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Posted by Gunnar Emilsson (+18761) 10 years ago
http://firstread.nbcnews....-fray?lite

I do believe in a different time that I would have voted for Mitt Romney. My vote last year was definitely more against the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party.....no matter what agenda Mitt put forth, or his policies, those scum-sucking dirtbags in the Tea Party had to go down, in my view.

I am happy to see Mr. Romney re-enter the fray to bring more reasonable, sensible, modern conservative approaches to the Republican party. As someone who considers himself moderate with right-leaning tendencies, I miss a coherent conservative voice.

I also miss a coherent liberal voice, but that should be left to another thread. Tea Party fascism is by far the biggest threat to our American democracy today. Let's fight it, each and everyone of us.
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Posted by Bob Netherton II (+1905) 10 years ago
It'll never work, Gunnar. Romney would have to get through the primaries. Adult thoughts just don't fly with "the base" in the primaries.

But then again, he essentially bought the nomination the last time around.
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Posted by Richard Bonine, Jr. (+15595) 10 years ago
It's hard to take Romney seriously when he picked Paul Ryan as a running mate.
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
Romney doesn't like Obamacare.
Strange, as Obamacare is eerily similar to "Romneycare" which was devised and enacted in Massachusetts under Romney as governor in 2006. Like, wasn't Obamacare -based- on Romneycare?

I don't necessarily think Romney is the Moderate candidate you're looking for. He seems to approve of the current GOP stance of "if we aren't getting our way, we won't govern anything". The joke that the current GOP would refuse to pass a kidney stone is feeling pretty based in reality. Other than trying to repeal Obamacare 40 times, what exactly have they DONE this session?

I think there needs to be a serious change-up in the GOP ranks. I would love to vote FOR a GOOD CANDIDATE (regardless of party affiliation), but if the GOP is going to continue to bow to the craziness of the Tea Party and other militant radicals, I feel I have to intentionally vote AGAINST the Republicans. If Romney wants to be considered anything other than THEM, he needs to disassociate himself far away... and I just don't see that happening.
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Posted by Gunnar Emilsson (+18761) 10 years ago
Great article in the New York Times this week.

The Tea Party's Path to Irrelevance
By JAMES TRAUB
Published: August 6, 2013

WASHINGTON - The Tea Party has a new crusade: preventing illegal immigrants from gaining citizenship, which they say is giving amnesty to lawbreakers. Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, recently told Politico that his members were "more upset about the amnesty bill than they were about Obamacare."

They're so upset, in fact, that Republican supporters of immigration reform, like Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have become marked men in their party, while House Republicans have followed the Tea Party lead by refusing to even consider the Senate's bipartisan reform plan.

Tea Partyers often style themselves as disciples of Thomas Jefferson, the high apostle of limited government. But by taking the ramparts against immigration, the movement is following a trajectory that looks less like the glorious arc of Jefferson's Republican Party than the suicidal path of Jefferson's great rivals, the long-forgotten Federalists, who also refused to accept the inexorable changes of American demography.

The Federalists began as the faction that supported the new Constitution, with its "federal" framework, rather than the existing model of a loose "confederation" of states. They were the national party, claiming to represent the interests of the entire country.

Culturally, however, they were identified with the ancient stock of New England and the mid-Atlantic, as the other major party at the time, the Jeffersonian Republicans (no relation to today's Republicans), were with the South.

The Federalists held together for the first few decades, but in 1803 the Louisiana Purchase - Jefferson's great coup - drove a wedge between the party's ideology and its demography. The national party was suddenly faced with a nation that looked very different from what it knew: in a stroke, a vast new territory would be opened for colonization, creating new economic and political interests, slavery among them.

"The people of the East can not reconcile their habits, views and interests with those of the South and West," declared Thomas Pickering, a leading Massachusetts Federalist.

Every Federalist in Congress save John Quincy Adams voted against the Louisiana Purchase. Adams, too, saw that New England, the cradle of the revolution, had become a small part of a new nation. Change "being found in nature," he wrote stoically, "cannot be resisted."

But resist is precisely what the Federalists did. Fearing that Irish, English and German newcomers would vote for the Jeffersonian Republicans, they argued - unsuccessfully - for excluding immigrants from voting or holding office, and pushed to extend the period of naturalization from 5 to 14 years.

Leading Federalists even plotted to "establish a separate government in New England," as William Plumer, a senator from Delaware, later conceded. (The plot collapsed only when the proposed military leader, Aaron Burr, killed the proposed political guide, Alexander Hamilton.)

The Federalists later drummed out Adams, who voted with the Jeffersonian Republicans to impose an embargo on England in retaliation for English harassment of American merchant ships and impressment of American sailors. This was the foreshadowing moment of the War of 1812, which the Anglophile Federalists stoutly opposed.

Finally, in the fall of 1814, the Federalists convened the Hartford Convention to vote on whether to stay in or out of the Union. By then even the hotheads realized how little support they had, and the movement collapsed. And the Federalists, now scorned as an anti-national party, collapsed as well.

Contrast that defiance with Jefferson's Republicans, who stood for decentralized government and the interests of yeoman farmers, primarily in the coastal South.

They ruled the country from 1801 to 1825, when they were unseated by Adams - who, after splitting with the Federalists, had joined with a breakaway Republican faction.

In response, Jefferson's descendants, known as the Old Radicals, did exactly what the Federalists would not do: they joined up with the new Americans, many of them immigrants, who were settling the country opened up by the Louisiana Purchase.

Their standard-bearer in 1828, Andrew Jackson, favored tariffs and "internal improvements" like roads and canals, the big-government programs of the day. The new party, known first as the Democratic-Republicans, and then simply as the Democrats, thrashed Adams that year. (Adams's party, the National Republicans, gave way to the Whigs, which in turn evolved into the modern Republican Party.)

Today's Republicans are not likely to disappear completely, like the Federalists did. But Republican leaders like Mr. Rubio and Mr. Graham understand that a party that seeks to defy demography, relying on white resentment toward a rising tide of nonwhite newcomers, dooms itself to permanent minority status. Opposing big government is squarely in the American grain; trying to hold back the demographic tide is quixotic. Professional politicians do not want to become the party of a legacy class.

The problem is that the Tea Party is not a party, and its members are quite prepared to ride their hobbyhorse into a dead end. And many Republicans, at least in the House, seem fully prepared to join them there, and may end up dragging the rest of the party with them.

The example of those early days shows that American political parties once knew how to adapt to a changing reality. It is a lesson many seem to have forgotten.
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Posted by Hannah Nash (+2537) 10 years ago
Today's Republicans are not likely to disappear completely, like the Federalists did. But Republican leaders like Mr. Rubio and Mr. Graham understand that a party that seeks to defy demography, relying on white resentment toward a rising tide of nonwhite newcomers, dooms itself to permanent minority status. Opposing big government is squarely in the American grain; trying to hold back the demographic tide is quixotic.


This was a fantastic article; thank you for sharing!
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banned
Posted by coffeedrunk (+58) 10 years ago
They will disappear, many are already joining the democrats. I personally am joining the ranks of the democrats due mostly to their newly found ideology about preemptive wars. Obama and the peaceful democrats have already giving us a full scale battle in Libya, as well as a covert battle in Syria. I (in my support of the military industrial complex) am elated that the "peace loving hippies" would share a confrontational warlike bond with the Dick Cheney's of the world.
Maybe both parties have one ruler after all, or we are all the same ideologically.
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Posted by Gunnar Emilsson (+18761) 10 years ago
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Posted by Elizabeth Emilsson (+797) 10 years ago
+1, Gunnar.
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Posted by Buck Showalter (+4461) 10 years ago
This where Bridgier tells you to shove something up your ass, cd.
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Posted by Bridgier (+9547) 10 years ago
I would, but I found whatever he wrote completely incomprehensible, so I decided to err on the side of caution and let it slide. After all, I don't want to be a bully.
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Posted by Buck Showalter (+4461) 10 years ago
Oh we'll, no dilemma for me. I've heard the term "moral relativism" used to describe the "they did it first" logic, but Tu Quoque is more accurate.
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Posted by coffeedrunk (+58) 10 years ago
f-ck you, and I bet he gives us another war, because Alex Jones and Ron Paul are correct. Global government run by the federal reserve and international banksters. Proof is how can the American banking system impose tax penalties multilaterally to any other country. Buck your a bitch
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Posted by Gunnar Emilsson (+18761) 10 years ago
As a kinder and gentler poster, I feel compelled to help "coffeedrunk" along in his conversation on this thread.

CD, when you post "alex jones....is right", you have instantly anointed yourself as bat poop crazy.

I would suggest re-phrasing that.
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Posted by Buck Showalter (+4461) 10 years ago
It's, "you're a bitch." Dumbass.
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Posted by Bridgier (+9547) 10 years ago
because Alex Jones and Ron Paul are correct.

Oops, well, there we go. CHEMTRAILS UBER ALLES!
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Posted by Oddjob (+194) 10 years ago
That's a pretty good score, coffeedrunk. You single-handedly managed to get the Borg all riled up!
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Posted by Ingird Emilsson (+210) 10 years ago
coffeedrunk's bringing up the Rothschilds again. That's sooo 18th Century
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