A quick question

Republican Party isn't my party. I've voted all over the board since I've earned the right to vote...even in this election I voted against the gay marriage amendment. I consider myself on the right side of moderate and vote accordingly based upon what I feel are the most important topics of the day.

Not only did Kerry fail for me on my key issues, but he in general was further to the left of me than Bush is to the right of me. So my choice was a no-brainer. If the Dems are smart and move to the center, it will make my choice more difficult. I would love to have to actually think about who I would cast my vote for.

Interesting Avatar...the only thing I see wrong with it is that Quebec is part of it. I think you're also making some interesting assumptions about attiudes in Alberta, Saskatechewan and Manitoba, which are likely very close to their southern neighbors in Montana and the Dakotas.

 

are they the ones who want our government to attack terrorists? If so, then yes I do like the direction they are taking the party.

 

This is one example of how the liberals are crazy when it comes to their political opponents.

Even though he asks the question very calmly, it wont take much to get Lastort to say that he is more afraid of the Christian right than he is of Islamofascist terrorists.

I'm an atheist and not a republican and I'm totally unafraid of the Christian right. I know enough of these people to know that
1) Our society is secular enough that I can avoid them whenever I want. I was even able to do that when I lived in rural Tennessee. I was even able to taunt them with Marilyn Manson CD's and not get burned at the stake.
2) They have a legitimate beef with people who want to eliminate xmas displays and all kinds of innocuous stuff just to annoy them
3) Do I want everyone in America deciding what moral code they will follow, and try to understand Kant? No, a million times, no. Prayer in school is infinitely preferable.
4) Am I afraid of silly stuff like creationism? No, they can't put that toothpaste back into the tube.
5) Do I like it when they disparage Islam? yes, and I love it when they disparage the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, too.
6) Does it bother me that they say I will burn in hell? You gotta be kidding

In sum, they are on the correct side more often than not in the more important issues and I don't much care if they reached the right conclusion for the wrong reasons

 

I am not registered for any party. But I did put a Bush sign in my yard...and a Don't Be A Girlie Man bumper sticker on my back window of my car. That was the first time I ever did anything like that. That's how fired up Kerry got me. When someone offered me the items, I took them with glee.

Am I concerned about the Christian coalition? Not yet. I still feel that that group is only about 20-25% of the support. If the party were to move in that direction more strongly, they might lose someone like myself to a more centrist candidate. And the country is won in the Center with people like myself and others. Clinton knew that lesson well...even if he didn't resonate with me due to job concerns with my parents working for defense contrators....he ran to the center and governed to the center when it was clear moving to the left would fail miserably.

I would love to see someone like Pataki or Guiliani run in 08 and win the nomination. They more closely align with my politics which is fiscally conservative and moderate on social issues.

 

I think I'm more worried that you're assuming the Chiristian Coalition speaks exclusively for the "religious right".

 

Mike when you move to France can I have your xbox? It won't play on the TV's in Europe so you have no use for it.

 

While I have dabbled in Libertarian Party stuff (sorry, there's just too many goofballs there) I have always been a registered Republican, and wouldn't vote Domocrat if you put a gun to my head. I'm also a flaming atheist, and believe even less that there is an ablsolute universal morality than a vast majority of the lefties I know that fear the Christian Coalition the same way you do. And I can say the CrewSchmack pretty much much hit it out of the park.

What it means is that the big evil nasty Christian Right scares me less than the class-warfare hate-mongerers of today's American Left.

 

Well, I'm born and bred Protestant and have no idea what the Christian Coalition respresents or stands for, so you tell me.

What's radical about it? To me, pro-life stances and marriage amendments are anything but radical. However, government instituted religion or redistribution of wealth certainly are.

I've never known an intelligent Protestant to believe that the government should ordain Christianity and force belief upon its citizens, acting as something of a theocracy. Most believe just the opposite.

However, thats not to say they don't stand for the moral convictions shared by or directed in Christianity. To me, there is no problem with opposing the legislation of a religion, but affirming morally-based legislation (any moral that is true is indepedent of religion and should be legislated).

So, if the Christian Coalition is "radical" because they want Christianity to be the official religion of the USA, then I agree. But if they are radical for opposing abortion and gay marriage and favoring phrases like "Under God", "In God We Trust" and then Ten Commandments, then I disagree. But, in my experience the former is almost never the case, nor should it be.

As to the Christan Coalition representing by "radical" fundamentalist Protestant denominations, I have absolutely no idea. I'm not familiar enough with each denominations beliefs to say, though certainly the Episcopals are anything but strictly fundamentalist. My experience is primarily in the Presbyterian and Reformed church, the latter's political leanings being incredibly diverse.

More commonly, I find fellow Protestants who strongly favor redistribution of wealth and all it entails, which is something I'd hardly consider fundamentalist or conservative or anything other than wrong.

 

Ah yes, this is what they're all telling themselves: that the election result is due to some kind of radical Christian jihad.

They tell themselves this to avoid having to deal with the fact that they had a terrible candidate with no ideas, nothing to say and a really ugly personal history who ran a horribly inept campaign, never convinced the electorate he had a clue and was one of the least likeable people ever to run for national office.

Now hear this: the "Christian Coalition" (whoever that is ) had nothing whatever, and I mean literally nothing, to do with the election result.

Now Mike, you've got to get a grip here. I know that for the last 24 hours this is the theme of the entire left and a good deal of the MSM as they attempt to rationalize an ugly loss. The CW amongst the disgruntled is that this election was all about "values" and "morals" and gay marriage and had nothing whatever to do with the fact that we're at war and people believe there's a serious threat and they don't think John Kerry had any sort of clue about it or any intention to do anything but surrender.

The Christian Coalition my ass. I know a whole hell of a lot of people who voted for Bush and I don't know a single person who has anything to do with any such organization. It's paranoia, and frankly tasteless, absurd avatar is insulting and demeaning and just plain dumb.

Was it the Christian Coaliton who elected Bush in 2000? Wiped the floor with Democrtas in 2002? Elected Reagan with huge majorities twice?

No, it was the fact that, in those elections, people rejected the Democrat party program. As they did this time.

Instead of this ridiculous juvenile crap, which is beginning to border on tinfoil hat paranoia, why don't you look at why people keep rejecting what your side has to say.

For that matter, why don't you figure out what it is your side is really saying? Because the reat of the country has no idea.

Your guy (and a year ago I'm willing to bet he was the last guy you were remotely interested in) ran on tha "I hate Bush" ticket, and his campaign consisted of "I hate Bush because he's a bad, bad man". You and your leftie pals thought that was enough. You were kidding yourselves.

The voting booths might as well have lited two choices: Bush and Not Bush.

The Christian Coalition, whoever the hell they are, didn't have squat to do with your inept, stupid, amateurish campaign and your thin-skinned, arrogant, effete candidate. Bush was very vulnerable, and there were actual human being Democrats who could have beaten him with a smart, disciplined campaign.

You chose insted to run a liberal true believer whose platform was nothing but hate and the electorate rejected it. Is this so hard to understand?

And frankly, Mike, this whole thing about gay marriage and "values" is very big with YOUR base too. Blacks are the single strongest group of values voters, followed by Hispanics, Seniors and Union families.

You can't ever win anything if your sole support is Eastern elites (cough, cough), lobbyists, Wall Street and the Hollywood crowd. There simply aren't the votes.

Christian Coaltion my ass. Wake up Mike. There was no Fundamentalist coup d'etat on Tuesday. Just the electorate as a whole saying you're full of crap. Grow the hell up and deal with it.

 

You and this guy aren't going to get anywhere with this thesis:

 

Mike,

I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, the "buckle in the Bible Belt". I went to an elemantary school that thought Jerry Falwell was a bit too liberal. As you probably know, I'm not Christian.

I can honestly say this:

The Christian Coalition does not worry me. Not one little bit.

I've seen real relgious zealotry that makes Rangers-Celtic seem like a mid-August Wednesday night Wizards-Rapids match. I've had a gun held to my head with the person on the recreational end making me pull my pants down to see if I've been snipped in accordance with the laws set forth by the prophet Mohammed, Blessed be his name. I've seen a woman thrown out her home for being raped because she bought shame and dishonor upon her family.

I know who the enemy is, and it isn't some middle-aged housewife with a cross and a copy of the Gospels.

Sachin

 

We can certainly disagree about Iraq. Personally I happen to think that it's exactly the right war at exactly the right time. Bill Clinton, for all that I disdain him, worked like a dog for eight years and tried everything imaginable to negotiate a path out of that hellhole. To his credit, no one could have done it better, or worked harder at it or is more suited for exactly that kind of work.

And he came up bone dry. Eight freakin years of nothing. In the end Arafat ( who by actual count literally spent more nights in the WHite House than anyone outside the First Family), Assad, the Saudis, the Egyptians, all of them, stiffed him big time. To me it was absolute proof positive that it simply could not be done. Clinton couldn't even give them the store, the keys and the truck out back - he proved that they didn't really want it.

As he left office, he pointedly commented that they gave him the shaft, and he was bitter about it.

How absurd then for anyone to want or expect or think something positive would come out of George Bush spending eight years doing the exact same thing. Utterly ridiculous.

The left wants to complain bitterly all of a sudden about the tragedy and wrongness of leaving a huge national debt for our grndchildren to pay off (although both you and I are old enough to remember when the roles were exactly reversed and it was the Democrats who kept raising the debt ceiling and the Republicans saying the EXACT same things, word for word).

How much worse though for us to leave our children and grandchildren, rather than some IOU's, a WAR that we didn't have the guts to fight when we should have?

So we picked our spot. And frankly, if that's the "wrong" place, where was the "right" place. Palestine? OH, now THAT would have been a popular choice. Talk about freaking out your pals the French! Or Saudi Arabia? Iran?

Iraq WAS the right place, and the right time IS now, and repeating some absurd Kerry mantra which is devoid of meaning only demeans the serious business we are about. The task is up to us. Right now.

As for the rest of this business (and I didn't mean for this to be an Iraq essay) look: an awful lot of Americans, besides snake-handling, Evangelical Bible thumpers, are Social Traditionalists. And goddam it, it's THEIR COUNTRY TOO.

They have an absolute RIGHT to vote thier conscience about things like partial birth abortion and gay marriage. Your pals want to run around shrieking about what a bunch of hicks and rubes they are, and I hope they continue, because that is turning off more and more people every day.

As you rightly point out, you don't change someone's mind by first calling him a moron and a redneck.

I've got lots more to say but no time except for one last point:

There's a lot of debate right now about the exit polls that were so horribly wrong. The real out=there freaks on the left say it proves the election was rigged, in the apparent belief that Kerry really DID get something like 60% of the vote, which is ludicrous on the face of it.

I've only heard this mentioned a couple places, but I am absolutely convinced that it's true: people coming out of polling places were AFRAID to admit that they voted Republican. Every place you go now, if you admit that you are Pro Bush or Pro Republican, people yell and put you down r at the least roll their eyes and make clucking noises.

You know exactly what I;m talking about. It's the BS PoliForum crowd expanded into the general population.

So when someone asked them who they voted for, they were afraid to say "Bush" for fear of getting scorn and abuse. SO they either lied or, more often, simply refused to be interviewed.

So the pollster moved on to the next guy.

In other words, the sample SELF-SELECTED, which is absolute doom for the results of ANY sample based calculation.

But frightening people into silence, which is what the radical left is into these days, only drives evem MORE people to the polls, where nobody can yell at them when they punch the Bush ticket. They resent being caricatured as idiots, and they're giving it right back to you in spades.

Your buddies are so busy shooting themselves in the foot with their arrogant, condescending, shrill namecalling that they aren't able to notice that alll they're really doing is puching up Republican vote totals. Everywhere.

 

Al Franken's show is horrible. I listen to in now and then, but he doesn't have the ability to sustain my interest as Glenn Beck or Limbaugh can. I tend to disagree with Limbaugh on a lot, but he's more entertaining than Franken. The other shows on Air America are just horrible as well. The Morning Sedition show is marginal at best, while there are many other shows that make Franken's actually look good.

Then again, they haven't been at it for very long. The thing is, they should have looked to some of the other guys who aren't "Big names" who had been doing shows like this for years in obscurity and put them on, rather than put on guys who haven't done radio at all.

It is possible to get good at it...Limbaugh's show wasn't very good 10 years ago...Conan O'brien's show was like watching a train wreck for his first year and a half. But by putting very bad shows on in "prime time" talk radio slots, that network did itself a disservice.

By the way Mike, I think you "get it" when it comes to what the Dems did wrong from your rambling.

 

Yes...that guy does have a good show...I couldn't remember his name. And he has been doing it for a long time.

He should be going head to head against Limbaugh and not Franken. Franken spends half his show in the noon hour playing Limbaugh clips and talking about what's wrong with them.

 

Mike,

What station around here is Air America?

I needs to listen.

Sachin