Ted Cruz...
Trump idiotic tantrum is giving Cruz free sympathy points and easy opportunities to make himself look good by defending his wife.
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WrentheFaceless wrote: Cruz is more dangerous than Trump IMO, mainly due to the fact that he's a religious zealot. Trump may be a con man but he wont try turn us into a Theocracy like Cruz would.
Sorry... it's laughable to believe that Cruz would turn us into a Theocracy. Not going to happen by any stretch nor attempts.
We hear this everytime with every Republican Presidential candidates...
That's the same as righties believe that Democratic candidates are the Red hammer&sickle communists.
whembly wrote: Sorry... it's laughable to believe that Cruz would turn us into a Theocracy. Not going to happen by any stretch nor attempts.
We hear this everytime with every Republican Presidential candidates...
That's the same as righties believe that Democratic candidates are the Red hammer&sickle communists.
Theocracy is a strong word, but his stance on social issues is straight line Religious Right, and his own website speaks of Christians being persecuted. This isn't a guy that's looking to .
•Successfully defended the constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument, winning a 5-4 landmark decision before the U.S. Supreme Court.
•Led the way to preserve the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance at the U.S. Supreme Court.
I'm not sure I'd consider either the Ten Commandments or any part of the Pledge, let alone the "under God" clause, part of "restoring the constitution," unless you have a pretty specific idea of what the Constitution really means...
jasper76 wrote: Yeah, it's hard for me to think that the GOP has anyone me to blame but themselves for their current Trumptastrophe. You can raise a mob, but don't be surprised when it turns against you.
GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
Kinda hard for me to accept that Tea Party types are going for Trump. He's a big government guy. Maybe the convictions of the Tea Party are pretty thin, but I've just been assuming that the Tea Party vote is where Cruz is getting his limited support.
whembly wrote: Sorry... it's laughable to believe that Cruz would turn us into a Theocracy. Not going to happen by any stretch nor attempts.
We hear this everytime with every Republican Presidential candidates...
That's the same as righties believe that Democratic candidates are the Red hammer&sickle communists.
Theocracy is a strong word, but his stance on social issues is straight line Religious Right, and his own website speaks of Christians being persecuted. This isn't a guy that's looking to .
•Successfully defended the constitutionality of the Texas Ten Commandments monument, winning a 5-4 landmark decision before the U.S. Supreme Court. •Led the way to preserve the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance at the U.S. Supreme Court.
I'm not sure I'd consider either the Ten Commandments or any part of the Pledge, let alone the "under God" clause, part of "restoring the constitution," unless you have a pretty specific idea of what the Constitution really means...
It's all about freedom ofreligion polonius... not, freedom from religion.
jasper76 wrote: Yeah, it's hard for me to think that the GOP has anyone me to blame but themselves for their current Trumptastrophe. You can raise a mob, but don't be surprised when it turns against you.
GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
Kinda hard for me to accept that Tea Party types are going for Trump. He's a big government guy. Maybe the convictions of the Tea Party are pretty thin, but I've just been assuming that the Tea Party vote is where Cruz is getting his limited support.
Many Tea Partier *ARE* supporting Trump. Not because he's an awesome candidate... but, they want to RELEASE THE KRACKEN (Trump) amonst the GOP elite as a show of disapproval.
They're what I'd call the, Burn the GOP Down Crowd.
I don;t get it. It doesn't get much more Tea Party than Cruz? And no one in the GOP can stand Cruz, either, so its not like voting for him would be supporting the establishment.
I guess I shouldn't be looking for too much common sense, consistency, and rationality when it comes to people's voting habits. If the religious are buying what Trump's selling, why not the Tea Party.
Don't worry, Cruz's hallmark is pretty much getting nothing done. He likes to talk a lot and do very little.
I don't know that Cruz's comments are going to help him. Certainly didn't do Rubio any good to go head to head with Trump. And it kinda looks weird since an anti-Trump PAC went after Trump's wife first. The fact that PACs aren't the same as a campaign is kind of a technicality- Cruz could have said that he didn't support that kind of dirty play, but he didn't and now we have this.
Cruz gets killed in a general against Hillary. He loses a portion of the Trump voters, and drives moderates to vote Dem. Kasich probably does better, but has no real chance short of being brokered in, which leaves the same problem of losing Trump/Cruz voters. So, at this point, I don't see any chance of the Republicans winning the general with a candidate other than Trump. Which, the leadership may be perfectly okay with- Cruz would rehab them somewhat, put a conservative on the ticket, and then go down in the general, but not destroy the down ticket candidates.
It's all about freedom ofreligion polonius... not, freedom from religion.
You better believe that implicit in 'freedom of religion' is the freedom from compulsion to adhere to any religion. Otherwise, it's a meaningless phrase.
GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
You forgot to mention the part where they created the Tea Party movement first, then ignored them. Their rhetoric about all govt. being evil, all govt. spending being evil (while at the same time increasing spending), death panels, etc. all helped to give rise to the movement while at the same time never believing it themselves. Trump really is a monster, but don't ignore the doctor that created it and then turned away after being terrified at the ugliness of it.
It's all about freedom ofreligion polonius... not, freedom from religion.
You better believe that implicit in 'freedom of religion' is the freedom from compulsion to adhere to any religion. Otherwise, it's a meaningless phrase.
Yep, it's not just that the government is not allowed to stop you from practicing your religion (with the basic restrictions all our rights have ), butthat the government can also not establish religion.
"It's not easy to tick me off. I don't get angry often," Cruz told reporters while campaigning in Wisconsin. "But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that'll do it every time. Donald you are a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone."
I'm liking *this* Ted Cruz...
Is this the same Ted Cruz who said we need to let our police occupy Muslim neighborhoods to keep them from radicalizing?
In my honest opinion, picking between Trump and Cruz would be like picking between delusions of grandeur and delusions of persecution. I don't know which one I think would do more damage to the country, and because my state doesn't have open GOP primaries, I don't have a vote on the issue anyways.
"It's not easy to tick me off. I don't get angry often," Cruz told reporters while campaigning in Wisconsin. "But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that'll do it every time. Donald you are a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone."
I'm liking *this* Ted Cruz...
The Ted Cruz that has fully embraced the Republican Primary becoming Wrestlemania?
It's all about freedom ofreligion polonius... not, freedom from religion.
You better believe that implicit in 'freedom of religion' is the freedom from compulsion to adhere to any religion. Otherwise, it's a meaningless phrase.
What was it that Cruz was arguing before the Supreme Court that compelled anyone?
It's all about freedom ofreligion polonius... not, freedom from religion.
You better believe that implicit in 'freedom of religion' is the freedom from compulsion to adhere to any religion. Otherwise, it's a meaningless phrase.
Yep, it's not just that the government is not allowed to stop you from practicing your religion (with the basic restrictions all our rights have ), butthat the government can also not establish religion.
None of which were the cases that Cruz argued before the Supreme Court.
"It's not easy to tick me off. I don't get angry often," Cruz told reporters while campaigning in Wisconsin. "But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that'll do it every time. Donald you are a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone."
I'm liking *this* Ted Cruz...
Is this the same Ted Cruz who said we need to let our police occupy Muslim neighborhoods to keep them from radicalizing?
"It's not easy to tick me off. I don't get angry often," Cruz told reporters while campaigning in Wisconsin. "But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that'll do it every time. Donald you are a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone."
I'm liking *this* Ted Cruz...
The Ted Cruz that has fully embraced the Republican Primary becoming Wrestlemania?
It appears so. It's gutter politics... but, in the case I don't blame Cruz for feeling like he needs to defend his wife.
It's a quick simple test really. Ask people if we should put "Allahu Akbar" on all money printed in 2017 and you will have an answer to the question about Cruz's stance on religion and the constitution.
I blame him for making his defense sound like Trump might be about to appear and hit him with a chair.
I think it's an off-key response honestly. His voters aren't the people lapping up this sort of bluster, those are all Trumpeters.
d-usa wrote: It's a quick simple test really. Ask people if we should put "Allahu Akbar" on all money printed in 2017 and you will have an answer to the question about Cruz's stance on religion and the constitution.
d-usa wrote: It's a quick simple test really. Ask people if we should put "Allahu Akbar" on all money printed in 2017 and you will have an answer to the question about Cruz's stance on religion and the constitution.
Sure... ask away.
I didn't realize you spoke for the people.
I guess it was to be expected. You already speak for every liberal politician by telling us what their tiny sound bites really mean, so this is just a natural evolution.
But here we are, and yet another natural conclusion of a simple argument. It's my fault really, for thinking it could possibly go another way.
d-usa wrote: It's a quick simple test really. Ask people if we should put "Allahu Akbar" on all money printed in 2017 and you will have an answer to the question about Cruz's stance on religion and the constitution.
Sure... ask away.
I didn't realize you spoke for the people.
I guess it was to be expected. You already speak for every liberal politician by telling us what their tiny sound bites really mean, so this is just a natural evolution.
But here we are, and yet another natural conclusion of a simple argument. It's my fault really, for thinking it could possibly go another way.
Oh. My bad... I thought your mind was already made up and you know what the outcome would be.
Let's hypothesis something.
Would they're be a backlash if we'd replaced ALL monetary denominations from "God we Trust" to "Allahu Akbar" or something similar?
Yeah, there would be.
But, let's say on a new $200 bill? Sure, I'd be fine with that.
Maybe on the new coins, rotate sayings from religion around the world? That'd be neato.
I think it would be neat as well, especially on coins.
We have a lot of different coin sets between the quarters and dollar coins in circulation. A series on world religions could be a nice touch.
I just have zero faith that it would work out and I think that it would end the same way as the "monument park" at the Oklahoma Legislature. Some "private group" donates a 10 Commandment Monument that is placed there and the legislature says it's okay because they didn't pay for it, some private group donated it and they are just hosting it. Only to be outraged when Satanists and Buddhist line up to donate their own monuments and asking them where they should place them next to the 10 Commandments.
There are just a lot of folks that wouldn't want any other religion on their money, but they don't see why anybody else should care that "God" is mentioned on their money. People be crazy.
d-usa wrote: I think it would be neat as well, especially on coins.
We have a lot of different coin sets between the quarters and dollar coins in circulation. A series on world religions could be a nice touch.
I just have zero faith that it would work out and I think that it would end the same way as the "monument park" at the Oklahoma Legislature. Some "private group" donates a 10 Commandment Monument that is placed there and the legislature says it's okay because they didn't pay for it, some private group donated it and they are just hosting it. Only to be outraged when Satanists and Buddhist line up to donate their own monuments and asking them where they should place them next to the 10 Commandments.
There are just a lot of folks that wouldn't want any other religion on their money, but they don't see why anybody else should care that "God" is mentioned on their money. People be crazy.
People are crazy... and in your case, OK should've allowed the Satanists / Buddhist monuments as well.
Would they're be a backlash if we'd replaced ALL monetary denominations from "God we Trust" to "Allahu Akbar" or something similar?
Yeah, there would be.
But, let's say on a new $200 bill? Sure, I'd be fine with that.
Maybe on the new coins, rotate sayings from religion around the world? That'd be neato.
You gotta pray like one of these to get on US paper:
Spoiler:
I could see something like a "world religion" thing on the back of the nickel with various symbols and such. But you know the right would go ballistic if anything Islam-oriented were included. Didn't they throw a hissy when a Hindu held a prayer in the House or something?
EDIT: And like d-usa said, you'd have the Satanists and so forth pressing for inclusion as well.
I could see something like a "world religion" thing on the back of the nickel with various symbols and such. But you know the right would go ballistic if anything Islam-oriented were included. Didn't they throw a hissy when a Hindu held a prayer in the House or something?
Back to Oklahoma (oh my home state, what a wonderful example you are):
Back in 2007, the Governor's Ethnic American Advisory Council was offering a copy of the Quran with the Oklahoma State Seal as a centennial gift to each member of the State Legislature. 20+ members of the legislature made a grand show out of refusing the gift. Even if they wanted to go the "I'm a Christian, I believe in the Bible and don't need the Quran" route, they could have simply emailed them a "no thanks" instead of making a public spectacle out of it.
GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
You forgot to mention the part where they created the Tea Party movement first, then ignored them. Their rhetoric about all govt. being evil, all govt. spending being evil (while at the same time increasing spending), death panels, etc. all helped to give rise to the movement while at the same time never believing it themselves. Trump really is a monster, but don't ignore the doctor that created it and then turned away after being terrified at the ugliness of it.
Even though our resident Republican mouthpiece has avoided this, I'd just like to highlight it again.
I haven't seen any graphs or Venn diagrams to prove it, but I'd guess there is a large overlap between Tea Partiers and Trumpers. The fact that the Tea Party is pretty much universally viewed as a joke apparently still doesn't register. Bachman, Palin, Odonell, etc are all forgotten somehow. The fact that they've introduced feth all towards a sensibly smaller govt but hate the fact two men can kiss and get it legalized same as the rest of us doesn't register.
Face it, if you're a modern Republican, and you're not a social issue tyrant, you should be ashamed of your party. Blame whomever you want, but its still your party.
And yes, the Democrat erosion of the 2nd Amendment is deplorable, to me at least. Something something emails Libya (but never Iraq) Mexican walls.
d-usa wrote: I think it would be neat as well, especially on coins.
We have a lot of different coin sets between the quarters and dollar coins in circulation. A series on world religions could be a nice touch.
I just have zero faith that it would work out and I think that it would end the same way as the "monument park" at the Oklahoma Legislature. Some "private group" donates a 10 Commandment Monument that is placed there and the legislature says it's okay because they didn't pay for it, some private group donated it and they are just hosting it. Only to be outraged when Satanists and Buddhist line up to donate their own monuments and asking them where they should place them next to the 10 Commandments.
There are just a lot of folks that wouldn't want any other religion on their money, but they don't see why anybody else should care that "God" is mentioned on their money. People be crazy.
People are crazy... and in your case, OK should've allowed the Satanists / Buddhist monuments as well.
Surely the clause that prohibits establishment of a religion prohibits the establishment of multi-faith religion. In other words, the government should be secular.
GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
You forgot to mention the part where they created the Tea Party movement first, then ignored them. Their rhetoric about all govt. being evil, all govt. spending being evil (while at the same time increasing spending), death panels, etc. all helped to give rise to the movement while at the same time never believing it themselves. Trump really is a monster, but don't ignore the doctor that created it and then turned away after being terrified at the ugliness of it.
Even though our resident Republican mouthpiece has avoided this, I'd just like to highlight it again.
I haven't seen any graphs or Venn diagrams to prove it, but I'd guess there is a large overlap between Tea Partiers and Trumpers. The fact that the Tea Party is pretty much universally viewed as a joke apparently still doesn't register. Bachman, Palin, Odonell, etc are all forgotten somehow. The fact that they've introduced feth all towards a sensibly smaller govt but hate the fact two men can kiss and get it legalized same as the rest of us doesn't register.
Face it, if you're a modern Republican, and you're not a social issue tyrant, you should be ashamed of your party. Blame whomever you want, but its still your party.
And yes, the Democrat erosion of the 2nd Amendment is deplorable, to me at least. Something something emails Libya (but never Iraq) Mexican walls.
The Democrat erosion of the 2nd Amendment at least is based on the laudable idea of reducing crime and violent death, not some personal bias against XXX (gays, Islam, immigrants, black people, etc.)
Here is what Ted Cruz said after the attack on Brussels.
He continued, in a statement released by both his campaign and his Senate office, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”
Senate and campaign aides to Mr. Cruz did not respond to questions seeking clarification on how the proposal might be carried out.
The next day he says this to "clarify" his position....
Cruz pointed to a former New York City police unit that targeted Muslims for surveillance as a model for his proposals.
"New York City, under Mayor Bloomberg, had a program that focused on, worked proactively with Muslim communities to stop radicalization to prevent attacks from radical Islamic terrorism before they occur," Cruz said. "Now what happened? Mayor de Blasio came in and decided political correctness mattered more than keeping people safe. He disbanded the program."
I guess he realized that words matter. However, I wonder if it helped him score any points with the Trump base?
It feels like above everything else we value the blowhard, the fool, and this misguided notion of superiority.
I can only speak for where I live but there is this general feeling of anti intelligence. People sincerely believe that climate change isn't real because it snowed a week ago. Whenever there's a shooting I hear nothing but grandstanding about how they wouldnt have been victims cause they carry. Incidents of violence against women, races, and religion are met with derision and the insistance they earned it.
And I know that these sentiments aren't just limited to my narrow patch of earth.
How the hell did we go from going to the moon to thinking engineers are too fething smart for their iwn good?
Easy E wrote: Forget it. I can't get the Quotes to work right.
Here is what Ted Cruz said after the attack on Brussels.
He continued, in a statement released by both his campaign and his Senate office, “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”
Senate and campaign aides to Mr. Cruz did not respond to questions seeking clarification on how the proposal might be carried out.
The next day he says this to "clarify" his position....
Cruz pointed to a former New York City police unit that targeted Muslims for surveillance as a model for his proposals.
"New York City, under Mayor Bloomberg, had a program that focused on, worked proactively with Muslim communities to stop radicalization to prevent attacks from radical Islamic terrorism before they occur," Cruz said. "Now what happened? Mayor de Blasio came in and decided political correctness mattered more than keeping people safe. He disbanded the program."
I guess he realized that words matter. However, I wonder if it helped him score any points with the Trump base?
It's funny, because this is the party that bitches and moans about how immigrants don't integrate into America (whatever the hell they think that means), and then talks about throwing up all kinds of programs that will specifically targeting them (i.e. make it impossible for them to ever integrate, again, whatever the hell that means). I don't know what Republicans mean when they say "integrate into America" but I feel fairly confident that targeting them for special attention as a 'threat' won't be getting us wherever that is
Easy E wrote: I am going to guess that 'integrating with America" means becoming a white, old, rural republican.
Basically. When they say integrate, they don't mean a seamless blend of cultures, but "stop not being like us."
It's easy to bust America's balls on this topic, but we do a better job of integrating immigrant culture into our own than most. Jewish, Catholic, and Mormon culture is part of our national landscape in a way that would have been almost unthinkable 100 years ago. We eat ethnic food and watch telenovellas. We get drunk on St. Patrick's day and Cinco de Mayo. yes, it's expected that immigrants assimilate, but it's also possible to have full assimilation.
The Democrat erosion of the 2nd Amendment at least is based on the laudable idea of reducing crime and violent death, not some personal bias against XXX (gays, Islam, immigrants, black people, etc.)
No its based on a personal bias against guns. Very little has been put forward to try and reduce violence or crime, but a lot of bs on looks has.Nothing laudable about outlawing a rifle not used in crimes because it has a bayonet lug.
If the Democrats want to attack systemic violence in America they can start and end with the legalization of drugs, and to a lesser extent getting young Black males to not kill each other.
Easy E wrote: I am going to guess that 'integrating with America" means becoming a white, old, rural republican.
Basically. When they say integrate, they don't mean a seamless blend of cultures, but "stop not being like us."
It's easy to bust America's balls on this topic, but we do a better job of integrating immigrant culture into our own than most. Jewish, Catholic, and Mormon culture is part of our national landscape in a way that would have been almost unthinkable 100 years ago. We eat ethnic food and watch telenovellas. We get drunk on St. Patrick's day and Cinco de Mayo. yes, it's expected that immigrants assimilate, but it's also possible to have full assimilation.
In all fairness they weren't referring to America overall but just how some specific group is. Overall we are pretty cool about this kind of stuff, but there are small groups that get bent out of shape about the other.
jmurph wrote: Ok, so saying "conservative" in regards to GOP glosses over some pretty different groups:
Business conservatives who like deregulation and lower taxation- this group includes large corporate interests and wealthy elites. This is the big funder of GOP politics and seems to be in the crosshairs this primary.
Cultural conservatives who range from moderate to extreme fundamentalists. This group is the voting base of the GOP and seems to be increasingly hostile to the globalism of the first group. This is where you see the strong naturalism, populism, and protectionist rhetoric scoring big.
Sort of. You're missing the central group, movement conservatives. These are the guys who have dominated Republican leadership for decades, who's control has only recently come under threat. When various Republicans are discussed as 'true' conservatives' or not, it is against movement conservative values that they are being assessed. They hold a position which is basically 'small government', but while this is like most conservatives it's their focus on small government for its own sake that makes them unique. A business conservative might want open markets so he can better compete, and would therefore conclude government should be smaller, but a movement conservative starts with smaller government and then figures out what might good about that.
It was on social issues that movement conservatism drew it's early impetus, as their focus on small government made for a much better way of arguing for social conservative positions that were quickly becoming untenable. On civil rights it was almost impossible to argue for white supremacy or even seperate but equal, but the movement conservative argument of fighting Fed govt power, through state's rights, was an argument that was still viable. But while this may have been early in-road to conservative politics, movement conservatives aren't inherently social conservatives. Nor are they really economic conservatives, as their drive for less and less government quickly moves beyond any economic argument, and is pursued entirely for its own sake.
The thing about movement conservatives, though, is that while they've dominated GOP leadership since Reagan, and now make up almost all of the conservative punditry, the actual base of voters they command has been doubtful. Most people really don't give a crap about ideologically pure theories. It was an academic movement turned to a political movement, that never actually built a grassroot voter base.
But the movement has always been well positioned to frame its arguments to appeal to other conservative groups. They're not economic conservatives, but it isn't hard to sell tax cuts. They're not social conservatives, but it isn't hard to sell 'less fed govt' to people who've been on the losing end of federal decision on civil rights, integrated schools, abortion, and now gay marriage. And they've appealled to racists with dog whistles - they sell a reduced social safety net with talk of 'welfare queens' and 'strapping young bucks on food stamps'.
And so once the Republican base is seen through that framework, we get a part-explanation for what Trump has managed to do. See, while a diverse group might have preferred Republicans for social conservative reasons or whatever else, that support was often in spite of some Republican policies. The Republicans aren't unique in that, no major party can perfectly appeal to everyone. But Republicans had the problem worse than most, because some elements of the movement conservative platform appeal to almost no-one. The social security cuts loved by the movement conservatives are extremely unpopular.
Trump's possibly accidental genius was to adopt all the bits of the GOP that appealed to many voters, while ditching the bits that large block of voters didn't like. He didn't just keep the racist language, he cranked it to 11. But at the same time he actually came out clearly in favour of the social security network, he's actually promised to expand social security. It isn't too hard to see how Trump might capture GOP voters who blame their low incomes on immigration, illegal or otherwise, but at the same time rely on government support.
Now in order to win a national election, the GOP needs both these groups, plus enough political moderates that don't identify strongly as Democrats. The problem is that the second group is pushing against the other two blocs that the Repubs need to actually win.
They need to do that, and at the same time they need to avoid appearing so radical that it frightens lots of liberal leaning people to go out and vote against the Republican candidate. The other big problem that the GOP has right now is that the Democrats have more voters. They counter that problem by having a more energised voter base, but it means they run the risk every election of pissing off the large number of Democratic casual voters.
Ustrello wrote: Oh you mean like states legalizing weed left and right? Or states decriminalizing small amounts of it? Only to be sued by red states over it
4 states is hardly left and right, nor does it touch on the billions of dollars made in hard drugs. And two states suing is ridiculous, but hardly just a red state thing. Either way, not a Democrat incentive but the peoples incentive. Cannabis didn't become legal because of any prominent Democrat initiatives, it was almost entirely grass roots. Of course that is all being taken over by venture capitalist feth bags now.
Edited by RiTides - Please avoid combining words that avoid the swear filter.
I'm more mocky this idea certain groups seem to have that anyone who isn't a bible thumping, flag waving, eating steak at the barbaque on 4th of July, red blooded Murican is somehow "not integrating."
For exactly the reasons Polonius points out, that has never been the case and it's never been the doomsday scenario some people seem to think it is. American culture, for all its problems with immigrants, has in the long run been remarkably successful at adapting people from many different places and backgrounds into a single society.
whembly wrote: GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
The first problem is that there was never a coherent, viable Tea Party platform. "We're angry about stuff... and things" is all good and well for a rally, but it doesn't translate in to much of a policy platform.
The second part is that the Tea Party is far from ignored. go look at the five ringed circus I know you like, and have put up on this site. Walker, Perry, Carson and finally Cruz are all Tea Party darlings. There has probably never been a Republican field with more outsiders/rabble rousers/hardliners.
This primary doesn't show a Tea Party that's been ignored. It shows a Tea Party that's almost claimed the dominant position in control of the GOP.
Trump relates to this in that he's a seperate symptom of the same core problem. The core of the Republican party, movement conservatism, is really struggling for appeal and direction, in large part because they've won (taxes and government are nothing like they were in the 80s). Lacking a policy platform that resonates, its easy to see how it led to the Tea Party, which sort of, more or less, took the ideas of movement conservatism but made them more extreme and lots crazier. Trump is a different kind of approach, he's taking the parts of movement conservatism that still work, and ditching the more problematic parts.
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DutchWinsAll wrote: If the Democrats want to attack systemic violence in America they can start and end with the legalization of drugs
That link well tell you that drug and gangland killings in total are about 1,000 murders a year, out of a total of 12,000. The category "Other arguments" is almost three times that by itself.
The US murder rate isn't driven by drugs, or by drug laws. If it was then the rest of the developed, except the Netherlands and maybe one or two other places, would have murder rates just like the US. But they don't. Because they don't have mass proliferation of lethal weapons.
That link well tell you that drug and gangland killings in total are about 1,000 murders a year, out of a total of 12,000. The category "Other arguments" is almost three times that by itself.
The US murder rate isn't driven by drugs, or by drug laws. If it was then the rest of the developed, except the Netherlands and maybe one or two other places, would have murder rates just like the US. But they don't. Because they don't have mass proliferation of lethal weapons.
So if 50% of American murders are committed by Black males, and its not related to drug and gang turf, then what is it? I have trouble believing that levels of melanin really affect violence rates that much, or that the police are unfairly targeting Black males for murder convictions. That other arguments tab doesn't preclude drug or gang related murders, just that they weren't tried that way. And changing the drug laws would absolutely have an affect on murder rates in other parts of America, namely South and Central America.
And I really wish people would stop acting like the US murder rate is so high. 2 or 4 out of 100K really isn't all that much different honestly.
The last I checked, gun murders by a friend, family member or acquaintance were by far the most common, with "professional criminal" or spree shootings much less common.
Of course, suicide is by far the most common way to die by firearm.
sebster wrote: Trump is a different kind of approach, he's taking the parts of movement conservatism that still work, and ditching the more problematic parts.
Accidental or not... that makes him a genius. And very fething dangerous at the same time.
DutchWinsAll wrote: So if 50% of American murders are committed by Black males, and its not related to drug and gang turf, then what is it? I have trouble believing that levels of melanin really affect violence rates that much, or that the police are unfairly targeting Black males for murder convictions.
According to one report that I have read, economic despair is the number #1 "cause" of crime. As Polonius points out, most murdering is done by people who fairly intimately know each other is the most common "form" of murder, and most murders are actually "crimes of passion" and not pre-meditated.
You are correct in that melanin levels aren't to blame, but you can quickly see how looking at things economically, people with more melanin, statistically speaking are in a bad way economically. We also know from statistics that if a black person goes to court for the "same" crime as a white person, the black person is far more likely to receive the maximum sentence.
whembly wrote: GOP leadership is the blame by ignoring the conservatives/tea party movement. They're paying the piper now...
The first problem is that there was never a coherent, viable Tea Party platform. "We're angry about stuff... and things" is all good and well for a rally, but it doesn't translate in to much of a policy platform.
The second part is that the Tea Party is far from ignored. go look at the five ringed circus I know you like, and have put up on this site. Walker, Perry, Carson and finally Cruz are all Tea Party darlings. There has probably never been a Republican field with more outsiders/rabble rousers/hardliners.
This primary doesn't show a Tea Party that's been ignored. It shows a Tea Party that's almost claimed the dominant position in control of the GOP.
When the Tea Party got candidates elected, like Rubio for example, and then those candidates did not deliver on their promises, or worse went the opposite direction (like Rubio on immigration) then Wembly's case they feel ignored is probably not very far off the mark. And seeing candidates like Rubio and Bush being pushed down their throats just exacerbated that feeling.
Polonius wrote: Of course, suicide is by far the most common way to die by firearm.
I was watching the 30 For 30 on the 1985 Bears and it talked about one of the players killing themselves at one point and Jim McMahon said that he had such pain from the hits that if he had had a gun he would have killed himself to stop the pain.
It's one of those things that we really seem puzzled by. Americans are probably not that much more likely to want to kill somebody (or themselves), but are far more likely to have access to a gun, which dramatically increases the chances of success.
I'm not necessarily in favor of gun control, but lets not pretend that our gun violence rates are somehow unrelated to the sheer ubiquity of guns.
skyth wrote: Startimg with a philosophy and then trying to find what it 'helps' is a backwards way of doing something.
Not entirely, because the philosophy wasn't really that high minded or abstract. We think of the arguments about "big government" vs. "Small government" as pretty narrow settings. Obamacare is "bigger government" because it has a mandate to purchase health insurance, but health care is already heavily regulated, with the government buying huge chunks already between Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and Federal employee plans. It was big before, and it's slightly bigger now. Bush tax cuts were for "small government," but kept most taxes.
Sure, there's the occasional call to close down the Fed or breaking up the big Wall Street banks, but for the most part, things have stayed within a pretty narrow band of regulated capitalism for a few generations.
Movement conservatives were born from something far more traumatic: the New Deal. We don't understand how huge it was, because the country was much more laissze fair prior to it, and the regulations of the New Deal were incredibly intrusive into business. Tack on the threat of communism, and movement conservatism was born with a pure ideology: smaller government.
It reached a climax with Ronald Reagan. Now, objective observers might now that Reagan was an unusually charismatic leader at a time when the USSR really suffered long term economic collapse (at least partially due to low oil prices). But movement conservatives saw that an ideologically pure president was hugely popular. The goal, since the 80s, has been to recreate that.
Still seems backward to start at 'smaller government is better' and then trying to come up with whys that match what you want. Almost like a creationist doing science
TheMeanDM wrote: So the National Enquirer (yes, that one) reports that Cruz has had 5 affairs...and offers pics of the ladies (pretty easy to id pics).
Also sounds like it was an elephant in the room for awhile that nobody talked about hoping nobody would talk about it.
For me... It's kind of a "meh" issue.... I've come to pretty much expect that ANY politician who runs on "Family Values" or "Christian Traditions" or whatever other buzzword, is going to get caught, literally or figuratively, with their pants down.
Do I think this will sink him?? Probably not. His supporters will figure out some way of hand-waving this away, ignore it altogether, or come up with some Clinton conspiracy theory. In the most latter instance, I could see a more long-term effect on party politics from that side of the fence, but it won't really have that big an impact in the grand scheme of things.
TheMeanDM wrote: So the National Enquirer (yes, that one) reports that Cruz has had 5 affairs...and offers pics of the ladies (pretty easy to id pics).
In a way, it'd be nice to see us move on from judging a person's lifestyle when we vote. The question of who Mr. Cruz was sleeping with is a matter for him and Ms. Cruz, not us.
TheMeanDM wrote: So the National Enquirer (yes, that one) reports that Cruz has had 5 affairs...and offers pics of the ladies (pretty easy to id pics).
Also sounds like it was an elephant in the room for awhile that nobody talked about hoping nobody would talk about it.
I am positively giddy at the prospect that this could even be slightly true. A great big smile slowly bloomed upon my face as I read the linked article.
But, that is, admittedly, my Ted Cruz hate boner talking.
Basically... the quote is that the NE got "leaked" info, not quite the same as what most people would consider their usual tricks.... Also, this article does point out that it was also the Enquirer that initially broke the Edwards' affair in 07, which turned out to be completely true...
So yeah, I'm actually with you whembly, in saying, let's wait for more details and whatnot.... but the way things are worded here, I have my suspicions that it's true..
And of course, the google search shows a USA Today piece where Cruz is calling this leaked story an "attack" from the Trump camp
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Polonius wrote: In a way, it'd be nice to see us move on from judging a person's lifestyle when we vote. The question of who Mr. Cruz was sleeping with is a matter for him and Ms. Cruz, not us.
I agree with this sentiment, however when one of your major talking points is the "sanctity of marriage" and "family values".... being hypocritical, and a liar can be a bit tough to look past, even if it is only a "lifestyle" issue.
Polonius wrote: In a way, it'd be nice to see us move on from judging a person's lifestyle when we vote. The question of who Mr. Cruz was sleeping with is a matter for him and Ms. Cruz, not us.
I agree with this sentiment, however when one of your major talking points is the "sanctity of marriage" and "family values".... being hypocritical, and a liar can be a bit tough to look past, even if it is only a "lifestyle" issue.
A couple of points.
Family values don't mean what you think they do. The implied meaning has changed over the years, as the culture wars shift from premarital sex to cohabitation to gay marriage to trans rights, but generally it means a support of an idealized nuclear family unit. It also carries a whiff of very staunch conservative ideals, such as marriage within ones race, husbands leading the household, and efforts to exclude those that are different.
Further, most family values voters don't want a leader that exhibits those values, otherwise they'd love Obama. They want somebody that will impose those values on others.
I do think that being seen as insincere or hypocritical could effect enthusiasm, which given that Cruz is running a strict excite the base type of platform, wouldn't bode well.
TheMeanDM wrote: So the National Enquirer (yes, that one) reports that Cruz has had 5 affairs...and offers pics of the ladies (pretty easy to id pics).
Family values don't mean what you think they do. The implied meaning has changed over the years, as the culture wars shift from premarital sex to cohabitation to gay marriage to trans rights, but generally it means a support of an idealized nuclear family unit. It also carries a whiff of very staunch conservative ideals, such as marriage within ones race, husbands leading the household, and efforts to exclude those that are different.
Further, most family values voters don't want a leader that exhibits those values, otherwise they'd love Obama. They want somebody that will impose those values on others.
I do think that being seen as insincere or hypocritical could effect enthusiasm, which given that Cruz is running a strict excite the base type of platform, wouldn't bode well.
That is precisely what I mean... It is a term that is strongly associated with the evangelical movement and Christianity in particular.
And for me, when a candidate professes Family Values, a married man seeking or engaging in sexual relations outside of the home goes completely against their monogamous ideas. You make a fair point about FV voters not liking Obama, because I would posit that there are slightly racist tones to the view... In the 60s and 70s, this crowd railed against hippies, and African-American communities, decrying a decline in morals.... and yet, they failed to take in the economic reality: for many the idea that a black family had two bread-winners was because of a moral deficiency, not because they were fighting an uphill battle with a racist system and the father couldn't get paid enough money for the same work, or couldn't even get the same work as white men, thus forcing the family into the position that either the wife works as well, or they end up on the street.
They broke the Edwards cheating scandal, and 2-3 others as well.
Also, just heard it referred to as the Cuban Mistress Crisis.
If you head to the link I posted, they mention the Edwards scandal, but also that the Enquirer ran a story of Palin cheating which turned out completely false... So they aren't batting 1.000 in the "correct cheating story" department
Polonius wrote: In a way, it'd be nice to see us move on from judging a person's lifestyle when we vote. The question of who Mr. Cruz was sleeping with is a matter for him and Ms. Cruz, not us.
Agree entirely. Saw it this morning, and it's a private matter.
However, obviously his target demographic probably does care, a lot.
Polonius wrote: In a way, it'd be nice to see us move on from judging a person's lifestyle when we vote. The question of who Mr. Cruz was sleeping with is a matter for him and Ms. Cruz, not us.
Agree entirely. Saw it this morning, and it's a private matter.
However, obviously his target demographic probably does care, a lot.
I think it'll be a matter of staying home. It's hard to imagine somebody that agrees with Cruz, but is disgusted by rumors of affairs, voting for Trump (or Clinton).
I really think that what we'll see here is that fairly selective Christian forgiveness at work. People generally don't look at the facts, and decide who to vote for. They decide who to vote for, then interpret the facts to support that decision.
DutchWinsAll wrote: So if 50% of American murders are committed by Black males, and its not related to drug and gang turf, then what is it?
Black households earn around a third less, and have much higher rates of unemployment. The US isn't unique among developed countries in having an ethnic minority with a much weaker economic position, but it is unique in adding loads of guns to that. Mix those two things together and bingo bango, there's your murder rate.
And I really wish people would stop acting like the US murder rate is so high. 2 or 4 out of 100K really isn't all that much different honestly.
Meh. If the question becomes 'is gun murder in the US the single most pressing issue in the nation' then the answer is no. If the question is 'does the US have a murder rate which is completely outside the norm in developed countries then the answer is yes, obviously, it's way higher, the other developed countries are all clustered around 1 to 1.4, then the US is just way out there on its own'.
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whembly wrote: Accidental or not... that makes him a genius. And very fething dangerous at the same time.
Yeah, and if it was almost anyone else I'd be cheering that someone was dragging the Republican party towards a viable, popular new political position. But when its Trump it becomes very dangerous, as you say.
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CptJake wrote: When the Tea Party got candidates elected, like Rubio for example, and then those candidates did not deliver on their promises, or worse went the opposite direction (like Rubio on immigration) then Wembly's case they feel ignored is probably not very far off the mark. And seeing candidates like Rubio and Bush being pushed down their throats just exacerbated that feeling.
I think anyone who watched Rubio getting put forward as an example of anything had a right to get angry. And you're forgetting Cruz is still there, he's the Tea Partiest of Tea Parties. Any Tea Party supporter who sees him in the running for president and then votes Trump is incoherent even by Tea Party standards.
Trump and the Tea Party are both symptoms of the same Republican problem. But they are very different kinds of response.
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whembly wrote: How 'bout we wait for someone more... reputable... no?
Even if God almighty came down and confirmed Cruz was sleeping around, it should be irrelevant. Personal morals and decent political leadership are not the same thing.
And on a political level this is irrelevant. People who believe in Cruz simply won't believe this, and people who are keen to believe this already dislike the guy.
At first I was wondering if I missed some news when wondering why people were talking about Cruz's sex life so I went back a few pages and boy do I wish I hadn't.
I would say that it does matter if the affair(s) story is true.
We wxpect them to keep campaign promises.
If they are unable to keep a promise to be faithful to their spouse, the "sacred bond" of marriage and such....then it absolutely makes sense to question their ability to keep campaign promises (for starters).
TheMeanDM wrote: I would say that it does matter if the affair(s) story is true.
We wxpect them to keep campaign promises.
If they are unable to keep a promise to be faithful to their spouse, the "sacred bond" of marriage and such....then it absolutely makes sense to question their ability to keep campaign promises (for starters).
Keep in mind that Trumps is best buds with the editor of National Enquirer.
TheMeanDM wrote: If they are unable to keep a promise to be faithful to their spouse, the "sacred bond" of marriage and such....then it absolutely makes sense to question their ability to keep campaign promises (for starters).
I know that's generally the logic applied to why these kinds of things are relevant, but in my observation there's pretty much no link between the two. There's no shortage of lying political gaks that are great family men, and no shortage of cheaters who genuinely fight for their political values.
It does a great job of establishing exactly what is going wrong inside the GOP, through the freak out getting played out across the pages of The National Review. The National Review, through William H Buckley, is pretty much the origin point for movement conservatism, it's their ideological centrepoint. Like most political groups, they've been trying to reconcile their beliefs with the economic decline in many areas of America. Their answer is a little different to most.
"If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. ... The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die."
Holy crap. The contempt shown in that is amazing. I mean, even if you recognise the argument that communities that lose their economic base shouldn't be left on welfare life support indefinitely, there's a way to argue that, and way to just sound like a bunch of social darwinist lunatics. The National Review chooses the latter.
Anyway, is it really any wonder that people are choosing something different to that? That people who might have been somewhat receptive of an anti-welfare stance as it applied to others, suddenly aren't receptive as it applies to their own benefits?
It's a stupid strategy when you just look at the damn numbers. The poor outnumber the rich and they get to vote just the same.
The most satisfying thing about this race has been watching billionaires waste piles of money on candidates like Jeb Bush while Trump knocks the crap out of them, and watching Bernie Sanders make Hilary sweat despite her massive war chest.
Movement Conservatism is eating itself - it's policies created more inequality, more poor people who have a vested interest not to vote for movement conservatives.
Da Boss wrote: It's a stupid strategy when you just look at the damn numbers. The poor outnumber the rich and they get to vote just the same.
The trick has been to convince people that they are not poor, instead they are rich people that just haven't had their break yet.
And more, that the other poor family one street down is poor because they haven't been trying hard enough, and they're not poor anyway because they had 15 children to buy a Cadillac on social security.
CptJake wrote: When the Tea Party got candidates elected, like Rubio for example, and then those candidates did not deliver on their promises, or worse went the opposite direction (like Rubio on immigration) then Wembly's case they feel ignored is probably not very far off the mark. And seeing candidates like Rubio and Bush being pushed down their throats just exacerbated that feeling.
I think anyone who watched Rubio getting put forward as an example of anything had a right to get angry. And you're forgetting Cruz is still there, he's the Tea Partiest of Tea Parties. Any Tea Party supporter who sees him in the running for president and then votes Trump is incoherent even by Tea Party standards.
I'm not forgetting anything. You're taking my comment out of context, my post had nothing to do with Trump, supporting him or against him. It was answering a comment stating the Tea Party was basically in control of the Republican Party. And it is not. The fact that even now Party Big Wigs are not behind Cruz solidifies my point.
DutchWinsAll wrote: So if 50% of American murders are committed by Black males, and its not related to drug and gang turf, then what is it? I have trouble believing that levels of melanin really affect violence rates that much, or that the police are unfairly targeting Black males for murder convictions.
According to one report that I have read, economic despair is the number #1 "cause" of crime. As Polonius points out, most murdering is done by people who fairly intimately know each other is the most common "form" of murder, and most murders are actually "crimes of passion" and not pre-meditated.
You are correct in that melanin levels aren't to blame, but you can quickly see how looking at things economically, people with more melanin, statistically speaking are in a bad way economically. We also know from statistics that if a black person goes to court for the "same" crime as a white person, the black person is far more likely to receive the maximum sentence.
But yet, as a raw number, there are more economically depressed Whites that aren't putting up these same numbers. And knowing the murder victim doesn't change the fact it could be gang or drug related.
Roughly 7% of the population commits roughly 49% of all homicides in the US, round that off to a clean 6000. That means the other 6500 or so come from the other 93% of the nation. If these ratios were brought in line with each other, America's homicide rate would be in line with the rest of the Western world then, or at least a lot closer to it.
I was asking why the homicide rates for Black males are so much higher? A couple of people have said "economics" and thats part of it, but hardly the whole answer. Nor is my answer of strictly drugs and gangs. Gun ownership rates aren't terribly far off between the races. So what is it if not a combination of the first three?
DutchWinsAll wrote: But yet, as a raw number, there are more economically depressed Whites that aren't putting up these same numbers. And knowing the murder victim doesn't change the fact it could be gang or drug related.
Roughly 7% of the population commits roughly 49% of all homicides in the US, round that off to a clean 6000. That means the other 6500 or so come from the other 93% of the nation. If these ratios were brought in line with each other, America's homicide rate would be in line with the rest of the Western world then, or at least a lot closer to it.
I was asking why the homicide rates for Black males are so much higher? A couple of people have said "economics" and thats part of it, but hardly the whole answer. Nor is my answer of strictly drugs and gangs. Gun ownership rates aren't terribly far off between the races. So what is it if not a combination of the first three?
So instead of asking questions that have already been answered, just tell everyone what you think the reason is.
I was asking why the homicide rates for Black males are so much higher? A couple of people have said "economics" and thats part of it, but hardly the whole answer. Nor is my answer of strictly drugs and gangs. Gun ownership rates aren't terribly far off between the races. So what is it if not a combination of the first three?
It's a combination of where they live, education, and economics.
-There has been shown a correlation between education level and crime. This of course refers to gang and drug activity, but also covers the realm of "petty" crime and other random acts. People who commit violent crimes, when we get rid of spousal abuse... so things like robbery, murder, etc. tend to be people who are less educated. The more educated the person is, the more the tendency is to commit "white collar" crimes.
-Black Americans do have a greater tendency for living in urban centers than white people of the same economic standing (extremely poor white people tend to be more rural). This urban living creates its own set of issues regarding work, food scarcity and criminal prospects.
So while I personally would center my argument on living space, education and economics... I suppose you could also extend this argument a little bit to popular culture. By this I mean that there is a very large portion of the "Hip Hop World" (I use this term specifically to encompass music, rappers themselves, video channels like World Star, etc.) glorifies a particular type of person and a particular lifestyle. For many black youth, this is basically the only musical influence they have from birth till well after they reach 18. However, I cannot, and will not blame exclusively the musical apparatus, because that would be as stupid as blaming GTA games or "Metal" for why school shooters do their acts: there isn't a single bogeyman present to blame, it's a host of ingredients mixing in the right way.
You also have to consider the "hardening" aspect of prisons, and many black people who end up going to prison for non-violent drug offences, end up joining gangs, or becoming violent in prisons.
Before you start putting your hopes in a Presidential candidate, take fifteen minutes and re-familiarize yourself with the actual powers of a President.
Keep in mind that the majority of people in the US that are screaming about 'Trump', or 'Clinton', or 'Bernie' in one way or another... probably couldn't tell you who their Congressman is, much less pass a basic government quiz.
My chief complaint: As deplorable as I find Mr. Trump to be, I find his ideological adversaries to be equally deplorable.
I've sat and listened to people saying that if he is elected, they're going to 'riot' and 'burn everything down'. Yes, because nothing says 'Democrats are better' like getting upset and torching the lives and livelihoods of other people who've done nothing wrong.
Also, in regards to Mr. Trump... much of what he has said has been taken out of context. He has never said 'Mexicans are rapists, murderers, and drug-dealers'. He did, however, say that there was concern for those types of individuals fleeing their own country and coming into ours illegally because our border security and immigration system is broken. To deny this is a concern is foolish- I encourage you to talk to someone from some of the areas of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, etc. that have to deal with their criminal elements. Here's a starting point- Los Zetas love snatching up pretty little girls, doing what they want with them, and using them as meat shields.
There's enough to dislike about Mr. Trump without twisting his words and fabricating statements, I assure you.
Mr. Sanders has made multiple statements that borderline foolish. I must be honest, at some point I'm waiting for him to come out and state that he was pulling our legs and just wanted to show us how gullible the low-information voters truly are. If you genuinely believe you can tax 'the one percent' and other high-income families an astronomical amount of money... and they'll just sit here and take it? You're delusional. These individuals will relocate themselves or their money to tax shelters, and we will be sitting on programs that have to be funded -somehow-.... so guess who's footing that bill? Also I would respect the man a little more if he could comb his hair.
Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, is the only candidate that genuinely gives me chills. Ask any member of the armed forces that's had the uh... 'pleasure' of having any dealings with her. Speak to someone who's worked for the State Department during her tenure. I'm not one to jump on a conspiracy bandwagon, but I can genuinely tell you that something is horribly amiss with Benghazi and so much protocol went into the toilet, it's bizarre. Some things were said after the fact, that would make the average civilian think "that makes sense", but a LOT of military personnel were saying, "Wait, hold on- no way!" I'm honestly scared of that woman.
All in all, I think every candidate we have is garbage. Each and every one of them. Fortunately, I'm not losing sleep because a President can only do so much... and half of what people seem to believe our candidates are going to do... well, that's not their decision any more than it is my decision to fire someone at a 7/11 in Cambodia.
It was a long time ago – I don’t think anyone can even remember, but I can remember, I have a great memory, I’ve got the best memory ever. These guys, they made the most special thing, really, really special. Where everyone was free and everything was great, just the way I’ve made America, I really, really mean that.
Now we’ve got these people – I don’t like these people, let me tell you, they’re really awful, they said, “Hey Trump, you’ve got small hands,” and so I went after them, I really did, I sued them, and what did they do? They decided they wanted a fight and I said, “Okay, we’ll see who’s still here in a few years,” and see, we’re still here, on this battlefield. It’s a yuge battlefield, and it’s really, really, great, it’s so special. See, we’ve built this cemetery, so how big it is? It’s so special. And these guys – we’ve got the best guys – they tell me, “Hey Donald, give us someone who can lead us and we’ll beat these rebels,” and so I made things happen – it’s what I do – and boom, look, we’ve got this big, big win. These guys died winning, and I’m sure that makes their families just so, so happy, all this winning. It’s really great that we can be here to make this place special because of all the winning they did.
But really, we can’t make this place any more special than they did by winning so hard, unless it’s to build a brand new Trump Towers – Gettysburg – that’s right ladies and gentlemen, that’s right, right here, right where you’re standing, we’re going to build this yuge tower, and oh my goodness, it will be so special, so big. You’ll just get sick from how big it is. You say to yourself, “Hey, I wonder if anyone will remember this place.” And now you don’t have to wonder anymore because you’ll be able to see it from miles and miles away, that’s how yuge it will be. We’ll make those rebels remember this place where they lost, where they became losers. I really hate losers. I hate them so much that we’re going to keep on winning, just to show them how much of losers they really are, that’s what we’re going to do. What these guys did – and they’re just the best, so special – well, we’re going to make sure that what they won for is going to be kept alive forever. Know what I’m going to do? I’m going to build a wall, a yuge wall, really, really yuge, all along the Mason-Dixon Line, and know what? I’m gonna make Jeff Davis pay for it, I really am. That guy’s such a loser, it’s why I hate him so much, and I think it’s what the guys that won here would really want. I’m just going to keep this great country really great, and yuge, just like me. We’re going to keep winning until we’re so tired of winning that you’ll have to thank me for making everything so great. My government is going to be around for a while, so get used to that winning.
Oh hey, look, we’ve got someone yelling about issues over there. What’s that? Slavery? Throw that guy outta here, get him out, this is about winning, and he’s a loser.
Look, we must be honest. 15% of our population is responsible for over 65% of the violent crime. This is just a cold, hard, sad fact. That's the thing about facts- they don't care about how you feel. You can't change a fact by getting upset about it, it won't go away unless you actually do something to make the numbers change.
I have a radical theory that many of the problems within the black community are, in fact- the fault of a certain type of white person. Not all white people, just a very specific set.
When you sit and tell a group of people that all of their problems are specific to their race, and are the fault of someone else- you tend to cultivate communities that gravitate away from taking responsibility. Instead of saying, "Hey, your son went to jail because he robbed a store", they're often told "Your son was only robbing that store because those 'bad whites' made him poor".
These particular individuals, the 'good whites' always remove the agency of black and hispanic people. Instead of holding them to the same standards that they'd hold themselves or any other human being with the same situation- they've treated them like helpless, untrained, wild animals. This is beyond insulting.
And it always just so happens that the 'bad whites' are ideologically opposed to the 'good whites' for some reason. And not in a 'bad' or 'good' way. The 'white saviors' always claim to have the best interest of minorities in mind, yet have no problem using them- whipping them into an angry mob to put against their opponents. Like animals.
If that doesn't fit the definition of 'systematic racism', then I don't know what does.
When you live in a culture that has incentivized being a victim by giving them a blank check to be unrepentant jerks, outright bigots, and violent mobs... you have to expect that people will gravitate toward individuals that cater to their desire to be a victim and spin the narrative to justify it. Hence, 'Microaggressions'.
To say 'cops target minority neighborhoods' is a bit deceptive. If you ask police how they set up their patrols, believe it or not, they will tell you. If you have ten patrol cars for two areas- and area 'A' is getting fifty calls a weekend, and area 'B' is getting three... why would you put five cars in each? Police respond to where the crime is. If it's in a minority neighborhood? Well, keep in mind... many times minorities live in the inner city as well. That is often because housing projects are located there so the people can utilize various functions of the city without driving. Inner cities tend to be more dangerous, regardless of what color the people are.
Police can only do so much by 'targeting' individuals of a certain race by patrolling a neighborhood. They aren't catching violent murderers by sitting in a parking lot and looking for them. That's not how you catch a murderer- forensic evidence, eyewitnesses, video surveillance, etc... all these things are what catches violent criminals. They don't get 'busted' on the spot- it can take months, sometimes even years to catch and prosecute a violent criminal.
As to the root cause of this, I don't think it's as simple as 'that thing'. You can't say it's the influx of guns- there are tons of people with guns in the US that aren't committing crimes at that rate. To say it's the Gangster Rap culture is to remove the agency of individuals and not hold them accountable at the end of the day for the decisions they've made. To blame it on 'racism' completely ignores the fact that 'racism' isn't enough to put a guy in prison for murder these days, and assumes every single person involved in the case is also a racist- which borderlines on 9/11 conspiracy theory. It would appear that it's a variety of factors, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter- you are responsible for the choices you make. There are millions of people every day that have their share of crap thrown at them, live in poverty, are victimized by various types of bullies, get dealt a bad hand- and they aren't murdering, robbing, raping, or hurting people.
I will say that it is a bit like radical Islam- outsiders can try to 'fix' it all they want, but it's not going to change unless Islam itself starts to work within its own community.
Brother Armiger wrote:Random political thoughts for the day:
Before you start putting your hopes in a Presidential candidate, take fifteen minutes and re-familiarize yourself with the actual powers of a President.
Keep in mind that the majority of people in the US that are screaming about 'Trump', or 'Clinton', or 'Bernie' in one way or another... probably couldn't tell you who their Congressman is, much less pass a basic government quiz.
My chief complaint: As deplorable as I find Mr. Trump to be, I find his ideological adversaries to be equally deplorable.
I've sat and listened to people saying that if he is elected, they're going to 'riot' and 'burn everything down'. Yes, because nothing says 'Democrats are better' like getting upset and torching the lives and livelihoods of other people who've done nothing wrong.
Also, in regards to Mr. Trump... much of what he has said has been taken out of context. He has never said 'Mexicans are rapists, murderers, and drug-dealers'. He did, however, say that there was concern for those types of individuals fleeing their own country and coming into ours illegally because our border security and immigration system is broken. To deny this is a concern is foolish- I encourage you to talk to someone from some of the areas of Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, etc. that have to deal with their criminal elements. Here's a starting point- Los Zetas love snatching up pretty little girls, doing what they want with them, and using them as meat shields.
There's enough to dislike about Mr. Trump without twisting his words and fabricating statements, I assure you.
Mr. Sanders has made multiple statements that borderline foolish. I must be honest, at some point I'm waiting for him to come out and state that he was pulling our legs and just wanted to show us how gullible the low-information voters truly are. If you genuinely believe you can tax 'the one percent' and other high-income families an astronomical amount of money... and they'll just sit here and take it? You're delusional. These individuals will relocate themselves or their money to tax shelters, and we will be sitting on programs that have to be funded -somehow-.... so guess who's footing that bill? Also I would respect the man a little more if he could comb his hair.
Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, is the only candidate that genuinely gives me chills. Ask any member of the armed forces that's had the uh... 'pleasure' of having any dealings with her. Speak to someone who's worked for the State Department during her tenure. I'm not one to jump on a conspiracy bandwagon, but I can genuinely tell you that something is horribly amiss with Benghazi and so much protocol went into the toilet, it's bizarre. Some things were said after the fact, that would make the average civilian think "that makes sense", but a LOT of military personnel were saying, "Wait, hold on- no way!" I'm honestly scared of that woman.
All in all, I think every candidate we have is garbage. Each and every one of them. Fortunately, I'm not losing sleep because a President can only do so much... and half of what people seem to believe our candidates are going to do... well, that's not their decision any more than it is my decision to fire someone at a 7/11 in Cambodia.
Exalted for the truth! I don't really like any of the candidates either, although I feel that Trump is the least bad (probably gonna get flamed for daring to say that in this thread). We really do need better control over who comes into this country, as we have enough deadbeats and criminals that are born US citizens without having deadbeats and criminals come here from other countries. I have nothing at all against foreigners in general (indeed, immigration is part of what has made this country great), but I do have a problem with all the ones who come here and either cause trouble or just sit on their asses and collect entitlement benefits without actually doing anything useful.
Brother Armiger wrote:The issue with black crime:
Look, we must be honest. 15% of our population is responsible for over 65% of the violent crime. This is just a cold, hard, sad fact. That's the thing about facts- they don't care about how you feel. You can't change a fact by getting upset about it, it won't go away unless you actually do something to make the numbers change.
I have a radical theory that many of the problems within the black community are, in fact- the fault of a certain type of white person. Not all white people, just a very specific set.
When you sit and tell a group of people that all of their problems are specific to their race, and are the fault of someone else- you tend to cultivate communities that gravitate away from taking responsibility. Instead of saying, "Hey, your son went to jail because he robbed a store", they're often told "Your son was only robbing that store because those 'bad whites' made him poor".
These particular individuals, the 'good whites' always remove the agency of black and hispanic people. Instead of holding them to the same standards that they'd hold themselves or any other human being with the same situation- they've treated them like helpless, untrained, wild animals. This is beyond insulting.
And it always just so happens that the 'bad whites' are ideologically opposed to the 'good whites' for some reason. And not in a 'bad' or 'good' way. The 'white saviors' always claim to have the best interest of minorities in mind, yet have no problem using them- whipping them into an angry mob to put against their opponents. Like animals.
If that doesn't fit the definition of 'systematic racism', then I don't know what does.
When you live in a culture that has incentivized being a victim by giving them a blank check to be unrepentant jerks, outright bigots, and violent mobs... you have to expect that people will gravitate toward individuals that cater to their desire to be a victim and spin the narrative to justify it. Hence, 'Microaggressions'.
To say 'cops target minority neighborhoods' is a bit deceptive. If you ask police how they set up their patrols, believe it or not, they will tell you. If you have ten patrol cars for two areas- and area 'A' is getting fifty calls a weekend, and area 'B' is getting three... why would you put five cars in each? Police respond to where the crime is. If it's in a minority neighborhood? Well, keep in mind... many times minorities live in the inner city as well. That is often because housing projects are located there so the people can utilize various functions of the city without driving. Inner cities tend to be more dangerous, regardless of what color the people are.
Police can only do so much by 'targeting' individuals of a certain race by patrolling a neighborhood. They aren't catching violent murderers by sitting in a parking lot and looking for them. That's not how you catch a murderer- forensic evidence, eyewitnesses, video surveillance, etc... all these things are what catches violent criminals. They don't get 'busted' on the spot- it can take months, sometimes even years to catch and prosecute a violent criminal.
As to the root cause of this, I don't think it's as simple as 'that thing'. You can't say it's the influx of guns- there are tons of people with guns in the US that aren't committing crimes at that rate. To say it's the Gangster Rap culture is to remove the agency of individuals and not hold them accountable at the end of the day for the decisions they've made. To blame it on 'racism' completely ignores the fact that 'racism' isn't enough to put a guy in prison for murder these days, and assumes every single person involved in the case is also a racist- which borderlines on 9/11 conspiracy theory. It would appear that it's a variety of factors, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter- you are responsible for the choices you make. There are millions of people every day that have their share of crap thrown at them, live in poverty, are victimized by various types of bullies, get dealt a bad hand- and they aren't murdering, robbing, raping, or hurting people.
I will say that it is a bit like radical Islam- outsiders can try to 'fix' it all they want, but it's not going to change unless Islam itself starts to work within its own community.
Also exalted for truth. I'm not even gonna start on discussing it, but I totally agree with your points. If people don't like the truth, that's their problem.
Look, we must be honest. 15% of our population is responsible for over 65% of the violent crime. This is just a cold, hard, sad fact. That's the thing about facts- they don't care about how you feel.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics claimed that, in 2012-13, non-Hispanic white people accounted for 42.9% of violent crimes while non-Hispanic black people accounted for only 22.4%.
Mr. Sanders has made multiple statements that borderline foolish. I must be honest, at some point I'm waiting for him to come out and state that he was pulling our legs and just wanted to show us how gullible the low-information voters truly are. If you genuinely believe you can tax 'the one percent' and other high-income families an astronomical amount of money... and they'll just sit here and take it? You're delusional. These individuals will relocate themselves or their money to tax shelters, and we will be sitting on programs that have to be funded -somehow-.... so guess who's footing that bill? Also I would respect the man a little more if he could comb his hair.
Bolded for hilarity. You do realize that taxes have been way way way higher in the past and we did not see a mass exodus of people, correct?
Look, we must be honest. 15% of our population is responsible for over 65% of the violent crime. This is just a cold, hard, sad fact. That's the thing about facts- they don't care about how you feel.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics claimed that, in 2012-13, non-Hispanic white people accounted for 42.9% of violent crimes while non-Hispanic black people accounted for only 22.4%.
The thing about facts indeed.
I think you could have picked a better source than American Renaissance.
ScootyPuffJunior wrote: I think you could have picked a better source than American Renaissance.
Sure, but I figured that the conservative perspective provided by the American Renaissance article would eliminate any allegation of "liberal media bias". Pointing out what's wrong with the arguments presented therein is step two in the process.
Look, we must be honest. 15% of our population is responsible for over 65% of the violent crime. This is just a cold, hard, sad fact. That's the thing about facts- they don't care about how you feel.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics claimed that, in 2012-13, non-Hispanic white people accounted for 42.9% of violent crimes while non-Hispanic black people accounted for only 22.4%.
The thing about facts indeed.
My numbers were wrong, thanks for the correction.
I may have derived my number from murders, rather than violent crime with some bad math/rounding... I found this chart on my computer.
Mr. Sanders has made multiple statements that borderline foolish. I must be honest, at some point I'm waiting for him to come out and state that he was pulling our legs and just wanted to show us how gullible the low-information voters truly are. If you genuinely believe you can tax 'the one percent' and other high-income families an astronomical amount of money... and they'll just sit here and take it? You're delusional. These individuals will relocate themselves or their money to tax shelters, and we will be sitting on programs that have to be funded -somehow-.... so guess who's footing that bill? Also I would respect the man a little more if he could comb his hair.
Bolded for hilarity. You do realize that taxes have been way way way higher in the past and we did not see a mass exodus of people, correct?
Low-information indeed
Citation?
Because they aren't going to sit and take it. And you know it.
EDIT: Really? Our taxes in World War 2? LOL. Okay. Sure.
I'll support his tax plan when we're in a massive global war.
