Fuck it, if we're dragging necromancy into the picture let's get Strom Thurmond back in the running. At least he was open and honest about being a racist. The scary part is, Strom Thurmond might not even be right enough for the Tea Party; he voted in favor of background check at gun shows in 1999, allowing more foreign workers into the U.S. for farm work and visas for skilled workers in '98... fuck, he'd be dead in the water on those two alone.
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PoliGAF 2014 |OT| Kay Hagan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News
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Fuck it, if we're dragging necromancy into the picture let's get Strom Thurmond back in the running. At least he was open and honest about being a racist. The scary part is, Strom Thurmond might not even be right enough for the Tea Party; he voted in favor of background check at gun shows in 1999, allowing more foreign workers into the U.S. for farm work and visas for skilled workers in '98... fuck, he'd be dead in the water on those two alone.
And yet he had no shame in calling himself a racist... kind of mindblowing.
It's sad that Strom Thurmond's honesty would be a breath of fresh air these days for the GOP.
Being clinically dead hasn't stopped Scalia from being a pain in the ass, why should it stop Strom?
Aaron Strife
Banned
I think the GOP nominee will be
Tim Pawlenty
And he'll pretend to be Southern the whole time
E: the nice thing about Strom Thurmond is that he's dead in real life too, not just a tea party primary
Tim Pawlenty
And he'll pretend to be Southern the whole time
E: the nice thing about Strom Thurmond is that he's dead in real life too, not just a tea party primary
I know he can run, I'm saying I don't think he can win the nomination.
Yeah, a lot of the antics by fringe/Tea Party GOPers is an unintended consequence of the increasingly politically correct world we live in, I think. Not saying going back to Thurmond's antics is ideal either, but it's almost like these people know they live in a world where they just can't be themselves anymore, so they hide behind rhetoric that makes no sense while upping the ante on sticking it to what they oppose, because to them it embodies everything that fuels their closeted hatred, racism, bigotry, you name it... and the scary thing is that it pays the dividends for them, because so long as they don't break the unspoken rule (i.e. said blatant racism, sexism, bigotry front and center in their politics) they can continue to get away with acting crazy, totally unchecked...
benjipwns
Banned
It is?
It's a modern "tradition" because you generally don't have a shot in the primaries and even more importantly, can't fundraise as easily. But losers running again and again is a long American tradition going back to Jefferson. (Jackson, Clay lost three times and could have lost a fourth in 1848 but Zachary Taylor knocked him out at the Convention, Cleveland, William fucking Jennings Bryan ran and lost three times and could have had the nomination again in 1912 if he wanted it, and the aforementioned Dewey and Stevenson. And Nixon.)
Primary losers run again constantly.
Basketball is actually as easy to predict long term as Presidential elections since it's pretty stable and tied to point differential.
The NCAA tournament isn't because it's one-and-done. The standard errors grow exponentially. That's why his system basically just picked the better team for each game because it's the only sensible way to do it if your goal is to be as accurate overall for the entire tournament as possible.
I would assume this is compounded in soccer because of the endless number of 1-0, 2-1, 0-0 entries in the dataset.
RustyNails
Member
What will be his platform on Obamacare this time around? No GOPer is going to go full repeal in 2016. And then there is immigration.
Anyway all this talk is moot because there is no possible way for a Republican to attain 270 electoral votes. It's good for run of the mill diablosing and idle chit chat.
benjipwns
Banned
She turned half a term as a governor of fucking Alaska into becoming a multi-millionaire media star. Gets paid mad bank to go to all these tea party/GOP events where she's treated like royalty and rambles for a few minutes about how Obama sucks. And do reality shows. All with no responsibilities.
In retrospect she's clearly the smartest person on any of the 2008 tickets.
In retrospect she's clearly the smartest person on any of the 2008 tickets.
Well, to be fair McCain was the one that picked her and gave her the platform to make that transition. Without that lift up she'd be nothing more than the Governor of a snowy winter hellscape.
I'm not sure I'd characterize that as evidence of being a "smart businessman" so much as being an opportunist.
By your definition, Joe the Plumber would be a smart businessman too.
benjipwns
Banned
A smart businessman takes advantage of opportunities they're presented with.
I think he's like a D-list tea party invite now. He blew his attempt to get his business, his book and then wasted time on a congressional run. No star power.
To this day I'm still wondering how he blew such a meal ticket.
I dunno, I'd go around saying the stupidest shit ever in an attempt to stay in the limelight and keep that gray train going. Sure I'd look like a moron, but I'd be laughing all the way to the bank.
No, see that's exactly what I mean. The dude keeps going around saying stupid shit (just the other day he said "your dead kids don't trump my second amendment rights"), but unlike the typical right-wing celebrity, he's not getting paid to say such shit anymore. He's working at a friggin union (LOL) job nowadays instead of going around on book tours and doing radio interviews and shit.
Well, you've got to be smart enough to write a book to do that. Or at least smart enough to hire someone that knows how to do that. That's the difference between someone like Palin and Joe the Plumber. She has people around her that know how to keep her in the green by saying dumb as fuck shit and the connections to make it happen, Joe the Plumber has no such people or connections. That's the advantage of wealth and power, the ability to turn any situation into an opportunity to make money.
benjipwns
Banned
He's not a good guest, Palin's got her folksy quips and can fit answers into thirty or forty seconds now. Whenever I've seen him he kinda rambles off and is slightly informed about a topic. Palin comes armed with the lines and quips prepared.
Just for shits and giggles... Say that somehow, Strom Thurmond was both still alive and ran for president in 2012. Which would be more important to the average Tea Party voter; that Thurmond had voted in favor of background checks at trade shows / immigrant visas, or that he would openly be out specifically to "beat the black guy," and very clearly because he is black.
Basically, what do we think is more important to the Tea Party; two of the things they're openly passionate about and will completely turn on a candidate for not fervently supporting (as seen with Cantor's disembowelment over immigration) or the one thing that they have to keep quietly festering but is (we assume) the underlying cause of their rage?
No. A smart businessman creates opportunities.
benjipwns
Banned
No. Tax cuts do.
neurosisxeno
Member
I would have voted for him. Hell, if a man can stand up and flat out say he's a Racist, what point is there to lying about anything. There is a huge lack of trust and honest between politicians and the American people, so anyone who's honest seems like a safe bet these days...
So it doesn't matter if he's a shithead as long as he admits that he is one?
neurosisxeno
Member
There was definitely a bit of hyperbole attached there, but It would be nice to see a GOP candidate that's not jumping through hoops lying through their teeth on the national stage.
benjipwns
Banned
Thurmond would get nowhere on this hypothetical platform.
Restricting guns, allowing immigrants and abortion are the do-not-cross lines with the GOP base. They'll accept tax increases and gay marriage before those things.
And even if they were 100% racists, they wouldn't support an openly racist candidate purely on those grounds because they know that's a non-starter in a general.
I think this is one reason listening to Rush Limbaugh occasionally is instructive (or Hannity or whoever, Limbaugh's just the most likely to actually be funny from time to time) because he regularly lays out the conservative political strategic world view at its very core. It's Nixon's silent majority theory. Essentially that the Tea Party is a slightly center-right movement in the country, but the left dominates the media and if the GOP would put up actual conservatives instead of Romney/McCain the people would see the true contrast between their pro-America views and the left-wing agenda of the Democrats and sweep them in with a landslide ala 1972 and 1984. It's when you betray these positions and support amnesty or gun control or birth control that America says "might as well just vote for the full fledged anti-America free stuff agenda" since it gets more media hype.
rocketknight
Member
I wasn't so much curious if people would vote for him as much as I was wondering what folks thought the Tea Party reaction would be to a candidate who openly expresses the contempt that seems to rest at the core of their outrage, but has a history that doesn't meet the rigid standards they expect their candidates to meet (i.e. Cantor was pretty far right and even he wasn't far enough to survive a primary).
I get what you're saying though and I said it myself; an openly racist candidate, though abhorrent for the racism, would at least be a breath of fresh air in politics. I dunno that I'd go so far as to say I'd vote for him (Racism being such a backwards convention, the rest of their views are unlikely to align with my own), but at least it wouldn't be the usual bullshit for once.
That's pretty much where I fall in this hypothetical as well, and I had a feeling PolitiGAF would mostly settle in the same area. There's no way they'd support an overtly racist candidate if they all bail out on somebody like Bundy.
There's definitely a racist undercurrent at the heart of the Tea Party though; their anti-immigration stance obviously so, but I think even the fanatical devotion to the second amendment is an expression of it as well ("I need to be armed or brown people will get me"). But interestingly enough, we both agree that in the right situation they'd allow tax increases, even though they're the "Taxed Enough Already" party. The reason I posed this hypothetical was to see if anyone else thought the social issues of the party would trump the fiscal ones they claim to represent. I think they'd be perfectly fine with a candidate who raised taxes as long as he was "one of their guys" and coming down hard on all of their socially conservative demands.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
The right continues their attack on defense attorneys
http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-tapes/
http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-tapes/
benjipwns
Banned
In 1992 they stayed with Bush because he chased after Buchanan and the Religious Right just enough to defray his "no new taxes" stumble. Though I think he didn't keep a lot of them for the general.
I know a lot of the younger PoliGAFer's won't believe it, but the Bushies (James Baker, etc.) were once considered to be faux-conservatives who were undermining the Reagan administration from within and secretly pushing for abortions everywhere and prayer nowhere. H.W. Bush was certainly more moderate and Rockefeller Republicanish than he played in his 1988 and 1992 campaigns where he overcompensated in some pretty hilarious ways. (If you watch the 1988 primary debates, for example, at times you'd think he was the 700 Club host and Pat Robertson was a Democratic candidate.) The pledge of allegiance at the convention being one of my favorites.
The hope I once had for the Tea Party was that it would stick to purely fiscal and economic issues and be a counterweight to the social conservatives and "invade everywhere" conservatives that would tear the party apart essentially. But the Tea Party got sucked up into that generic "patriotism is conservative" vibe. And the GOP was all too happy to help encourage that angle.
Slightly before my time (2000 was my first time voting) but I've read heavily on the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed's work pushing the GOP to align with their views in the 80s and 90s.
On that note, why does it seem like the Democrats (at least since the 60s when everything flipped) remain relatively stable while the GOP is routinely being "hijacked", for lack of a better term. For example, even though Clinton represented a more centrist shift within the party, it doesn't feel like a tectonic shift from, say Carter or Kennedy. But you look at Reagan and Bush Sr. and then the neocon/evangelical underpinnings of people like Bush Jr. or Sarah Palin and it's like watching the ground shift from conservative to crazy in real time (especially Palin when you see her wishing for that gosh darn Armageddon to just get started already, jeewiz). Now the Tea Party is going through and weeding out the old guard GOP who are running scared into deep red turf. It just seems like their shifts are so much more... violent.
Edit: Fully expecting to get schooled here as my political history starts to get murky any further back than Carter or Ford. That's kind of why I lurk in this thread to begin with.
Biting them in the ass now, though.
benjipwns
Banned
In some ways, it's amusing that the Republicans have remained as they were founded, a temporary alliance of opposition forces.
The Republican Party is basically a coalition of anti-Democratic forces. On foreign policy you have the "strong foreign policy" types and the non-interventionists. On social issues you have the libertarians and the social conservatives. On economic issues you have the free marketers and the big business/protectionists. This type of divide has been the party's makeup almost since it combined the Whigs, Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, etc. into one force that was boosted into significant power due to the Civil War. When Bryan imported Populism into the Democratic Party and Wilson imported intellectual Progressivism and internationalism this effectively crafted the unstable Republican Party of the 20th Century. The one that went from Roosevelt to Harding/Coolidge to Hoover to Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan while remaining one party.
In some respects, it's the Populism that introduced and inflamed the contradictions into the Democratic Party that as they were forced out pushed them into the Republican Party leaving it with so many contradictions. It's just the inertia of the duopoly that keeps the Republican Party together.
Read more incoherent unsupported ramblings in my upcoming book: The Criss-Cross of Gold: How William Jennings Bryan Made The Parties Jump Jump.
The Republican Party is basically a coalition of anti-Democratic forces. On foreign policy you have the "strong foreign policy" types and the non-interventionists. On social issues you have the libertarians and the social conservatives. On economic issues you have the free marketers and the big business/protectionists. This type of divide has been the party's makeup almost since it combined the Whigs, Free Soilers, Know-Nothings, etc. into one force that was boosted into significant power due to the Civil War. When Bryan imported Populism into the Democratic Party and Wilson imported intellectual Progressivism and internationalism this effectively crafted the unstable Republican Party of the 20th Century. The one that went from Roosevelt to Harding/Coolidge to Hoover to Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan while remaining one party.
In some respects, it's the Populism that introduced and inflamed the contradictions into the Democratic Party that as they were forced out pushed them into the Republican Party leaving it with so many contradictions. It's just the inertia of the duopoly that keeps the Republican Party together.
Read more incoherent unsupported ramblings in my upcoming book: The Criss-Cross of Gold: How William Jennings Bryan Made The Parties Jump Jump.
You gave me a weird image of William Jennings Bryan dancing to Kris kross
T
thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
Well, since you picked the 60's as the turning point you're questioning, just think about what caused the shift in the 60s. The parties divided between racists and not racists. Which of those two groups do you think would be more active after civil rights? The one filled with various groups with hateful ideas, or the ones that, after segregation, didn't really have a ton of legislative footing to stand on regarding race.
That's obviously not the whole story, but if you want the simplest explanation, that's the one. I would say right now it's transformed more into the republicans being the party that hates the government, and since republicans are a part of the government, republicans hate leadership republicans.
benjipwns
Banned
That's way beyond a simplistic explanation. Just as much as the conservative version in which the Democrats became the party of amnesty, acid and abortion and that's why the South fled.
The simple fact is that the "flip" didn't happen in the 1960's but when Republicans became a viable legislative party again starting in 1994. That's over a generation removed from the civil rights fights of the 1960's.
The big swings actually started after 2000, helped in part by some old hands dying off plus term limits:
This replicates with the U.S. Senate and House too. The House seems exponential because of redistricting, the states that were moving to the Democrats were losing population to the states that were moving to the Republicans enhancing the GOP swing.
The simple fact is that the "flip" didn't happen in the 1960's but when Republicans became a viable legislative party again starting in 1994. That's over a generation removed from the civil rights fights of the 1960's.
The big swings actually started after 2000, helped in part by some old hands dying off plus term limits:
This replicates with the U.S. Senate and House too. The House seems exponential because of redistricting, the states that were moving to the Democrats were losing population to the states that were moving to the Republicans enhancing the GOP swing.
My state's government purges employee email after 3 months unless there's a litigation hold on a certain individual. As a result, many people "save" email by moving it offline to their computer. Of course the computer savvy know how to back up that local copy, but I bet the average user does not and a loss of their machine means loss of anything older than 3 months.
I don't know what the IRS purge period is, and I bet it's longer than 3 months, but loss is possible.
Too small and definitely too poor.
I don't think there's anything to the IRS so called scandal, but I think we should keep all government emails forever.
Not only would it help in investigating misconducts, this will be treasure trove for future historians.
Storage is dirt cheap these days, no reason not to do it.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
That and most emails take up little to no space comparatively.
Joe Molotov
Member
I'm preordering right now.
I know Fox News is tasteless, but they took the cake today with one of their soundbites dealing with the emails. It went something along the lines of "I don't know what she (Lois Lerner) did. She could have murdered Jean Benet Ramsey."
WTF. I don't know who said it, but I'll find out.
WTF. I don't know who said it, but I'll find out.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Haven't watched the video, but is it true she's laughing while telling a story about getting a child rapist off on a technicality? If so...
T
thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
My company has a 6 month purge but there is an option to permanently store emails on network servers. If be curious what the IRS guidelines are around storage of emails. Of course well probably never hear if it wasn't her fault since that wouldn't make an interesting headline.
She's laughing at polygraphs and incompetent lab techs.
David Incorporated Esq.
Member
Yeah what can you do when the lab cuts out the bloody piece of underwear and then throws it away. That really is crazy and worth a laugh, history of the case aside.
But even then, does the headline "Hillary Clinton was kind of a sleazy lawyer" actually shock or disturb anyone?
speculawyer
Member
Bring it on. I want to see them shut down the government over those EPA regulations right before elections.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/28/3346151/epa-regulation-poll/
A huge majority of Americans support regulating carbon from power plants. And theyre even willing to pay for it.
Thank you, Cosmos.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Fucking bring it, please.
Democrats' position in the generic ballot polling improved dramatically after the shutdown last year (a lead of 6.4 points according to HuffPo's pollster average). If that happened again they could easily win the House.
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