Your assistance and opinion is respectfully requested.
Thanks for the thread.
I was suggesting similar discussion and efforts when I previously posted this:
We cannot let the Liberals destroy the Electoral College by seceding—or let ourselves feel so desperate that we are willing to do it ourselves. The Constitutional Republic must be preserved.
The time for the PRESSURE of the POPULAR VOTE is coming soon, far before November and in advance of the RNC Convention.
The Liberals don’t have near the power over the entire process they want—or want us to believe.
And meanwhile, some prayer and fasting isn’t at all a bad idea.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1980506/posts?page=104#104
Ping.
In my opinion, it will be easier to do this if the Witch is the Rat nominee, many more people in the red states fear her than Obamanation. We need to recapture the seats in the House that went Rat in the last couple of elections, especially in the red states that have the most to lose from a DemonRat administration. When the Beest has to fight both the united Republicans who have shed their RINOs, and the powerfully disgruntled moonbat left that is the Obama base, she won't get squat done.
Sometimes you have to go through a Jimmy Carter to get to a Ronald Reagan.
this comment was put on a thread. “McCain sounds an awful lot like Vladimir Putin.”
I felt my following response answers this thread as well....
No, he sounds like a typical Washington insider that wants as many people sucking on the nipple as possible in order to “get things done”.
He sounds like he’s so stupid in matters of history that instead of having an underlying belief in the individual, he thinks GOVERNMENT is the what makes this country great, not the individual.
He gets up reads the Post/Times, watches the Today show and GMA on Tivo and gets a ‘feel’ for what the American public is “worried” about. Then he just has to get face time and will propose legislation to (insert fad of the moment) in order to protect and serve the American interests.
Of course his butt-buddy, Ted Kennedy and the rest of the dems, are just too happy to be “bipartisan” and “get things done”.
Of course raising taxes, failing to secure our borders, getting rid of the department of miseducation, failing to obtain energy independence because of not drilling for oil and believing in pie in the sky pseudo-science are just not really important.
What we want is boxing regulation and wondering if some dumb@ss is injecting himself with steroids in order to play a game and die in his 40’s or 50’s.
I’d rather let the dems run the bike into the ditch and recover than think this asshat run our country with “bipartisanship”.
McCain is going to be the next president, just without my vote.
Hillary is an empty pantsuit that sounds like every man’s nightmare b#tch of a 20 former wive’s distilled into the absolute essence of a screeching, whining, nagging, sarcastic, know-it-all that will cut your testicles off, mount them on the wall to show her friends and drive him till he drinks himself to sleep every night praying for the Lord to kill him in his sleep.
Obama is the shining pinnacle of a liberal education in race politics and self loathing. He has received the love and understanding of a mixed race family that is still “typically white”. So that even his grandmothers love is “just a white woman sucking up for slavery reparations”. A man whose wife makes several hundred thousand dollars a year, donates less than 10% to charity and still complains about “the gap between rich and poor” and the failure to reach out to the “little people”.
My fellow freepers, I can suck it up and work my tail off for two or four years. I’ve got skills, education, and a good work ethic. I’m lucky enough to have a healthy family whose children have similar traits. The fact that the government is going to get more nipple people on board, just makes the traits of hard work, punctuality, honesty, self discipline and temperance more valuable.
I have been thinking about this for a long time and I have a lot to say on it, but unfortunately I am very busy today and I am not sure if I will be able to get to it today. But I am bookmarking it for later today or tommorrow!
1. I don't believe that it is helpful to refer to Democrats and Republicans as Socialists. They both may want us to eventually end up there, but right at this particular moment they are not advocating policies that are technically socialist. Even Obama's and Clinton's health programs are not technically socialist, even though they would both be a big step backward for the country.
One of my major problems with this site of late is the heightened rhetoric which associates all policies left of Limbaugh's as socialist, any criticism of the war as treason, any questions about out-sourcing as protectionism, etc.
Even though posters have long since stopped using ALL CAPS to express their angry positions, the words they use are still extreme and over-the-top.
If conservatism were an easy sell, then we would not have to worry so much about the marketing, but conservatism is not an easy sell. We're asking people to go with the sensible and safe family sedan rather than the cool sports car or monster truck. If we use over-inflated rhetoric to support our cause and oppose that of our opponents, then we will definitely lose in the political Nielson ratings.
2. I do not believe that as far as third parties go the more the merrier. In countries with strong multi-party traditions candidates are elected based on the proportion of votes that their party receives, not by winning the most votes in particular elections. The USA is much more tied to specific tracts of land (thank heavens!) than other countries. I can't ever see US citizens supporting a process where someone gets a seat from an area where that person has never set foot in, just to match up the number of candidates with the percentage of votes.
Since we have what we have, there are only two ways I can see forward where third parties would help to unseat the current duopoly of duplicity:
A) Personality Cult: We would need to create a party based around a famous and well-respected person. This party would technically have a platform and stand for something, but mostly would be putting forth this famous person to run. If he/she wins, then the party will gain money and power and lots of people would wave the party's banner in senate, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative contests. This is sorta what happened with the Reform Party. Unfortunately their standard-bearer was a flake.
Now who would you most likely get to run? Unfortunately the answer is someone that would look a lot like McCain: middle of the road, tied loosely to his party, focusing on good government rather than ideological purity, etc. Anyone with any strong ties to the Republican or Democrat party would not want to act in the role of a spoiler. Our best bet would be a retired general dissatisfied with the way either party is dealing with the War on Iraq or the fight against terrorism in general.
B. Left-Right Straddle: This idea would be to create two ideologically opposed third parties that would attempt to lure identical numbers of members in all states. The idea being is that both parties could gain members without fear of being a spoiler to what they would consider the lesser of two evils. This would require a lot of trust between people for which there currently is very little. It would also have to somehow protect itself from being jiggered by the RNC and DNC: you wouldn't want a bunch of RNCers to join the rightist party only to vote RNC in the main election, resulting in the leftist party holding the bag as the spoiler for the DNC candidate.
I could see something like the Green Party and the Constitution Party somehow working together (a combined "Vote your Conscience not your Convenience" campaign for example.) If each could get over 5% of the electorate to join then they wouldn't impact this first election, but they would get government matching funds next year and they could potentially get included in debates, etc.
3. The main problem I see is dealing with apathy and the lack of active involvement in politics. The field has been left to the activists, the axe-grinders, and the lobbyists.
In order for people to become more engaged in their government I think we would need a three-pronged effort:
i) Politics Clubs: People already join Investment Clubs to get together with people to determine the best investment decisions. Why not have politics clubs? Instead of having ones that are ideologically based we could just help create clubs to get things done that need getting done such as adding a lane to a particular stretch of clogged highway, adopting an effective anti-graffiti program, etc. Once people see that they can make an impact locally, they may be able to gain confidence that they can get things done at the state and federal level as well.
ii) Second Life --> First Life: Currently large numbers of people are spending a bunch of time as virtual people in virtual worlds. In these virtual worlds most people just goof off, but others actually engage in business and political activities. It would be interesting if we could somehow come up with an interface like Second Life that would actually be tied into real decisions in the real world. For example, people could work through budget issues for a real city as anonymous members of a Second Life type computer "game". Of course the city council could always override whatever the people in the "game" decide, but if a significant % of a particular city's population is in on the game, then they couldn't completely ignore it.
iii) Political X-Prizes: This could also be done through a web-site. The idea would be for people to use whatever tools they can (Lexus Nexus, web searches, sophisticated software, etc.) to solve problems posed by a philanthropist willing to spare some of his/her wealth. For example, we are told that some earmarks are written to help only one specific company. Have someone get $1000 for each earmark he can tie to a specific congress-critter and a specific lobbyist. Give out prizes to people who find tax credits that only apply to a few companies, or the one or two companies that are exempted from a particularly heinous regulation. Basically pay people to do the job that the GAO, congress, etc. are supposed to be doing. Shame the RNC and DNC into behaving better. Get people to realize that they can spend a significant % of their time surfing the web for a good cause ... rather than a good pair of ti...