One interesting factor in the 2012 election is the declining power and influence of the Christian Right. The CR did it's usual bang-up job of getting its message out. And evangelicals responded in droves, as they usually do. But there are fewer of them than there used to be, and the rest of the electorate is not buying what the CR is selling. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/u...ves-failed-to-sway-voters.html?pagewanted=all It used to be that there were enough evangelicals to make them a key constituency worth wooing. But that's increasingly not the case: This raises the possibility that the Republican Party will finally free itself from its voluntary subjugation to the Christian Right. That might allow the GOP to spread its message of small government and fiscal conservatism without being hobbled by regressive social policies -- policies that, in their intrusiveness, have always contradicted the "small government" part of the GOP message. Here is yet another opportunity for the GOP to move in a new direction that will bring it back toward the center and solidify its long-term relevance. Don't abandon conservative Christians -- but no longer let them wield outsize influence over the party.
If there were election fraud in selected states (Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio) that gave Obama his "victory" would that change your view of the Christian Right? Just wondering.
Forgot to add: I've been saying for a long time that the long-term tide of opinion is on the side of gay marriage. That's what has made the recent wave of constitutional amendments both infuriating and pointless. Infuriating because they represent the old guard's attempt to lock-in its views while they still have enough influence to do so -- precisely the "dead hand" that our Founders feared; Pointless because nearly all of those amendments will be repealed or ruled unconstitutional in a fairly short time. I think this year marked the turning point. The conservative offensive against gay marriage has failed; from now on they will be hard-pressed merely to defend their anti-democratic gains. And they will fail at that, too. One by one, those amendments will fall. And eventually the last few holdouts will be ruled unconstitutional -- just like the last few anti-sodomy laws. Injustice can rule temporarily in America, if enough people support it: but eventually it falls. Perhaps, with this last-gasp effort defeated, we can turn to a long-term solution: Getting the government out of the marriage business entirely. Leave marriage to the churches, and let the government provide civil unions to anyone who meets its objectively neutral criteria -- criteria focused on a compelling government interest, not irrelevancies like the gender or sexual orientation of the prospective partners.
No election obtained by fraud is legitimate. So yes, any assumptions based on that election's results would be invalid. You would have to base your assumptions on whatever truth remained after the fraud was accounted for. Are conservatives really going to claim that this election was decided by fraud? There's no evidence of such a level of fraud -- only the usual scattered issues in isolated precincts. There were those precincts in Philly, for instance, where GOP observers were barred and Obama got 99% of the vote. But it's not clear that was actually fraud: GOP observers had credentials issues nationwide thanks to Romney's failed ORCA project, and those precincts were expected to be overwhelmingly in favor of Obama anyway. And even if it *was* fraud, it was nowhere near enough to tilt the balance in the state. So it doesn't invalidate the overall outcome.
To make a case for sufficient voter fraud that it would have tipped a very close race (which the popular vote totals support) there will have to be serious research and work done by experts in the field. But undoubtedly, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in Florida (like St. Lucie county, where there was 141% voter turnout that went, surprise, for Obama) and in Colorado there has been election fraud. It's safe to assume more will be found when people dig deeper. In Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania alone voter fraud may have denied Romney 67 electoral votes. At the very least election fraud throws a shadow of illgetimacy on the Obama presidency that cannot be ignored or removed.
You really don't get it, do you? If there were ISOLATED cases of voter fraud, the only ones that could be proven was the one of the 50ish REPUBLICAN woman in Nevada who tried to vote twice for Romney and the video of the voting machine who repeatedly highlighted a vote for ROMNEY while the voter (and the official at the voting station) repeatedly selected the Obama" option. That machine had to be recalibrated. unny that Romney's family owns voting machines firms! LOL
Election fraud is code language for the 'wrong' people voting, and we all know what they mean by that. Nice to see someone here from Minnesota, I lived in Minneapolis for a few years and thought it was a great town in a great state!
It's true. The Christian influence is on the wane - and the anti-Christian influence is on the rise. But that's to be expected. I never read anything about the rise of any "Christian nation" in the Biblical writings. But there's a wealth of info to infer that mankind would become quite successful in in its natural journey towards decadence. But I'm certain we can easily view such a journey as progress.
Spot on. The spiral downward is the natural inclination of man. To think that man can be saved via government is a liberal fantasy, not a conservative one. I have to say that watching it unfold is sad, but it seems to get easier with each election, at least for me.
Agreed. Nothing I've seen suggests there is anything close to the level needed to question the election. Only the usual irregularities you'll get in an election in a nation of 300 million people. There were irregularities in 2000 and 2004, too. And 2008, for that matter. There always will be. The question is always, are we talking about something other than isolated incidents? So far, there's no evidence that we are. That alone is not evidence of fraud. The recorded registration numbers can often lag actual registration in years of heavy turnout. And while St. Lucie County went for Obama overall, if you look at it precinct by precinct, there were plenty of precincts where Romney won (Go to page 5 for the precinct-by-precinct results). http://www.slcelections.com/Pdf Docs/2012 General/GEMS SOVC REPORT.pdf Further, St. Lucie County has gone to the Democrats by about the same margin in every election since 1996 or so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lucie_County,_Florida#Politics So there is nothing suspicious or surprising about the actual outcome in that county. Nonsense. There is *zero* evidence that fraud was of sufficient scale to invalidate the results. BS. There will *always* be irregularities in an operation as big and far-flung as a presidential election. Always. It only "throws a shadow" if there's a question of it reversing the top-line results. That's simply not the case here, as it hasn't been the case in past elections.
Thanks! I live in Jersey City for four years. Liked it, even though it's probably not the place you want to point to as representative of the state....
The religious right supported "W", but what did the religious right get in return? They got a President who did nothing to overturn Roe vs. Wade and who appointed Roberts to the bench who shoved Obamacare down our throats and who passed massive entitlements and had no filter on spending taxpayer money. Conservative? Pffft.
The "wrong" people voted is code language for I will use the unsubstantiated charge of racism to try and gloss over instances where there are more people voting than registered...and they always vote for Obama.
Great! These "irregularities" (which are, by the way, attempts to steal an election) are occurring in key swing states and are always to the advantage of one candidate, Obama. I agree this is not proof positive of total theft...YET! It is enough to start a congressional investigation however. We've just started looking and in four key swing states we've seen a pattern of voter fraud. How much more is there left to see? We should find out. 141% That's some lag! Outside of the fact that nearly fifty percent more ballots were cast than had people registered to cast them, you mean? But you see, it's part of a pattern that's far bigger than just one county in Florida. Even if you are able to explain away St. Lucie that doesn't begin to explain statistically anomalous results in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado (so far). It's time for congress to look at this. Not yet, anyway. Not if you scoff at something you are predisposed to disbelieve anyway and stop looking before you even start. There is a pattern emerging in key swing states. If Romney had key states where entire counties were giving Obama less than one percent of the vote you would sure as hell wonder how that could possibly be. Show me similar circumstances and statiscally anomalous results when John McCain ran for president. Show me anywhere that there were entire blocs of voting precincts that did not give Barack Obama one single vote! Attempts to sanitize supposedly non existent voter fraud by calling them "irregularities" is noted, by the way.
So the electorate/country is becoming less white and less Christian with each election.....and folks are jumping for joy over this......funny stuff......
You lost the popular vote by 2% and the college by more than 100. whining makes you a sorry loser instead of just a loser.
And ignoring Soviet bloc style voting results makes you a sorry leftist, instead of merely a leftist.
"Show me similar circumstances and statiscally anomalous results when John McCain ran for president. Show me anywhere that there were entire blocs of voting precincts that did not give Barack Obama one single vote! Attempts to sanitize supposedly non existent voter fraud by calling them "irregularities" is noted, by the way." No proof forthcoming? I'm not surprised. I'll take this an admission of failure and even more reason to have Congress investigate rampant voting fraud by the DNC and Obama.
Like I have that data at my fingertips? There are no precincts in St. Lucie that gave Romney zero votes. Indeed, there is one precinct (Spanish Lakes Fairways) where Obama got zero votes. http://www.slcelections.com/Pdf Docs/2012 General/rescan/GEMS SOVC REPORT.pdf Further, if you go to the St. Lucie website, you'll see a notice that turnout exceeds 100% in all precincts because of the two-page ballot: http://www.slcelections.com/ NOTE* - TURNOUT PERCENTAGES WILL SHOW OVER 100% DUE TO A TWO PAGE BALLOT. NOT ALL VOTERS VOTED THE SECOND CARD CONTAINING THE AMENDMENTS Gee. No conspiracy or fraud involved. What a surprise. Yippee. If you're reduced to arguing semantics, you've lost. See above. And I fully support investigating any irregularities. Why you think *Congress* should do it, I don't know: the first step is for the county and state to look into it. But there's simply no evidence of large-scale problems, and no reason at this point to think we will *find* such evidence.
It really is a beautiful thing watching the religious right extremists foam at the mouth about their poor religious freedoms. America has spoken and has said NO to religious extremism.
You'll never have that data at your fingertips because there aren't whole swaths of key states in which McCain's opponent failed to even register a single percentage point of the vote (or some other absurdly low total). It happened in Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. And I said even if you could explain away St. Lucie that doesn't explain what's been happening in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Colorado. http://www.redstate.com/2012/09/04/colorado-counties-have-more-voters-than-people/ So you would like to believe. Agreed but in a national election Congress should play a part. We've already seen enough "irregularities" to invalidate that claim. "In one county alone in Ohio, which was a battleground state, President Obama received 106,258 votes...but there were only 98,213 eligible voters. It's not humanly possible to get 108% of the vote," the petition says. http://obamavoterfraud.blogspot.com/ In Cleveland, in some districts he did even better with an astounding 100% of the vote in dozens of locations. For example, in Cleveland's Fifth Ward, Mr. Obama won districts E, F, and G 1,337 to Mitt Romney's... 0. And in case you're wondering, Gary Johnson received more votes than Mr. Romney. Is this statiscally possible? And shouldn't this automatically set off an investigation? http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/w...cleveland.html "Okay, what if we look at an entire Ward? No way this trend continues, right? An entire ward. Why not do the First Ward? Obama won that one 12,857 to... 94. This time Romney got .7% of the vote. He's moving up in the world! In total, there are 21 districts in Cleveland where Mr. Romney received precisely 0 votes. In 23 districts, he received precisely 1 vote. And naturally, in one of the districts where Obama won 100% of the vote, there was 100% turnout. What a coincidence! By the way, in case you are thinking that Romney did so poorly because maybe those districts were not very populated: Nope. In those 44 districts, Mr. Obama won 14,686 to 23. That's .16% of the vote for Romney. This is a pattern! This is unmistakably ELECTION FRAUD."
Evangelicals weren't the only ones who got their message. Young people got it, too, and responded in droves to vote against it. Young people are the future of this country and they find CR policies of discrimination towards gays and minorities offensive. They want to go to school and not have massive debt when they graduate. Young women want to know that if they work just as hard to get an education and are qualified to do the same job as a man, they will be paid the same salary as the man. Young women are offended by attempts to deny them control of their bodies and access to contraception. They have a whole different viewpoint of what they want their world to be like than the CR does. Three of my grandchildren (2 girls and a boy) were able to vote for the first time this year. They all worked at the Obama campaign office and on election day, made phone calls and handed out sample ballots at the polling places. They watched the results as they came in and were ecstatic that Obama won - not only the election but Virginia - and they'd had a part in it. Women ARE interested in jobs and the economy but they're also interested in the things that affect their lives personally and having the CR pushing the anti-women legislation that Repubs are so frantically trying to get passed in state legislatures across the country is causing young people to pay close attention to issues they might not have otherwise at this age. Obama won with a coalition of all these groups - women, youth, minorities, gays, and so forth - who represent what the country is rapidly becoming and this is the future. IMHO.
Can you clarify what you're talking about? Your sentences above are confused. Are we talking about McCain, or his opponent? Are we talking about 2008, or is the Ohio and Penn reference to 2012? #1, do you admit that St. Lucie, which you held up as some sort of smoking gun, is now a non-issue? If not, why not? The "greater than 100% turnout" is explained, and the underlying numbers are completely unsurprising given St. Lucie's voting history. #2, your link is about voter registration rolls, not voting. All it means is that the boards of election in Colorado do a poor job of removing old names from their registration lists. That's a legitimate problem, but it is not evidence of fraud: it is evidence of administrative sloth. No, seriously. People who have a winning argument don't worry about semantics. No, we haven't. Not even close.
is this how the Christian right is justifying their attempts at destroying this country, it's God's work? .. thus their attempts at making a self fulling prophecy of theirs come to pass course these are the same folks that claimed Bush was their savior... we all know how that turned out.. God's work? .
Lol...Will this idiocy replace the birther nonsense in Obama's second term, or do you guys keep planning to beat that dead horse as well?
