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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6413
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| Posted: 14 September 2024 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | 1
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Funny thing is: You can’t name 2 things in the current GOP that were
anything like Reagan’s platform.
Surrender to Russia? Rounding up immigrants? Tariffs on China? Inviting
terrorists to Camp David?
Only the craziest attitudes annd ideas of Reagan survive: his general
hostility to government, his anti-union, anti-lgbtq, anti-bussing, pro-
business leanings. In all particulars, Reagan is a “RINO” compared to where
the party is now. He’s practically a “lib-tard”.
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David Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 3091
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| Posted: 14 September 2024 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | 2
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The Republican's cultural revanchism goes back further than the Reagan Eighties and is far more poisonous. The true motivator for modern "conservatism" has always been the Civil Rights Movement.
In National Review's inaugural issue in 1955, William Buckley wrote that he founded a magazine that “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” It was ludicrous to claim in 1955 that Dwight Eisenhower's presidential administration represented unprecedented liberal hegemony, but the history he founded NR to stand athwart was in reality Black civil rights.
In 1957, Buckley wrote Why The South Must Prevail, which established National Review's official position in favor of denying voting rights to Black citizens. The editorial has never been retracted.
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David Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Posts: 3091
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| Posted: 14 September 2024 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | 3
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I loved the mythological Ronald Reagan who emerged in the Oughts. During George W. Bush's administration and the Iraq catastrophe, Reagan became a president who would never have negotiated with terrorists or withdrew military forces from the Middle East, despite doing both.
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6413
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| Posted: 15 September 2024 at 2:53am | IP Logged | 4
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And Buckley is too leftist for today’s GOP as well.
As distasteful as he was, I think Buckley would have died trying to stop
Donald Trump before letting him become president.
The National Review’s support for Trump makes Vidal Gore’s accusations
that Buckley was a “crypto-fascist” seem pretty on the money. If they
represent Buckley accurately, that’s exactly what he was.
Edited by Mark Haslett on 15 September 2024 at 2:56am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133274
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| Posted: 15 September 2024 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | 5
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I’m disturbed by the number of “undecided” voters who, according to polls, say they need “more” from Harris before they can make up their minds. What is wrong with these people? The Vice-president could have been represented in the debate by a glass of lukewarm water, and she would still be a better choice than a convicted felon and rapist with visible mental deficiencies. (Sidebar: ever since his posthumous mocking of Stan Lee I have considered Bill Maher beneath my contempt. And have studiously avoided anything he had to say. Last night, however, I surfed into his show just as he was making a good point. Harris being elevated so late in the game shows that we don’t have need of an electoral process that runs into years. Other nations get along fine with the whole circus lasting no more than a couple of months. Why not here? Begin the campaigns on Labor Day and end them the day before the election.)
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12701
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| Posted: 15 September 2024 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | 6
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Cracking the nut of the undecideds is decidedly hard, indeed. Even if Kamala Harris is in some ways a cipher, is it remotely possible that what we don't know about her is worse than what we know about him?
Meanwhile, I would trade a full four-year campaign season immediately after inauguration if we could just dump electoral voting. If the Reps fear losing the popular vote again and again and again, then let's all agree to force them to find a popular voice that speaks to the majority of Americans.
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Casey Sager
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 731
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| Posted: 15 September 2024 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | 7
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Unfortunately the religious right makes up enough of a percentage of their voting electorate that you have to court them, otherwise you risk losing as John McCain did running in the primary against George W. Bush because he dared to go after them a little.
They're stuck because the policies that part of the party wants are incredibly unpopular among the majority of US citizens.
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Mike Devlin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 May 2010
Location: Australia
Posts: 252
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| Posted: 16 September 2024 at 11:15am | IP Logged | 8
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John Byrne wrote:
| I’m disturbed by the number of “undecided” voters who, according to polls, say they need “more” from Harris before they can make up their minds. What is wrong with these people? The Vice-president could have been represented in the debate by a glass of lukewarm water, and she would still be a better choice than a convicted felon and rapist with visible mental deficiencies. |
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I can't agree more, JB.
One would've hoped that the rapist part alone would've been a fatal blow for his election chances. With women voters at the VERY least.
Add to that his gleefully stripping American women of their hard-won reproductive rights, which again, should have been another fatal blow, from women voters over there. One imagines.
But no. Strange days indeed. | |
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3344
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| Posted: 16 September 2024 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | 9
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JB wrote:
| Begin the campaigns on Labor Day and end them the day before the election. |
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And even more, I'd be in favor of going back to a convention-based candidate selection process. In theory, it's less directly democratic to eliminate the party primary, but these are political parties, not government bodies. And when you consider that many states already have open primaries AND the progressive wing of the Democratic Party would rather ALL states have an open primary process, at that point, what's the difference between voting for a party candidate and voting for President?
It ends up being a ten-month slog - exhausting, endlessly combative, and counter-productive to building a functional and cohesive party platform. Yes, the conventions would be shitshows, but they'd be CONTAINED shitshows, and I don't think the volume (in both senses of the word) of disgruntled complaints would be noticeably greater.
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Charles Valderrama
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4829
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| Posted: 17 September 2024 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | 10
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Breaking: Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas have endorsed Kamala Harris... on National Voter Registration Day... encouraging their young fanbase to register.
Guess Trump will hate her too!! LOL
-C!
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3344
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| Posted: 17 September 2024 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | 11
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One of the things that I've often found baffling is how the GOP and conservatives (all up and down the economic slide) in general bemoan whenever celebrities get involved with Democratic campaigns and/or show their support. I think that's largely because the list of conservative celebrities has gotten shorter and the ones that are willing to show up in support of MAGA are ludicrous to the point of satire, and it's no doubt an embarrassing thing, particularly for Trump.
But because the GOP can't put anything forward without being completely hypocritical, almost all of the celebrity-turned-politicians of note have been in the GOP. Trump, obviously only has his created TV and media image to give him any credibility; but Reagan was the goddamn President of the Screen Actors' Guild - twice! (and a goddamn UNION, to boot).
I'm maybe not wild that, say, George Clooney writing an op-ed that Biden step down is not just front page news but multi-day front page news, but Clooney isn't doing anything other than expressing his opinion.
Edited by Dave Kopperman on 17 September 2024 at 7:54pm
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Fred J Chamberlain
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 August 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 4035
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| Posted: 17 September 2024 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | 12
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I’ve had the same reflections, Dave. Let’s hope that we eventually see an op
Ed piece by Scott Baio.
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