SC Gov Mark Sanford

[The Duke]

I like Sanford on some level from what I know.  He's a fine Governor and any state would be lucky to have him.

But I will not be supporting him in the primary, and and I don't believe he will win that primary.

He is a Governor and has no foreign policy experience.  Run down the GOP nominees in the Cold War, a similar environment to the war on terror:

1948-Thomas Dewey, Governor
1952-Dwight Eisenhower, former General
1956-Dwight eisenhower, incumbent President
1960-Richard Nixon, incumbent VP
1964-Barry Goldwater, Senator
1968-Richard Nixon, former VP
1972-Richard Nixon, incumbent President
1976-Gerald Ford, incumbentn President
1980-Ronald Reagan, Governor
1984-Ronald Reagan, incumbent President
1988-George Bush, incumbent VP

Only Dewey and Reagan came without direct foreign affairs experience.  Of those, Dewey had demonstrated his foreign affairs and campaigning skills in 1944 against impossible odds.  Reagan had shown his foreign affairs experience in the 1976 primary, and spent the four years after that ceaselessly studying foreign policy issues so he could be a credible alternative to his rivals in 1980.

The GOP will not nominate a candidate who has no foreign policy experience, this means a Senator will almost certainly get the nomination.  Names like Frist, Santorum, Coleman, Hutchison, and McCain are ones we should look at.  I believe Rice will not run, as she has not once expressed any interest in doing so.

[The Duke]

Um yeah, Ferraro gave Mondale such a huge boost among Italian Catholics, right? Kerry was an Irish Catholic.

This is why Super is right and you are wrong.  Going to mass does not make you Catholic, living a life based on Church teaching does.  Driving your wife to the brink of suicide, divorcing her and marrying your colleague's rich widow, backing abortion on demand, and raising a daughter who wears a see trough dress to the Cannes film festival is not Catholic.  Kerry is a Catholic in name only.  Ferraro is also a Catholic in name only.  They are elite northeastern liberals who subscribe to a cocktail party ideology and use their religion for show.  Real Catholics sense this, and don't consider these people to be Catholic.

[The Duke]

Um yeah, Ferraro gave Mondale such a huge boost among Italian Catholics, right? Kerry was an Irish Catholic.

This is why Super is right and you are wrong.  Going to mass does not make you Catholic, living a life based on Church teaching does.  Driving your wife to the brink of suicide, divorcing her and marrying your colleague's rich widow, backing abortion on demand, and raising a daughter who wears a see trough dress to the Cannes film festival is not Catholic.  Kerry is a Catholic in name only.  Ferraro is also a Catholic in name only.  They are elite northeastern liberals who subscribe to a cocktail party ideology and use their religion for show.  Real Catholics sense this, and don't consider these people to be Catholic.

so what the hell does this have to do with ethnicity then? There's plenty of Irish and Italian Catholic folks who have opebo-esque lifestyles (hell, look at Flyers), and I bet there are plenty of German Catholics here who despite supposedly being closer to other whites than the people listed above who are Opus Dei nutcases.

Flyers only wishes he had that lifestyle.  He is also not a real Catholic, as he does not follow Catholicism.

Ethnicity doesn't have to be an objective standard in this context, only subjective.  It is more a description of what people identify with than what their actual heritage is.  The Catholic vote in this case is a reference to people who actually practice Catholicism, not just those who descend from Catholic families.

[The Duke]

Um yeah, Ferraro gave Mondale such a huge boost among Italian Catholics, right? Kerry was an Irish Catholic.

This is why Super is right and you are wrong.  Going to mass does not make you Catholic, living a life based on Church teaching does.  Driving your wife to the brink of suicide, divorcing her and marrying your colleague's rich widow, backing abortion on demand, and raising a daughter who wears a see trough dress to the Cannes film festival is not Catholic.  Kerry is a Catholic in name only.  Ferraro is also a Catholic in name only.  They are elite northeastern liberals who subscribe to a cocktail party ideology and use their religion for show.  Real Catholics sense this, and don't consider these people to be Catholic.

so what the hell does this have to do with ethnicity then? There's plenty of Irish and Italian Catholic folks who have opebo-esque lifestyles (hell, look at Flyers), and I bet there are plenty of German Catholics here who despite supposedly being closer to other whites than the people listed above who are Opus Dei nutcases.

Flyers only wishes he had that lifestyle.  He is also not a real Catholic, as he does not follow Catholicism.

Ethnicity doesn't have to be an objective standard in this context, only subjective.  It is more a description of what people identify with than what their actual heritage is.  The Catholic vote in this case is a reference to people who actually practice Catholicism, not just those who descend from Catholic families.

Like every Republican Catholic follows the verse "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".

Is that an instruction I'm supposed to follow?

Its great not to be Christian, because I don't have to pay attention to stupid sh**t like this.

[The Duke]

I can't believe that Supersoulty is being pilloried by so many people when what he's saying has an obvious logic to it.  Soulty's argumentn is simply that the GOP must run a big tent candidate to win in a changing country, and one way to do that is to run a woman/Catholic/minority/northerner for ethnic, religious, gender, and regional appeal.  His reason is that the 2000 and 2004 victories were shadows of what a big tent GOP could accomplish.  I think he's right to some extent, and I don't think Sanford brings us that appeal.  He's a southern, male, white, Protestant with a basic Bushesque conservative philosophy that will never appeal to California or other such Democrat states.

His claim that Catholics are a minority should be accepted, because its not even debatable.  There are fewer Catholics than Protestants, and traditionally they have not been the group in power in America.

AuH20,

Don't talk about how Sanford can take Michigan and Pennsylvania, since you repeatedly predicted the Bush would take 350 EVs or so.  And don't talk about how well Smith did in 1928 in the south.  Compare his map to Davis's map in 1924, and you'll see that you have no clue what you're talking about.  There was a major drop off from 24 to 28.

WalterMitty,

Don't resort to crappy insults.  Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they're bigoted against some group.  Maybe he just idsagrees and is not an anti-Southern bigot.

[The Duke]

Well, I guess Smith only got 92% in South Carolina. Guess there was good Catholic turnout there. ha.

This "big tent" stuff is hilarious. Guess what, your goal is to get MORE THAN THE OTHER SIDE. Too big of a tent collapses.

The country is only "changing" insofar as we let millions of Mexicans enter it every year. But they aren't as culturally inclined towards victimology, so Democrats hold more limited appeal to them and win a majority of their votes mainly because of economic reasons (i.e. the majority are in lower income brackets).

The idea we "need" California is quite simply laughable, as is the idea we "need" a black woman in charge for the party to survive. As far as my Bush predictions, they were good enough to make 2 grand, which I assume is more than you made off the election-- as the election drew nearer, by the way, my predictions were very accurate, it was merely early ones that did not take a disastrous first debate performance into account.

I mean, some people here maybe don't understand democracy. Unlike North Korea, we don't have to pretend there is 100% consensus. There isn't. And guess what? Conservatives want to actually implement CONSERVATIVE policies. Imagine that fordy. And here you thought the GOP was purely in a game with Democrats to win elections, where ideology doesn't matter at all.

I'm glad these people aren't coaches. 'Hey team, yeah technically our goal is to win, but if we don't win by 10 that isn't good enough, because the game is changing, uh, somehow.' 'Oh, and we can't win by using the same gameplan. Like, we need to use the other's sides plan, because otherwise, we aren't being fair.'

These people should go over to the "emerging Democratic majority" site, where idiots keep saying Democrats have to win because we imported so many Mexicans and because women hate Republicans because of abortion. Oddly, Democrats have been in retreat at all levels since 1994, but I guess that majority will emerge eventually. Just keep people poor and import another 30 million Mexicans. So Republicans should really not run anyone except female minorities-- from the West coast or Northeast-- because otherwise they might keep winning elections by relying on... UGH.. the majority vote. I hate majorities actually, they're terrible politically...

My election prediction was better than your.  Only one person beat me, I think it was Tredrick, when we put our final prediction up.  I got only one state wrong, and it was a state that I went out on a limb on (Hawaii).

The actual percentages Smith got in SC is irrelevant.  How he fared relative to other Democratic candidates of that era is relevant.  He fared significantly worse in the South than other Democrat did, in part because he was Catholic.

Too big a tent collapses, eh?  Yeah I'd really hate to have all those darkies and beaners in my tent.  What the hell is wrong with you?

If you think the Bush 51% coalition was created to get just enough votes to be able to implement conservative polices, you're crazy.  The Bush coalition is a failed attempt by Karl Rove to build the big tent Soulty and I want.  He's just not very good at it.  Its remarkable how self contradictory you are today.  You claim the country is only changing because of too much immigration, yet the very 51% coalition you idolize is in the middle of creating an amnesty program that goes softer on immigration than anything Clinton or Carter would have dared!  The 51% coalition isn't conservatism by design, its a big tent program that doesn't work.

For someone who likes to pretend to be a great debate champion, you sure suck at it.  After all, one of the first things debaters learn is not to resort to fallacies like straw men.

You say that I said we "need" California, putting quote marks around California as if those had been my words.  here's what I actually said:

He's (Sanford) a southern, male, white, Protestant with a basic Bushesque conservative philosophy that will never appeal to California or other such Democrat states.

So I guess I didn't say anything like what you represented as my position.  Its a straw man!

Here's another.  You claimed I said we need to only nominate women and minorities and only from the north and pacific.  I never said that, I simply said that hey, once in a while, a WASPy motherer might have to wait on the sidelines while a woman or minority gets the nod, or a southerner might have to wait on the sidelines while someone from the Pacific gets the nod.

By the way, imagine if southerners Harold Baker or George Bush had been on the top of ticket in 1980 instead of Pacific Coaster Ronald Reagan.  Why, we'd never have had to sit through those liberal tax cuts and that lefty do gooder dismantling the USSR.  He even went to a Communiist Party meeting and voted for FDR!  The whole Pacific Coast just sounds like Moscow with folks like that.

Yeah, you got served today.  Served with a side of fries bitch.

[The Duke]

By the late 30's the US economy was once again beginning to flounder, even though we were employing millions through the WPA and the CCC.  Don't kid yourself.  World War II is what ENDED the Great Depression.

About 15 million jobs were created under the FDR adminstration from 1933-1941 (before Pearl Harbor). That was an increase of about 50%.

The unemployment rate went from 25% to 17%, an 8% drop, under the New Deal.  It went from 17% to 9%, another 8% drop, in just two years once war industry revved up.

[The Duke]

By the late 30's the US economy was once again beginning to flounder, even though we were employing millions through the WPA and the CCC.  Don't kid yourself.  World War II is what ENDED the Great Depression.

About 15 million jobs were created under the FDR adminstration from 1933-1941 (before Pearl Harbor). That was an increase of about 50%.

The unemployment rate went from 25% to 17%, an 8% drop, under the New Deal.  It went from 17% to 9%, another 8% drop, in just two years once war industry revved up.

Unemployment only counts people who both
1. HAD a job
2. Are ACTIVELY looking for a job

It's an overrated statistic.

You're mom is an overrated statistic.

[The Duke]

Its not original, but its still funny.

[The Duke]

BRTD,

Quotas still exist.  They are de facto quotas, not de jure quotas.  Simply calibrate the preference to achieve a predetermined outcome, which is exactly what almost all Universities have done.