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Dronze wrote:
All that being said, I think Condi & (insert moderate republican here) might have swept Obama, had the GOP put her up as opposed to McCain/Palin, though the 8 years prior may have been a bit of a damper on her chances.

Really? Because McCain is THE moderate Republican. I don't see Condi being distinct from him.

Dronze wrote:
as democratic party starts collapsing on itself due to it's gross indecision and unwillingness to actually assert itself.

Yes.

dogma wrote:

Dronze wrote:
All that being said, I think Condi & (insert moderate republican here) might have swept Obama, had the GOP put her up as opposed to McCain/Palin, though the 8 years prior may have been a bit of a damper on her chances.

Really? Because McCain is THE moderate Republican. I don't see Condi being distinct from him.

There are 2 big factors here: Race and gender. The republicans were trying as hard as they could to make Sarah Palin look like a progressive move. Problem is, her soundbites make her sound like, well, let's face it, that special kid in school that the teachers forced everyone to be friends with. Condi is relatively well-spoken, and as much as race was a deciding factor, the GOP would have trumped Obama and Biden by a wide margin, given that the front-runner was both African-American, and female. the ideologies are completely indistict, but the marketability makes for such a wide gap that it's not even funny.

Even if, fundamentally and politically Condi wasn't a change from business as usual, it would be overshadowed by the fact that she's an african-american woman who speaks eloquently and was instrumental in keeping america together, post-9/11 from a marketing standpoint. The use of such vague points, if you hadn't noticed, is somewhat commonplace in politics today, and would have made for a GOP powerplay unlike any seen before. They could have kept from mud-slinging and actually gotten the american public to believe that there had been a paradigm shift within the party itself, no matter what the full truth of the matter was.

Obama got the black vote by a long shot, even amongst the conservatives... to say that race, in this country is no longer an issue is blinding oneself to the blaringly obvious social strife happening to this day. "White flight" still manages to blight urban and inner ring suburban communities across the country. It's not as severe as it was even 20 years ago, but it's still a social issue that most see as best left as the elephant in the room that everyone chooses to ignore. Remember, we're a country with a short attention span and an affinity for shiny objects, and the first black female president would have held a lot more sway than just the first black president.

Dronze wrote:
There are 2 big factors here: Race and gender.

Yes, Liberals believe that.

Dronze wrote:
..but the marketability makes for such a wide gap that it's not even funny.

Didn't work for Hillary, or Palin.

Dronze wrote:
The use of such vague points, if you hadn't noticed, is somewhat commonplace in politics today, and would have made for a GOP powerplay unlike any seen before.

That's quite the funny joke coming from the guy that broached the race subject at "One Big Ass Mistake America".

Dronze wrote:
Obama got the black vote by a long shot, even amongst the conservatives... to say that race, in this country is no longer an issue is blinding oneself to the blaringly obvious social strife happening to this day.

You did it not two lines above,

I said to the missus they should have picked Condi ages ago! If they picked her to be JMs VP Its entirely conceiveable that they would have won. My missus is a democrat, but she liked Clinton not Obama. When he got the nod over Hilary she voted for an independant, but im pretty sure she would have leaned towards the GOP. And lets not even get onto the whole race or sex thing. Condi is a very bright and intelligent charismatic woman, and JM is a very likeable man. I think they would have made a great choice, but alas, they chose a creationist slow instead. Id like to know who thought that was a good idea!

dogma wrote:

Dronze wrote:
There are 2 big factors here: Race and gender.

Yes, Liberals believe that.

I'm merely speaking from a marketing standpoint. Condi Rice would have been a much easier sell than McCain or Palin ever were, "Straight Talk Express" or not.

dogma wrote:

Dronze wrote:
..but the marketability makes for such a wide gap that it's not even funny.

Didn't work for Hillary, or Palin.

Hillary will be living in Bill's shadow for the rest of her political career, no matter what she does. The personality and popularity of her husband (politics withstanding) are just too much for her to overcome. Even beyond that point, all those years she was in the Senate were just her drawing a paycheck from the taxpayers while she prepped to run for president, herself, she really didn't accomplish much of note in those interim years.

dogma wrote:

Dronze wrote:
The use of such vague points, if you hadn't noticed, is somewhat commonplace in politics today, and would have made for a GOP powerplay unlike any seen before.

That's quite the funny joke coming from the guy that broached the race subject at "One Big Ass Mistake America".

Again, look at the circumstances... "One Big Ass Mistake, America" was coming from the same people concerned about Barak Obama turning us into an islamocentric state, and that he was actually born in Kenya. Perhaps I'm drawing biased conclusions, but that's merely my opinion on it.

Dronze wrote:
Obama got the black vote by a long shot, even amongst the conservatives... to say that race, in this country is no longer an issue is blinding oneself to the blaringly obvious social strife happening to this day.

You did it not two lines above,

I don't believe I've ever said it WASN'T an issue, though I certainly do hold that it SHOULDN'T be one.

Just because I can comment on the fact that it would be more marketable doesn't mean that I don't think it's sick that it actually is...

Dronze wrote:
I'm merely speaking from a marketing standpoint. Condi Rice would have been a much easier sell than McCain or Palin ever were, "Straight Talk Express" or not.

To you, perhaps. But if the nation is both racist, and sexist, as you presume, it wouldn't have been a cake walk

dogma wrote:

Dronze wrote:
I'm merely speaking from a marketing standpoint. Condi Rice would have been a much easier sell than McCain or Palin ever were, "Straight Talk Express" or not.

To you, perhaps. But if the nation is both racist, and sexist, as you presume, it wouldn't have been a cake walk

You don't think so? This last election was an opportunity for BOTH parties to turn the politics as usual on their head. The GOP nominated Sarah Palin to the Vice Presidency, trying to look like they were actually veering away from the Republican party's usual image of bloated, old, rich white guys to counteract the democrats push for the first black president. First female VP? I'd call that the closest thing to a radical social achievement coming out of the right wing in a long time... Tax cuts for the rich and some old-money "G*d and country" type would have just been more of the same. I'm not going to say that nobody would have touched that, but most middle-class americans weren't exactly willing to trust the far right after everything that the Bush administration pulled. The GOP needed a moderate republican, but more to the point, needed someone who would have been noticed as a radical change. Nobody talks about McCain anymore, but Palin is still shoving herself into the public eye rather regularly, be it in debates such as this one, or by joining up with the media voice of the right wing, Fox News.

Besides, CNN (admittedly, a liberal media bastion) wouldn't have overtly touched the race, ethnic, or gender issues, percieved or not. They're entirely too PC for that. They would have, if anything, lauded the progressive steps taken by the republicans and seen it as a deep breath of fresh air. It seems like Palin painted a massive target on her back every time she opened her mouth, because the only thing that came pouring out was ignorance, fluff, and more sucking up than a shopvac. She couldn't even fake it well enough to stay afloat.

jbunny wrote:Actually The accounting standards are not set by agovernment. In America the are set by the Financial Accountign Standards Board, a private non-profit org. The Federal government just uses their standards as the standard that public companies are required to go by. FASB, and other orginizations like them in other contries are the ones tring to get a universal accounting standard.

Dude, I see you can look things up on wiki but I'm an accountant. I do IAS for a living so don't tell me who's involved in their construction. The US Federal Govt, along with every other major national government are stakeholders and have significant input into IASB. Did you really think they'd write statutes requiring IAS adherence without worrying about what IAS required, especially when many government bodies are required to follow IAS?

More importantly you've lost track of your argument. Unless your claim above was a complete non-sequitur, you obviously think the stakeholder driven set-up of international accounting is sufficiently unlike international regulation that it'd be efficient. At which point, given that a body like IASB would meet my comment about an international regulatory framework, you have to concede such a framework is possible without being inefficient.


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Vladigar wrote:And I soooo wish that Condi Rice would run. She runs circles around 99.9% of anyone that's been in Washington over the last decade.

Someone needs to write a book explaining how Rice managed to escape the Bush administration without . A lot of established civil servants with proud records came out with their reputations destroyed, many of them on the record as disputing Bush policy. Yet Rice, footsoldier #1, has come through unscathed despite being a fairly obscure academic and politician before the Bush admin, and agreeing entirely with Bush' most disastrous policies.

It would probably have to be a big book.


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dogma wrote:The small government Conservative would vote for the Neoconservative (read: social liberal with teeth) apparatchik? Nice. This explains a great deal about you.

While the small government conservative is an altogether different beast, the small government but big military conservative isn't motivated by any real belief in government. The main ideology of the SGBM conservative is manly manliness, government should be small because then manly men will triumph, but the army should be big and aggressive because the army is full of manly men and attacking other nations is a manly man thing to do.

It sounds very silly, but once you spot it it's remarkable how easy it is to predict the beliefs of your SGBM conservative.


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Dronze wrote:All that being said, I think Condi & (insert moderate republican here) might have swept Obama, had the GOP put her up as opposed to McCain/Palin, though the 8 years prior may have been a bit of a damper on her chances. Then the moderate would have been in the passenger seat, appealing to the more reasonable republicans, as well as the conservative democrats, as well as the truly neutral moderates. With all this in play, the far right would have immediately recognized her work under the Bush administration, with little in the way of needed specifics of what she actually managed to accomplish during her time within the power structure.

No, the biggest point in McCain's favour was that his reputation came primarily from outside the GOP. His opponents in the primaries were all harmed by being more closely attached to the GOP, and none of them were part of the Bush admin. In house election somewhere a GOP candidate found that taking 'Republican' off his campaign material markedly improved his responses, and the Democrats actually took him to court to require him to put it on there - that's just how toxic GOP affiliation was in 2008.

No-one actually from Bush' administration would have stood a chance.

sebster wrote:

Vladigar wrote:And I soooo wish that Condi Rice would run. She runs circles around 99.9% of anyone that's been in Washington over the last decade.

Someone needs to write a book explaining how Rice managed to escape the Bush administration without . A lot of established civil servants with proud records came out with their reputations destroyed, many of them on the record as disputing Bush policy. Yet Rice, footsoldier #1, has come through unscathed despite being a fairly obscure academic and politician before the Bush admin, and agreeing entirely with Bush' most disastrous policies.

It would probably have to be a big book.

This one comes down to the whole short attention span and "OOH, LOOK, SHINY OBJECT!" complex that our society and media have. She was smart enough to give herself just as much exposure as needed to say something for Homeland Seurity, and only when it was absolutely needed to come from her own lips. Footsoldier #1 spent a lot of time in heavy cover and gone to ground...

sebster wrote:

Dronze wrote:All that being said, I think Condi & (insert moderate republican here) might have swept Obama, had the GOP put her up as opposed to McCain/Palin, though the 8 years prior may have been a bit of a damper on her chances. Then the moderate would have been in the passenger seat, appealing to the more reasonable republicans, as well as the conservative democrats, as well as the truly neutral moderates. With all this in play, the far right would have immediately recognized her work under the Bush administration, with little in the way of needed specifics of what she actually managed to accomplish during her time within the power structure.

No, the biggest point in McCain's favour was that his reputation came primarily from outside the GOP. His opponents in the primaries were all harmed by being more closely attached to the GOP, and none of them were part of the Bush admin. In house election somewhere a GOP candidate found that taking 'Republican' off his campaign material markedly improved his responses, and the Democrats actually took him to court to require him to put it on there - that's just how toxic GOP affiliation was in 2008.

No-one actually from Bush' administration would have stood a chance.

It would have taken a shrewed campaign, but I don't think it would have been nearly as handicapped as you thought. Bush didn't throw her to the wolves, and by 2003, everyone forgot that she was his lacky to begin with. There was already a moderate amount of distance between her and the administration, at least within the realm of public perception, and that's what would have made the difference. First words associated with the name aren't "Republican", or even "Bush-Era". The far-left liberal whacknuts completely ignored her when they came around to condemn Bush, Cheney, and whomever else THAT particular lynch-mob came into town for, and would have continued to marginalize her political ties to the Bush-era GOP, since they would be too worried about being politically correct to try and hold that to her. Besides, she's the shiny object that would grab the feminists, those seeking a symbol for racial and gender equality, and any other racial or gender-biased vote that was out there.

On top of the marketing factor, she's still smart enough to not run a campaign into the ground, and deft enough to avoid the potential pitfalls along the way.

Dronze wrote:
You don't think so? This last election was an opportunity for BOTH parties to turn the politics as usual on their head. The GOP nominated Sarah Palin to the Vice Presidency, trying to look like they were actually veering away from the Republican party's usual image of bloated, old, rich white guys to counteract the democrats push for the first black president. First female VP? I'd call that the closest thing to a radical social achievement coming out of the right wing in a long time...

The GOP nominated Palin because they were grasping at straws. They didn't know how to react to Obama, so they attempted to emulate him. Their entire playbook was thrown to the wolves, from their perspective, via the massive disapproval of Bush.

Dronze wrote:
Tax cuts for the rich and some old-money "G*d and country" type would have just been more of the same. I'm not going to say that nobody would have touched that, but most middle-class americans weren't exactly willing to trust the far right after everything that the Bush administration pulled. The GOP needed a moderate republican, but more to the point, needed someone who would have been noticed as a radical change.

Given the reaction to McCain it seems they needed a hardline right winger. No one was upset because the Bush administration was too conservative, they were upset because it was too liberal. Neoconservativism only sounds like its right wing, its actually heavily infused with socialism.

Dronze wrote:
Nobody talks about McCain anymore, but Palin is still shoving herself into the public eye rather regularly, be it in debates such as this one, or by joining up with the media voice of the right wing, Fox News.

Further evidence that a moderate had no chance in the GOP.

sebster wrote:

Someone needs to write a book explaining how Rice managed to escape the Bush administration without . A lot of established civil servants with proud records came out with their reputations destroyed, many of them on the record as disputing Bush policy. Yet Rice, footsoldier #1, has come through unscathed despite being a fairly obscure academic and politician before the Bush admin, and agreeing entirely with Bush' most disastrous policies.

It would probably have to be a big book.

Rice got out smelling of roses because she is a good politician.

sebster wrote:
Someone needs to write a book explaining how Rice managed to escape the Bush administration without . A lot of established civil servants with proud records came out with their reputations destroyed, many of them on the record as disputing Bush policy. Yet Rice, footsoldier #1, has come through unscathed despite being a fairly obscure academic and politician before the Bush admin, and agreeing entirely with Bush' most disastrous policies.

It would probably have to be a big book.

It would be a pretty short book. Rice has never been a vocal defender of the Iraq War, and has generally advocated a very useful counter-terrorism strategy; ie. prevention. She is, based on the few times that I've met her (my friend's father was the medical chair at Stanford), conservative not only in her politics, but also here demeanor. She knows how to let other people take risks, while preparing herself to capitalize on them by intellectually setting her agenda. Smart woman, though lacking in imagination.

sebster wrote:
While the small government conservative is an altogether different beast, the small government but big military conservative isn't motivated by any real belief in government. The main ideology of the SGBM conservative is manly manliness, government should be small because then manly men will triumph, but the army should be big and aggressive because the army is full of manly men and attacking other nations is a manly man thing to do.

It sounds very silly, but once you spot it it's remarkable how easy it is to predict the beliefs of your SGBM conservative.

Karl Rove is a genius.

Dronze wrote:This one comes down to the whole short attention span and "OOH, LOOK, SHINY OBJECT!" complex that our society and media have. She was smart enough to give herself just as much exposure as needed to say something for Homeland Seurity, and only when it was absolutely needed to come from her own lips. Footsoldier #1 spent a lot of time in heavy cover and gone to ground...

Something she wouldn't have been able to do if she'd run for the Presidency.

It would have taken a shrewed campaign, but I don't think it would have been nearly as handicapped as you thought.

I don't think it would have taken a shrewd campaign, but a miracle. But I'll note you're assuming a skilled campaign from a women who's never run for any office.

Besides, she's the shiny object that would grab the feminists, those seeking a symbol for racial and gender equality, and any other racial or gender-biased vote that was out there.

People assume that a women will collect a lot of votes for simply being a women, but elections around the world demonstrate otherwise. Perhaps the most surprising part is that the group who's vote is most negatively affected by the politician being female is other women - women don't vote for women. It's weird, but there it is.


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Kilkrazy wrote:Rice got out smelling of roses because she is a good politician.

I think that's likely part of it, but I suspect circumstance played a large part too. She certainly wasn't target #1, and once people had a go at Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and about a half dozen others there probably wasn't much interest in going after her.

I honestly think a book into Rice keeping her level of political viability would be really interesting, and probably produce a lot of insight into politics in general.


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dogma wrote:It would be a pretty short book. Rice has never been a vocal defender of the Iraq War, and has generally advocated a very useful counter-terrorism strategy; ie. prevention. She is, based on the few times that I've met her (my friend's father was the medical chair at Stanford), conservative not only in her politics, but also here demeanor. She knows how to let other people take risks, while preparing herself to capitalize on them by intellectually setting her agenda. Smart woman, though lacking in imagination.

The key quote on Iraq that summed up the need for war came from Rice;
"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Karl Rove is a genius.

He is extremely good at his job.

sebster wrote:

Karl Rove is a genius.

He is extremely good at his job.

Oh? It's not like he delivered the last Presidency...

JohnHwangDD wrote:Oh? It's not like he delivered the last Presidency...

What? Does he have to be entirely responsible for something in order to be good at his job?

The point is that throughout the Bush presidency political arguments were very well framed by the Republicans, and Bush's two campaigns were run extremely well. Credit to Rove for both.

sebster wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:Oh? It's not like he delivered the last Presidency...

What? Does he have to be entirely responsible for something in order to be good at his job?

The point is that throughout the Bush presidency political arguments were very well framed by the Republicans, and Bush's two campaigns were run extremely well. Credit to Rove for both.

That being said, it's not like they needed to be spectacular... look at who he was running against: Al Gore was relegated to the lunatic fringe long ago, and it's only occasionally that his shouts get loud enough that someone notices, and John Kerry was a twit that couldn't actually deliver a strong enough point to be remembered.

Saying he was good at his job is like saying Sammy, the half blind, overweight amputee with Downs' is good at his job as a Walmart Greeter. It didn't take much...

Dronze wrote:That being said, it's not like they needed to be spectacular... look at who he was running against: Al Gore was relegated to the lunatic fringe long ago, and it's only occasionally that his shouts get loud enough that someone notices, and John Kerry was a twit that couldn't actually deliver a strong enough point to be remembered.

That might be a view some people might put on Gore today, but it's nothing like the perception held in 2000. Gore was very much a centrist politician, with a strong economy and popular incumbant behind him. It was only after his defeat that he returned to his original cause of global warming.

Kerry was a poor choice, plain and simple. He was a solid member of the well-intentioned but careful not to actually do anything centre-left, and a terrible speaker to boot. Say what you want about Bush's public speaking, at least people paid attention...

Saying he was good at his job is like saying Sammy, the half blind, overweight amputee with Downs' is good at his job as a Walmart Greeter. It didn't take much...

Yeah can't just generalise politicians by whatever criteria is convenient, you have to look at the detail of the political debate over those years. Just have to look at Swift Boats for Truth, all morality aside that was an incredibly well executed hatchet job.