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28th November 2009, 08:15 PM | #121 |
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Not going to happen. It could be that a party will die and be replaced but no political group is going to rewrite the constitution to limit their own power. With out the backing of one party at least there is no way to get the constitution changed to permit multiple parties.
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28th November 2009, 08:19 PM | #122 |
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28th November 2009, 08:21 PM | #123 |
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28th November 2009, 08:25 PM | #124 |
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28th November 2009, 08:48 PM | #125 |
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Only if you think you have a political party that represents you.
Remember republicans know that the best time for increasing the debt is when the economy is doing well. That way when there are problems you can use the debt to hammer your opponents. This is fiscal conservative in the US. |
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28th November 2009, 09:31 PM | #126 |
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Re: unifying principles:
This isn't much of an argument. A political party is ostensibly organized around a set of ideas. We can call them principles, or if we're less charitable we can call them "platitudes" but they represent ideas that animate party adherents.
Quote:
In any event, the greater concern, what's in far more need of reform, are the anti-representative, anti-democratic institutions by which the public (supposedly) expresses its will. |
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29th November 2009, 12:14 AM | #127 |
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Originally Posted by Piggy
Originally Posted by Piggy
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29th November 2009, 12:50 AM | #128 |
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29th November 2009, 12:58 AM | #129 |
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Yep, I do. According to Wiki:
Quote:
BTW, looking at the other side, I heard a funny comment about Dems the other day. Paraphrasing: "The Dems have one major accomplishment. They've learned to walk upright without a spine." |
29th November 2009, 01:29 AM | #130 |
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This is simply your opinion, and very cynical. A vast number of Republican's were unhappy with the spending that went on during Bush. I'm tempted to make an ivory towers type comment because the fact that so many people insist that they never saw that sort of thing doesn't prove it didn't happen. I was still listening to Rush for the first few years of Bush's presidency. And he was lambasting the moderate Republicans constantly. And he started out very apprehensively with regards to Bush. We all did, his record was that of someone who was very moderate ("reaching across the isle" and "bringing both parties together in Texas"). It's funny how he turned out to be Hitler incarnate. There are some Republican's who do believe in some of the social engineering that many others do not. And some of them are simply pandering to special interests and other voting blocks in the same manner so many politicians on the left also do. These are not the core of the party. These people do not stand up for the true conservative values. There is a reason they are referred to as RINO's (Republican's In Name Only). But sadly, many on the left want to just believe that we are all one big block and that we all stood by without any negative comments or unhappiness in the Bush years whatsoever. It's pure ********. If some of you would expand your horizons a bit you'd see that was the case. |
29th November 2009, 01:45 AM | #131 |
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29th November 2009, 06:29 AM | #132 |
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29th November 2009, 06:30 AM | #133 |
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29th November 2009, 06:38 AM | #134 |
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29th November 2009, 06:41 AM | #135 |
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29th November 2009, 06:44 AM | #136 |
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29th November 2009, 11:40 AM | #137 |
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29th November 2009, 11:44 AM | #138 |
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So you're saying that people don't actually think this, they don't even seem to think it, but they almost seem to think it?
Actually, I agree that the GOP needs to broaden its base of support for the good of the country (because if they don't, we'll have single-party rule by the Democrats, which will invite groupthink and corruption) but the topic at hand is what the party needs to do for its own good, and if it continues down the path of ideological purity it will find itself at a dead end. |
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29th November 2009, 11:47 AM | #139 |
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And what makes you think ideological purity is going to put us in any position to have enough muscle to push your ideals?
Oh, yeah. Nice piece of marketing thought up by Frank Luntz. It wasn't backbone, it was public relations. Let's not confuse campaign rhetoric with the process of governing. |
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29th November 2009, 11:50 AM | #140 |
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29th November 2009, 11:52 AM | #141 |
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29th November 2009, 11:53 AM | #142 |
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I don't believe the US Constitution inevitably leads to a 2 party system. That's what we have, though, and it's hard to shake once you have it. But I don't see that there's anything in the Constitution that would naturally prohibit a mutli-party system with de-facto coalition governments. |
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29th November 2009, 11:54 AM | #143 |
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so, what is the status of this Republican
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29th November 2009, 12:43 PM | #144 |
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Submit platitudes, and you shall receive: You don't want government screwing around in
Quote:
Originally Posted by Piggy
See, that's the problem: those who want to keep the GOP the way it is don't consider that doing so will not really succeed in passing any true Republican solutions. There must be some room for disagreement, of course, but less than there has been in the past. If that leads to a new centrist party springing up, then that's fine with me. By the way, why make four separate posts in a row? Same goes to ponderingturtle... |
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29th November 2009, 01:27 PM | #145 |
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Of course not. But you've been talking about needing to amend the Constitution to allow more parties. Right now, numerous parties run presidential candidates such as the Greens. That they don't get many votes does not mean they don't exist.
Again, we do NOT have a two party system. We have a multi-party system dominated by the two largest parties. |
29th November 2009, 02:24 PM | #146 |
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Re the split posts, I find them easier to read. I hate slogging through epic posts on a dozen different points, and prefer it if folks split up the points and deal with them separately. Just my style.
As for what you consider "basic Republican principles", seems to me you're merely pointing out that the campaign rhetoric is just that. But perhaps the problem is with the campaign rhetoric. I mean, look where it's gotten us... beholden to the Palinistas and Beck-heads. To say that we actually need to follow through on a radical reduction of government (a decidedly non-conservative way to go about things, btw) in order to make things match up just doesn't make sense to me. First of all, consider what would happen if we really did that, throwing thousands of people out of work, cutting many tax-funded programs that are working fine (which would have to be done) and further reducing regulatory oversight while constricting the social safety net. There'd be outrage. People like the idea of small government, but they're not too hot about the reality of small government. Also consider that we just got trounced by a campaign that did not use that tack, and that the most adored Republican icon is a textbook 20th-century big-government Republican, Ronald Reagan, who ballooned both the size of government and federal deficits. No, I just don't see any reason to believe that attempting to follow thru on the talking points would work at all. Like him or not, Obama was right when he said that a choice between "big government" and "small government" is not the issue. The question is how much government we need to do the things we want government to do. And when you consider that this is a nation of 300 million people, encompassing 50 states, and spanning an entire continent, the very notion that a shoestring government could effectively administer the country is dubious at best. That's probably why the notion of small government is more popular among talk show hosts and campaign managers than it is on Pennsylvania Avenue. |
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29th November 2009, 02:25 PM | #147 |
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Now, what happens if the Democrats offer to let in those Republicans who fail the litmus test, or decide they cannot be a member of a party that has a litmus test?
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29th November 2009, 02:30 PM | #148 |
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29th November 2009, 02:57 PM | #149 |
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Originally Posted by Piggy
Quote:
Originally Posted by Piggy
We can argue about whether reducing our dependency on social help/handouts is a bad thing or not. Perhaps it is - perhaps our society has been incorrigibly altered. But it doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me to run with intelligent small-government proposals, instead of going "moderate" (read: deficit spending). We've had plenty of examples of that in the past decade. To give you an idea of how I believe Republican principles can work in practice, I'll give some examples: 1: Small, nonintrusive government. We get government out of people's sexual preferences wrt gay marriage (by legalizing it or getting out of marriage altogether) and submit to the rights of private American citizens in regards to wiretapping by making sure we do it legally. 2: Fiscal conservatism. We stop signing costly boondoggles like Medicare Part D and the bailouts into law. We let capitalism take its course, e.g. allowing firms to fail. We actually move to balance the budget. 3: Strong national defense. We avoid overexerting the U.S. Army by modeling it for a conventional war it wasn't meant to fight; we recognize changes on the ground and respond to them when appropriate (the surge was too long in coming); and we actually PLAN RESPONSIBLY for war. I don't think those proposals are too far from the mainstream. |
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29th November 2009, 02:59 PM | #150 |
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29th November 2009, 03:01 PM | #151 |
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29th November 2009, 03:02 PM | #152 |
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Cain: This doesn't follow from what I said.
And yet, your original argument still doesn't follow. I'm just putting my words in a context.
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Quote:
Quote:
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29th November 2009, 03:08 PM | #153 |
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I believe the reality is a little more complicated. For example, Poland and other Eastern European countries threw a fit when we appeared to withdraw the missile shield...because of Russian aggression. Ahem.
Also, those bases allow us to respond flexibly to threats that occur anywhere in the world, and they provide a convenient midpoint for both supplies and wounded troops. |
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29th November 2009, 03:11 PM | #154 |
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29th November 2009, 03:16 PM | #155 |
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29th November 2009, 04:21 PM | #156 |
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29th November 2009, 04:33 PM | #157 |
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29th November 2009, 06:32 PM | #158 |
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29th November 2009, 09:11 PM | #159 |
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I'm not saying that Beck and Palin in particular are calling any shots.
When I say that the party is beholden to the Palinistas and Beck-heads, I mean that most Republicans in office now cannot continue to hold their seats if they lose the support of the kind of people who are the core audience for folks like Beck and Palin -- that is, people who buy into conspiracy theories and extreme rhetoric, and don't have any clear grasp of political, economic, environmental, and cultural realities. That's who we've wound up in bed with. And now we find that there's no one else to shack up with, so most Republican office-holders dare not risk getting kicked out of that flea-infested bed for fear of being left out in the cold altogether. Do I consider Beck and Palin to be core conservatives? Hell no! They're radicals. And disengagement from reality, which is the hallmark of their agenda, is decidedly not a basic conservative tenet. It's mere populist nuttery wrapping itself in the conservative banner. |
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29th November 2009, 09:14 PM | #160 |
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