Guess the Caucus (Repub Edition)Follow

Personally Guiliani is the only republican candidate that doesn't give me the perv-creepies.

Nah, even in a dress, I can still imagine Guiliani drooling over a well-endowed sexy woman rather than fantasizing about a blushing prepubescent boy.

You forgot Ron Paul :(, $18 million has gotta count for something.

Giuliani. 2004 showed us that polls were skewed to the informed voters. The uninformed will remember his 9/11 shout-outs and vote for him in various moments of doubt, panic, and idiocy becaue they're scared al qaeda will send a plane up their ***. McCain polls better on protection, but again--informed.

Well, Huckabee is the predicted winner here. Only a quarter of the precincts are in for the Republican ticket but Huckabee has an 11% lead over Mitt (35/24). Then Fred Thompson of all people.

Wait and see what the other 75% have to say, I guess.

But he's so god damn cute!

Although, I'd likely vote for him in that situation purely on the "at least he wont accidentally ***** things up too badly" theory.

Moronic. The only possible reason for you to vote for Huckabee over Obama is partisan hackery unless you've grossly misrepresented your views here. Not that I'm adverse to partisan hackery, mind you, but at least be honest about it.

This coming from someone who voted for Bush, twice.

Don't be silly, Gbaji doesn't vote. Even if he did, it would be utterly meaningless as a Republican Presidential candidates chance of winning California has been about 1 in 500 for the last 20 years or so.

Have you actually bothered to look into any of his stances & plans or are you basing this off of what you've caught in the air?

I doubt I'd change your opinion and don't intend to try but I'm sincerely perplexed why you'd say this if you had actually looked.

Well. I haven't sat down with the man and asked him personally, but I have seen a number of his speeches, and I've read many transcripts of his conversations and interviews.

The one consistent factor with Obama is that he works hard to hit the classic "talking point" that's currently popular with the Left. Now, that's not unusual for a politician (obviously, Republicans would hit points popular with the Right, but you get the point), but in Obama's case, when you look past that, you see one of two things: Either a fairly radical take on socio-economics, or nothing at all. By that I mean that when he's asked more pointed questions, or allowed to elaborate on exactly what he'd do within some area, he either falls back on rhetoric ("move forward", "change the status quo", "push for progressive change", "not follow the Beltway mentality", etc...), or he falls into positions that are radically liberal and I don't think it's because he wants those things, but ends up supporting them purely because he gets cornered semantically on them.

Some examples:

When asked about his speech at the DNC:



Ah... I see! So instead of standing for big government and big spending, he stands for helping people by using government. Um... Isn't this exactly what I've said a million times is the "trick" Social Liberalists use to get people to expand the size and scope of the federal government? Why yes! It is.

It's also meaningless. He's concentrating on the "talking point" (pursuing the "cause" of the moment), while actively avoiding talking about the mechanism used to achieve that goal (bigger government). This is shallow political rhetoric at its worst IMO.


His position on Network Neutrality

Classic Liberal position held by politicians who find that "supporting neutrality" must be good, regardless of what the actual law says. He's naive because he'd end up supporting a legal change that would effectively hand control of content to the local providers (the very cable and TV companies he thinks/claims he's opposing) while blocking actual free content competition on the internet (which is what's made it the ultimate example of how a true free trade environment produces benefits well beyond the profits by those who invest in it).

His position is a perfect example of a politician, who, through a lack of understanding of an issue adopts what appears to the the "popular" position, and makes things worse in the process. He's clearly just repeating what someone else told him he should say. Don't get me wrong, there are some valid arguments for the network neutrality position. But his are so surface level, that they don't even address the real issues. It's pure pablum.


His positions on wealth

He actively and enthusiastically believes in the economic ideology of folks like Warren Buffet. Great and all, but I don't think he really understands that he's effectively quoting Karl Marx in the process. He's either politically naive on this subject, or he really is a radical socialist who believes that wealth (capital) isn't actually property to be protected as a right, but is instead some sort of social obligation to the welfare of the people as a whole.

I'm actually not sure which is true, but either one puts him in the "I don't want this guy to have any real power" category. I do strongly suspect, however, that he really doesn't have more then an academic understanding of the economic policies he supports. Just based on the way he talks about economics. He seems to actually believe that this somehow represents what Americans want.



I can go on, but that's enough for now.

Um... My reason for saying Obama is politically naive on those issues is *not* because he doesn't have well drawn out plans, but in a way because he does.

His education plan is essentially a cut and paste from sections of the two major teachers unions positions. Nothing he has is "unique" or "new". He basically outsourced his position.

Same deal with energy. He's basically parroting the talking points of the environmentalist groups. Does he have a lot of words? Yup. But he's basically just hitting the standard "use bio-fuels", "OMG! Global Warming!!!", and "big oil is bad" positions. I understand that these are traditional Liberal positions, but nothing in his web site is "new" on this front.

I'm particularly amused that he lists as the two problems: 1. Reliance on foreign oil, and 2. Global warming. Yet virtually the entire page is about global warming, and the only "solution" to ending reliance on foreign oil is magically mandating massively more fuel efficient vehicles. Um... That's not going to do it.

I can't imagine why I get the sneaking suspicion that he simply had a well paid environmentalist (or group of them) write his policy for him. Again. That's not shocking for a politician, but for one who claims to have "new ideas", his ideas are remarkably similar to what you'll find on various Liberal political groups websites as their "wish list" for the future.


Which is part of why I talked earlier about how he'd likely just be a puppet for those groups. Having given him his positions, those groups will wield incredible influence over his if he were to be president. A more seasoned politician would know to carefully phrase his positions so that they satisfy various political groups without committing to their exact positions as he has done.


Hence, he's politically naive.

You didn't read the PDF's, huh? It's okay. If you had, though, you would have read the additional plans for alternative energies development, distribution infrastructure and mass-transit rehabilitation. And the fuel standards, of course.

Oh well. This is why candidates talk in sound bites, I guess. People don't like to take the time to learn in depth

Anyway, as I said, I'm not trying to convince you. I assume that any positions you disagree with you'll dismiss as "naive" anyway so there's not much point in continuing.

Oh. I want to address this as well:



I view this exactly the opposite. While I agree on the "brief" part, I think we can glean more about a politicians true positions and beliefs from a Q&A then we can from a canned statement on a website.

He's got staffers to research and write the stuff on his site. It's sculpted. I'd wager that if you asked him, he couldn't repeat half of what's written there. While Romney and Huckabee's sites are simpler, I'm pretty sure if you asked them, they could hit all of the points that are present. Kind of a tangent, but worth mentioning.


It's in the off the cuff statements that you learn about a candidate. He has to answer based on the knowledge in his own head, not the collective knowledge of his staff and supporters. Huge difference. It tells us what *his* positions are. And he does very poorly in that environment IMO. As I pointed out earlier, he tends to fall back to very standard statements. He's fallen into some very stupid holes when he finds himself in that situation, which indicates that he really doesn't have the breadth of understanding of those issues (especially things like foreign policy) that his site might indicate.


And when asked about economic policies, no matter how many times he claims he's "new and different", he's terrifying in his consistent fall-back to positions that are essentially socialist in nature (far more then this nation has seen before). His answer to everything seems to be "fix the problem in front of us and worry about paying for it later", which is a pretty sure way to end up "accidentally" growing government by a massive amount. As I pointed out earlier, he's "accidentally" quoted Karl Marx without realizing it (in his book in fact). He was actually talking about policies of Buffet's that he agrees with, but those policies are direct quotes of Marx. Ooops!

If he had a broader understanding of the issues, he wouldn't fall into traps like that.