Romney opts out of Presidental Race

[MasterBates]

I still believe that they will both gut the military. Maybe not from a manning standpoint, but what good are 65K more soldiers and 27K more Marines if they cut 100K+ Sailors/Armed Flying Corporation types and nobody has enough money to buy gas/bullets/parts to actually do anything with the increased manpower.

 

[QuagmireMcGuire]

I hope you are not implying that there are only 11 intelligent black women who belong to the party of Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr[SIZE=-1]‽[/SIZE]

First, I do believe that I stated conservative and did not draw a particular party line. So why do we presume that conservative must equate to being Republican (or conversely, that to be liberal is to be a Democrat)?

Second, why do you invoke those particular men- Lincoln and Dr. King? I do not possess a particularly high opinion of Lincoln and I find it very interesting that you would invoke Dr. King into this conversation as if because of his deeds, I should be dissauded from my position.:yuck_125:

Third, the Republican Party of Dr. King's time is not the same Republican Party of Quagmire's time. The Republican Party of Lincoln's time is not the same Republican Party of Dr. King. So, if you were making that equation between conservative and Republican, trying to imply that the ideals of the Republican Party (or the Democratic Party) have remained the same over the generations is unnecessary.

Onwards with the thread.

 

[raptor10]

...so why do we presume that conservative must equate to being Republican...

Second, why do you invoke those particular men- Lincoln and Dr. King?

I have a high opinion of those two men, that's why.

and I find it very interesting that you would invoke Dr. King into this conversation as if because of his deeds, I should be dissauded from my position.:yuck_125:

Yup lets not let deeds and actions get in the way of ideology...

Third ...words... unnecessary.[/quote]
It was a joke and you had to go lawyer it up, Gosh!

 

[QuagmireMcGuire]

It was a joke and you had to go lawyer it up, Gosh!

Ya know. I am beginning to think that anything written by me that just happens to include words with two or more syllabuls is going to be viewed as "going lawyer."

Anyway, my sincere apologies. I knew you were joking.

 

[Flash]

Condoleezza Rice as VP???
What is everyone's thoughts on this? Do you think it is possible? Might be interesting, however probably very unlikely......

One of the worst National Security Advisors ever and one of the more ineffective and least influential Secretary of State's in modern times, who has little experience outside the bureaucracy of Washington DC or academia. The only reason to put her on the ticket would be for PR, nothing more.

That would court the Conservative, Black and Women voting blocs, all in one fell swoop.

I seriously doubt she would sway many conservative votes at all, she has been at loggerheads with man conservative foreign policy ideologues since she started in this administration, the North Korean negotiations have really riled them up. Also, I have to agree with Quagmire, I think she has very little support in the black community, mainly over politics.

 

[HueyCobra8151]

For some reason the black community seems to ostracize prominent conservative blacks.
--
Quagmire: The Democratic party has a LONG history of being the party of racists. They killed black Republicans in the 1890's, they put KKK members in the Supreme Court (Hugo Black?), they rejected Republican desegregation of schools & the military, they fillibustered just about every Civil Rights bill ever put into congress (from the 1922 lynching laws all the way to the 50's and 60's). Remember George Wallace and Bull Connor during the Civil Rights movement? Illegitimacy in American black culture skyrocketed after LBJ's war on poverty. Hell Richard Nixon was the first President to push affirmative action.

The same stuff happens today, the Democrats still have a former Kleagle in the KKK in the Senate. Articles like this one show that Democrat voters are considerably less likely to vote for a black candidate than Republican voters, and if you take out the gerrymandered districts, there are fewer Democrat black Representatives representing white districts than Republican.

Sorry for the rant, that got kind of long. I just don't understand how the Republican party is portrayed as being "racist" and the Democrats get a free pass.

 

[Spekkio]

Hell Richard Nixon was the first President to push affirmative action.

I thought you said that Democrats are racist??? I wouldn't use an example of a Republican implementing a policy which forces employers to hire people based upon the color of their skin as a shining example of progressive thinking.

I just don't understand how the Republican party is portrayed as being "racist" and the Democrats get a free pass.

It's the whole "fight for the poor" thing. While there are more poor white people in the U.S., the percentage of poor black people is higher. Plus, inner city minorities stand to gain more from government programs that Dems try to implement than rednecks living in nowheresville simply because the programs go where the population is more dense.

 

[HueyCobra8151]

Affirmative action in the late 60's was a little different than affirmative action today, no?
--
Dem's don't fight for the poor anymore than Republicans. Welfare is just a means to appease the poor to protect the rich. LBJ implemented his "war on poverty" at a time when real poverty was declining, and poverty proceeded to increase dramatically after that, so perhaps gov't intervention is not the ticket.

Edit: And I would argue that the Republican ethos is much more friendly to things like small business, which helps poor individuals to become less poor. Something about giving a fish vs. teaching someone to fish, right?

I read an article awhile ago about California's term limits on welfare checks, and when people stopped getting checks, amazingly enough they found jobs. So was welfare really even helping them in the first place? Or was it just enabling them to live that lifestyle?

 

[villanelle]

What about Fred Thompson for MCain's VP ticket? I know he did miserably with his own efforts, but that seemed to be more from a lack of effort than some kind of popular mandate agianst him or his stance on the issues. If he could somehow shed the stink of failure from his own campaign, he might be a decent choice. I don't know how well two aging white men would play, be Thompson would ceritnaly pull MCain further to the right. If that's the strategy he ops for, Thompson might work.

Or maybe I just really, really don't want him to chose Huckabee so I'm grasping at straws.

 

[Spekkio]

Affirmative action in the late 60's was a little different than affirmative action today, no?

No, it's not any different at all. It mandates that one hires a certain amount of people based upon the color of their skin.

You could argue that such a mandate might have been more necessary in the 60s to facilitate desegregation, but that does not make it any different in concept.

 

[HueyCobra8151]

You could argue that such a mandate might have been more necessary in the 60s to facilitate desegregation...

This.

I do agree with you though, I think that things based solely on skin color lead to more racially motivated thinking, not less.

 

[villanelle]

No, it's not any different at all. It mandates that one hires a certain amount of people based upon the color of their skin.

You could argue that such a mandate might have been more necessary in the 60s to facilitate desegregation, but that does not make it any different in concept.

Sure it does. If you accept that it was more necessary then than now, it is a very different concept. One was a productive strategy towards solving the probelms created by segregation and the the other is political kow towing and, essentially, a PR stunt. Very different concepts, even if they are inacted with similar, or even identical, rules.

 

[BourneID]

I suggest we make a poll on who should be McCain's VP, I tried too, but I have no clue how to do it.

 

[Spekkio]

Sure it does. If you accept that it was more necessary then than now, it is a very different concept. One was a productive strategy towards solving the probelms created by segregation and the the other is political kow towing and, essentially, a PR stunt. Very different concepts, even if they are inacted with similar, or even identical, rules.

Mandating that someone hires an individual based upon ethnicity is mandating that someone hires an individual based upon ethnicity. That is the concept, and it is the same now as it was in the 60s. The reason why it is done is irrelevant.

Regardless of whether or not you think it was necessary, I do not believe that the government has the right to tell private business owners who they must hire, let alone based upon such a superfluous attribute as ethnicity.

 

[BoaisyJon]

I'd have to disagree there. Both Obama and Clinton claim to stand for the middle-class and poor. Hillary is not for the upper-middle class, I mean she has claimed she will repeal the Bush tax cuts which start at salaries of $250,000/yr and up; $250,000/yr is upper-middle class

I'm sorry, maybe I misunderstood, but I'm positive (and so is the US census bureau) that 250k a year is Upper Class (>95 percentile, which in 2004 started at 154,000 - sorry I couldn't find more current data)

edit: 2006 data

I'm a conservative of the Goldwater Variety, but let's not mis-characterize what people say, because that never happens on AW.

/end rant