Voting 2008...

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Imp-Chan
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Re: Voting 2008...

Post by Imp-Chan »

I cannot for one second believe he threw the race. The sheer amount of money involved would make that an impossibility... not to mention that if such a move were ever revealed or even sufficiently convincingly implied as deliberate, it would destroy his career, bankrupt him, and quite possibly see him killed or at the very least jailed for committing fraud upon the American people.

That said, he was clearly deranged when he accepted That Woman as his running mate, and I suspect substantial amounts of campaign money and underlying desperation were involved in the decision, not just to accept her but to shift the entire campaign in that direction. Palin was, indeed, a death knell for that campaign. I don't think I've EVER seen an individual in politics become such an effective lightening rod for loathing so fast. The sad thing is she still thinks she's got a future in politics after this.

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Re: Voting 2008...

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With McCain, I apply the old rule "never attribute to malice that which can be readily explained by stupidity." He was bitter and desperate and made really bad judgment calls every week of his campaign. Palin was just the worst of them.

McCain's concession speech was the most coherent statement I've heard him make in a year or more. All the stress had drained out of him. He actually seemed rested.
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Re: Voting 2008...

Post by Sareth »

Allow a third party candidate supporter who felt Obama and McCain point out that, int th portion of of the nation I am in, Palin was actually views as a positive on the ballot. It was believed that she was a party maverick, coming int from outside of the system (and thus not corrupted by it) who would have the strength to stand up against the usual who haw and actually change things. I know people who voted McCain SPECIFICALLY hoping he'd have a heart attack right after he was sworn in.

Me, personally, I voted third party as I do not believe either candidate will fix anything. After all, they are, and have long been, members of the government that made this hellacious mess in the first place, why should I expect the tiger to change its stripes?
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Boss Out of Town
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Re: Voting 2008...

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A worthy thought, but a lot more people were for her because of her religious and political extremism, and many more people voted against her for the same reasons, along with being alarmed by her incoherent thoughts and bone-ignorance on important things like geography and law.

As a topper, a Fox News report last night revealed another Palinism last night. She had to be corrected by staffers because she seemed to believe that Africa was a country rather than a continent. I suspect that the problem was not that she didn't understand that distinction, she just refused to think it important.

As near as I can tell, Palin wasn't a "maverick" of any kind. Just a corrupt small-town bigot with pretensions.
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Re: Voting 2008...

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I actually bothered follow up on some of the smaller news reports about Pallin, not sure how 100% accurate they were. but here Alaskan political path is strewn with bus thrown politicians. I was as much against her because her behavior was the polar opposite of what she claimed to be. Read up on her antics when she first started her climb and ran for mayor of her hole-in-oblivion town. *shudder*
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Re: Voting 2008...

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Boss Out of Town wrote:A worthy thought, but a lot more people were for her because of her religious and political extremism, and many more people voted against her for the same reasons, along with being alarmed by her incoherent thoughts and bone-ignorance on important things like geography and law.
I can't say that I voted "against her," having been planning to vote for the Obama ticket all along unless he did something thoroughly stupid or the muckrakers turned up something seriously negative about him (an illegal-alien aunt didn't come close to qualifying). However, adding Palin to the McCain ticket pretty well sealed the deal -- but not because of Palin's own views, rather because of what the choice said about the Republican party.

To me that nomination screamed loud and clear that the Republicans were far more interested in winning the election than they were in governing responsibly once they won it. In my view of government (which I believe to be the constitutionally mandated one), a vice president should be someone who can do three things: preside over the Senate (constitutional requirement, and not that hard to do), be the president's man (or woman) on the spot for special chores, and step in and govern effectively if the president is incapacitated. Only the third of these involves any official wielding of power, and even with the elderly McCain as president, the odds were against it being needed this term if the Republicans had won. Her likely inability to discharge that function competently (and I'm not sure about the other two) was a serious black mark in my eyes, but she wouldn't have been the only vice presidential candidate in recent history to bear it.

But what on earth prompted the Republicans to nominate a person with that black mark? It's not like there weren't Republican possibilities out there who had the necessary administrative skills to fill in as VP; there were even female Republicans with those skills (Heather Wilson and Christine Todd Whitman, to name two) who would have been available to be tapped if the demographics "required" a groundbreaking Republican woman. That they weren't tells me that the party's interest was purely in playing to the crowd, with no thought given to what the McCain-Palin administration would actually have been like. Fortunately, it didn't work, but my anger (which was reflected in the rest of the ballot that I filled out) was much more directed at the Republican kingmakers than at this particular candidate for vice-king. If they were serious about governance, they'd have picked someone else, and I don't want a party of clowns running this country.
Imp-Chan wrote: That said, he was clearly deranged when he accepted That Woman as his running mate, and I suspect substantial amounts of campaign money and underlying desperation were involved in the decision, not just to accept her but to shift the entire campaign in that direction. Palin was, indeed, a death knell for that campaign. I don't think I've EVER seen an individual in politics become such an effective lightening rod for loathing so fast.
Impy, you've just demonstrated that you're younger than I am. You were still 15 years in the future when Spiro T. Agnew was elected...
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Boss Out of Town
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Re: Voting 2008...

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So Wassilia really is the "meth lab capital of Alaska?" I can believe it. Not to mention the sexual assault rate three times the national average for small towns.

When the wife and I went to Alaska last year, we rented a small car to get around. I pointed out to her that, as big as Alaska was, there were only four highways in the entire state and we could get anywhere we could afford to visit with only a few hours driving time. It's a gorgeous place, with friendly people, and not much going for it besides the scenary.

Alaska only has one city (Anchorage) one good-sized town (Fairbanks) and a dozen or so small towns that would be large enough to appear on a road map in a state like Illinois. As near as I could tell, they have no more "rural" farming country in the entire state then in a small Iowa country. The rest is wilderness. Their politicians are most famous for picking the pockets of of the lower 48's taxpayers to build an infrastructure they cannot afford to create for themselves. If it weren't for the extraction industries and military bases, Alaska would be a net loss to the US economy.

I appreciate the great efforts Alaskans are making to keep up with the rest of the country, but they aren't in any position to serve as a good example to the rest of us on how to run governments.
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zanntos
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Re: Voting 2008...

Post by zanntos »

Ahhh Alaska, DC with statehood, get convicted and your people STILL want you to represent them. *cough* Stevens *cough* Berry *cough*
At least there are rumblings of the Senate barring/removing Stevens if he actually does win since it's so close.
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Re: Voting 2008...

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zanntos wrote:Ahhh Alaska, DC with statehood, get convicted and your people STILL want you to represent them. *cough* Stevens *cough* Berry *cough*
At least there are rumblings of the Senate barring/removing Stevens if he actually does win since it's so close.
Further proof of just how insane our culture has become. There was a time when even a whiff of a bad scandal (like landing drunk in a fountain with a stripper) would drive a congressman from office. The rest of the Beltway, no matter how crooked they were, had some sense of dignity and propriety.

Nowadays, you have to drag them kicking and screaming out of the office with a sentencing warrant, and it doesn't seem to really bother anyone, except Harry Reid, and that because he's stuck with the job of hall monitor.

It's good to be part of the Old Boys Network in Washington. I don't think I've read a single editorial by our usually pompous presslords demanding that something be done with Stevens. And these were the people who ran Clinton through an impeachment for playing patty-fingers with a consenting adult staffer.

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Re: Voting 2008...

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Imp-Chan wrote:I cannot for one second believe he threw the race. The sheer amount of money involved would make that an impossibility... not to mention that if such a move were ever revealed or even sufficiently convincingly implied as deliberate, it would destroy his career, bankrupt him, and quite possibly see him killed or at the very least jailed for committing fraud upon the American people.

That said, he was clearly deranged when he accepted That Woman as his running mate, and I suspect substantial amounts of campaign money and underlying desperation were involved in the decision, not just to accept her but to shift the entire campaign in that direction. Palin was, indeed, a death knell for that campaign. I don't think I've EVER seen an individual in politics become such an effective lightening rod for loathing so fast. The sad thing is she still thinks she's got a future in politics after this.
I certainly don't think McCain "threw" the race, but you know what? I bet that in his heart of hearts, he's breathing a sigh of relief at not winning it. Even at the beginning of the campaign, I had a hard time viewing the next president's job as a really attractive one, because of all the messes he'll inherit, and it has become less and less attractive with the passage of time. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine McCain personally becoming less, er, "dedicated to winning" as the campaign wore on.

If so, it's not much longer a stretch to see him taking on the Chickie as a running mate in the sense of "taking one for the team." I am reminded of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket of 1984. They didn't have a snowball's chance against a wildly popular Ronald Reagan, but somebody had to be the Democrats' nominee -- and vice-nominee. The groundbreaking step of nominating a woman as Vice Presidential candidate happened at a time when that woman had to know she wasn't going to win. By nominating the Chickie, the Republicans can now say, "hey, we're equal opportunity here" -- even as they throw her under the bus as soon as some conveniently egregious malfeasance comes to the fore. And they'll have saved their real candidates for 2012, when Obama is going to look lousy for not cleaning up 100% of the messes he's been bequeathed.

And no, I don't normally come across as a conspiracy theorist. Just check me out on one thing: watch to see how the Republican hard-core views Sarah Palin over the next two years.
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