The Goat Pen

Hello AA, glad your back.

AlabamAlum wrote:McCain lost because...

1) Many Republicans did not like him before he ran. He was very unpopular and seen as an appeaser for much of his career as a senator.

Well this isn't true because the Republicans nominated him over ALL the others....

AlabamAlum wrote:2) Palin was his running mate. He needed a strong Veep candidiate and he did not have it.

This IS true. If a moderate voter was on the fence with McCain, Palin pushed them right to President Obama when he selected Palin.

AlabamAlum wrote:5) Many were unhappy with W and when things go poorly in a country, the first instinct is to go with the party opposite.

This is also true. It would have been pretty tough for any GOP candidate to win in 2008. In that sense, McCain was the sacrificial lamb.

Quantative easing....2,000 page legislation that no one reads or can understand....infinite golfing....apologize for America to dictators....billion dollar giveaways to unions....9.0% unemployment......

4.....MORE......YEARS!!

Oh yea!!! Bush made him do it.

10ac wrote:I marred some but after reading what I did, it seems to me that no one expects much from a Dem president. Not even the Dems. But a Republican one is a different story.

That is awesome. My I have that for a signature?

innocentbystander wrote:

AlabamAlum wrote:McCain lost because...

1) Many Republicans did not like him before he ran. He was very unpopular and seen as an appeaser for much of his career as a senator.

Well this isn't true because the Republicans nominated him over ALL the others....

Did you notice the "did not like him" part? That's past tense. After he was nominated he became better than the D option in their mind - much the same way a boil on the leg is favorable to a boil on the scrotum. Did you also notice the qualifier "many" in my post above? Starting even before McCain-Finegold, he was not popular with many Republicans. As a result, he became a candidate that was not particularly popular with a decent-sized base of those who nominated him.

AlabamAlum wrote:

innocentbystander wrote:

AlabamAlum wrote:McCain lost because...

1) Many Republicans did not like him before he ran. He was very unpopular and seen as an appeaser for much of his career as a senator.

Well this isn't true because the Republicans nominated him over ALL the others....

Did you notice the "did not like him" part? That's past tense. After he was nominated he became better than the D option in their mind - much the same way a boil on the leg is favorable to a boil on the scrotum. Did you also notice the qualifier "many" in my post above? Starting even before McCain-Finegold, he was not popular with many Republicans. As a result, he became a candidate that was not particularly popular with a decent-sized base of those who nominated him.

We are arguing meaningless semantics. Whether they liked him or didn't like him, mattered not. They went out to vote on Super Tuesday and they nominated him (not Romney.) McCain won almost all the primary states (losing only Michigan, Utah, and Massachusetts to Romney.) Huckabee got Iowa but Romney got all the other Caucus states which means his campaign people were just better organized than McCain's. Romney just didn't have the name recognition of McCain.

The 2008 GOP Primary wasn't quite as ridiculous as the 1996 one was (when Bob Dole simply refused to debate any of his GOP opponents like Bob Dornin, Steve Forbes, and Pat Buchanan.) At least McCain was man enough to go to the debates and get clobbered on national television, something I don't think Newt Gingrich would ever do. If many Republicans didn't like McCain before he ran, the "many" should have been much more pro-active in making sure he didn't get the nomination in February of '08. They only have themselves to blame for Primary apathy.

He's my Senator and I didn't even vote for him (during the GOP Primary.)

We are arguing meaningless semantics. Whether they liked him or didn't like him, mattered not.

Disagree. That bloc of Republicans would work harder to beat the bushes for votes if they had liked him.

He's my Senator and I didn't even vote for him (during the GOP Primary.)

Exactly.

AlabamAlum wrote:Palin is horrible. Bush is horrible. Obama is horrible. McCain would have been horrible. Biden is horrible.

There has to be better choices than the ones I listed above.

Me.

AlabamAlum wrote:

We are arguing meaningless semantics. Whether they liked him or didn't like him, mattered not.

Disagree. That bloc of Republicans would work harder to beat the bushes for votes if they had liked him.

Then you've lost me. What exactly are you trying to say? That many Republicans didn't like ANY of the 2008 candidates so they couldn't be bothered to come out in February and nominate anyone else and they just let the Republicans that "cared" nominate whomever they wanted? If you aren't saying that about the "many" Republicans, then what are you saying?

I'm not particularly an Obama fan, but I have yet to hear one Republican offer a solution to the economic mess we're in. All they do is talk about how wonderful the Constitution is and complain about the deficit, which they blame on Obama even though most of the debt can be traced directly back to George Bush and his policies.

I don't care what the issue is the Republican answer is to CUT TAXES!! If that doesn't work, CUT TAXES AGAIN!

Well, we tried that with G.W. Bush, and instead of the growth we were promised we got the Great Recession.

Red Bird wrote:I'm not particularly an Obama fan, but I have yet to hear one Republican offer a solution to the economic mess we're in. All they do is talk about how wonderful the Constitution is and complain about the deficit, which they blame on Obama even though most of the debt can be traced directly back to George Bush and his policies.

I don't care what the issue is the Republican answer is to CUT TAXES!! If that doesn't work, CUT TAXES AGAIN!

Well, we tried that with G.W. Bush, and instead of the growth we were promised we got the Great Recession.

The "Great Recession" was not the fault of government. You need to unlearn that right now.

We got the "Great Recession" Red Bird because too many people in this country are irresponsible. They aren't credit worthy, and they (the "sub-prime" borrowers) were given "no-money-down" home loans. When the bubble burst, so many of these irresponsible people (who didn't give a fuck about their credit ratings) "welched" on their homes and turned the keys into the banks because #1) they couldn't flip them for a profit or #2) they resented the fact that they were now upside down on a home. So the banks are stuck with all these "toxic assets" ran to AIG (the one company that insured all this "sub-prime" risk) and AIG could NEVER have raised all the cash necessary to make the banking industry "whole" at the expense of so many irresponsible individuals. They could never pay that many claims.

That is how we got the "Great Recession." Welchers are to be blamed.

And this 2008 Congress absolutely REFUSED to do ANYTHING to prevent this type of thing from happening again. And they could have fixed all of it so (going forward) we wouldn't have a 5% or 6% home loan default rate (or whatever horribly high number it was) with just one piece of bank legislation:

the only home loan legislation the 2008 Congress ever needed wrote:In order to get a commercial or residential home loan, you must have a minimum of 20% of the purchase price "in cash." That 20% minimum equity stake can NOT come from another loan of any kind.

That is it. That is all they needed to stop this in the future. And the default rate (with this legislation) would never-ever again, be what it was in 2008. And why would that have worked? Because you don't walk away from a home you are upside down on, when you have real SKIN IN THE GAME! But the 2008 (Democrat) Congress would NEVER have insisted upon that kind of necessary legislation because so many of the Democrat "Base" isn't credit worthy. Those people vote Democrat specifically because they are not responsible people and they need government to step in and make them whole (at the expense of the other) when they fuck up. And the Democrats in Congress would be alienating their "voting constituents" by denying them ANY chance of ever getting a home loan if they required them to scrimp and save 20%, (constituents that Democrats in Congress did everything they could to ENABLE them to get home loans with asinine legislation like the Community Re-investment Act.)

That is what this whole "Great Recession" was about..... it wasn't about Dubya cutting taxes. It was about too many people getting homes when they are simply not responsible enough to own them.

Yea, let's blame the little guys!

If I remember correctly, it was working class home-owner wannabes demanding easy credit and insisting on an unsupervised market for exotic derivatives that finished Lehman Brothers and brought our great nation to its knees. Those working class losers organized into cells like commies and campaigned for no-down-payment mortgages that they didn't deserve and could never hope repay, only to default and end up either homeless or living in their parents' basement.

What an incredibly clever plan to ruin themselves. Can anyone imagine a more diabolically perfect means of self destruction?

What amazes me, what keeps me awake at night is trying to figure out how these irresponsible dead-beats got control of the home loan process in the first place. I'll bet they greased a few palms with their grimy, sweat-soaked $10s and $20s. We all know Alan Greenspan is on the take. How could that greedy Jew resist the milk money offered to him by those near-idle free-loaders?

Thank God we're on guard now, and these . . so called "working" poor can't hope to pull another fast one.

While I was on vacation in SC, my brother in law said he liked Romney. He is a passionately pro-life, pro-gun, evangelical, blue collar, anti-government-run health care Southerner. I simply showed him youtube film clips of Romney professing his undying love for gun control, his ardent support for abortion, and his warm embrace of Ted Kennedy when he signed ObamaRomneycare in Mass. My brother in law was stunned, having no idea of Romney's past flip flops on these issues that are important to him. Having been properly informed, he will never consider voting for Romney.

Those videos will sink Romney with millions of other GOP Southern primary voters once they are widely aired, which they certainly will be.

To paraphrase Rhett Butler, "My dear Scarlett, I wouldn't be so eager to see Mitt go; with him goes the south's last hope of beating Obama."

Heh. I just watched GWIW last night.

Romney is more like Prissy, who swore she knew all about birthing babies. But when it was necessary to deliver Melanie's baby, she suddenly knew nothing about birthing babies.

"Why Rhett, surely you don't mean."
"Yes, Scarlett."
"But Obama in Atlanta? Rhett, say it isn't so! Surely Newt or Palin can stop him."
"Remember this year, Scarlett; one day you can tell your children how you watched the GOP burn itself to the ground."

I'll fetch your smelling salts, Miss Pittypat.

If Romney is the best that the R's can offer, then they deserve to lose to Obama.

If you want for a liberal, you might as well vote for the unabashed liberal instead of the closet one.

Jungle Rat wrote:

AlabamAlum wrote:Palin is horrible. Bush is horrible. Obama is horrible. McCain would have been horrible. Biden is horrible.

There has to be better choices than the ones I listed above.

Me.

I think I might have to agree with that.