quote:But there is of course a reason he can’t say that: such a statement is customarily followed by an expression of gratitude and a willingness to give something back to society. And gratitude and a willingness to give something back are precisely what Romney lacks—in common with the party he’s aspiring to represent.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: What I got from that (incredibly whiny) essay (Think of of the poor Mormon children that can never hope to be president! *sob*) was this part.
quote: There is nothing about Romney that could not be embraced by most non-lunatic Republicans, nothing to make him an "anybody-but" candidate -- except that he's a Mormon.
The problem is not that the non-lunatic Republican are shunning the Mormon; it is that there are too few non-lunatic Republicans. It isn't that Gov. Romney is too Mormon. He just isn't rabid enough for the base.
It goes even a little bit farther. Its an article which has the core, bolded point of "When it comes to presidential politics in the Republican Party, Mormons need not apply."
And he's saying this as the republicans are all set to vote a mormon to be their presidential candidate in their own primary.
A mormon which he himself supported Gingrich over. Obviously he hasn't been making a case that romney is moving forward on qualifications that overcome his mormon-ness, and he even made the wholly and factually incorrect claim that Gingrich stands a better chance in the election than Romney, which leaves the indication that he's only really trying to sell himself or defend himself on his own entrenched narrative that it is romney's mormonness that makes him unelectable.
Don't even know what to make of that, anyway.
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quote:And where were the evangelical Republicans whose dread of Mormons now drives the anti-Mitt movement? It's fine for Mormons to take the lead when there's a risk, but apparently it doesn't earn us a seat at the table.
So, it turns out attacking minority groups doesn't in fact endear you to groups that in turn consider you a minority? Surprise?
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But...it's just so sad the discrimination they face. Intolerance is just so cruel. Why they are barely allowed to marry and serve in the military.
quote:Once Obama actually wades into the election, I think he's going to drop a populist bomb on Romney's head that Romney will have extreme problems fending off, given the defenses he's used in previous months.
I have a feeling this election is going to turn into one the nastiest blood baths in anyone's memory. Both the left and right seem more motivated by a fear of the opposition than enthusiasm for their candidate. Combine that with the Citizen's United decision and we've set the stage for a really ugly campaign season, no matter what course the candidates choose.
Some of it is going to be legitimate. There really are some fundamental disagreements over what we should be doing as a country that could be well-served by a rigorous public debate.
The ugly part is going to be if Obama goes after Romney for being a Mormon, and Romney trots out the birther Muslim Rev. Wright etc crap from four years ago. If we go that route, yes, it'll be nasty and highly magnified by the money.
But if it goes the route of Obama hitting Romney over wealth issues, and Romney hitting Obama over economic issues, well, I think that gets to a very real place that probably needs to be talked about. The goodness of that debate will depend heavily on how often they pivot to straw mans instead of reality.
I'm pushing forward with cautious pessimism.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I especially appreciated:
quote:And where were the evangelical Republicans whose dread of Mormons now drives the anti-Mitt movement? It's fine for Mormons to take the lead when there's a risk, but apparently it doesn't earn us a seat at the table.
So, it turns out attacking minority groups doesn't in fact endear you to groups that in turn consider you a minority? Surprise?
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: But...it's just so sad the discrimination they face. Intolerance is just so cruel. Why they are barely allowed to marry and serve in the military.
Wait...that's not them.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: But Kate, this is totally different. Card didn't choose to be a Mormon.
Wait...that's not them either.
Is there like a Hatrack academy awards of posting, because
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: The ugly part is going to be if Obama goes after Romney for being a Mormon, and Romney trots out the birther Muslim Rev. Wright etc crap from four years ago. If we go that route, yes, it'll be nasty and highly magnified by the money.
You are not looking far enough down the rabbit hole of citizen's united.
It will be "the ugly part is going to be if the clusters of wholly unaffiliated PAC's representing only themselves of course go after mormonism birther muslim rev. wright crap" which of course the candidates can assure everyone is not their doing, their hands are clean of course
That said.
Obama's odds on Intrade appear ... appropriate, "optimistically," for how I can best anticipate the election to go. The whole circus-level drama in the republican primary stems from how republicans are so desperate to shop for someone who actually inspires them, and would have picked pretty much any other valid conservative candidate had there been any viable non-Romney candidate that wasn't a joke and/or a walking human disaster.
The field has been primed such that when Obama enters the race, his campaign can bombdrop on the "super-rich, out of touch, called himself middle class" Romney, who really just comes off looking like a plastic robot built from a Make Your Own Cracker-Ass Multimillionaire kit (Now with karate Platitudes™ action!).
I would like to make a guarantee, and will stand by this assessment: the only way that Romney will win in a straight-up election otherwise unhindered by a dramatic unassessed future variable (major crisis, scandal, etc) will be if conservatives utilize citizen's united to outspend Obama's campaigners by an order of magnitudes.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: For me the "let them eat cake moment" was a little publicized statement Ann Romney made during the 2008 primary season. In response to the question of whether they could relate to the financial troubles faced by ordinary people, she said something to the effect that they could because they too had had financial difficulties. When they were in school, there were times when they had to dip into her trust fund to make ends meet.
I wish I could find the exact quote but either my google foo is weak or the faux pas of the wife of a 2008 "also ran" don't get remembered by many.
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I especially appreciated:
quote:And where were the evangelical Republicans whose dread of Mormons now drives the anti-Mitt movement? It's fine for Mormons to take the lead when there's a risk, but apparently it doesn't earn us a seat at the table.
What I especially liked about the sentence you quoted here was that it immediately followed this:
quote:For instance, why were Mormons the main scapegoats of the Left for the passage of the marriage-protection initiative in California? The decisive bloc of votes for the proposition came from blacks and Hispanics -- but Democrats didn't dare punish them for their morally conservative position on family life, because without blacks and Hispanics the Democratic party couldn't get any electoral votes anywhere.
Why were Mormons the main "scapegoats" of the Left for the passage of the marriage-protection initiative in California? Could it be because, as Card put it, they "took the lead" on it?
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quote:I've thought he was economically out of touch for a long time, although the "I'll bet you $10k" was his "Let them eat cake" moment for me. I just don't think this particular excerpt is a great example of it.
Oh, I don't think it's a great example either. His actual words were not nearly as 'eff the poor' as the sound bite portrays, of course. I just think it's a nod in the out-of-touch tone of Romney.
A much larger indicator of how out of touch he is, for me, is apparently how overwhelmingly large America's middle class is.
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Card's whining about conservative Republican treachery vs Mormons demands a re-read of the fable about the frog and the scorpion. (Though I actually think that particular yarn has featured many animals.)
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Heh. Yeah, Jake, when did Newt get so mean?Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I've always heard it as the fox and the scorpion, but I think you hit the nail on the head with the reference.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: The ugly part is going to be if Obama goes after Romney for being a Mormon, and Romney trots out the birther Muslim Rev. Wright etc crap from four years ago. If we go that route, yes, it'll be nasty and highly magnified by the money.
You are not looking far enough down the rabbit hole of citizen's united.
It will be "the ugly part is going to be if the clusters of wholly unaffiliated PAC's representing only themselves of course go after mormonism birther muslim rev. wright crap" which of course the candidates can assure everyone is not their doing, their hands are clean of course
That said.
Obama's odds on Intrade appear ... appropriate, "optimistically," for how I can best anticipate the election to go. The whole circus-level drama in the republican primary stems from how republicans are so desperate to shop for someone who actually inspires them, and would have picked pretty much any other valid conservative candidate had there been any viable non-Romney candidate that wasn't a joke and/or a walking human disaster.
The field has been primed such that when Obama enters the race, his campaign can bombdrop on the "super-rich, out of touch, called himself middle class" Romney, who really just comes off looking like a plastic robot built from a Make Your Own Cracker-Ass Multimillionaire kit (Now with karate Platitudes™ action!).
I would like to make a guarantee, and will stand by this assessment: the only way that Romney will win in a straight-up election otherwise unhindered by a dramatic unassessed future variable (major crisis, scandal, etc) will be if conservatives utilize citizen's united to outspend Obama's campaigners by an order of magnitudes.
I don't think he'll be outspent by that much. I think he'll be outspent, sure, but he's shown an amazing ability beyond anyone's wildest dreams to fundraise huge sums, and that's just his money. Obama will have his PACs as well, though they'll be grossly underfunded by comparison.
Plus, are we going to find that there's a point at which the supersaturation of campaigns with money produces diminishing returns. You can only air ads so many times. Workers can only canvass so many neighborhoods. There are only so many people up for grabs to even have their minds changed. it just seems like at some point the money can be spent but I question how effective it will be.
I also question how well candidates will be able to escape the tagging of SuperPACS. We've already seen a kerfuffle grow out of the GOP primary regarding PACs, with Newt and Mitt going after each other for what their PACs have said, and attempts to brush off the control issue have fallen rather flat if you ask me.
The Warren/Brown race in Massachusetts is getting some attention for the voluntary approach they are taking to campaign finance. That could get interesting.
I agree that the bomb dropping you refer to will happen. I also happen to think it's a perfectly fair criticism. Whether it's a respectable campaign issue or not is up for debate.
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I thought on prop 8, the Mormons kinda weren't invited until it became obvious that without them, prop 8 wasn't going to work. They were like the last to join the coalition and were the figurative straw. That position makes you stand out. Sure the other 500 straws contributed, but the last one, the one that pushed it over is the one to get the blame. Human nature and all that.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: I thought on prop 8, the Mormons kinda weren't invited until it became obvious that without them, prop 8 wasn't going to work. They were like the last to join the coalition and were the figurative straw. That position makes you stand out. Sure the other 500 straws contributed, but the last one, the one that pushed it over is the one to get the blame. Human nature and all that.
Also worth mentioning: OSC's comments about the high turnout of black voters (likely due to Obama's candidacy) having the side effect of tipping the scales for Prop 8 are supported by the facts.
Demographically speaking, black voters were more likely to support Prop 8, and black turnout was at an all-time high in 2008.
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quote:I don't think he'll be outspent by that much.
Heh. And, moving forward with logical thrust of my statements, I'm saying that, by extension, intrade doesn't think so either :>
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: The ugly part is going to be if Obama goes after Romney for being a Mormon, and Romney trots out the birther Muslim Rev. Wright etc crap from four years ago. If we go that route, yes, it'll be nasty and highly magnified by the money.
You are not looking far enough down the rabbit hole of citizen's united.
It will be "the ugly part is going to be if the clusters of wholly unaffiliated PAC's representing only themselves of course go after mormonism birther muslim rev. wright crap" which of course the candidates can assure everyone is not their doing, their hands are clean of course
That said.
Obama's odds on Intrade appear ... appropriate, "optimistically," for how I can best anticipate the election to go. The whole circus-level drama in the republican primary stems from how republicans are so desperate to shop for someone who actually inspires them, and would have picked pretty much any other valid conservative candidate had there been any viable non-Romney candidate that wasn't a joke and/or a walking human disaster.
The field has been primed such that when Obama enters the race, his campaign can bombdrop on the "super-rich, out of touch, called himself middle class" Romney, who really just comes off looking like a plastic robot built from a Make Your Own Cracker-Ass Multimillionaire kit (Now with karate Platitudes™ action!).
I would like to make a guarantee, and will stand by this assessment: the only way that Romney will win in a straight-up election otherwise unhindered by a dramatic unassessed future variable (major crisis, scandal, etc) will be if conservatives utilize citizen's united to outspend Obama's campaigners by an order of magnitudes.
I don't think he'll be outspent by that much. I think he'll be outspent, sure, but he's shown an amazing ability beyond anyone's wildest dreams to fundraise huge sums, and that's just his money. Obama will have his PACs as well, though they'll be grossly underfunded by comparison.
Plus, are we going to find that there's a point at which the supersaturation of campaigns with money produces diminishing returns. You can only air ads so many times. Workers can only canvass so many neighborhoods. There are only so many people up for grabs to even have their minds changed. it just seems like at some point the money can be spent but I question how effective it will be.
I also question how well candidates will be able to escape the tagging of SuperPACS. We've already seen a kerfuffle grow out of the GOP primary regarding PACs, with Newt and Mitt going after each other for what their PACs have said, and attempts to brush off the control issue have fallen rather flat if you ask me.
The Warren/Brown race in Massachusetts is getting some attention for the voluntary approach they are taking to campaign finance. That could get interesting.
I agree that the bomb dropping you refer to will happen. I also happen to think it's a perfectly fair criticism. Whether it's a respectable campaign issue or not is up for debate.
Lyrhawn: Are Super-Pacs allowed to offer financial incentives for people who vote for their candidate, such as raffles or just flat out, vote for this candidate and get $5?
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: I thought on prop 8, the Mormons kinda weren't invited until it became obvious that without them, prop 8 wasn't going to work. They were like the last to join the coalition and were the figurative straw. That position makes you stand out. Sure the other 500 straws contributed, but the last one, the one that pushed it over is the one to get the blame. Human nature and all that.
More than that, re: the blacks — to the critics analyzing the fault that lies behind prop 8's passage, an organized institution operating with purpose represents much more a faultable organization in regards to the effort, and could be targeted as an institution engaging purposefully against gay marriage — in a way you can't do with blacks as an ethnic group.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: I thought on prop 8, the Mormons kinda weren't invited until it became obvious that without them, prop 8 wasn't going to work. They were like the last to join the coalition and were the figurative straw. That position makes you stand out. Sure the other 500 straws contributed, but the last one, the one that pushed it over is the one to get the blame. Human nature and all that.
More than that, re: the blacks — to the critics analyzing the fault that lies behind prop 8's passage, an organized institution operating with purpose represents much more a faultable organization in regards to the effort, and could be targeted as an institution engaging purposefully against gay marriage — in a way you can't do with blacks as an ethnic group.
Oh, absolutely!
I think you hit the nail on the head here.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: The ugly part is going to be if Obama goes after Romney for being a Mormon, and Romney trots out the birther Muslim Rev. Wright etc crap from four years ago. If we go that route, yes, it'll be nasty and highly magnified by the money.
You are not looking far enough down the rabbit hole of citizen's united.
It will be "the ugly part is going to be if the clusters of wholly unaffiliated PAC's representing only themselves of course go after mormonism birther muslim rev. wright crap" which of course the candidates can assure everyone is not their doing, their hands are clean of course
That said.
Obama's odds on Intrade appear ... appropriate, "optimistically," for how I can best anticipate the election to go. The whole circus-level drama in the republican primary stems from how republicans are so desperate to shop for someone who actually inspires them, and would have picked pretty much any other valid conservative candidate had there been any viable non-Romney candidate that wasn't a joke and/or a walking human disaster.
The field has been primed such that when Obama enters the race, his campaign can bombdrop on the "super-rich, out of touch, called himself middle class" Romney, who really just comes off looking like a plastic robot built from a Make Your Own Cracker-Ass Multimillionaire kit (Now with karate Platitudes™ action!).
I would like to make a guarantee, and will stand by this assessment: the only way that Romney will win in a straight-up election otherwise unhindered by a dramatic unassessed future variable (major crisis, scandal, etc) will be if conservatives utilize citizen's united to outspend Obama's campaigners by an order of magnitudes.
I don't think he'll be outspent by that much. I think he'll be outspent, sure, but he's shown an amazing ability beyond anyone's wildest dreams to fundraise huge sums, and that's just his money. Obama will have his PACs as well, though they'll be grossly underfunded by comparison.
Plus, are we going to find that there's a point at which the supersaturation of campaigns with money produces diminishing returns. You can only air ads so many times. Workers can only canvass so many neighborhoods. There are only so many people up for grabs to even have their minds changed. it just seems like at some point the money can be spent but I question how effective it will be.
I also question how well candidates will be able to escape the tagging of SuperPACS. We've already seen a kerfuffle grow out of the GOP primary regarding PACs, with Newt and Mitt going after each other for what their PACs have said, and attempts to brush off the control issue have fallen rather flat if you ask me.
The Warren/Brown race in Massachusetts is getting some attention for the voluntary approach they are taking to campaign finance. That could get interesting.
I agree that the bomb dropping you refer to will happen. I also happen to think it's a perfectly fair criticism. Whether it's a respectable campaign issue or not is up for debate.
Lyrhawn: Are Super-Pacs allowed to offer financial incentives for people who vote for their candidate, such as raffles or just flat out, vote for this candidate and get $5?
Is this a serious question?
No. No they can't.
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They could in the good old days. Blatant bribery or votes for favors is a tried and true part of American democracy historically.
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Blackblade, since there isn't any way to tell which way a person voted, cash incentives for votes are not very practical. One can, however, offer giveaways at rallies or perks for volunteers in order to influence a voter.
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Dan: I wasn't thinking about Citizen's United at all when I asked my question. I'm just trying to think legally what's to stop me from telling my neighbor, "Here's a $10 voucher for Chili's, go out and vote for this person." Or if you come to my rally we will be giving away $10,000 to one patriot. Now that we are close to the polling station and it's election day, go out and vote for X!
Kate: I realize it's impractical. I'm just thinking about what might happen if you have lots of money coming in, but advertising isn't enough.
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It's not at all impractical. It worked for decades in the past. After 1840 began the great period of American participation. For a few decades, Americans turned out to vote in huge numbers consistently for every election, with turnout rates that would crash and never again rise as high in the 20th century. It happened in large part because of the social aspect of voting back then. Political parties would basically either throw huge parties and then give you a ballot and direct you to the polling place, or they'd actually hold the precinct in a bar and give away free drinks. It's no wonder turnout was so high.
And then there's the machine politics of the big cities. In the back half of the 19th century, city bosses would outright buy you off, give you of favors, like sneaking a family member through customs, or looking the other way on something, or getting a brother out of jail, to keep a tight-fisted control over the city. Even the Pendleton Act and like measures at Civil Service Reform didn't do much to root out the effects of political patronage (though it helped). This system was in place and highly effective for decades, but it waned with the rise of consumerism and more solid political identification and affiliation.
A modern version of it would probably work just fine...though the media is a lot better at vilifying these things...when it chooses to.
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All I am saying is that there (technically) is no way to know if a voter kept their end of the bargain. They could take your bribe and still vote however they wanted to vote.
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Generally the type of people you're going to draw out with that sort of activity are people too apathetic or lazy to vote anyway. Bribery in this context is all about turnout.
Thus, most of them will have no ideological basis for taking your bribe and turning on you. They'll probably go along with it.
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I'm pretty sure businesses have been sanctioned for offering discounts/freebies to people wearing "I voted" stickers.
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Your point is well taken, Kate. In order for the bribery to be effective, you would still need to persuade the person that voting for you is actually a good idea.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Your point is well taken, Kate. In order for the bribery to be effective, you would still need to persuade the person that voting for you is actually a good idea.
Well you could target your bribes toward people likely to vote in a way that you'd favor. Offering $5 to people in poor inner-city neighborhoods would likely net you votes for the Democratic candidate.
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That would be an effective way to do it, I agree Matt.
Another way could be to target youth voters. You could utilize stuff kids appreciate, like rock stars or something, to energize them into voting. You wouldn't need to have any party affiliation with the push, because the demographic you're targeting skews heavily one way anyway.
That would be pretty clever.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: ... and could be targeted as an institution engaging purposefully against gay marriage — in a way you can't do with blacks as an ethnic group.
Additionally, it turned out that when you crunch the numbers, any differences between ethnic groups unfortunately vanish when you control for religiosity.
In other words, if you're trying to target a particular institution behind the increased latino/black tendency to vote in support of the proposition, you're just going to end back at Christianity which was already under heavy criticism anyway.
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Isnt anyone going to make the joke/observation that we already bribe at least one group of voters based on demographics-seniors whom we've spent decades now swearing we'll never ever ever^23 lower benefits, as well as never raising taxes?
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Who was it that said that famous line about politicians learning they can bribe people with their own money? It's incredibly true.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: That would be an effective way to do it, I agree Matt.
Another way could be to target youth voters. You could utilize stuff kids appreciate, like rock stars or something, to energize them into voting. You wouldn't need to have any party affiliation with the push, because the demographic you're targeting skews heavily one way anyway.
That would be pretty clever.
Already done several times over. You'd think it'd be more of a Democratic thing too, but there are several music stars out there that throw concerts for GOP candidates. They hit fairs and college campuses with free concerts in tandem with politicians. I'm not sure how much you can directly correlate that to voting because there's a much less direct connection.
In olden times, the concert would be ON election day, so you'd literally vote right at the concert. These days, it'd probably be over the summer at a rally or something, and an 18 year old simply isn't going to carry over his gratitude, such as it is, months to the election, if that's even enough to get him off his butt anyway. Now, hold the concert right next door to the polling place and you're really on to something. Getting kids out of their chairs in the first place is like 90% of the battle. But again, I think a lot of them are predisposed towards voting one way, so you have to be careful who you pick on demographically, and WHERE. There are plenty of young Republicans where I live now.
By and large concerts are used right now to target groups of younger people who already support a certain candidate to energize them and increase turnout.
Turnout, turnout, turnout. Getting them to the polls is probably more important than getting them to agree with you in the modern era.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Who was it that said that famous line about politicians learning they can bribe people with their own money? It's incredibly true.
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: That would be an effective way to do it, I agree Matt.
Another way could be to target youth voters. You could utilize stuff kids appreciate, like rock stars or something, to energize them into voting. You wouldn't need to have any party affiliation with the push, because the demographic you're targeting skews heavily one way anyway.
That would be pretty clever.
Already done several times over. You'd think it'd be more of a Democratic thing too, but there are several music stars out there that throw concerts for GOP candidates. They hit fairs and college campuses with free concerts in tandem with politicians. I'm not sure how much you can directly correlate that to voting because there's a much less direct connection.
In olden times, the concert would be ON election day, so you'd literally vote right at the concert. These days, it'd probably be over the summer at a rally or something, and an 18 year old simply isn't going to carry over his gratitude, such as it is, months to the election, if that's even enough to get him off his butt anyway. Now, hold the concert right next door to the polling place and you're really on to something. Getting kids out of their chairs in the first place is like 90% of the battle. But again, I think a lot of them are predisposed towards voting one way, so you have to be careful who you pick on demographically, and WHERE. There are plenty of young Republicans where I live now.
By and large concerts are used right now to target groups of younger people who already support a certain candidate to energize them and increase turnout.
Turnout, turnout, turnout. Getting them to the polls is probably more important than getting them to agree with you in the modern era.
Yeah I was being a smart-ass and referring to the "Rock the Vote" movement of the 90s.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Isnt anyone going to make the joke/observation that we already bribe at least one group of voters based on demographics-seniors whom we've spent decades now swearing we'll never ever ever^23 lower benefits, as well as never raising taxes?
Oh absolutely!
Let's be honest, though, by this metric government bribes all kinds of demographics. If a party is in the business of giving you more money (or taking less of your money) then that provides an obvious incentive to vote for them. That's why poor people skew left and small business owners skew right.
I mean, there are plenty of people who don't vote their pocketbook due to their principles, but there's no point in pretending it's not a common phenomenon.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: ... and could be targeted as an institution engaging purposefully against gay marriage — in a way you can't do with blacks as an ethnic group.
Additionally, it turned out that when you crunch the numbers, any differences between ethnic groups unfortunately vanish when you control for religiosity.
In other words, if you're trying to target a particular institution behind the increased latino/black tendency to vote in support of the proposition, you're just going to end back at Christianity which was already under heavy criticism anyway.
WELL then, there you go!
Do you have anything handy that showed this to be the case?
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: The ugly part is going to be if Obama goes after Romney for being a Mormon, and Romney trots out the birther Muslim Rev. Wright etc crap from four years ago. If we go that route, yes, it'll be nasty and highly magnified by the money.
That isn't what I was thinking of and it would seem very out of character if either candidate went down that line. Of course, under current laws PACs could go that route even if the candidates object, but that isn't really what I expected either.
Republicans are anything but excited about Romney and Democrats are pretty luke warm on Obama these days. That will make it hard for either candidate to get their base to turn out to vote.
If you can't get your base to be enthusiastic about your candidacy, the obvious alternative is to motivate them with fear of your opponent. So what I'm predicting is that both parties are going to tie themselves up in knots trying to make there opponent look like a dangerous extremist. Obama will be portrayed as a socialist anti-American who is incompetent and naive about everything from the economy to terrorism. Romney will be portrayed as a corporate elitist who will eliminate social security, medicare, and student grants and loans, rather than raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
If Romney's religion becomes an issue after the primary season ends, it's most likely to be with accusations that Mormon's have too much in common with the conservative Christian groups who want to weaken the separation of church and state. The conservative Christians who think Mormonism is a dangerous cult aren't going to work for Obama's re-election so unless some one from that camp decides to run as an independent, that argument will fade into obscurity once Romney's clinched the nomination.
I can't imagine the birther issue ever gaining momentum beyond the wight wing wackos but it is a fringe on the edge of a more main stream fear that Obama isn't a "real" American.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Do you have anything handy that showed this to be the case?
Something like this:
quote: Among Californians who attend worship at least weekly, support for Proposition 8 was nearly uniform across all racial and ethnic groups. Among those who attend worship less than weekly, majorities of every racial and ethnic group voted “no” on Proposition 8. The differences that remain among groups are not statistically significant at the 95% level of confidence.
posted
assuming a fair shot for both candidates, the easy popular attitude manipulation to work americans with (and thus the one you will see the most of) for the democrats is to continually depress conservatives and ensure they not think of Romney as 'one of their own.' — something that can be relentlessly done over his plasticine appearances and the fact that he has adopted platitudes and promises for the conservative base just for this election, which fly profoundly counter to the policies he governed with — which makes it all seem reliably like nakedly opportunistic political shapeshifting to win the primary, as opposed to being personally ideologically aligned with conservatives.
Probably because, well, you know, it's nakedly opportunistic political shapeshifting to win the primary. Sorry, Mitt.
quote:I can't imagine the birther issue ever gaining momentum beyond the wight wing wackos but it is a fringe on the edge of a more main stream fear that Obama isn't a "real" American.
It isn't even really a fringe. It is actually still the majority. The number of conservatives who have gone ahead and plum figured out that Obama was born in the united states is, afaik from the last polls I looked at, still a minority.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Probably because, well, you know, it's nakedly opportunistic political shapeshifting to win the primary. Sorry, Mitt. [Frown]
His flip flopping actually makes it possible for opponents to attack him from both sides. I can see the attack ads now. Complete with scary music, distorted images and strip quotes.
quote:Which Mitt Romney do you believe? The scary liberal Romney who promoted socialized medicine and abortion in MA or the evil ultra-conservative heartless Romney who made his millions firing people. If you aren't scared of Romney yet, you will be.
--- This message brought to you by NOTOBAMA: real citizens united against cultish flip flopping.
[ February 03, 2012, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: It isn't even really a fringe. It is actually still the majority. The number of conservatives who have gone ahead and plum figured out that Obama was born in the united states is, afaik from the last polls I looked at, still a minority.
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This poll breaks it down demographically. The numbers for Republicans are quite different with a bare majority (52%) of Republicans thinking it certain or probably that the President was born in the US.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: It isn't even really a fringe. It is actually still the majority. The number of conservatives who have gone ahead and plum figured out that Obama was born in the united states is, afaik from the last polls I looked at, still a minority.
Is there a poll that is more recent than this one?
He might be referring to this poll from a year ago, of likely Republican Primary voters, which claims 51% of respondents thought Obama was born outside the US.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: This poll breaks it down demographically. The numbers for Republicans are quite different with a bare majority (52%) of Republicans thinking it certain or probably that the President was born in the US.
Kate, That poll was done before April 27th, 2011 when Obama released his long form birth certificate. The one I linked was done in May 2011 and shows a significant decrease in the percent of Americans who believe Obama was born outside the US. That poll doesn't break it down by party. Does anyone know of any polls that break this down by party that were done after 27 April 2011.
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