I'm glad that moderate republican got healthcare reform passed. also i'm glad he ended don't ask don't tell. how fitting
Obama hasn't accomplished as much as FDR, ergo he's a moderate republican? Aside from the sillliness of that above - FDR's crowning accomplishments were legislative - because he had an actual filibuster proof majority for most of his presidency, back when it was more difficult to filibuster, and when filibusters were seen as the tool of last resort, not a nominal supermajority for a few fleeting months in which government by filibuster became the norm. And of course - the one thing FDR didn't do was get a national health care program through.
extreme liberalism or extreme conservatism should be there to lead idea development, not actual governing policy. the country is neither, its more center. that's the problem with the republican party right now, the problem with the democrats isn't the opposite. there might not be enough democrats championing the liberal cause, but the governing policy with a few exceptions is right where it needs to be.
I agree it wasn't mean spirited and it's a shame if he gets grief for that rather than all the other stuff he should get grief for - most especially his proposed policies and the fact that they are practically all 180's from where they were before the last election; health care is a 180 since the last election. But, even just as a bad joke, it reminds me a bit of GHWB and his grocery store scanner/price of eggs problem. When you're that insanely rich and trying to connect with the poor, unemployed and underemployed you need to fake it better than that or risk being seen as out of touch with the common man. Again, I don't think the unemployed joke rises to that standard but it is part of a story much larger than one joke. Leaving this bad joke aside, Romney has a pattern with bad, awkward jokes, picked up by media during retail campaigning. In the last week alone he's made three jokes in which the fan he was talking to had to laugh nervously just to overcome the awkwardness of the whole thing. On this point at least, Romney is a bit of a weird dude. Whenever he tries to go "man of the people" he says something almost indecipherable, something in which he is the only one that gets the joke (if even he does). If it becomes a meme or fodder for late night comedians it could be a real problem for him. Regardless of what's happened in the past (under-qualified presidents, presidents with bad policies, presidents being elected simply due to lesser evil), America doesn't want a weird president. The unemployment joke wasn't an example of that but the others were. And you add that to his minority religion which is strange to many people (though it shouldn't be), the story of him strapping his dog to the top of his car for a cross-country trip, his seeming willingness to radically change positions for the express purpose of improving his chances of election and you start to get a picture of a weird guy who is not a little inauthentic. In fact, I think his awkward jokes are the most authentic thing about him, but they will not help him in the end. Nobody minds a bad joke and people get over insensitive jokes very quickly if they come with with a decent acknowledgement of hitting a wrong note, but weird jokes are weird. Romney can't retain his front-runner status if SNL, Jon Stewart and the rest begin to focus on how plain strange the man is.
Although I have to admit I don't get Mormonism (and I've tried), I think it's a wonderful thing to see two Mormons and a Syrian by ancestry rising to the top of the GOP field. Even if they have understandable problems with minorities, this shows a kind of diversity of which I wouldn't have thought them capable. Kudos to them on that at least.
I like the angle and I love radical proposals regarding electoral politics in this way, mostly for entertainment but also because of what they elucidate. But I don't think the GOP wants anything to do with moderates anymore. They're even trying to primary Orrin Hatch. I think the ship has sailed on Rockefeller style candidates or even Bush I types. I have to give it to them as they are fighting and fighting hard on core principles of what their party has turned out to be -- as a Democrat I envy and admire that as the last Dem to do it was Anthony Weiner and we all saw how that turned out and before him it was Howard Dean and Paul Wellstone, neither of whom was taken very seriously as they were regarded to be socialists when they were only Democrats. Conservatism and the Republican party are no longer what they once were. Whether that is better or worse if for Republicans (not a Dem like me) to decide. But the era of NE moderate R's is over. Even Chaffee couldn't stick and I don't have very high hopes for Snowe or Collins surviving their next elections even in Maine.
hell, even bush II before his admin was hijacked by the neo-cons. the end of compassionate conservatism.
Thanks, Mark. I needed a break but it's hard for me to stay away during election seasons. There are good discussions here and I enjoy participating in them. As long as I can continue to stay calm in my posts here, I will stick around. If I let stuff in here make me too angry or mean I will write to Clutch and ask him to ban me again from this forum. That's what I did the last time, maybe 6-9 months ago, and I enjoyed the time away. Clutch was gracious enough to tell me then that I could come back whenever I wanted to and he was kind enough to lift the self-imposed ban when I asked. But if anyone here catches me calling someone else an idiot or something worse, remind me of my pledge and I will voluntarily remove myself again until I can act like a grown-up.
No, if that was my angle....I'd write an article saying he's basically the same as a Republican...or say that Goldman Sachs controls the government . . . etc.
Yeah, the guy is strange alright. What makes it more awkward and hard to watch is that he knows it. That's why he goes to such effort and tries to hard with the jokey jokes. The one where he acted like a waitress grabbed his butt was almost painful to watch, and the unemployed joke was him trying so hard to be "one of the guys; a regular joe". It just reeked of phoniness and is awkward to the point where it is unpleasant to watch. But aside from that his policies are full of holes and his record is too. There are substantive issues that he needs to be getting hammered on all the time. Oh, and definitely welcome back!
lol! The article is obvious hyperbole - that's what makes it simultaneously silly yet poignant. A response to it that simply takes the hyperbole and then extrapolates to a bizarre absolute (e.g., that anyone not proposing FDR-esque action is a closet conservative) completely misses the point of the argument. Frankly, it's an indication of lame partisan bias.
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/25410215" width="400" height="227" frameborder="0"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/25410215"></p> speaks Hokkein, "whatever that is."
