Forget the Presidency. Any GOP candidate who could win in today's environment would be a worthless clone of the opponent. Hold the House, just that simple. Within a couple of years severe social and economic problems will demonstrate we have a failing system unable to cope. Things can change rapidly.
Disagreed. The Founders set up our government this way for a reason. Forget the President? Nothing happens unless the President signs the bill. Obviously nothing happens unless Congress generates a bill either. Any bill generated has to pass the legal test. The Founders of the United States of America knew what they were doing in my opinion.
This has generally been true of single-member districts. At most two parties can survive, and those must battle for the middle ground, where most votes can be attracted. In contrast, much of Europe has proportional representation, where the voter gets to choose N candates out of some much larger number, and the top N vote-getters are elected, all at large. In many countries, no party can win an absolute majority, and often no two parties together can add up to a majority. The result is coalition government. Does it work better than the US system? Overall, neither approach seems clearly superior across the board. And they have changed rapidly many times. There have been a few cases were some party has become rejected enough that they lose relevance, and some new party steps in to perpetuate the 2-party system. It may be the case that the Republican schizophrenia (are they a social values party or a fiscal responsibility party?) is leading to a split. In essence, we almost have 3 parties today. We have the evangelical "cram MY religion down everyone else's throat" party, the true conservatives (gradually reduce the size, cost, and pervasiveness of government, ease some regulations, maintain quality national defense, etc.) and the true liberals (increase size and cost of government, emphasize safety nets, invest in superior education and infrastructure, etc.) My take is that the true conservatives would do best by jettisoning the religions wingdings, and battling the liberals for the most reasonable, popular, affordable middle ground. I believe the Democrats get a lot of votes today from people who aren't all that comfortable with democratic socialism, but are even MORE uncomfortable with the prospect of a government that wishes to abandon individual rights in favor of sectarian coercion. Faced with a choice between Jesse Jackson and Michelle Bachmann, I'd hold my nose and vote Jackson. Bachmann represents the highway to hell.
Actually, they have evolved, but in the wrong direction. They started down a militaristic, corporate, deficit spending low tax path with Reagan, that failed under Bush, the lesser, and they evolved. But instead of moving towards the people, they moved towards a radical right and incorporated a fundamentalist christian bent and somehow are trying to act like they are the party of small government, which has never been true. The worst evolution of the right is the move towards radical purism where somehow government with the other party and striving to reach bipartisan compromise is now evil. This is just breaking the government.
The crisis the GOP now confronts is whether it can restrain its berserkers from the self-mutilation they seem hellbent on inflicting.
Wow! The wizards on the USA Today editorial board. Very impressive. Does Organize for America know that you care so much for the right you are trying to stop them from making a terrible mistake? Or are they afraid that defunding Obama Care is a very real possibility? http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/01/Why-Defund-Obamacare-Matters
The GOP needs to continue down the TEA Party route. They need to add more of the fiscal TEA Party conservatives. They are doing great with over 50 in the Senate and Congress and many top governors too boot. Economics are what will destroy this country.
The GOP was such a well oiled machine for so long, that it is having trouble when it has to deal with factions closer to the Democrats. I think a party fracture is unlikely for now, but when the RNC is trying to reach out to new demographics to become relevant again, and there seems to be every flavour of exclusionary ideologies within the party, you have your work cut out for you. You won't win over the LGBT community with the party's rampant homophobes, you wont win over more women with the horrible things party members say about women (legitimate rape anyone), you wont get the Latin community (despite being fairly conservative) with the xenophobic politics of immigration. Overall, they need a real leader who can rein it in, and right now noone is really emerging. If anything the last election showed they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
I was disappointed when Romney lost because he would have been a much better president than Obama. But even so, Mitt was too liberal for me. You might not understand that since you're telling us that moderates will leave the party if they do not get what they want.
Maybe if the Democrats in the Senate would stop blocking every jobs bill presented, (*)(*)(*)(*) wouldn't be so fanwards?
Conservatism is quite popular everywhere except in the Jurassic media. If you shut out the moron chorus the TEA party has done significant things.
Yeah, how does a bunch of kids, desks, learning materials and plaster somehow prove that teachers buy Beemers. It's patently ridiculous on its face. When you finishing typing for him, tell him I say congrats. Sure it does. Everything in life gives a basis for comparison. Bank accounts, clothing, cars, the music we listen to, the tv/movies we watch, the politics/ideology we believe in, all things give basis for comparison which means that we as a social group are going to (on a generalized scale) put a scale of importance on those things. If you have a nicer car, or clothes, or have more money, you will have more opportunities available to you then someone who doesn't. A wonderful idea, but not nearly the reality in which we live. I truly wish we could live in that world, but your notions come from the idea that everyone is just going to 'do the right thing' because it's the 'right thing to do', which is easy to do if your life is comfortable. If your not one of the happy comfortable folk, then all that goes out the window to be replaced with 'I need to get what I can while I can, almost however I can' because that is what it takes to survive. Which is why I am a fan of a (properly and efficiently) run education system, because it gives everyone a similar place/system that they can use to relate with each other, as well as to have if their life outside is less then ideal. It is supposed to be a place where kids learn to have hope, and dream about how they can shape the future. Responsible parents have the ultimate authority. Irresponsible parents who endanger their children should lose that authority. A child with a proper upbringing will inherently understand which side of the morality scale mass murder sits on. If not, then there are deeper issues that need to be dealt with. The problems begin once you start defining 'values'. Who's values do we value? The ten commandments always seemed to be a good starting place, but once you get past that, you start to run into the various cultural values that have added to North American Culture since it's inception. I agree that running lock-step with government as the be-all-end-all is just as pointless an exercise as dismissing it altogether. All parts of the US hold some value to the lives of its citizens and shouldn't be tossed out blindly.
We have the best education system liberals are capable of creating. If you expect to be any better we're going to have to fire the libs and try something else.
You already are trying something else - called charter schools. Some good, many corrupt and fraudulent. That's what happens when you let right wingers have access to both kids and money. BAD idea. Regards from Rosie
More like the moderates are being driven out by the extremists because the moderates aren't giving the extremists what they want. Either way, the Republican Party is shrinking due to its own actions. http://www.gallup.com/poll/159740/democrats-establish-lead-party-affiliation.aspx
Considering that most public schools are failing to properly educate children the also public charter school have a low threshold to cross.
Conservatives aren't forcing anyone to leave. It is you who threaten to leave if you don't get what you want. That makes moderates pretty selfish and inflexible but if you're really looking for an excuse to leave I'm sure you can always think of one.
When a cadre of lowdown upstart GOP politicians are hellbent on shutting down the US government if they do not get their way concerning repeal of a law they don't like, and another GOP politician says it's the "dumbest idea" he ever heard, you get an inkling of internal stresses that results in the Party's dysfunction and Keystone Cops image. Rove is reported to be at war with the TPs according to right wing kooks. A popular GOP governor harangues the incompetent GOP House leadership, and exchanges insults with an ambitious neophyte GOP senator. A senior GOP senator publicly labels the GOP's radical element "wacko birds." One of the designated GOP wacko birds petulantly declares that he "does not trust Republicans." (Finally, a glimmer of reason!) The Party of Lincoln is morphing into the Donner Party. Coming apart at the seams seems so unseemly. .
That works both ways Natty. Obama could sign the GOP budget and avoid a shutdown but he refuses to do it.
Well, that explains why the socialist experiment in public education has failed. They put the kids, desks, ...what's learning material? Aren't those called "brains"?...out in the parking lot, and the teachers and their beemers are safe inside the classroom. Americans don't measure equality with a cash register. And "equality of opportunity" was never the meaning in the Declaration of Independence. The people who signed that document were fully aware of social disparities. Besides, Americans are people who make opportunities, they don't hang around waiting for one to be handed to them. Hardly. That's the socialist view, the stooge socialist view, that if everyone is trained to be good little robots and chant "Obama mmm-mm", Nirvana will happen and the Second Coming of the great God Marx will occur. The Mayor expects that most people properly trained in the right thing to do will do it because the right thing to do will keep their asses out of jail, keep someone else from pumping their asses full of buckshot, and otherwise keep their holes to the number nature intended them to have. A properly run educational system teaches English, Math, History, and Science. It FAILS students who aren't up to grade level, and it segregates the trouble-makers from the students, and FIRES "teachers" who can't or won't. It teaches them to be good Americans, which means it teaches the evils of socialism and other systems of corruption and coercion. PARENTS exist to provide children with hope and dreams, which isn't to say that schools shouldn't also provide the same. The best hope any child can have is to live in a nation free of socialism. Not in the USA. Responsible parents give their small children turkey and cheese sandwiches for lunch, the ultimate authority, under the command of Moochelle Obama, steals that lunch and hands the child a government provided "meal", instead. Agreed. So why is King Obama calling the Fort Hood terrorist act "workplace violence", thereby downgrading the severity of the event? Sure. You're absolutely right. Society has no consensus on values, so the schools should teach no values, right? That worked out well for Harris and Klebold, didn't it? Schools should teach the following values, and no others: Do not initiate violence, respond to violence offered appropriately, be that violence in kind, escalation, or flight. Be responsible for one's self, and expect others to be self-responsible as well, do not respect the irresponsible in others. Don't make promises carelessly, don't forswear yourself. No. WESTERN society has evolved a fine set of values to teach it's young. People from non-western cultures can go home if they refuse to assimilate.
. It's all the moderates fault? The Republican party holds the ideal of personal accountability. What do you call a person who supports such an ideal yet never accepts their own personal accountability? Fine. Blame the moderates as the Republican Party comes crashing down around you. The results will be the same regardless of who you point fingers at. - - - Updated - - - An apt description given that many, like Mac-7, blame others for their own self-destruction. They are eating their own young and blaming others for it.
If the House has presented a budget, and the RAT-run Senate refuses to pass it on to King Obama, then the DemocRATs are to blame.
Yes, the GOP keeps trying to move to the left, and everytime (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) McConnell or Crybaby Boehner cuts another loser deal with the RATS, more Americans leave the GOP in disgust. Being Americans, those who leave the GOP don't become RATS, naturally.
You are the one who refuses to compromise and threatens to walk if we don't meet your demands. Demands which btw you have still failed to specify.
Yes. The RINO that wants to keep MessiahCare, an unconstitutional law rammed down the throats of America with an illegal vote in the US Senate, in violation of the Originations Clause and in violation of the basic principles of freedom this nation is founded on, then yes, the GOP needs to shut down the funding for that law, despite the RINOs.
