Ted Cruz and Rand Paul: 2016 and Social Issues
[Guest post by Dana]
During this year’s CPAC, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul briefly discussed the priority (or lack thereof) of social issues in the upcoming elections. As they are the two potential presidential candidates that generate the most buzz these days, it’s interesting to look at a side-by-side comparison. Right now, there isn’t a lot of daylight between them, however, while acknowledging that messages and platforms will have to be honed and articulated, this is where they currently stand. Social issues and their place of importance in a national election have not only been a consistent source of contention between commenters here at Patterico’s, but stirs heated debate throughout the right at large.
While at CPAC, Ted Cruz was asked if he thought the GOP should take social issues out of the conversation in the upcoming elections.
The man many consider a likely GOP presidential candidate in 2016 said, “I don’t think the politicians get to decide what the people care about.”
Cruz said he doesn’t think anything is off the table, but, he cautioned, there are important problems to address first.
On the home front, he said it is imperative that the country get back on its feet economically.
And looking overseas, Cruz said America must reclaim its standing in the world.
In the impromptu press conference, Cruz took only two questions.
He criticized President Obama’s handling of the Ukraine crisis and America’s loss of prestige in the world.
Cruz also said he was just as concerned about the president’s failed economic agenda. The country is facing such a crisis, he said, it needs to change course both at home and abroad, and soon.
Rand Paul addressed similar questions:
There was a consensus among young people at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference that the GOP needs to get out of social issues. Do you agree?
I think it’s partly that. But I also think young people are very concerned with privacy. I think most young people’s lives revolve around their cellphones. They communicate with their parents by cellphone even when they’re in the house. And I think they are horrified by the idea of the government searching their records and being in possession of their records when they’ve not been suspected of a crime.
Right. But it seems what they’re saying is that the Republican Party should stay out of issues like gay marriage.
I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues. The Republican Party is not going to give up on having quite a few people who do believe in traditional marriage. But the Republican Party also has to find a place for young people and others who don’t want to be festooned by those issues.
–Dana
I agree with Paul. I had a recent dustup with social conservatives at Ricochet and believe that they are not able to discuss other issues rationally. What matters most of all is economics. The rest is secondary although I am sympathetic to the anti-abortion crowd. The creationists are given to angels on the head of a pin arguments.
Mike K (cd7278) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:15 pmThe Democrats already own the dopers, the gays, and the pro-abortionists. There’s no point in trying to pander to them, or to their running dogs. Become Democrat-light and suffer the fate of the Whigs.
nk (dbc370) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:23 pmThe media is going to festoon Republicans with social issues whether they like it or not.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:28 pmSame thing for Libertarians. Who came up with the idea that a group whose litmus test for admission is “Do you like a good pot-party with hookers?” will be inclined to vote Republican, and that a Libertarian on the ballot steals votes from the Republican candidate and not from the Democrat? Even if it were true, which I greatly dispute that it is, I wouldn’t trade the Pentecostals for them, even if a Libertarian candidate ever managed to get 5% of the vote (snicker).
nk (dbc370) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:29 pmI like these guys, but when are they going to wake up? Their position on social issues is like Obama’s on national defense. Obama says he’ll end wars and go home. Ignoring the fact that the enemy gets a vote. If they enemy doesn’t end the war, then all you’re doing is retreating.
Same with social issues.
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=5489&app=cro
I’m sure Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon and Interim Provost Martin Wybourne thought they had ended the war, too. The enemy just notified them that their initial surrender offer wasn’t good enough. They want it all.
There’s a message in that for people like Cruz and Rand. I doubt they’ll hear it.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:30 pmDo Cruz and Rand not realize that college is just boot camp for the left in the larger culture war they’re going to wage for the rest of their lives?
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:32 pmConservatives decide not to take the field in the Social Issues Bowl.
Guess what happens?
http://collegeinsurrection.com/2014/03/stanford-students-denied-funding-for-event-with-speakers-who-dont-support-gay-marriage//#more
The other side takes the field and it’s a rout.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:39 pmMore from the Stanford story.
I have news for you folks; oh yes it is. College administrations have demonstrated it’s a very acceptable pretext for silencing those with viewpoints they don’t like. And behavior that is rewarded is repeated.
Just don’t chew your poptart into a rorshach test.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:43 pmJust my opinion for what it’s worth–in outward messaging and even talking amongst ourselves we need to use other, better, more discrete words than the generic “social issues”. It’s the shorthand that gets us every time. I have come to understand that “social issues” encompasses a range of issues and agendas which do not necessarily mean the same set of items or the same benchmarks and priorities for all conservatives or all Republicans or all libertarians. Furthermore, by using the phrase “social issues” the liberals easily tar us with anything they can make up and fit into that phrase which often bears no resemblance to any of our positions.
elissa (ab9919) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:47 pmPaul is more willing to dismiss social issues as a concern than Cruz, but I don’t see either of them saying social issues should be the focus of a Republican platform. I think what matters is which issues the GOP focuses on, especially when it comes to winning with Millennials:
DRJ (a83b8b) — 3/15/2014 @ 4:50 pmQuestion, is there any social issue position, that the democrats espouse which seems too ridiculous to the millenials?
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:12 pmto talk about serious issues, just seems to invite the ‘two minute hate’
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/03/paul-ryan-to-meet-with-black-caucus-members-after-his-offensive-remarks-about-inner-city-poverty/
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:17 pmI realize that, elissa. Since the liberals control the media, academia, and entertainment no matter what terms we use they’ll smear us with anything they can make up and fit into the phrase things that bear no relation to our positions anyway. So I think what terms we use is a relatively small matter as long as we go through this filter.
Considers; leftists are the most ideological and politically partisan of all. Yet, when they refer to themselves they’re “non-partisan,” “apolitical,” and “pragmatic.”
“Ideological,” “political,” and “partisan” always means “not of the left.”
Or perhaps this will help illustrate.
Democrats, 2010:
http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Mary_Frances_Berry_91E3D9D5-C40D-440C-9D48-1C50CBC60C87.html
The 2nd topic under discussion at Politico’s Arena, the one relevant to this discussion?
The question they’re asking their guests to answer isn’t, “Is the tea party racist?” It’s, “Will smearing the Tea Party ‘racist’ (note the scare quotes in the original) work as a tactic for the Democrats?”
And their guest’s response is of course yes:
Democrats, 2014:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/373268/chris-matthews-senate-goes-andrew-johnson
It doesn’t matter what terms we use, elissa, the playbook is always the same for the left. Lie, smear, slander, and scare. Because that’s the only way they can get their base to ignore just how awful the truth is. Sort of like how the NORKs propagandize their people that things are heaven on earth compared to everywhere else but most especially the evil capitalist South.
So we need to model a communications strategy on Cold War methods of getting around Communist propagandists. AKA our leftist MFM, academia, and Hollywood.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:21 pmState your position and offer that others have opinions that might not align. But that should not be an impediment or a reason to reject others. Why blow a candle out when the house is burning down?
Colonel Haiku (427f2e) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:25 pmI just find it amazing that the left can openly discuss what smears and slander will work best for them, and when they use the smears and the slanders they’ve settled on as a tactic GOP pols respond as if they’re raising a legitimate issue.
Like when they settled on the “War on Women” smear, and Stephanopolous threw a grenade into the debate by asking why the GOP wants to deny women access to contraceptives.
What did the pols do? They kept explaining that they didn’t want to deny women contraceptives and that they supported that 1960-something SCOTUS decision, blah blah blah.
Instead of pointing out that it was a non-issue, a diversion, because as Ms. Berry explains they needed the election to be about anything except the disaster that was and is the Obama administration.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:27 pmnarciso–I am not a millennial (thank goodness) but I’ve seen some data which strongly suggests that, for example, late term/partial birth abortion a la Wendy and Nancy is not something the millennials are uniformly or firmly supportive of and in fact are shocked by. That would seem to be an area to possibly exploit or explore with those voters.
elissa (ab9919) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:29 pmThe problem with Republicans’ views on “social issues” is that these issues are the only thing that differentiates them from the socialists, so the establishment plays them for all that they’re worth for political mileage. They’re never going to do anything about gay marriage or abortion. They’re never going to endanger their chances for re-election.
Republicans need to focus on economics? Why? They don’t even hold the moral high ground here, either. They hold the same views on economics as the socialists, save a few minor, meaningless points in degree. They’re not even trying to grasp what needs — nay, has — to be done. Spending doesn’t just need to be cut to the bone — entire swaths of government must be phased completely out of existence and the sooner the better.
You’ll never get that with socialists on both sides of the aisle.
J.P. (bd0246) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:30 pmI hope everything won’t be in block quotes from here on out.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:31 pmMaybe but how often do they vote that way, they have Dennis Miller’s proverbial ‘attention span of a ferret on double expresso’
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:31 pmToday’s feel good story:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_SOMALIA_VIOLENCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-03-15-08-31-56
Colonel Haiku (427f2e) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:33 pmOtherwhise it ends up the Zoolander scene at the gas station,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:33 pm“The problem with Republicans’ views on “social issues” is that these issues are the only thing that differentiates them from the socialists”
J.P. – Very astute. That must be why Harry Reid is too chickensh*t to bring a Democrat budget to the floor of the Senate.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:34 pmelissa @16, Wendy Davis’ late term abortion stance didn’t just rub the millenials the wrong way.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/wendy-davis-filibuster-against-late-term-abortion-ban-repels-texas-hispanics/article/2545357
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:35 pmCruz and Paul’s response to social issue questions should be The 2nd amendment is the only social issue I give a damn about.
mg (31009b) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:37 pmYes, she’s the exception, more dripping with blood than Oscar Pistorius,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:39 pmGood things happen to bad people, Col.
mg (31009b) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:41 pmYou can be 100% right on the issues, Steve, and still lose it all.
Colonel Haiku (427f2e) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:41 pmThis is what I’m talking about. Paul Ryan’s remarks weren’t offensive. He was not calling inner city men too “lazy” to work. He was criticizing the “poverty managers” in government who create barriers to job creation and otherwise create conditions where people can’t work.
The people who gave us Detroit. In other words, the CBC. The same people he’s crawling to now.
He should be talking to these people instead.
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/12/103560-chicagos-black-community-livid-weve-trained-vote-specific-manner/
Again, I don’t know when the GOP pols will wake up. Don’t go through the self-appointed leaders of “The Black Community.”
Go to the freakin’ black community. Frankly, it’s a richer vein of electoral ore to mine, so to speak, because they’re much more conservative in many ways than Hispanics.
But just like when it comes to
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:43 pmsocial issuesthat which must remain nameless, the GOP side never shows up so it’s always a rout in favor of the team that does.Yep, mg, and now the on-teh-run AQ says time for car bombs in major U.S. cities?
Colonel Haiku (427f2e) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:45 pmWe need to daisy cutter them first, Col.
mg (31009b) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:50 pmWell after the Boston reaction, who can blame them;
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/03/15/Al-Qaeda-Set-To-Attack-American-Cities-And-Abroad
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:50 pmYes, Colonello, but in life just as in the Navy 75% of success is showing up. On time, and with a haircut.
The GOP isn’t even showing up.
So you can be right on an issue and still lose it all, most especially when you let the other side mischaracterize where you are on that issue and the people you’d like to appeal to never hear anything different from you.
Except apologies for your remarks, which is the likely result from Paul Ryan’s Mao-style “struggle session” with the CBC.
If all people hear is “the GOP is racist” from the liberal lights at the MFM/CBC/UCB/MGM and then apologies from GOP pols for something they said, people the GOP needs to appeal to are going to conclude all those leftists were right about the evil Rethuglicans all along.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:51 pm==It doesn’t matter what terms we use, elissa, the playbook is always the same for the left. Lie, smear, slander,===
I don’t know if you noticed, Steve, but at least half of my opinion/suggestion above with respect to the language of “social issues” dealt not with the left, but with the benefits of refining and clarifying our own playbook for our own use.
elissa (ab9919) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:55 pm10 years ago, who didn’t think Same sex marriage was just a fluke, that Massachussetts coughed off after some bad chowder, now we have this crazy panel headed by Jocelyn Elders, don’t these people ever go away, pushing for transgenders in the military,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 5:59 pmI did notice, elissa. Which is why I said Ryan doesn’t need to meet with the CBC which consists of the “poverty managers” he was talking about who run the system for their own benefit. Instead he should be meeting with the inner city folks themselves. The people in whose name the CBC and other poverty managers are making money for themselves hand over fist.
Like all GOP pols, for some reason I’ll never understand he keeps going through people who are his enemies expecting them to be honest brokers.
It’s like the Bush WH’s media outreach to Jay Carney when he was Time’s Washington Bureau Chief. I’ll have to find the name of the Assistant WH Communications officer who came up with that brainstorm; she’s actually proud of that.
Since that’s the playbook, it doesn’t really matter if we give the same old stupid plays nifty new names. The plays still won’t work.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:05 pmfifteen years ago, who thought that the Kyoto flimflam would just fade away?
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:05 pmShe came later from Jeb’s camp I think;
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2014/03/13/view-crew-features-gop-strategist-nicolle-wallace-know-bill-clinton-
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:11 pmRecall how Sharyl Atkisson recently left CBS News because of the liberal bias. CBS news refused to give air time to the stories she broke. There’s a reason for that.
From a year ago.
The GOP’s playbook is from the early 1960s, apparently, when the media still liked Ike, too. They loved JFK, but they could still be fair to Ike.
Those days are looong gone.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:14 pmSteve57, you have written and linked to some interesting things and you made some very valid observations which I generally agree with. But, as is so often the case, we are not “discussing” the same subject. I was kinda shooting for a discussion on Dana’s post related to Cruz and Rand Paul and the upcoming elections and how to deal with “social issues”.
elissa (ab9919) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:16 pmFrankly, it’s a richer vein of electoral ore to mine, so to speak, because they’re much more conservative in many ways than Hispanics.
I think it’s somewhat of a myth that, as with Latinos, many people in black America are conservative enough to truly affect their voting behavior.
I was speaking with an older black woman about 2 years ago and she was telling me — approvingly — how decades ago, young kids in her neighborhood when acting up would be scolded by the grandmothers on the street. That would cause the trouble-making teens to slink off to their homes. She said that nowadays such kids would — to paraphrase — tell the grannys to “f” themselves, and that, anyway, such women wouldn’t dare come outside (and would be more likely to be cowering behind their front doors) and reprimand mischief-making younger folk to begin with.
As I was speaking with this older woman, her observations gave me hope. I presumed that my delving into her outlook on life in general would uncover a political orientation that was refreshingly non-left-leaning. But, no, upon further discussion her sentiments in general still were blindly loyal to the Democrat Party. I sighed to myself.
We live in the age of Obama’s-son-if-he-had-a-son, and it’s all a hard, rough, long slog from here on out.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:18 pmwhat Rand Paul is saying is that maybe we should nominate someone who isn’t socially backwards
and that pretty much leaves Rand Paul on the stage all by himself
done and done
I can live with that.
happyfeet (8ce051) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:20 pmI think its fine on the National level to de-emphasize social issues as long as States rights is made the conduit to take up So-Con concerns.
The fly in that ointment, of course, is SCOTUS.
But the real impetus behind scuttling So-Con issues is undermining the whole Conservative package.
Small government means hundreds of thousands laid off, retired or fired, closures of Departments, Bureaus and wholesale repeals of programs.
Talking about diminished expectations 2 1/2 years out is typical horsesh*t. Really, what did we expect?
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:24 pmthe left makes all our icons, radioactive, and then gives legitimacy to all of theirs, Sharpton is a fraud, an inciter of violence, an antiSemite, yet too many on the right, have accepted him as a debating partner, as such he was able to mount the witchhunt that was the Zimmerman matter, ‘never let a crisis go to waste,’ even if you have to conjure one out of whole cloth.
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:24 pm10 years ago, who didn’t think Same sex marriage was just a fluke, that Massachussetts coughed off after some bad chowder, now we have this crazy panel headed by Jocelyn Elders, don’t these people ever go away, pushing for transgenders in the military,
The slippery slope is getting more slippery and slicker as each day goes by.
I wonder how many Americans who now — in a fit of compassion for compassion’s sake — embrace the idea of issues like same-sex marriage and the US military hosting booths at Gay Pride festivals in DC still also kind of grimace (or become resentful) when it’s mentioned that the guy in the White House apparently has a personal background involving homosexuality? I know that was the reaction of a dyed-in-the-wool liberal I was speaking with awhile back. Call that an example of cognitive dissonance (or “limousine liberalism”).
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:25 pmwho isn’t socially backwards
Yep, happyfeet, such as people who often use the word “gay” in a negative or pejorative manner.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:28 pmYes, that’s jumping the Magalodon, they spent twenty years, financing gun control studies through the Joyce Foundation, so when an event in Colorado or Conneticut, comes to pass, they have the answer.
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:29 pmWe should discuss them intelligently. We should not say a rape victim will not get pregnant if it’s a “real rape”. We should say that we will not victimize her twice but that there should not be a second victim, the baby, as well, and we will help the mother as much as possible with the aim of both saving the baby and her physical and mental health. To start with.
We can say “gay marriage is to marriage as horse apples are to apples and if some people want to eat horse apples what difference does it make to us”. That’s likely to offend everybody. Why don’t we say that marriage is as much a social contract as it is a personal contract and communities should not be forced to endorse it by judicial fiat but should decide the question by democratic consensus, state by state?
Something like that, elissa?
nk (dbc370) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:29 pmYes, narciso, it does.
That’s the GOP playbook. Start with the fundamentals. Never articulate a vision, because you don’t have a vision to articulate.
That’s the building block for everything else. A apolitical non-Republican is the perfect spokesperson for such an outfit.
In one of his recent criticisms of Cruz Thomas Sowell noted the same problem.
The problem the GOP has is similar in one way to the Democrat’s problem. It isn’t the messaging but the message.
Then they diverge. The Democrats have a message, but they have to lie about it because if people knew what it was they’d hate it. Hence the word salad of euphemisms.
The GOP, on the other hand, has no message.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:31 pm“So you can be right on an issue and still lose it all, most especially when you let the other side mischaracterize where you are on that issue and the people you’d like to appeal to never hear anything different from you.”
Did someone say that we should allow mischaracterization of social issue positions or not express opinions? I know I didn’t.
Make your position known, but allow for a difference of opinion. Not enough of that done these days.
Colonel Haiku (427f2e) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:35 pmMcluhan was wrong, the medium is not the message, but the former can distort if not the message, dilute it’s signal strength,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:37 pmI will always love* you no matter what your opinions are, Haiku. We are discussing policy and actions that candidates will take if elected. At least I think we are.
*In a manly, non Mark-arousing way, of course.
nk (dbc370) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:45 pmSo here we are again, de-emphasize social issues and then get behind gay marriage.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/14/Rand-Paul-Says-Republicans-Need-to-Soften-on-Social-Issues
Which chromosome carries the loon gene again? MD?
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:47 pmOne side always has the ear of the two Coastal papers, the Journal, the three networks, (ignore CNN and MSNBC, because they are static)
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 6:48 pmDe-emphasizing an issue by talking about it is an Akinism.
We know we have located an idiot.
Dr. Paul has two strikes, kissy face with McConnell and De-emphasizing everything social except gay marriage.
How about practicing sitting in the corner, Son?
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:21 pm“Question, is there any social issue position, that the democrats espouse which seems too ridiculous to the millenials?”
Affirmative action because they have suffered from it. But they won’t admit it publicly. They also believe they will never see Social Security.
Mike K (cd7278) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:24 pmI know it’s dreaded McClatchy, but what could go wrong?
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/03/neel-kashkari-says-hell-help-gop-build-bigger-tent.html
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:33 pm“Dr. Paul has
twoone strikes”FTFY. Policies to close to his loony father.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:38 pmRecall Stephanapoulos asking the GOP debate about contracpetion. The media cannot wait to paint any GOP candidate as the town elders in “Footloose” because they KNOW NOW their economic ideas are death to the economy. We must have candidates like Paul and Cruz that point out the absurdity of that and bull right past that nonsense to the total failure of Obama’s economy. Heck, you can even get to Obama’s left and ask why are we still in the Middle East anyway. Not sure it’s dawned on Beltway GOP types but NOBODY wants any more war.
This is all the Dems have left-dishoenst scare tactics. To echo Mike-no one under 50 is going to see an SSI check because of how vapid the Dems have been, nor will their job prospects improve.And when China stops buying t-bills, well, somebody gets stuck without a chair when the music stops. #17 trillion of debt can make a lot of people chairless. But if the GOP runs ANOTHER go along get along sissified candidate in 2016, they will lose.
Bugg (f0dbc7) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:41 pm“NOBODY wants any more war.”
Agreed, but we all acknowledge that our current Admin has guaranteed we’re getting what we don’t want.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:56 pm58. You got me.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:58 pmYes, the folks on the Washington Naval Conference, thought that too,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:58 pmJindahl headed to NH.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 7:59 pmMy recollection is Ibrahim ran into trouble toying with secularism.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/03/update-malaysian-pilot-was-political-fanatic-attend-trial-of-opposition-leader-hours-before-flight/
Narciso?
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 8:01 pmYes, there’s some of that, also sometimes the crook has something to say, recall that Abramoff took one side, Norquist the other,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 8:03 pmR.I.P. David Brenner
Icy (b711aa) — 3/15/2014 @ 8:09 pm‘anyone, anyone, Bueller;
http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=244532:deliberate-too?-evidence-of-missteps-by-malaysia-mounts-complicating-flight-search&Itemid=2#axzz2w4yM7rjW
narciso (3fec35) — 3/15/2014 @ 8:30 pmI was describing the current state of the GOP. They are perfectly content to let the MFM/academia/Hollywood mischaracterize the conservative message. Mostly, apparently, because they don’t know what a conservative message would sound like.
I’d make my position known, but first I need to explain what it’s based on.
If you mention “cultural Marxism” or “the Frankfurt School” you’ll get ridiculed as a right-wing nutjob and your accusers will claim no such things exist. Except of course in the imagination of conservative loons.
So I’ll let that bastion of right-wing looniness, Stanford University’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online, make the introduction to the school and one of its breakthrough theories.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/
The Frankfurt School is so named because these Marxist professors were forced to emigrate from Nazi Germany because they were active communists. They tried and failed to foment communist revolution. So they analyzed their failures and arrived at a conclusion. You can not impose a Marxist system on a bourgeois culture. First you must destroy the bourgeois culture, and then the proletariat can have its communist system.
But you can not admit that your aim is Marxism; that must remain hidden. Today we call it “PC,” or more often the cultural Marxists themselves call it economic and social justice.
Are you not feeling fundamentally transformed, Colonello?
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 8:41 pmLast time I got festooned I felt dirty for like three days.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/15/2014 @ 8:41 pmSearching for the debris in the Southern Indian Ocean is daft. There are only a few French Islands hours out toward the Cape of Good Hope.
Why would the pilot and cohort slip away to ditch?
The mere fact the Indians, et al., saw nothing was they weren’t looking.
A very skilled pilot took this crate to 45,000 ft.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 9:01 pmAnother link.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing-malaysian-flight-mystery-deepens-pilot-investigated-foul-play-suspected
Neither Iran or Pakistan need a heavy lift, the target has to be China or Malaysia.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 9:02 pmIf you haven’t read Michael Totten’s series on his first hand look at Cuba, do. It’s worth reading in its entirety. But I’ll just quote this part.
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/only-way-out-exile
The reason why the courts in this country used to consider marriage and family a special sphere in which courts would intrude only reluctantly was, as one justice put it, marriage “is how society reproduces itself.” The Marxists, both the traditional and cultural types, agree. That’s why the Castro was so eager to break them up. Break up the bourgeois family and you break up bourgeois society.
You know what else was invented to break up the bourgeois family? Gay marrige.
Feminists, another strip of cultural Marxist, siezed upon the Marxist theory of the family.
http://www.csustan.edu/History/Faculty/Weikart/Marx-Engels-and-the-Abolition-of-the-Family.pdf
Marx and Engels intended to destroy the bourgeois family after the communist revolution. Cultural Marxists, with their emphasis on fundamentally transforming society first before imposing socialism, switched the order. Feminists in particular seized upon the Marxist critique of the family as reinforcing the bourgeois socio-economic values of private property and the division of labor. Feminists theory states that the family reinforces the patriarchal values of women as property and devaluing women (and valuing men) for their gender roles. Women could only be free and independent if they weren’t dependent on a man. And gender roles had to be destroyed. Even the concept of gender had to be destroyed.
They concluded a couple of decades back that Gay marriage would be the ultimate method of ungendering marriage and divorcing child rearing from marriage. Not that they didn’t have other incremental methods.
But the bottom line is that you can’t pass bourgeois values on to children if you don’t have bourgeois families.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 9:13 pmI suppose I should quote something from the piece on Marx and Engels.
Life of Julia, anyone? Where you never see Julia with a husband and her son is only in one slide before he’s cared for by the state? Universal preschool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3qtpdSQox0
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 9:31 pmI was going to add this as a post-script to the post, but instead am going to just add it to comments.
On a walk this afternoon, I ran in to our local assemblyman who is running for an unexpected vacancy in the Senate.
I asked him what he thought the main focus of the right should be in the upcoming national election. He stated that the economy must be first and foremost for the GOP at large, not social issues. He believes they have their place, but that place is not at the front of the class.
He also stated that although he is pro-life, he realizes that making that the focal point of his campaign, or any Republican’s campaign, is not going to win anyone a seat. However, if asked about his position, he is forthright.
He is a business owner and has met with both success and loss. He has cut paychecks, laid off workers, had to budget, and been on his knees when things were rough. His take away from that experience now that he is in politics, is, before anyone enters the fray, they have to understand the difference between principle and priority. You can compromise on priority, but you cannot compromise on your principles. They also have to know which hill is worth dying on.
He said that because the Republicans fear losing seats and more importantly, party members, they are actually *not* talking about social issues. Their hand will be forced by the media, of course, and if they aren’t direct about their stands, the media will ‘make’ their stands for them– whether accurately or not.
He hopes that conservatives will not leave the party, but absolutely understands why they do. His hope is that the Rand Pauls and Ted Cruzes will not only breathe new life into the party, but will compel the old guard to expand, change, and move forward. He recognizes that Paul and Cruz will pull in young voters and sees that as essential. He agreed that the GOP has been sinking under its own misplaced focus, in spite of the Republican platform being solid.
The most interesting thing he said was he has received endorsements from the Latino Chamber of Commerce, the Black Caucus, and other minority groups in predominantly Democratic areas. And he believes that the reason for it is twofold: He actually shows up in these neighborhoods where there is rampant poverty and crime – unlike his colleagues who will not venture outside of their money zones; and, his conservative platform, especially with regard to the dangers of a bloated government, as well as breaking down what economic freedom is, is a message that every American responds to – whether Democrat or Republican. Apparently, a number of Democrats have responded to his message.
My takeaway after speaking with him, was at the root of it, conservatives must be fearless and willing to share the message to anyone, anywhere. They cannot let fear of losing their district dictate what they will say. They must be willing to risk loss, in order to know victory. And that’s where we get stuck.
Dana (9a8f57) — 3/15/2014 @ 9:54 pmhttp://www.king5.com/news/cities/olympia/College-group-cancels-diversity-meeting-after-trying-to-exclude-white-staffers-249652471.html
Next time Karama Blackhorn will hide her hatreds a bit better.
But “racism” and “diversity” as it’s currently defined come from the work of the Marxists at the Frankfurt school. Since they found that people, not just in the US but also in Europe, were not susceptible to the traditional economic exhortations to communism, they had to find new ways to develop the proper class conscience among the proletariat.
Without using the terms “class conscience” and “proletariat.”
So race, gender, and sexual orientation, they found, serve nicely as substitutes. With whites, particular white men, playing the role of the bourgeoisie. Who weren’t necessarily oppressing the proletariat economically but always through “white privilege” and “white supremacy.”
And “people of color,” women, and gays playing the role of the oppressed proletariat.
Essentially, the left would like nothing more than to convince the right that social issues should be off the table. Because then we’d be diverted from the fact that, as the left knows, social issues are really the only issues that matter.
We’d be off just playing in our pens with our economies and our foreign policies while they fundamentally transform society into something that won’t even know what the hell we’re talking about. Much less care.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 9:54 pm“On the home front, he said it is imperative that the country get back on its feet economically.”
Absolutely. That social crap can be hashed out later.
First, stop the bleeding.
Blacque Jacques Shellacque (73b524) — 3/15/2014 @ 10:46 pmWhen I lived in Mpls/St.P I was a member of this club and my wife got her hair done in a boutique under its roof in front of the check in desk.
http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/minnesota-another-somali-gym-attack-followed-by-violent-home-invasion/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 11:19 pmBet he drives a late-model premium coupe either light grey or beige.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/03/texas-muslim-murdered-daughter-and-lesbian-lover-left-quran-open-to-page-condemning-homosexuality
He’ll be an imam in prison.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 11:23 pmMinneapolis sponsored a hijab day, despite the fact virtually none of her Muslim immigrants wear one.
Come to think of it, about the only way to avoid social issues is to cordon the freaking ghetto off, set a bunch of fire breaks and bring in the sappers.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/15/2014 @ 11:30 pmThe bleeding is a result of the notion that the “social crap” can be hashed out later. It already may be too late.
It does no good to stop the bleeding first when the train’s almost at the gulag gates. By the time you get the bleeding stopped the gates will be closed and we’ll be at the platform. It’s time to stop the train, first.
http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/marcuse_professor_behind_1960s.php
He’d be positively ecstatic now; all those people who gave him hope back in the ’60s are large and in charge. And look where we are.
He’s got a pen and a phone and he doesn’t need Congress.
The GOP is largely made up of people with no coherent worldview, no coherent philosophy, no coherent strategy, because they have no guiding principles. Just a grab bag of sometimes roughly similar policy preferences.
The left does have guiding principles, whether individual leftists know it or not. They know what they want to destroy, why they want to destroy it, how they plan to destroy it, and what they’re going to replace it with when and if they get the chance.
We are so late in the game that already we’re not even allowed to express our views on the bases outlined by Marcuse.
And conservatives not only don’t understand why, they don’t even have the language to explain their views. If they understand those views themselves, which I doubt. Our last two presidential candidates have tripped all over themselves to call Barack Obama a nice guy, the community organizer who despises them, and us. That’s how little they understand what’s been happening around them.
The left has been all to happy to let us focus on stopping the bleeding as they continued to rack up the body count as they execute their grand strategy.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/15/2014 @ 11:37 pmDana:
I like this.
DRJ (a83b8b) — 3/15/2014 @ 11:50 pmYou keep using this word, “festooned.” I do not think it means what you think it means…
Unless Sen. Malaprop is concerned that young people up and down the country are being forcibly embellished, decorated, and bedizened with wreaths and garlands.
I’m shocked, shocked to discover that a United States senator should enunciate such a disfigure of speech! (I wonder what word my fine fettered friend could have meant?)
Dafydd
Dafydd the Conciliator (763797) — 3/16/2014 @ 12:24 amthis means we have to smear, slander, and scare Up to Eleven.
Michael Ejercito (906585) — 3/16/2014 @ 12:36 amWhy?
Michael Ejercito (906585) — 3/16/2014 @ 12:41 amIt is not as if the baby is an American, for God’s sake!
No. In the Cold war if we wanted to get our message to the people of North Korea, the first thought that popped into our collective heads wasn’t to call and schedule an interview with the Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK.
But based upon who they think it’s a bright idea to have moderate GOP debates, that would have been tossed out as a suggestion by the PR types at an RNC communications strategy brainstorming session.
And the rest would have said to each other, “Hmm, that might work. Do we have their number?”
Second, you can’t talk to people who’ve never been exposed to a conservative idea as if they’re lifelong Republicans who’ve gathered to schmooze over drinks at the country club’s conference room.
For instance if I were Paul Ryan I wouldn’t Play the Washington game meet with the CBC. That’s like sitting down for an interview with the KCNA; how do you think that’s going to get edited by the time it’s broadcast to the NORKs on state TV? I’d go to Chicago or Milwaukee and just tell them the truth. The CBC and the media are claiming that he called blacks lazy when he criticized the multi-generational cycle of dependency and poverty in the inner city.
I, still in my role as Paul Ryan, didn’t call you lazy, I’d say. I called your Congressman/woman a “poverty manager” because she has things set up so the system benefits her/him, not you. There are no jobs to be had, but have you seen how he/she lives?
The truth is it’s your Congresscritter who thinks you’re lazy. That’s why your Congresscritter wants to import foreign labor to do jobs she/he thinks you’re too lazy and stupid to do. That’s what amnesty’s about.
http://michaelgraham.com/us-chamber-ceo-we-need-amnesty-for-illegals-because-americans-are-lazy-and-stupid/
(Naturally I’d make sure I’d polish my remarks a bit. But only a bit. This is how I talk when I go into these neighborhoods to pound the pavement for the GOP, but then I’m not the one running for anything.)
But, stepping out of my role as Paul Ryan, I have to admit that kind of message would work better if Paul Ryan also wasn’t pushing for amnesty…
Like I said, no guiding principles.
At least I understand the plan when liberals do it. It makes sense for the CBC to keep their constituents beholden and dependent. And to import a whole new underclass on the ridiculous notion that unskilled illiterate laborers who largely don’t even speak Spanish now (various aboriginal dialects) are going to somehow be a source of net tax revenue and improve the solvency of SS, Medicare, etc. When in fact they’ll of course be a whole new crop of future beholden dependents who can be used to demand a massive expansion of entitlement spending.
I have no clue what compels these GOP pols to do something so suicidally stupid other then the vain hope that they’ll finally get the love and attention they’ve always craved from the MFM.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 2:22 amNo, Rand Paul used the right word when he said “festooned”. The Democrat media festoons Conservatives with caricaturistic positions. Festooning is a form of mockery as old as the Bible. Herod festooned Christ with a “king’s robe” and “scepter” and the Romans took it further with a “crown” of thorns. Paul may actually have been making the same biblical reference.
nk (dbc370) — 3/16/2014 @ 2:35 amWe do it too. Examples: “It’s ok if a Democrat does it”; “the left-wing media (but I repeat myself)”; “Racist” as created by JD 😉
nk (dbc370) — 3/16/2014 @ 2:42 amthe point is to prevent everything else from working;
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/calling_a_spade_a_garden_implement_doesnt_make_it_a_hoe.html
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 4:51 am*In a manly, non Mark-arousing way, of course.
Comment by nk
nk, this isn’t necessarily even directed at you, particularly if the type of comment you’re expressing is made in purely good fun. But if there’s actually a bit of let’s-mock-Sammy-F intent behind that response, then that’s interesting from the standpoint of how various people, when indignant about the opinions of others, will attempt to rebut their viewpoints through ridicule or ad-hominem-type humor. In particular, the way that certain liberals, when trying to defend the pro-GLBT crowd, will ironically enough imply that the sexuality of those people they’re in opposition to justifies a bit of mockery.
The two-faced nature of that — which I’ve observed in a staunch liberal I have worked with in the past (and who I’ve described previously) — never ceases to amaze and amuse me. It’s sort of like, oh, if the GLBT agenda deserves our great patience and compassion for compassion’s sake, then why do you become resentful when I say that Obama has had gay encounters in his lifetime?! Or it’s similar to someone like happyfeet becoming indignant about anti-GLBT sentiment, yet his often using the word “gay” in a pejorative, condescending way.
Call such cognitive dissonance a form of Alec-Baldwin-ism liberalism. Or a Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton-using-racist-slurs form of big-hearted tolerance.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 6:52 amNTTAWWT
JD (dd904d) — 3/16/2014 @ 6:55 amRemember when Mitch Daniels had the temerity to suggest social issues should take a back seat to economic and security issues?
JD (dd904d) — 3/16/2014 @ 6:56 amThe Democrat media festoons Conservatives with caricaturistic positions. Festooning is a form of mockery as old as the Bible.
nk, the post I just made above was done before I had even gone through this entire thread, so I didn’t notice your particular comment until right now. I’m not sure if I should therefore stick with pleading total ignorance on my part or merely point out the irony of human nature.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 6:58 amYou can not impose a Marxist system on a bourgeois culture. First you must destroy the bourgeois culture, and then the proletariat can have its communist system.
That’s a surprisingly easy thing to do (eg, what has been occurring in places like France, Argentina, Venezuela, urban America, blue-state America, etc) when you exploit the greedy, selfish, lazy, envious and nihilistic tendencies of a large percentage of humans and then, at the same time, also trigger their cheap desire to be compassionate for compassion’s sake.
It’s a deadly, powerful combo.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:07 amAnd conservatives not only don’t understand why, they don’t even have the language to explain their views.
How many people on the right, when dealing with the concept of “it’s the economy, stupid!,” don’t even draw a connection between a healthy economy being nurtured by a healthy family structure, by a healthy social-cultural framework? Instead, they’ll give into all those Americans who proclaim their economic conservatism (“I demand that my checkbook be balanced and that my bills be paid on time, and so should the government!!”) but smile proudly about their cultural liberalism (“I got very teary eyed at a same-sex wedding I attended recently, and I also believe that public schools are being merely loving and beautiful when they promote our modern-day culture!”).
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:15 am==How many people on the right, when dealing with the concept of “it’s the economy, stupid!,” don’t even draw a connection between a healthy economy being nurtured by a healthy family structure, by a healthy social-cultural framework?==
You’re right, Mark. (Although I’d argue it’s a much greater failure of understanding on the left than on the right.) Now, please try putting your statement on a bumper sticker or a campaign slogan.
Cluck-clucking and handwringing over the fall of western society and its impact on economies– which is painfully obvious to most of us here, is just cluck-clucking and handwringing — until we come up with a cogent counterpoint, and the political power to do something about it.
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:40 amelissa speaks truth
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:47 amwe gots to get teh power
to fight teh Power
this America
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:55 amwe’ve got a three alarm fire
forget Bruce and Steve
Let’s just sweep our mythology out with the grime and filth:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/no-house-republicans-havent-voted-50-times-to-repeal-obamacare/article/2545733?custom_click=rss
Government fixing its fixes fixes nothing, it makes it all worse.
Our knee-jerk apologies for 1/2 of 1/3 of government are by, for and of that same 1%. Rumors and shouts from the back of the theatre are not conventional wisdom, they’re a bum rush.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:11 amYour perceptions are racist.
http://www.jammiewf.com/2014/obama-whines-about-being-laughed-at-for-wearing-mom-jeans-ive-been-unfairly-maligned-about-my-jeans/
Correct that brain stem.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:20 amif Paul trailed water
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:31 amwe might get took for ducklings
lead on my good man
That Reagan. Now there was a man who knew how to wear jeans. And he was also smart enough not to talk about his jeans in public.
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:36 ammy ancestors’ prawn
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:36 amoverturning teh turtles
is my specialty
Obama got them
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:37 amfancy spiderbutt mom jeans
what a tangled web!
“but smile proudly about their cultural liberalism (“I got very teary eyed at a same-sex wedding I attended recently, and I also believe that public schools are being merely loving and beautiful when they promote our modern-day culture!”).”
Mark – I don’t know such people on the right as you describe. How many of them are there out there in la-la land?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:41 amThis is your current president who, during the unfolding of several international crisis, managed to find time to talk to Ryan Seacrest”
“The truth is, generally, I look very sharp in jeans.”
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 8:44 amo, Barcky voters
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:00 amto work for crumbs under lash
does teh lash snap still?
blessed is teh Man
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:08 amwho knows what will be precious
later in his life
Now, please try putting your statement on a bumper sticker or a campaign slogan.
Elissa, what I say here in these threads is pretty much a case of — at least to me — proclaiming that two plus two equals four.
I don’t know too much about what’s going on in the world of the spoken word (since I don’t listen much to talk radio—although I’m aware of the flip nature of people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh), but I do know that when it comes to the written word, only rarely, if ever, are 2+2=4 observations expressed, much less mentioned repeatedly and, yep, ad infinitum. In particular, I’m referring to more obscure aspects of 2+2=4, such as the fact that many of those people who adhere to left-leaning biases actually and oddly enough have just the opposite traits of what they most fancy about themselves and like-minded others.
Are many people from all political stripes throughout greater society even aware of that ironic aspect of human nature? (By contrast, much of the public is fully aware of the case of the good Christians who cheated on their spouses and were mediocre parents to their kids, etc).
What bothers me is if we all were gathered in a room of just and only conservatives — forget about also being joined by a whole bunch of liberals/Democrats and “centrists” — and if I started articulating 2+2=4 points of view, my specific comments would easily self-identify me as belonging to a particular person in this anonymous forum. “Oh, pfft, you’re that Mark guy.”
If the message of 2+2=4 were really getting out there far and wide — if it were actually being stated by millions and millions of people 24/7 — tracing the source of such comments wouldn’t be so easy.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:11 am74. Comment by Dana (9a8f57) — 3/15/2014 @ 9:54 pm
This part is extremely important. It’s the difference between getting less than 5% of the vote, and getting 15% or 20%. How else can you so easily pick up 10% or 15% or even more of a given population group? Where else could campaigning or campaign spendinmg be so efficient in terms of gaining votes per unit of time or money?
Even just sending a piece of mail or two to people’s homes is probably a straight 3% or 4% pickup.
The Bush campaign (I think) – or some other Republican Presiential campaign – discovered this or rediscovered this in Ohio in he year 2000, when
they were worried there could be phony registrations, so they sent pieces of mail first class to addreesses of registered voters so they could find out if any were returned. N
ow they didn’t say ‘test” The pieces of mail were arguments, targeted somewhat toward blacks, or residents of those neighborhoods, for electing George Bush (I think it was) I don’t know what hey said. Maybe school vouchers maybe some other things, maybe they threw in some general issues.
Because they weren’t really serious, they made their best arguments.
And the percentage of the vote they got in those precincts where they did this was higher.
Now the Democratic campaign workers will tell you anything like this is bad for your cause because you are increasing turnout.
Sammy Finkelman (20cc53) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:13 amman with such thin skin
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:16 amnever before occupied
the oval office
Mark – I don’t know such people on the right as you describe.
daleyrocks, my description refers to the people throughout America who, based on opinion polls, don’t consider themselves as being either a Democrat or certainly a Republican, but who in general terms can be described as being very squishy, and proudly so. They’re the folks who, at best, will allow a state in the US to be purple instead of staunchly blue. Some of them are people who, due to social trends and pressures, leaned further right in the past than they do today.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:17 ambirds sing on Sunday
Colonel Haiku (7d6f25) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:20 ammore like they rilly mean it
or is it just me?
“daleyrocks, my description refers to the people throughout America who, based on opinion polls, don’t consider themselves as being either a Democrat or certainly a Republican, but who in general terms can be described as being very squishy, and proudly so.”
Mark – Your comment described them as people on the right. You are dodging the question.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:26 amjihadwatch.org/2014/03/texas-muslim-murdered-daughter-and-lesbian-lover-left-quran-open-to-page-condemning-homosexuality
I saw a brief headline related to that story on another website but didn’t bother to click on it. What’s interesting is I admit — mea culpa! — that my first inclination was to roll my eyes and assume the suspect perhaps was a Bible belter. But since the story hadn’t been widely played up by, and splashed all over, the MSM, I should have known there were some Nidal-Hasanization inclinations (or Michael-Bloomberg-ism—referring to the moral relativism of a New York politician when learning about the attempted bombing of Times Square a few years ago) hovering over that story.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:27 amMark – Your comment described them as people on the right.
Fair enough. I guess I should have said “people who became registered Republicans from way back when, people who deem themselves ‘centrists’ or ‘moderates,’ people who are labeled by some in 2014 as ‘RINOs,’ people who once leaned further right in the past than they do today…”
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:34 am“Fair enough.”
Mark – Still dodging the question or maybe now you have modified your description so much as to render it meaningless.
You describe a group of people on the right holding a set of views. I say I don’t know such people on the right in my area holding such views and so in return ask you how many in your area you know holding such views.
It turns out you know none. You were attempting to describe a group based on answers to survey questions, not real life, and you did it incorrectly. You live in a blue state, you should be able to speak to what the attitude of people on the right is rather than dodging the question.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:44 amIt turns out you know none.
daleyrocks, can you say with 100% certainty and honesty that you or, as another example, Patterico, don’t lean a bit left — just a teeny bit — when it comes to things like same-sex marriage? There are a few other people in this forum who’ve posted comments in the past — and who are generally of the right — that reveal a lot of squish, squish when it comes to certain social matters.
BTW, I don’t say that in order to create a “gotcha!” moment but because I’m seeing the way that human nature is being affected at this time in US history. A time when we’re being inundated with compassion for compassion’s sake.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:51 amWell, if cluck-clucking and handwringing and repeatedly doing 2+2=4 math on a right leaning blog floats your boat and you think it’s worthwhile and you find it rewarding to write, that’s your call, Mark. I guess to be honest, at this desperate time in our nation’s history I am looking increasingly for people who have ideas on how to actually change the trajectory. I enjoy reading people’s posts who have things to offer that are more action oriented–more substantive–more original and more tangible– than mere observations about the mess. I just don’t recall seeing much of the former from you. I admit this all probably makes it harder for me to appreciate the majority your posts.
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 9:53 amI admit this all probably makes it harder for me to appreciate the majority your posts.
Elissa, it would help if you could say whether the various people you have conversations with in Illinois — in a truly blue state — or people you overhear on a regular basis, would be among those who I described previously. What I mean is people, particularly even those who generally do lean right, who rarely or never talk about the obscure (or finer) aspects of 2+2=4.
I’ve gotten a sense, based on what you’ve implied in the past, that social liberalism is starting to seep quite far into the people all around you, certainly from a standpoint of the general populace in your section of the upper Midwestern US, in Chicagoland (or, ugh, Rahm Emanuel-ville) in particular.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:14 amWell elissa, they are free to espound on the most ridiculous issues, slander with a broad brush, and what do we hear from our side, varying tones of cricket,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:22 amNo, it would not “help” at all, Mark. Since I live here and make a living here and am politically active here, it should be a fairly good guess on your part that I understand the political and social and religious makeup of the various parts of IL, and the implications of same, as well if not better than you do.
And also you need to stop “analyzing” people on this blog as you have been politely asked to do by multiple commenters several times before.
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:38 amYes, Mr Graham, it’s sad that it has come down to this, to an increasingly upside-down, ass-backwards world we live in. Where you’re more likely to be vilified or ostracized than a Nidal Hasan is.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:45 amAnd also you need to stop “analyzing” people on this blog as you have been politely asked to do by multiple commenters several times before.
So you express indignation about that while totally shrugging off the specifics of my question. Why?
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:47 amWhy??? Patterico, the owner of this blog, was one of the people who asked you to refrain from personal “analysis” of other community members (and especially of him and his wife). Even if you choose to ignore the others I should think you’d have honored Mr. Frey’s request.
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:55 amif i sought echo
Colonel Haiku (7f84dc) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:57 ami would not be on this blog
teh diversity
with no more women
Colonel Haiku (7f84dc) — 3/16/2014 @ 11:01 amtwo men survive teh Last War
left Mark in tight spot
An example of how far narrative, can defeat fact;
http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-lisa-bloom-20140302,0,1301510.story#axzz2w9q5ZDRA
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:05 pm“daleyrocks, can you say with 100% certainty and honesty that you or, as another example, Patterico, don’t lean a bit left — just a teeny bit — when it comes to things like same-sex marriage?”
Mark – Well, you would have to be specific when it comes to your generalization about “things” since you have such a great reluctance to getting pinned down.
I tell you what, though, I am not answering any questions from you until you answer the question I posed to you earlier. Your goal post moving is boring.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:22 pmI agree. But as you pointed out, you and I are usually talking about different things. It isn’t so much a trajectory we need to change as an enemy’s strategy we need to counter.
The very language we use has to be different. That’s why it irks me when Marco Rubio talks about the immigration system “being broken.” As if it were some act of God, a natural phenomenon. Somebody broke it, and we all know who.
Even good people like Rubio, Cruz, and Paul don’t seem to understand what they’re dealing with. They don’t understand they’re dealing with an enemy that has a set of guiding principles (in the military we’d call it doctrine), tactical objectives, and strategic goals. Probably because they themselves have none of those things, nor do they think they need them.
When I quoted Marcuse earlier, it was for a reason.
These ideas are still ascendant.
http://www.thecrimson.com/column/the-red-line/article/2014/2/18/academic-freedom-justice/
This is pure Marcuse. And by that I mean pure cultural Marxism. Marcuse talked about racial minorities in the ghettos as the new oppressed proletariat. That since has been expanded to include gender and sexual orientation. What do community organizers like Barack Obama do. Organize society into battalions so to speak along lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and like armies before them dehumanize their enemies so they can indulge in their hatreds with gusto.
Consequently the practical upshot is, if I were Paul Ryan I’d never meet with the CBC. Because I know where they are going with this. It will simply be a propaganda coup for them. Paul Ryan acknowledges their moral authority and good intentions. Paul Ryan acknowledges that what he said was hateful (recall that Marcuse said that organizations and people who “oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.” need to be suppressed). And by apologizing Paul Ryan demonstrates the fact that he knows he’s a racist and therefore can not be trusted nor should he be listened to in the future.
Here’s a thought; if conservatives want to “change the trajectory” why don’t we stop playing into their propaganda campaigns. Paul Ryan isn’t going to get some sort of free exchange in ideas if that’s what he thinks. One thing that’ll never happen is that CBC members will come out of the meeting saying “Paul Ryan convinced us he’s a good guy and his ideas have merit.” We are not dealing with well intentioned people. We need to stop pretending we are.
All they want is the optics, so to speak. The imagery they can display to their balkanized constituencies (the entire Democratic party has been “community organized” according to the tenets of cultural Marxism courtesy of people like Barack Obama) to show that even their enemies acknowledge their authority. And that their enemies have been forced to admit they really are as mean and hateful as they’ve always told their constituencies they were.
Is that practical enough? Quit reinforcing their message as a start to “changing the trajectory?” I also have ideas about how, if you know where they’re going, you can head them off at the pass. But I’ll stop here for now.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:29 pmMark, I don’t mock Sammy. I chide him, correct him, and probably sometimes insult him, but I do not mock him. I do mock your obsession with homosexuality/bisexuality. I just cannot possibly take it seriously (or you because of it). I don’t know AND I DON’T WANT TO KNOW whether you truly have a paranoid view that just about everything in existence has homosexual tendencies, or you are pushing a militant pro-gay “everybody does it” agenda. In either instance, (dare I say it?) it rubs me the wrong way.
nk (dbc370) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:35 pmCruz is probably best attuned of the three, maybe because he came most directly from an oppositionist
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:41 pmstate in the ivy league, which one notices doesn’t really matter to the credentialist, as is didn’t for Thomas, or his protegee John Yoo,
Hey, when was the last time you hear a candidate use “festoon” or “festooned” in a sentence? That has to be worth points by itself. Somewhere Bill Buckley is smiling.
Kevin M (dbcba4) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:45 pmI agree, narciso, I was tempted to add another comment and say perhaps he didn’t belong on my list.
As an aside, it occurs to me that one of the reasons why leftists are pushing for universal preschool, college for all, stay on your parents’ policy as a dependent “child” until you’re 26, is to have even more time to indoctrinate and then insulate future generations even longer from reality.
So in addition to being a payoff to the teachers’ unions, and consequently another way to transfer and launder wealth from the productive to the liberal pols, it’s just a way to keep these people in a haze of unknowing long enough that they won’t figure out how stupid leftist ideas are until it’s too late in life.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:48 pm“I agree. But as you pointed out, you and I are usually talking about different things. It isn’t so much a trajectory we need to change as an enemy’s strategy we need to counter.”
Steve57 – But what you don’t see is it doesn’t have to be different things. Changing a trajectory and countering the opposition are two sides of the same coin and they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Several of the speakers at CPAC made headway in that direction, sending out a positive message about the country and conservatism. That’s what Reagan used to do. Instead only attacking the opposition and why their ideas have not worked, the positive message and how we can do better has to be delivered each time on the floor of the House or Senate or on a news show. Cut through and ignore the topic the anchor wants to talk about to the topic we want to talk about, but do it in a positive way. We can create jobs, we can ensure social security will be there when you retire, we can reduce the deficit, etc., etc., we can do better.
Mirror the media training of the Dems. Pivot away from what you don’t want to talk about but become the party of “YES,” not what everybody assumes is the party of no.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/16/2014 @ 1:50 pmdaley @134, I see that perfectly.
What I was saying if you’re talking about one side of the coin, use language that’s appropriate for that side of the coin.
If people in power have a deliberate policy of non-enforcement of immigration laws for social engineering purposes (as happened in England, not just here, despite the Labour party’s denials while they were in power) don’t talk about our “broken immigration system” as if it just sort of happened.
It didn’t just happen. Somebody deliberately broke it. Remind people of that.
One of the things about the balkanization of the Democratic party’s constituencies is that many of their grievance groups have been pandered to according to their assigned identity group grievances on bases that are diametrically opposed to other identity groups’ real interests.
So there are divide and conquer opportunities there. For the good of the country, we should break up the grievance group coalition of the left.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 2:10 pm“daley @134, I see that perfectly.
It didn’t just happen. Somebody deliberately broke it. Remind people of that.”
Steve57 – I really don’t think you see it. Take your example on immigration. It’s fine to remind people that we had an amnesty in 1986 and the promised follow through never appeared, that we’ve had selective enforcement or nonenforcement ever since. All that does is rehash history and point fingers and cause peoples’ eyes to glaze over. Plus pointing fingers gives people arguments to dispute.
The facts are simple and there is no disagreement. Our immigration system is broken and our border is not secure. We believe immigration is a cornerstone of this country’s success.
Our plan secures the border, provides for continued immigration while ensuring that we know who is entering and staying in this country, protects American workers, and avoids having this conversation again in 10 years time.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/16/2014 @ 2:30 pmNo, that’s not what I was talking about.
Did you know that Arizona’s immigration law that was widely reviled in the MFM as “racist” and “anti-Hispanic” passed with 47% support from Hispanics voters in AZ?
I’m not talking about rehashing history. These are not monolithic groups. There is a way to sell GOP policies to them and split them off.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 2:45 pmWe identify which people are actively working against the interests of working class people of all colors in the here and now.
Amnesty is a pocketbook issue for people; black, white, and latino.
The left has shoved people into political ghettos that don’t share the same interests.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 2:48 pmWe are told that if you’re against abortion you’re “anti-woman.” Really? Has anyone told women that?
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/03/10/cnn-poll-58-percent-of-americans-oppose-abortion-in-all-or-most-circumstances-n1806283
Lest there be any confusion about the results of that Gallup poll (link embedded in the above article).
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:02 pm“No, that’s not what I was talking about.”
“I’m not talking about rehashing history.”
Steve57 – That’s exactly why I’m saying you don’t get it even though you say you do.
If you’re not talking about rehashing history why did you say remind people that the immigration system was broken on purpose?
Just make up your mind.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:12 pmBecause it is, and the same forces that broke it, tell us they can fix it now, much as the health care problem is due in part to the interference of the HMO, Kennedy/Kassebaum, et al,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:14 pmNot that I endorse the analysis as it’s shaped by the distorted leftist prism that causes liberals to mistake their imaginations for reality.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/tensions-between-black-and-gay-groups-rise-anew-in-advance-of-anti-gay-marriage-vote-in-nc/256695/
It would perhaps be better to refer to this as “ally ourselves with the already divided” strategy. Because despite what the author believes, and would have others believe, there was no reason to shove a “wedge” between blacks and gays. There was nothing in common there in the first place.
The only interests that any forced alliance between blacks and gays serve are the interests of the Democratic party which needs the numbers.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/02/25/coalition-of-black-pastors-call-for-holder-impeachment-over-same-sex-marriage/
I realize that some people that comment here don’t find the reality of marriage to be pursuasive, but the fact is unmoored from its central raison d’etre which is to provide an environment to have and raise children it becomes a mere vanity item. Sort of like “designer children” themselves, if you can afford them.
These pastors live with the reality of what happens when marriage is devalued to the point where its only purposes are frivolous. To validate the feelings of adults, as long as they have those feelings for each other, and to access certain tax benefits, etc.
There is a coalition to be built on shared values. And there is a general sense that the people who benefit from the system, the people who run it rather than the people it’s nominally supposed to serve, don’t give a rat’s @$$ about their constituents. They are not listening to their constituents.
Hence, opportunity.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:34 pmThank you, narciso. I see somebody gets it.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:35 pmdaley, the people who broke the system haven’t finished breaking it.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303546204579438003657934042
You remain stuck in 1986, as if I’m talking about what you’re apparently convinced was a one time event.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:37 pmOh, the headline:
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:38 pmNow after six years, and her successor, is ‘white house domestic advisor, do they call him the deporter in chief,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:45 pmhttp://www.cbsnews.com/news/10-ice-agents-sue-over-obama-immigration-policy/
Having broken the system, it’s a full time job making sure it stays broken. Sort of like cutting down a tree. You have to keep going back to cut off the shoots or the tree might grow back.
Or, without constant harassment, if left to their own devices ICE agents and the Border Patrol might just do their jobs and prove the pols who say the system “is broken” are wrong. And demonstrate it requires constant breaking to force it to remain in its demolished state.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 3:46 pmEven if you choose to ignore the others I should think you’d have honored Mr. Frey’s request.
Elissa, is it fair to say you’re deflecting or obfuscating the basic question and point I raised previously? I merely asked you whether you ever articulate or ever hear other people cite the points (the 2+2=4 ones) I mentioned above. I didn’t say anything about whether such comments made in public are a reflection upon (ie, an analysis of) you or anyone else in this forum.
I will say that in response to daleyrocks, and his saying he doesn’t know anyone who’s a conservative in general — who leans right when it comes to economic matters and also leans mostly right on social ones — I mentioned at least a few people who post regularly to this message board who do fit that profile yet are sympathetic to, or increasingly pliant about, the issue of same-sex marriage.
In terms of social-cultural issues in the 21st century, few are as significant and telling as SSM. That’s a basic barometer. It ain’t a rather esoteric or obscure one, such as whether public schools should require that students wear uniforms or not, or whether no-fault divorce is good or not.
So what’s behind this dynamic, which I’m observing right here amongst at least three forumers in this portion of this thread? It’s a phenomenon that explains why this society is getting certain top-ranking members of the Republican Party increasingly wanting to say “let’s downplay social conservatism, let’s downplay social issues!!”
That’s a reality — that’s a trend showing up in various opinion polls (right along with various Americans of all stripes still blaming George Bush Jr for current economics problems instead of Obama) — and not a way to score debating points.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 4:08 pmNTTAWWT, Mark.
JD (dd904d) — 3/16/2014 @ 4:13 pmSquish, squish, squishy in so many ways, but just the opposite when that probably would be a more understandable or realistic type of reaction:
[Throws up hands in exasperation]
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/16/2014 @ 4:22 pmWhile the economy tanks, an international jet airliner has been likely been hijacked, and Russia is invading Ukraine, Barack O’Drama will surely have plenty of time to fill out his March Madness brackets and explain to a national audience on ESPN why he is picking such-and-such team to reach the Final Four.
But he never has time to take questions about the
Elephant Stone (108847) — 3/16/2014 @ 5:03 pmFinalFour Americans who died at Benghazi.what the heck are we, John, at least Volodya has a goal?
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 5:11 pm==It doesn’t matter what terms we use, elissa, the playbook is always the same for the left. Steve57 last night ==
==The very language we use has to be different. Steve57 earlier today==
This is an example of why trying to have a conversation with you is so difficult, Steve57.
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 5:47 pmkeeping a discerning eye on the news;
https://twitter.com/robinabcarian
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 5:51 pmI mean, have you come around to a different way of thinking since last night, Steve, but did not want to admit it? Or are you oblivious to the inconsistencies in your arguments within the same thread?
elissa (96d669) — 3/16/2014 @ 5:52 pmCome straight with a hair cut, Steve. Looks like elissa’s a-callin’ y’all out.
Colonel Haiku (853a3d) — 3/16/2014 @ 6:09 pmHe is a bad man.
mg (31009b) — 3/16/2014 @ 6:15 pmhttp://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/03/16/Ted-Cruz-Signs-Now-Infamous-Poster-of-Himself-The-Fight-For-Liberty-Never-Ends
elissa, please elaborate on my inconsistencies. If it’s what I think it is all I can say is your working overtime looking for them where none exist.
Steve57 (c6f556) — 3/16/2014 @ 6:55 pmI know one could elaborate on exactly how blinkered this strategy is, but cutting to the chase;
http://weaselzippers.us/179628-john-bolton-sending-kerry-to-deal-with-lavrov-is-like-sending-a-cupcake-to-negotiate-with-a-steak-knife/
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:02 pmnarciso, 159. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbjiKIKzY3c
nk (dbc370) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:10 pmThat’s a contender for quote of the year, narciso.
nk (dbc370) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:14 pmAn unintentionally revealing bio:
http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/03/16/cronkite/?singlepage=true
narciso (3fec35) — 3/16/2014 @ 7:17 pmAah, I didn’t see this earlier on my phone; I was out.
Let me help you.
I’ve bolded the text where the first of your quote applies. The professional left. It doesn’t matter what terms we use when dealing with that group of people. Which is why I recommend not dealing with them at all. Or, when necessary, not on their terms.
I’ve italicized the text where the second of your quotes applies. Voters we are trying to sway. We have to tailor the message. We need and should want to deal with them.
Another example.
Another example.
A final example.
It doesn’t matter what terms we use as long as we go through the same dishonest third parties as conduits.
But since they have been such dishonest brokers, then by definition the people you need to go to directly have never actually heard a conservative idea. Like some of the college friends of my nieces and nephews. So you do have to think about the sales pitch.
Just because I said it doesn’t matter what terms we use when dealing with the professional left (the MFM/academia/Hollywood/and progressive pols themselves such as the CBC) whose mission in life is to distort our message, that doesn’t mean I think you shouldn’t think about what you say when you make the opportunity to get your message directly in front of the people you need to appeal to.
Without a filter this time.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/16/2014 @ 10:54 pm“I will say that in response to daleyrocks, and his saying he doesn’t know anyone who’s a conservative in general — who leans right when it comes to economic matters and also leans mostly right on social ones”
“That’s a reality — that’s a trend showing up in various opinion polls (right along with various Americans of all stripes still blaming George Bush Jr for current economics problems instead of Obama)”
Mark – First, you completely misrepresent my position. I said I did not know people who were on the right who were squishy the way you described them on social issues. Get it right. I was not talking about composite people from opinion surveys. You declined to talk about actual people you personally know in your area because your response is to always avoid taking personal ownership of comment content.
Second, with respect to your favorite survey question about responsibility for the economy – who the heck cares? Without seeing the choices provided and wording of the question it is meaningless data. Given that Obama’s approval rating is below 40%, people trust Republicans more on the economy than Democrats, and a majority of people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, I’m not going to obsess over those data points like you do or give them the sort of importance you seem to. Then again, you obsess about all sorts of strange stuff and get upset when people point it out.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 12:31 amI said I did not know people who were on the right who were squishy the way you described them on social issues. Get it right.
daleyrocks, I never said otherwise, although my paragraph did leave out an important predicate, since I was describing people who are generally of the right but are becoming increasingly squishy about the issue of same-sex marriage. And, yes, that’s merely one out of many social-cultural controversies hovering around out there, but it’s a biggie. It’s, as I said previously, a major barometer of our times.
I pointed out at least a few people who post to this very board who I’ve noticed moving in that direction. You don’t detect that, or do you not think that my interpretation is a correct one?
Moreover, you haven’t seen recent opinion polls that back up such a change in attitude (liberals will love to describe that as “evolving” or “evolution”), or do you think the growing ambivalence towards opposition in the past to one major — repeat: major — aspect of the GLBT agenda is exclusive to only liberals and centrists who reply to opinion surveys?
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/17/2014 @ 7:58 amThen again, you obsess about all sorts of strange stuff and get upset when people point it out.
Keep in mind the desire to respond in an ad-hominen manner when scrutinizing the left in particular, or when dealing with and becoming resentful of the way they deal with their political opposites, or when wondering why debate in general can become so inflammatory.
Mark (d72f8d) — 3/17/2014 @ 8:02 am“daleyrocks, I never said otherwise”
Mark – Wrong. See your #148, which directly says otherwise.
I think the important thing to take away from this conversation is to remember when reading your comments in the future that when you are referring the views of people and trends in those views, unless you note otherwise, that you are speaking about what you have read in surveys, not anything based on your experience in real life “over the years.”
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 9:28 am“daley, the people who broke the system haven’t finished breaking it.
You remain stuck in 1986, as if I’m talking about what you’re apparently convinced was a one time event.”
Steve57 – No, if you actually read my comments you would understand that’s not true. The people who understand the history don’t need a lecture on it or convincing. The American people by a majority still favor a secure the borders first immigration reform policy. It is Washington that is not listening to the people, just the same way it was in 2007.
If you think people want to hear another divisive Obama-type lecture on blame-shifting and finger pointing rather than having solutions laid out that meet their wants, good on you.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 9:39 amRight daley.
http://townhall.com/news/around-the-web/2013/12/23/chicagos-black-community-livid-weve-been-trained-to-vote-in-a-specific-manner-n1767731
I’ll go give them a lecture about that’s not what they want to hear right now.
Cuz you said so.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:09 am“I’ll go give them a lecture about that’s not what they want to hear right now.”
Steve57 – That event makes my point. The crowd did not want to hear the same old blame game.
Thanks for playing.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:13 am“Shut up while I lay out solutions that meet your needs.”
daleyrocks, winning hearts and minds.
Me? If I run across a crowd dissatisfied with their Democratic pols and who want to blame the right people, I’m willing to listen. And help them.
Because I’m a sensitive, giving person, daley.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:16 am“daleyrocks, winning hearts and minds.”
The Admiral, boring people to death while blaming others for their problems.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:20 amWhat part of “we have to tailor the message” do you not understand, daleyrocks-who-knows-what-people-don’t-need-to-hear-and-what-they-do-need-to-hear?
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:22 amMark- here is a real world homework assignment for you. Please play along:
Suppose you work closely with someone and are more than just casual friends outside of work–lets say you occasionally go out to dinner or as couples go to an outdoor concert together. That person has two adult children– a son who is a lawyer and a daughter who works in advertising. The son is married and he and his wife have two young children. The daughter came out as a lesbian over a decade ago. She and her partner were together for almost eight years before going out of state where they could be legally married. The daughter is now pregnant with your associate’s third grandchild. Her egg, donor sperm. They are going the “traditional old fashioned” route and chose not to know the baby’s sex before it is delivered. The son and his wife appear to be thrilled that their kids will have a cousin close in age.
You, Mark, are invited to a baby shower hosted by other colleagues of the grandmother–the same colleagues who hosted a shower for the son’s babies. Clearly you do not approve of same sex relationships and especially SSM. What would you do, Mark?
1. You refuse to go and be very vocal as to why. Pointedly you don’t send a gift.
2. You decline the invitation because you don’t want to condone the behavior and you’d feel uncomfortable, but pretend you have another commitment rather than coming right out and saying it.
3.You attend, glad for the opportunity to engage and enlighten others on your 2+2=4 equation and raise awareness about the decline of American morals.
4.You attend with a nice gift but more for the sake of your colleague than the baby. You hate the situation and don’t say much beyond business banalities but manage to gush over the cake.
5.You attend and try to enjoy yourself knowing that an innocent, new, and loved child is entering that family and the world. Still, you know that going through life the child will have a hard time of it and subtly mention it to a few other guests.
6.You offer sincere congratulations to all involved.
7.Some other option beside those listed.
elissa (3a8451) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:23 amI don’t see conversation in the cards.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:27 amYup, that’s me. And how dare those people in the ads complaining about losing their coverage due to Obamacare blame anyone but themselves for losing their health care coverage!
Because we all know government policies never put people in a bind. Each individual is entirely responsible for every single problem in their lives.
Harry Reid is right, eh, daley? They’re liars on the Koch brothers payroll when they try to shift the blame Obama and the Democrats when its entirely their own damn fault for losing their health insurance.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:29 amYou’re right, daley! They wanted to hear a new and different blame game.
But why don’t you go and give them a lecture on personal responsibility and how they can’t blame others when its their own damned fault they live in a $chitthole. Certainly not the administration of the city of Chicago.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:34 amComment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 9:39 am
The American people by a majority still favor a secure the borders first immigration reform policy.
You know how you can get answers you want in a poll by asking the right questions.
They are not told that a border secure enough to satisfy those asking for it as a precondition will never happen nor does anyone want to negotiate such a deal, nor could they.
So saying “secure the borders first” is the same thing as saying NEVER GIVE AMNESTY PERIOD.
Which the public does NOT want.
Sammy Finkelman (cb261b) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:38 amWhen people speak of a “broken immigration system” they mean the laws themselves.
That they are no good.
That they exclude people they shouldn’t, or allow people to come in theory, but not in fact.
(You have oversubscribed visas and so on. Or – this is new – a delay in visas for spouses so that it now takes 15 months to issue one, instead of about four.)
Of course the thing is, there never was a “system” but it is just a hodge-podge of laws.
Sammy Finkelman (cb261b) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:44 am“So saying “secure the borders first” is the same thing as saying NEVER GIVE AMNESTY PERIOD.
Which the public does NOT want.”
Sammy – Polling for a secure border has been a consistent majority for years. It is what helped defeat the scam reform of 2007.
You are right that polls can be worded to get different results and words can mean different things to different people. Please define how you are using the word AMNESTY.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:50 am“When people speak of a “broken immigration system” they mean the laws themselves.”
Sammy – They also mean deliberate nonenforcement of existing laws.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:52 am“You’re right, daley! They wanted to hear a new and different blame game.”
Admiral – Why do you keep claiming you get it when it is clear you do not.
Read what you linked again. The people attending the meeting did not want to be lectured to by anyone, especially a race pimp like Sharpton. The wanted a Tea Party type Townhall where they could vent. D’oh!
For a Dale Carnegie Advanced Teaching Fellow I really don’t understand why people think you are hard to carry on a conversation with.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:57 amWhenever anyone tries to pass an “abolitionist tract” to the blacks on the Democratic plantation, he will have the dogs set on him. Fact of life. Remember Christie Whitman’s campaign? http://articles.philly.com/1993-11-10/news/25944474_1_whitman-campaign-edward-j-rollins-campaign-manager This is one of the kinder attacks on Ed Rollins.
nk (dbc370) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:03 am“When people speak of a “broken immigration system” they mean the laws themselves.”
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:52 am
Sammy – They also mean deliberate nonenforcement of existing laws.
No, they are not complaining about that, but they may be saying they cannot, and should not, be enforced the way they are, e.g. it would bankrupt dairy farmers, cause crops to go unharvested, and so on.
More, they mean it achieves perverse results, e.g. you graduate people with technical degrees, and then force them to work for foreign companies based abroad; you force Microsoft to open up a campus in Vancouver Canada.
Sammy Finkelman (cb261b) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:05 amThe Crimean referendum will result in a complete reversal of U.S. foreign policy – probably not what Putin wanted..
Sammy Finkelman (cb261b) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:09 am“No, they are not complaining about that”
Sammy – You are flat out, completely, dead wrong.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:14 am“But why don’t you go and give them a lecture on personal responsibility”
Admiral – Since you still don’t seem to get it, that would not be my approach.
But since you are so big on history and explaining why things are broken, I’m sure the people would love a lecture from you on why most of the city schools are broken, who broke them, why there is so much resistance to fixing them, and why their children can’t get a decent high school education. You probably think the people are so dumb they don’t know who controls the city, the schools and the teachers and need it shoved in their faces again for good measure.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:22 amPresident Obama is now planning on kicking illegal immigrants off Medicare – they were ineligible for many years, but no regulations were in place to prevent it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/us/politics/crackdown-proposed-to-prevent-illegal-immigrants-from-obtaining-medicare.html
The motive is probably Obamacare’s finances. They are hitting only Medicare Advantage, and prescription drug plans, NOT REGULAR MEDICARE.
There’s only a couple of tens of thousands on the rolls, and the amount of money saved would be only $67 million over 5 years, or around $12 million a year in a Medicare budget of $70 billion, but it could help make life for private insurance companies more difficult, as they will try to recoup the money.. (I suppose there being no point in the government trying to recoup money from itself, and I suppose they don’t want to antagonize or bankrupt doctors or hospitals by trying to get money from them if Medicare paid them, and/or there may not even be a legal basis for doing that, since it is not the job of heallth care providers to double check Medicare eligibility if Medicare made a mistake.)
Meanwhile, he is coming under large pressure to halt or slow down deportations – a record was set during his Administration, which he has never gotten any credit for from those opposed to immigration – he will now try to find a way to reduce it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/us/politics/deportation-policy-shift-is-signaled-by-obama.html
Sammy Finkelman (cb261b) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:31 am186. Are people who say there’s a broken immigration complaining that the laws are not being enforced?
No, they are saying they can’t be enforced, or they shouldn’t be enforced, and that the laws are badly written.
Sammy Finkelman (cb261b) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:34 am“No, they are saying they can’t be enforced, or they shouldn’t be enforced, and that the laws are badly written.”
Sammy – Tell me why we have such a large illegal immigrant population if our laws are actually being enforced, please. It is tough to enforce laws if you don’t fund their enforcement or deliberately ignore them.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:45 am“No, they are saying they can’t be enforced, or they shouldn’t be enforced, and that the laws are badly written.”
Sammy – All your arguments do is suggest to me that if we let Democrats anywhere near an immigration reform bill, the above will prove true.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:50 amdaley, did you send a scathing letter to Paul Ryan for rehashing ancient history about how the “poverty managers” have been running the system for their own benefit and created a multi-generational cycle of poverty, government dependence, and unemployment? The bleeding heart also let people off the hook for blaming others for their own problems. In fact, Ryan joined them.
That must have been some letter. Or email. Please share it with us.
Steve57 (8204a6) — 3/17/2014 @ 1:17 pmdaley, you are trying very hard to have point. I can see that.
But as you yourself said @182:
Not just any old vent daly. One aimed at “…the right people, not just the white people.”
And if I were Paul Ryan I would have gone and joined in. And helped.
Then you started trying to crawl up my large intestine about how nobody wants to listen to that, Mr. “If you think people want to hear another divisive Obama-type lecture on blame-shifting and finger pointing rather than having solutions laid out that meet their wants, good on you” rocks.
Really? Nobody wants to listen to, “I hear you, and you have a point?”
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 4:39 pmLest you accuse me of “moving the goalposts” (your second favorite sport after trying to accuse me of being inconsistent), me @171:
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 4:41 pmI think there is a degree of category error, here;
http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2014/03/16/cruz-up-close/?singlepage=true
I mean our brand was so great after the blanc mange campaign, how about that great budget deal,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/17/2014 @ 4:55 pm“daley, did you send a scathing letter to Paul Ryan for rehashing ancient history about how the “poverty managers” have been running the system for their own benefit and created a multi-generational cycle of poverty, government dependence, and unemployment.
Admiral – That’s pretty funny. I did not know I was responsible for the screwed up way Paul Ryan handled the situation. If he had asked me, I would have told him to do it differently, but not give people a lecture on personal responsibility as you suggested earlier in the thread.
Have you made up your mind yet. Based on #194 it does not seem so, since moving the goalposts and being inconsistent are not mere accusations if they are true. On this thread you have managed to distort my position from saying me I would not spend the time giving detailed finger pointing blame game lectures and instead focus what could be done better to you saying I should give a lecture on personal responsibility to inner city black people.
I would say you are arguing in complete bad faith and that those goal posts are doing the Watusi, but that’s just me.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 5:23 pmYou have a marked social deterioration, Charles Murray has noted it in the poor white community, but it is most pronounced in the majority communities, an aversion to gainful employment, to middle class habits,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/17/2014 @ 5:28 pmYes, you would.
Glad you mentioned the moving of the goalposts and teh inconsistencies.
I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t.
Toodles.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 5:47 pmWell Newt back when he was at the top of his game, talked about paradigms, ways of seeing the world,
narciso (3fec35) — 3/17/2014 @ 5:55 pmthe left assumes one paradigm of economic dirigism,
foreign policy ‘redeployment’ social turmoil, regardless of how many signs that said template has failed,
Newt is smart and a good communicator and he was right about a lot of things.
elissa (3a8451) — 3/17/2014 @ 6:00 pmYup.
Seek help, daley. You seem to have a persecution complex the size of Saturn. It’s actually not about you.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 6:04 pm/it is following a paradigm, even when they dial ‘up to eleven’ which is the problem,
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2014/03/16/lawlessness-small-and-large/
narciso (3fec35) — 3/17/2014 @ 6:10 pmreasons I’m not cynical enough;
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/17/Report-GOP-Consultant-Class-Continues-To-Get-Fabulously-Rich
narciso (3fec35) — 3/17/2014 @ 7:56 pm203. One of the spiritual gifts is ‘discernment between spirits’.
I’m kinda leaning toward a litmus test profile.
Christianist, fearless, uncommon integrity, not a respecter of men, discernment, fit by tempermant, education and experience for the job.
Someone else liking the candidate: a ‘nice to have’. Otherwise y’all go to blazes, no offense.
gary gulrud (e2cef3) — 3/17/2014 @ 8:57 pmthat you are speaking about what you have read in surveys, not anything based on your experience in real life “over the years.”
daleyrocks, you’re telling me that I’ve never, ever personally witnessed a person becoming squishier and squishier ideologically as he or she moved through life?! I wish.
I had an aunt who originally was a fairly staunch Republican and right-leaning person, but who, for reasons baffling to me, started to defend the crooked, crummy Clintons (Bill and Hillary) during the latter years of her life.
I have a friend from my elementary-school years who I originally could shoot the breeze with rather smoothly and nicely because he was quite conservative. But for some reason, as with my aunt — and as he too has grown older — he somehow has caught the bug of modern-day feel-good liberalism. That symptom is even more puzzling because it can’t be blamed on the influence of his wife, who’s fairly sensible and staunchly Republican.
Something’s in the water. Moreover, it’s rather pathetic when I see people going in the opposite direction of what occurs with more humans than not, who generally start off to the left and then move to the right as they grow older.
Mark (6d2ab2) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:41 pm“Glad you mentioned the moving of the goalposts and teh inconsistencies.”
Admiral – Since you introduced them to the thread first, why not point out your issues?
In fact, were you even trying to make any kind of point on the thread? Can you summarize it or was it your usual argument clinic performance?
I’ll wait until you accuse me of persecuting you (In #201 you have it backwards), as you have done many times here before. I can defend my comments. As usual, you have no defense for yours. Ad hoc, inconsistent, incoherent, goal post moving gibberish.
Thanks for playing.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 3/17/2014 @ 10:45 pmMark- here is a real world homework assignment for you. Please play along:
2. You decline the invitation because you don’t want to condone the behavior and you’d feel uncomfortable, but pretend you have another commitment rather than coming right out and saying it.
Elissa, from a purely hypothetical standpoint, I’d choose option #2. It’s tougher to know how I’d really respond without actually knowing the person in question. For example, if she weren’t a necessarily pleasant soul, I’d have little difficulty in making excuses and putting distance between me and her.
OTOH, if she were a person who I truly admired in terms of her personality and — this is a key point — political outlook, I’d likely be quite welcoming in joining her at an event deemed important to her.
However, I have a hunch that a truly sensible, conservative (non-squishy) person who’s homosexual or bisexual, will just naturally adjust — or accommodate — his or her lifestyle in order to suit the preferences of basic, fundamental, tried-and-true trends of human history through the centuries, and not try to turn things in the other direction. So the trappings of a “marriage” — along with the inclusion of test-tube babies (instead of, say, adopted kids) — to such a person would be downplayed or disavowed. Or it certainly wouldn’t be heralded and promoted, and then foisted onto the friends and family members all around that person.
Mark (6d2ab2) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:01 pmdaley @206, there’s nothing that can not wait.
Steve57 (ab7166) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:07 pmJust dropping in to say Dana is doing a great job with interesting posts.
I could settle for either Cruz or Paul. As they are not democrats or democrat lites I am sure every imperfect they have will be broadcast at just the right time to benefit the ‘most liberal republican who can win’ during our primary. That’s just how it works. I’m not sure how the GOP is supposed to communicate this reality to the voters so Republicans can give the media the attention it deserves as it manipulates their process.
I guess they would have to actually want to. Given who the GOP picks to moderate its debates I’m pretty sure it’s happy with the process and the results.
Dustin (a22163) — 3/17/2014 @ 11:24 pm