2016 POTUS Election Thread

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L.T. Fan

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By Robert Kagan

When the plague descended on Thebes, Oedipus sent his brother-in-law to the Delphic oracle to discover the cause. Little did he realize that the crime for which Thebes was being punished was his own. Today’s Republican Party is our Oedipus. A plague has descended on the party in the form of the most successful demagogue-charlatan in the history of U.S. politics. The party searches desperately for the cause and the remedy without realizing that, like Oedipus, it is the party itself that brought on this plague. The party’s own political crimes are being punished in a bit of cosmic justice fit for a Greek tragedy.

Let’s be clear: Trump is no fluke. Nor is he hijacking the Republican Party or the conservative movement, if there is such a thing. He is, rather, the party’s creation, its Frankenstein’s monster, brought to life by the party, fed by the party and now made strong enough to destroy its maker. Was it not the party’s wild obstructionism — the repeated threats to shut down the government over policy and legislative disagreements, the persistent calls for nullification of Supreme Court decisions, the insistence that compromise was betrayal, the internal coups against party leaders who refused to join the general demolition — that taught Republican voters that government, institutions, political traditions, party leadership and even parties themselves were things to be overthrown, evaded, ignored, insulted, laughed at? Was it not Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), among others, who set this tone and thereby cleared the way for someone even more irreverent, so that now, in a most unenjoyable irony, Cruz, along with the rest of the party, must fall to the purer version of himself, a less ideologically encumbered anarcho-revolutionary? This would not be the first revolution that devoured itself.

Then there was the party’s accommodation to and exploitation of the bigotry in its ranks. No, the majority of Republicans are not bigots. But they have certainly been enablers. Who began the attack on immigrants — legal and illegal — long before Trump arrived on the scene and made it his premier issue? Who frightened Mitt Romney into selling his soul in 2012, talking of “self-deportation” to get himself right with the party’s anti-immigrant forces? Who opposed any plausible means of dealing with the genuine problem of illegal immigration, forcing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to cower, abandon his principles — and his own immigration legislation — lest he be driven from the presidential race before it had even begun? It was not Trump. It was not even party yahoos. It was Republican Party pundits and intellectuals, trying to harness populist passions and perhaps deal a blow to any legislation for which President Obama might possibly claim even partial credit. What did Trump do but pick up where they left off, tapping the well-primed gusher of popular anger, xenophobia and, yes, bigotry that the party had already unleashed?

Then there was the Obama hatred, a racially tinged derangement syndrome that made any charge plausible and any opposition justified. Has the president done a poor job in many respects? Have his foreign policies, in particular, contributed to the fraying of the liberal world order that the United States created after World War II? Yes, and for these failures he has deserved criticism and principled opposition. But Republican and conservative criticism has taken an unusually dark and paranoid form. Instead of recommending plausible alternative strategies for the crisis in the Middle East, many Republicans have fallen back on mindless Islamophobia, with suspicious intimations about the president’s personal allegiances.

Thus Obama is not only wrong but also anti-American, un-American, non-American, and his policies — though barely distinguishable from those of previous liberal Democrats such as Michael Dukakis or Mario Cuomo — are somehow representative of something subversive. How surprising was it that a man who began his recent political career by questioning Obama’s eligibility for office could leap to the front of the pack, willing and able to communicate with his followers by means of the dog-whistle disdain for “political correctness”?

We are supposed to believe that Trump’s legion of “angry” people are angry about wage stagnation. No, they are angry about all the things Republicans have told them to be angry about these past 7½ years, and it has been Trump’s good fortune to be the guy to sweep them up and become their standard-bearer. He is the Napoleon who has harvested the fruit of the revolution.

There has been much second-guessing lately. Why didn’t party leaders stand up and try to stop Trump earlier, while there was still time? But how could they have? Trump was feeding off forces in the party they had helped nurture and that they hoped to ride into power. Some of those Republican leaders and pundits now calling for a counterrevolution against Trump were not so long ago welcoming his contribution to the debate. The politicians running against him and now facing oblivion were loath to attack him before because they feared alienating his supporters. Instead, they attacked one another, clawing at each other’s faces as they one by one slipped over the cliff. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got his last deadly lick in just before he plummeted — at Trump? No, at Rubio. (And now, as his final service to party and nation, he has endorsed Trump.) Jeb Bush spent millions upon millions in his hopeless race, but against whom? Not Trump.

So what to do now? The Republicans’ creation will soon be let loose on the land, leaving to others the job the party failed to carry out. For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be.
I agree with a lot of this. The GOP has evolved to something I don't recognize anymore. They were at one time a conservative minded group But when they began to abandon that platform it brought about the Tea party and the establishment GOP was so upset by this move they decided to ostracize anyone that didn't adhere to the party line. Now they are willing to succeed the election because someone is leading the race they cannot bridle. It's a sad commentary that the leaders of the GOP are willing to take a poison pill rather than accommodate the Will of the people. Nottwithstanding that it is Trump, these actions are shameful on their own merits.
 

Cowboysrock55

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DEMOCRATS' SUPER-DELEGATE PROCESS SLAMS SANDERS


Las Vegas Review-Journal
While Sen. Bernie Sanders' supporters have worked tirelessly (and quite successfully) to convince their fellow Americans to "Feel the Bern," they might very well be the ones feeling burned when the Democratic Party selects its presidential nominee.

Sen. Sanders' supporters have helped him virtually tie Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, beat her quite decisively in the New Hampshire primary and finish a respectable five points behind her right here in Nevada. But thanks to the DNC's hypocritical super-delegate process, Sen. Sanders left those three states with 13 fewer delegates than Mrs. Clinton.

The Democrats like to rip the GOP's push for voter ID as being unfair, but, as National Review's Jim Geraghty pointed out last week, if the DNC's average grass-roots voter's vote "isn't going to count because of the way the party system works, I guess requiring voter ID isn't so disenfranchising after all, huh?"

While both parties have super delegates, those in the Republican party account for 7 percent of the nominating vote and are bound, by GOP convention rules, to vote according to state primary results. Democratic super delegates, on the other hand, control 15 percent of the nominating process and can vote for whomever they wish. According to these rules, only blowout victories in congressional districts and other areas would give Sen. Sanders a legitimate shot at winning the nomination.

The process is a total joke. Despite all the excitement around Sen. Sanders' campaign, Mrs. Clinton has already collected 502 delegates ("earning" is a complete misnomer), compared with Sen. Sanders' paltry 70. Of those totals, Mrs. Clinton has a whopping 451 super delegates, while Sen. Sanders has a meager 19. Again, this is despite Sen. Sanders fighting to a virtual tie in Iowa — only to come away with 21 delegates, to Hillary's 29 — and hammering her by 22 points in New Hampshire — where both candidates got 15 delegates. Then, Saturday in Nevada, Clinton got 52.7 percent of the vote, with Sanders receiving 47.3, which of course left Clinton with 60 percent of the state's delegates — 20 to Sanders' 15.

The primaries/caucuses are run by the Democratic National Committee, which is not a government organization and can therefore make up whatever rules it would like. But when you consider that Democrats purport to be the party that hears the public's voice — the party that supposedly wants to allow as many people to vote as possible, and as easily as possible — the entire nomination process is exposed as a sham.

The Democratic Party screams disenfranchisement when Republicans bring up the need for voter ID to combat fraud, yet supports disenfranchising thousands of primary/caucus voters with its super-delegate process. All Mrs. Clinton has to do is show up, and the coronation is complete. In this case, Sen. Sanders and his supporters are getting dramatically short-changed. If the Democrats really believe all their rhetoric, they would get rid of super delegates.
 

townsend

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Not promoting him for President rather making a comparison of him being wealthy is not unlike the early Presidents who gained their positions primarily as a matter of being wealthy and were elected because of their status. Most of the early Presidents were wealthy people for their time. You are too quick to try to make this an anti Trump debate.
I think wealth has little bearing on presidential qualifications. Clinton grew up poor, the Roosevelts were rich, Lincoln was poor.

But seriously though. As a person who would literally vote for any other republican or democratic candidate over Trump, I find it hard to figure out what anyone who would consider voting for Trump is thinking.
 

Smitty

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Democrats rigged their nomination process after the surprise of Obama beating out Clinton in 2008. Clinton literally cannot lose. She is the nominee.
 

L.T. Fan

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I think wealth has little bearing on presidential qualifications. Clinton grew up poor, the Roosevelts were rich, Lincoln was poor.

But seriously though. As a person who would literally vote for any other republican or democratic candidate over Trump, I find it hard to figure out what anyone who would consider voting for Trump is thinking.
I didn't say it was a qualifier. Secondly I was referencing the first early Presidents. They were in a position to be elected primarily because their wealth put them in a position to be chosen. It was a comparison of Trump and them. You are still doing the anti Trump thing.
 

Genghis Khan

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I didn't say it was a qualifier. Secondly I was referencing the first early Presidents. They were in a position to be elected primarily because their wealth put them in a position to be chosen. It was a comparison of Trump and them. You are still doing the anti Trump thing.
But there's no comparison. In the 18th century wealth gave you the leisure time to educate yourself.

There's no leisure time for a guy like trump. He's not sitting around pouring over John Locke like Jefferson did.

It's not at all an apt comparison.
 

BipolarFuk

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If I were thinking of voting for Trump, why would I give a flying fuck what Mitt Fuckin Romney thinks?
 

L.T. Fan

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But there's no comparison. In the 18th century wealth gave you the leisure time to educate yourself.

There's no leisure time for a guy like trump. He's not sitting around pouring over John Locke like Jefferson did.

It's not at all an apt comparison.
I am done. This keeps turning to an anti Trump theme and I wasn't going that direction at all. I was just making a comment about Trump being wealthy and how this status was one of the things that got the early presidents elected. It was just a comparative statement.
 

Jiggyfly

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On both sides.
Why does it have to be a side?

That's one of biggest problems currently in politics, having to choose a side, once that happens the actual facts of a issue gets ignored if they don't fit a sides agenda.

But yes it is both sides, because if you pick a side it's a high probability you fit the criteria.
 

Cotton

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Why does it have to be a side?

That's one of biggest problems currently in politics, having to choose a side, once that happens the actual facts of a issue gets ignored if they don't fit a sides agenda.

But yes it is both sides, because if you pick a side it's a high probability you fit the criteria.
Because in all of politics in the history of humanity there have been multiple sides to a center.
 

shane

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When Donald Trump is the least evil choice, your country may be fucked.
 

Cowboysrock55

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But there's no comparison. In the 18th century wealth gave you the leisure time to educate yourself.

There's no leisure time for a guy like trump. He's not sitting around pouring over John Locke like Jefferson did.

It's not at all an apt comparison.
I'm not sure being a lifer politician really prepares a person either. I actually think successful business experience gives someone great insight into the economy and how to help make it successful. More so then holding a government office position that's for sure. But none of that means Trump is a good candidate either. Just means there is actually something to be said for someone who has experienced the real world and been successful there.
 

L.T. Fan

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I'm not sure being a lifer politician really prepares a person either. I actually think successful business experience gives someone great insight into the economy and how to help make it successful. More so then holding a government office position that's for sure. But none of that means Trump is a good candidate either. Just means there is actually something to be said for someone who has experienced the real world and been successful there.
Most people would say they want the country run like a business and there sure isn't a lot of the public servant office holders that know how to do that. The office of the President is an Executive office and as a matter of information the only executive office within the three branches of government. Seems reasonable that an executive is best suited to fill it.
 

Jiggyfly

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Because in all of politics in the history of humanity there have been multiple sides to a center.
Actually throughout history there has been more than 2 sides and people were afforded the ability to make their case, now it's ignore anything if it does not have the right letter saying it.
 

Cotton

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Actually throughout history there has been more than 2 sides and people were afforded the ability to make their case, now it's ignore anything if it does not have the right letter saying it.
More than 2 doesn't equal multiple?
 

Jiggyfly

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I'm not sure being a lifer politician really prepares a person either. I actually think successful business experience gives someone great insight into the economy and how to help make it successful. More so then holding a government office position that's for sure. But none of that means Trump is a good candidate either. Just means there is actually something to be said for someone who has experienced the real world and been successful there.
And on the other hand making a profit for yourself and those closest to you at the expense of most everything else does not prepare you for making sure the economy works to benefit the country as a whole.
 
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