Why Is the Republican Field So Extreme? (Read 2137 times)

 

In a related topic, which Colt QB holds the team record for longest TD pass?

Painter, apparently.

Christie is out.

I'm not surprised.  I know that he said "no" all of those times then reconsidered, but he has a pretty good gig here in NJ and he knows it.  Plus he is young so there is really no hurry for him to enter the national scene.  While I think that he has done a good job as governor, I'm not sure that there is enough of a body of work to know how he would be as president.

I believed before that it is Romney's nomination to lose and still believe it now.  Whether or not he can beat Obama I don't know.  There seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction regarding the list of potential nominees in the Republican party.  I used to think that if the economy were to stay in the toilet that Obama would not survive another election but now I am not so sure.

How is Hank Williams Jr. doing in the Tennessee Republican Senate race? 

After hearing his recent comments I'm a little more worried about just who all his rowdy friends are and what they do on nights other than Monday. 

Could he actually win?

Serious question: why aren't tea partiers supporting the Wall Street protests?

Aren't they about the same thing:

-expressing outrage at govt corruption and cronyism.

-frustration that the interests in Washington don't represent the ordinary American.

-the "tea party" idea that our country is being controlled by distant interests, money being siphoned off the top by an oligarchic elite.

Serious question: why aren't tea partiers supporting the Wall Street protests?

 

Aren't they about the same thing:

-expressing outrage at govt corruption and cronyism.

-frustration that the interests in Washington don't represent the ordinary American.

-the "tea party" idea that our country is being controlled by distant interests, money being siphoned off the top by an oligarchic elite.

The Wall Street protesters don't know what they are protesting.  Seriously.  That, or they are terrible at organizing and communicating it.  Explanations run from bank fault for the economy to the Afghanistan war and the environment (for the latter two, why the hell then are they even protesting there?).  A lot of people, myself included, are still confused as to what they are actually protesting and looking for. 

Why would anyone jump now to support a movement without a coherent platform?  Right now it just looks like a bunch of 20-somethings peeved at the state of the world in general.

The Wall Street protesters don't know what they are protesting.  Seriously.  That, or they are terrible at organizing and communicating it.  Explanations run from bank fault for the economy to the Afghanistan war and the environment (for the latter two, why the hell then are they even protesting there?).  A lot of people, myself included, are still confused as to what they are actually protesting and looking for. 

 

Why would anyone jump now to support a movement without a coherent platform?  Right now it just looks like a bunch of 20-somethings peeved at the state of the world in general.

Did I miss it, but does anyone have a 'coherent platform' to figure out how to solve our problems? Congress sure doesn't. The tea party--hard to see a totally coherent platform there...

I just laid out three clear bullet points that seem to be consistent with the message. I think that the purpose of the gathering is to encourage conversation to determine a coherent platform, to address the problems I listed above. The simple idea is that Washington has been corrupted by money and no longer represents the interests of ordinary Americans. Pretty clear and coherent message.

Serious question: why aren't tea partiers supporting the Wall Street protests?

 

Aren't they about the same thing:

-expressing outrage at govt corruption and cronyism.

-frustration that the interests in Washington don't represent the ordinary American.

-the "tea party" idea that our country is being controlled by distant interests, money being siphoned off the top by an oligarchic elite.

From 500,000 feet most things can be made to look similar.

Via Mother Jones (not exactly a Tea Party mic) here are the demands of the OWS crowd.

• Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hour.

• Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

• Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

• Demand four: Free college education.

• Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

• Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

• Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

• Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

• Demand nine: Open borders migration. Anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

• Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

• Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

• Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

• Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

Not sure any of these follow the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party front page of demands.

 

The demand that you hear repeated that these protests lay out such a platform is an argument that reinforces the technocratic, top-down view of democracy that is a symptom of the problem.

Yes, heaven forbid they can actually communicate what they are demonstrating about.