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Originally Posted by jackson33
Buffy; Your anecdotal comments through out your post could be countered with the same from reported incidents through out the Country, including voter intimidation (Joe, the plumber), sign removals (McCain) and the many reports from individuals denied access to actual polling places.
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Well, most importantly, we've gotten rid of the massive and more importantly *official* efforts by the government to disenfranchise voters through programs specifically designed to purge voter rolls in districts that mostly vote Democratic, and to fire US Attorneys who refused to pursue baseless allegations of voter fraud. Or do you think that Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzalez resigned simply "to spend more time with their families?"
Equating official government actions by officers sworn to uphold the law to clearly wrong-headed individuals who steal signs is to say the least a bit disingenuous, but has become an extremely popular debating tactic of the extreme right wing and parroting it is well, unseemly....
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Originally Posted by jackson33
If the 'Reform' had been enacted, Congress had made the Bush Tax Cuts permanent and Clinton had gained the nomination, NONE of whats going on would have happened.
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Wow. So you're saying that there was no housing bubble? That massive lending to poor credit risks would have all been just fine?
Whoa. Know of any economists who agree with you on that?
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Originally Posted by jackson33
It might be interesting, being from California and the SF area, what *mainstream centrism* means and compared to the folks in Wyoming, Georgia, Oklahoma or Alaska.
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Throw out Georgia and you're talking about less than 1% of the population of the US. Does that constitute "mainstream"?
In California, you'd find that it's only because LA and the Bay Area are two of the biggest metropolis' in the US that it votes slightly differently than Georgia: Atlanta is liberal but the rest of the state is very conservative. Where I live in the Bay Area 'Burbs, it's actually quite mixed, and lots of my friends are indeed Social Conservatives who go to Evangelical Churches every Sunday. Go over into the Central Valley (which I do frequently as I have family in Modesto and Fresno) and it gets downright redneck. Heck, I regularly go to a genuine Honky Tonk in Fremont just south of Oakland where a friend of mine sings with the house band when she's out here from Nashville that's packed every weekend with step dancers and pickups with Huckabee stickers in the parking lot.
California ain't Berkeley, or even San Francisco, no matter how much Rush says so.
The fact is that most "conservatives" I know actually are more cooperative and centrist than you'd imagine. What you aparently misunderstood above is that the categories I described are that of the *leadership* who--with the exception of that old-line third group--are complete and total whack jobs who care more about power and getting their way than anything else.
What's scary is that while the equivalent whack jobs on the left do exist, you *never* hear about them because they have no power.
Conversely, its the whack jobs on the right that are in total control of the Republican party and all of its major communications outlets (Rush, Drudge, Michelle, etc.).
My point is is that if the Republican power center *did* move back to the center, they'd recover nicely because *lots* of people like to have a counter balance on the right.
This is not "we're a center-right nation" (do you realize that's just this week's "conservative" talking point?), it's "we're a *centrist* nation" who doesn't like radicals on *either* end of the spectrum.
Extreme Polarization as practiced by the Gingrich's and Delay's and Rush's of this world have destroyed political cooperation in America, and the kind of "Recreation" that T-Bird is pushing in the OP of this thread has *everything* to do with changing the mode of discourse in our country to "get it back on track"--something that 85% of American's think is Job One no matter what their political persuasion.
Seeing political debate as a "not only must we win but the other side must lose" is Unamerican and Unpatriotic, yet the only people demanding a pound of flesh on these grounds are hypocrites like Michelle Bachmann.
Do you really think that the best way to Recreate America is to continue to demonize Liberals as capable of doing nothing but evil?
If you think that a country where not even Ahnold can be allowed to be a Republican is a good thing is downright scary to me.
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Originally Posted by jackson33
I'm not sure any one person, with as large a staff that's needed, can effectively change anything.
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Well, no, not all by themselves: that was Bush's principal problem. "My way or the highway" is no way to motivate everyone to move in the same direction when everyone really has to sacrifice. That's why "charismatic" leaders like Kennedy or Reagan or Clinton or Obama really *can* get things done.
Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation,
Buffy
