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Tell you what, why not let's just put this thread on CSpan as an advertisement for the Republican Candidate for the Presidency and see how the public responds, shall we? I mean, if you guys represent the face you want on this issue let's show America what you really think of them - I mean, I don't know that C-Span would run it; but, at this point I'd venture to say, this would be the best campaign ad against Bush that the Democrats or anyone else could ever hope for. Do you want to call them, or shall I.

Tell you what, why not let's just put this thread on CSpan as an advertisement for the Republican Candidate for the Presidency and see how the public responds, shall we?

I'm certain its already in the works. Expect a massive shift to Kerry in the polls around August.

Free traitors remind me of the Liberty League of 1935. They were a GOP pressure group formed to fight the New Deal. It came off as rich people in their yachts and mansions preaching "suck it up, loser" bootstrap rugged individualism to the guys on the breadlines. It enabled the Democrats to spend the next generation as the party of the "little guy" against the "selfish interests". If the Democrats take this issue and run, they will be the new majority party for the next generation.

Real people in the real world are not going to consider their lives and families expendable to comparative advantage textbook theory. There are no atheists in the foxholes and no free trade libertarians in bankruptcy court.

"Tell you what, why not let's just put this thread on CSpan as an advertisement for the Republican Candidate for the Presidency and see how the public responds, shall we?"

Actually, I've counted at least four recent articles that the liberals have run in the mainstream press in their attempt to make this a big issue.

But there simply isn't any interest in the matter. The vast majority of Americans are employed, after all, and that's hardly a group of people to be sympathetic to that 5.7% of our population who is out on the street at the moment.

You can howl as much as you like in public about "outsourcing," and you may even find a few fellow unemployed posters to comiserate with, but it's not going to be a big campaign issue.

The unions didn't even bother to yell at Clinton for getting NAFTA ratified in the Senate.

On the other hand, Bush's mere implementation of steel tariffs caused prices to rise and yells to be heard around the world. Protectionism simply isn't politically viable.

Or put another way: you can't yell enough to get politicians to give you your old job back. It's gone. Bye, bye.

And you can't sue it back with lawyers or legislate it back with politicians. Just like phone switchboard operators being replaced with computers and newspaper boys being replaced with street vending machines, so too are IT jobs being replaced by better network management software (in the case of system administrators) and by better design software (in the case of Java programmers) and by foreign programmers (in those cases where mere mindless grunt work is required - hey, just because it is "IT" doesn't mean that it is high tech).