News Republicans no longer a viable party?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ivan Seeking
  • Start date Start date
Click For Summary
The discussion highlights concerns that the Republican Party is being defined by tea party extremists, potentially leading to a government default and damaging the party's viability. Conservative columnist David Brooks argues that Republicans are resisting necessary compromises, which could alienate independent voters who may view them as unfit to govern. The conversation also touches on the need for spending reform and the perception that Democrats are unwilling to cut entitlements, while Republicans are seen as inflexible on tax increases. Participants express frustration with both parties, suggesting that extremism is hindering effective governance and reform. The overall sentiment is that the current political climate could lead to a painful restructuring for the Republican Party.
  • #481
turbo said:
If she would take Palin, then Palin might actually be able to see Russia from her house.

MUHAHAHA! :smile::biggrin::smile:

This getting better and better! 10++
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #482
Proton Soup said:
nothing is harder to put out than a Greece fire, eh?

Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about... compared to Greece... well, you’re all in Disneyland over there. You don’t have any (real) problems, yet (but it will come if you don’t do something).

EU is a freaking academic kindergarten for overpaid adults that never had a "real" job in their entire life, IMHO. They try to 'play' "The United States of Europe", but someone forgot to bring all the rules, before starting, and now we’re f**ked up. Greece is going to burn down... no doubt about it.

However I live in the Kommunismus Kingdom of Schweden, and we voted NO to EMU (Euro), that is "We the People" (as Ted Nugent would have said :-p), not because we don’t want to play with Berlusconi, but because it was easy to see that "the rules" wasn’t thought thru all the way.

The finance people called the NO voters – "Unemployed communists living on welfare above the Polar Circle"

They are very quiet today... :biggrin:

But when Greece goes, we all go, and probably to some extent even you guys over there.

That’s why this "dysfunctional mess" couldn’t have come at a 'better' moment...

*sigh*


P.S. Giorgos Papandreou doesn’t have the A-bomb, the only good thing at the moment...
 
Last edited:
  • #483
What gets me with the media publication such as Newsweek is I remember reading somewhere where journalists were saying they expect the American people to trust them to report objectively on the different issues, but then they go and do blatantly biased things (such as the Michele Bachmann cover photo). No need to resort to such things to levy legitimate criticism on the woman.
 
  • #484
CAC1001 said:
What gets me with the media publication such as Newsweek is I remember reading somewhere where journalists were saying they expect the American people to trust them to report objectively on the different issues, but then they go and do blatantly biased things (such as the Michele Bachmann cover photo). No need to resort to such things to levy legitimate criticism on the woman.
Do you remember a rather unflattering picture of a male Democratic presidential candidate hitting all the rags a while back? Hint: he was prominent in Dem national politics in the last few years. The TV networks all picked up his screaming to his supporters and ran it over and over.

Yep! The "liberal" media only paints conservative women in unflattering lights.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #485
turbo said:
Do you remember a rather unflattering picture of a male Democratic presidential candidate hitting all the rags a while back? Hint: he was prominent in Dem national politics in the last few years. The TV networks all picked up his screaming to his supporters and ran it over and over.

Not sure which one you are referring to, but now that you mention it, I do remember this cover from (although I do not think was ill-intentioned on the part of The New Yorker as it endorsed Barack Obama):

obama-michelle-new-yorker.jpg
 
  • #486
No, it was Howard Dean, urging his supporters on after a 3rd-place finish in Iowa.
 
  • #487
Ahhh, okay, yeah, Howard Dean, I remember seeing that. I was talking more about photos on magazines though. I also don't think the Left in the media were too concerned about Howard Dean as they had Hillary and Obama as their top picks.
 
  • #488
CAC1001 said:
Ahhh, okay, yeah, Howard Dean, I remember seeing that. I was talking more about photos on magazines though. I also don't think the Left in the media were too concerned about Howard Dean as they had Hillary and Obama as their top picks.
Stills from that rally were all over the magazines, papers, etc all over the country, and that scream was practically being looped on FOX.
 
  • #489
Ivan Seeking said:
And there we go. Bachmann wins the Iowa straw poll. ...

If it's any consolation to everyone on the planet, here are the results of the Ames Straw Polls from it's inception:

Year... A.S.P. winner ... Elected President
1980... Bush, George H. W. ... Ronald Reagan
1988... Robertson, Pat ... George H. W. Bush
1996... Dole, Bob ..... Bill Clinton
2000... Bush, George W. ... George W. Bush
2008... Romney, Mitt ... Barack Obama
2012... Bachmann, Michele ... TBD


And what were the results of the 2000 election again?

2000 election .. G.W. Bush ... Al Gore
Popular vote ... 50,456,002 ... 50,999,897


So they've got a zero percent batting average.

There is a god (and may she smite Sarah Bachmann with a pox and some randomly placed boils...)
 
  • #490
turbo said:
Do you remember a rather unflattering picture of a male Democratic presidential candidate hitting all the rags a while back? Hint: he was prominent in Dem national politics in the last few years. The TV networks all picked up his screaming to his supporters and ran it over and over.




Yep! The "liberal" media only paints conservative women in unflattering lights.


that's right, it's not the liberal media, it's the establishment media. and they LOVE war.

that Dean scream is still funny, btw. maybe not fair, but to be honest, the reason it doesn't play very well is that it doesn't come across as particularly male.

and speaking of protecting your image, here's another blast from the past that came back to haunt a candidate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X244jadVnRU
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #491
Proton Soup said:
that's right, it's not the liberal media, it's the establishment media. and they LOVE war.

that Dean scream is still funny, btw. maybe not fair, but to be honest, the reason it doesn't play very well is that it doesn't come across as particularly male.

and speaking of protecting your image, here's another blast from the past that came back to haunt a candidate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X244jadVnRU
Ah yes, the Dukakis tank scene. If he hadn't been a conservative woman, the media would have given him some space.



NOT! There is a whole lot of history-blind revisionism being perpetrated by the right, instead of making fair appraisals of candidates' positions. Of course, rational discourse doesn't sell a lot of commercials.
 
  • #492
Ivan Seeking said:
...

Perhaps one of their Presidential candidates is fit to hold office - Romney. The rest are either fringe [eg Bachman] or could never get nominated [eg Huntsman].

Do you still feel that way after Romney's "exchange" the other day?

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mr. Romney responded, as the hecklers shouted back, “No, they’re not!”

“Of course they are,” Mr. Romney said, chuckling slightly. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/us/politics/12romney.html"

Well, after googling and doing some research, I've found that the money is just sitting there, doing nothing:

# Back in the U.S., companies are squeezing more productivity out of staffs thinned out by layoffs during Great Recession. They don't need to hire. And they don't need to be generous with pay raises; they know their employees have nowhere else to go.

# Companies remain reluctant to spend the $1.9 trillion in cash they've accumulated, especially in the United States.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43860044/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/boom-corporate-profits-bust-jobs-wages/"

$1.9 trillion? Math time! $1.9e12/($40,000/year salary) = 47,500,000 people? vs unemployment rate: 13.9 million http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm"
That can't be right. Someone check my math.



But Romney did have some good advice at the end:

When he realized he wasn’t changing any hecklers’ minds, he said they were free to vote for someone else. “I’m not going to raise taxes — that’s my answer,” he said. “And if you want someone who can raise taxes, you can vote for Barack Obama.”

Ok then, I will.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #493
CAC1001 said:
Yes there is. The fact that almost every time in recent history tax increases are agreed to with corresponding spending cuts, the cuts never occur. So why agree to tax increases if spending cuts are promised when the cuts likely will not occur?

By that logic, why agree to spending cuts if they never occur anyway, and just try to figure a way out without spending cuts?
 
  • #494
Willowz said:
Why should personal charity be a greater good than state mandated charity? Can you provide reasonable justification for this assumption?

His point is that it's more moral to want to donate than to be forced to donate.
 
  • #495
turbo said:
Yep! The "liberal" media only paints conservative women in unflattering lights.

The media paints anyone they can in an unflattering light so as to sell more of their product to a society all too eager to gobble it up.
 
  • #496
daveb, there's a multi-quote button in the bottom right of every post that I think might be helpful to you here.
 
  • #497
turbo said:
Russ, that's all well and good during the primary season. What's going to happen to the GOP nominee in the general election when the Dems replay footage from the debate and NO GOP candidate would agree to take a deficit-reduction deal that had 10 parts cost-cutting to 1 part revenue increases?

This one I'd think should be very simple to answer. The GOP candidate should just point out when taxes are increased, the corresponding spending cuts virtually never occur.

IMO, Grover Norquist and his ilk are going to radicalize and marginalize the GOP to the point where the past checks-and-balances of a 2-party system will no longer be viable. That's not good for the country.

This has been being said about the Republican party for the past fifty years or so.

turbo said:
Our democracy is for sale to the highest bidder, thanks to the Citizens United ruling.

No it isn't. Citizen's United only allows for unlimited spending by corporations in elections (and only for domestic corporations at that I believe; foreign corporations are banned from engaging in unlimited spending, and there are other laws that limit foreign influence in American elections). It did not undo the law that prevents corporations from making unlimited donations to a politician's campaign.
 
  • #498
CAC1001 said:
... foreign corporations are banned from engaging in unlimited spending, and there are other laws that limit foreign influence in American elections). It did not undo the law that prevents corporations from making unlimited donations to a politician's campaign.
For that matter foreign anything (individual, corporation, nation) is banned from funding US political campaigns.
 
  • #499
Of course the republican party is viable. Look at how it has evolved to bear almost no resemblance to the values it once had. It has been hijacked by religious zealots who would like nothing better than to hurry the apocalypse along so they can disappear in the rapture. If Americans think Obama is bad, wait till a Perry, Palin or Bachman gets in the white house. Our forefathers were religious and sprinkled government with references to god yet they still knew that mixing politics and religion was a bad idea. That seems to be lost on us now.
 
  • #500
moejoe15 said:
Of course the republican party is viable. Look at how it has evolved to bear almost no resemblance to the values it once had. It has been hijacked by religious zealots who would like nothing better than to hurry the apocalypse along so they can disappear in the rapture. If Americans think Obama is bad, wait till a Perry, Palin or Bachman gets in the white house. Our forefathers were religious and sprinkled government with references to god yet they still knew that mixing politics and religion was a bad idea. That seems to be lost on us now.
In referencing 'party' I assume you mean this characterization is pervasive, widespread among Republicans:

The highest ranking Republican politicians in the US now are Speaker Boehner and Minority leader Senator McConnell. Please demonstrate how you known they plan to hurry the apocalypse. Or, if by 'hijacked' you mean recently elected officials we can examine them. From the 2010 elections in the Senate the freshmen are Boozman, Rubio, Coats, Moran, Paul, Blunt, Ayotte, Hoeven, Portman, Toomey, Lee, Johnson, and there are some ~80 freshmen Republicans in the House from 2010. Among them all: no Jerry Falwell (dead), no Pat Robertson. Please demonstrate how these officials express their religious zealotry; surely they have made some speeches far more religous than, say, http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html" ("...the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.")?

Now, perhaps the above damnation of Republicans was not meant to be taken literally, as an observation of reality; instead it may well be that the post derives from a strongly held belief on this subject, something taken on a faith gathered from family, friends, or even a political evangelist who sends letters containing fire and brimstone warnings about Republicans and asking for donations to the cause. In that case, Amen?

Oh, ps: Palin holds no office, is running for no office.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #501
so why is the media ignoring and downplaying Ron Paul? why is Paul such a threat to the establishment? Jon Stewart wants answers.

http://ronpaulflix.com/2011/08/jon-stewart-scolds-media-for-ignoring-ron-paul-aug-15-2011/


and why is Perry considered such a winner when he's been hiding from the debates? could it have something to do with his [STRIKE]electa[/STRIKE]...purchaseability? can you say RINO?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wRRoyaOn50
 
  • #502
Proton Soup said:
so why is the media ignoring and downplaying Ron Paul? why is Paul such a threat to the establishment? Jon Stewart wants answers.

http://ronpaulflix.com/2011/08/jon-stewart-scolds-media-for-ignoring-ron-paul-aug-15-2011/


and why is Perry considered such a winner when he's been hiding from the debates? could it have something to do with his [STRIKE]electa[/STRIKE]...purchaseability? can you say RINO?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wRRoyaOn50

To be fair - I wonder if the Young Turks looked into how much funding groups like ACORN have received? Campaign donors being appointed to boards or posts and receiving grants or loans - the ugly side of politics indeed.
 
  • #503
WhoWee said:
To be fair - I wonder if the Young Turks looked into how much funding groups like ACORN have received? Campaign donors being appointed to boards or posts and receiving grants or loans - the ugly side of politics indeed.

i don't know about ACORN, specifically. but see my thread on "is msnbc the establishment?". there, Cenk claims that one of the reasons he didn't get the slot that Sharpton now occupies is that he was a little too critical of the president and his administration. he also doesn't think too much of the president's "compromise" on the debt deal. he thinks the president caved in and says it often and loudly.
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 293 ·
10
Replies
293
Views
35K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
3K