Posted on 01/27/2008 12:44:28 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Yeah, like Democrats.
I concur. How else could we have the five remaining that we have? How else could McCain and Romney lied themselves into a position to even vie for the nomination? We cannot place the blame solely on Democrats. Look how our party’s primaries are turning out.
The 3,000-ruble hotel room which cost us about $100 a night less than two years ago would now cost us about $123, and the hotel hasn't changed its price.
The media’s insistence despite all evidence to the contrary that McCain is inevitable is helping Republicans get McCain out of their system.
The GOP will have McCain fatigue by Super Tuesday.
But no matter what happens, at least Huckabee won’t be getting the GOP nomination.
I do fear there are three possible outcomes for the GOP nomination at this point:
1) Romney wins outright. He makes a politically savvy VP choice.
2) McCain and Romney fall short of the 1,191 necessary delegates. Huckabee trades McCain delegates for the VP slot.
3) McCain wins outright and chooses Joe Lieberman for a “unity ticket.”
I think all three scenarios win against Hillary Clinton, banishing the Clintons forever from the upper reins of power.
If McCain is the nominee, he will not run for re-election in 2012. If his VP is Huckabee, Huck will have been Dan Quayled early and often, and will not capture the GOP nomination in 2012. If the VP is Lieberman, then he doesn’t get the GOP nomination in 2012 for obvious reasons, but he runs the most successful independent run in American history in 2012. He loses, but he helps deliver the first ever 50 state victory to the Republican candidate.
I liked the title:
Some folks shouldn't be voting, (like non republicans in republican primaries).
Then we might not get a "Donkephant" as the republican candidate or nominee.
One only has to talk to some of the people voting to figure that one out.
Listen to Hannity’s man on the street segments and be very afraid.
This whole election cycle is like a horror movie or a bad dream...
Sad but true.
Maybe we should start a draft a conservative movement - what do we have to lose at this point?
How about Tom Delay?
Since the qualification seems to be young (Obama) or TV presentable (Huckabee) and media savey (McCain). Delay does not flip flop like Romney. He has good hair like Romney and better than Giuliani. I mean, if appearance is all that counts, he would have that plus substance.
If we are going to dream, at least it could be a good day dream instead of the present nightmare.
Yeah, like 95%.
Watch one episode of Leno’s “Jaywalking” and give up on America.
There is a fine line between pragmatism and CINOism.
Entertaining (and overoptimistic) prediction, and it would be the first time the GOP carried 50 states. However Federalist George Washington and (Jeffersonian) Republican [Democrat] James Monroe both carried every state, without popular election of Electors.
Who Voted in Early America?
Voting Before the Revolution
For the most part, American colonists adopted the voter qualifications that they had known in England. Typically, a voter had to be a free, adult, male resident of his county, a member of the predominant religious group, and a “freeholder.” A freeholder owned land worth a certain amount of money. Colonists believed only freeholders should vote because only they had a permanent stake in the stability of society. Freeholders also paid the bulk of the taxes. Other persons, as the famous English lawyer William Blackstone put it, “are in so mean a situation as to be esteemed to have no will of their own.”
Becoming a freeholder was not difficult for a man in colonial America since land was plentiful and cheap. Thus up to 75 percent of the adult males in most colonies qualified as voters. But this voting group fell far short of a majority of the people then living in the English colonies. After eliminating everyone under the age of 21, all slaves and women, most Jews and Catholics, plus those men too poor to be freeholders, the colonial electorate consisted of perhaps only 10 percent to 20 percent of the total population.
The act of voting in colonial times was quite different from today. In many places, election days were social occasions accompanied by much eating and drinking. When it came time to vote, those qualified would simply gather together and signify their choices by voice or by standing up. As time went on, this form of public voting was gradually abandoned in favor of secret paper ballots. For a while, however, some colonies required published lists showing how each voter cast his ballot.
Voting fraud and abuses were common in the colonies. Sometimes large landowners would grant temporary freeholds to landless men who then handed the deeds back after voting. Individuals were paid to vote a certain way or paid not to vote at all. Corrupt voting officials would allow unqualified persons to vote while denying legitimate voters the right to cast their ballots. Intimidation and threats, even violence, were used to persuade people how to vote. Ballots were faked, purposely miscounted, “lost,” and destroyed.
After declaring independence on July 4, 1776, each former English colony wrote a state constitution. About half the states attempted to reform their voting procedures. The trend in these states was to do away with the freehold requirement in favor of granting all taxpaying, free, adult males the right to vote. Since few men escaped paying taxes of some sort, suffrage (the right to vote) expanded in these states. Vermont’s constitution went even further in 1777 when it became the first state to grant universal manhood suffrage (i.e., all adult males could vote). Some states also abolished religious tests for voting. It was in New Jersey that an apparently accidental phrase in the new state constitution permitted women to vote in substantial numbers for the first time in American history.
“Of Government in Petticoats!!!”
The provision on suffrage in the New Jersey state constitution of 1776 granted the right to vote to “all inhabitants” who were of legal age (21), owned property worth 50 English pounds (not necessarily a freehold), and resided in a county for at least one year. No one is sure what was meant by “all inhabitants” since the New Jersey constitutional convention was held in secret. But it appears that no agitation for woman suffrage occurred at the convention.
After the state constitution was ratified by the voters (presumably only men voted), little comment on the possibility of women voting took place in the state for 20 years. Even so, one state election law passed in 1790 included the words “he or she.” It is unclear how many, or if any, women actually voted during this time.
In 1797, a bitter contest for a seat in the New Jersey state legislature erupted between John Condict, a Jeffersonian Republican from Newark, and William Crane, a Federalist from Elizabeth. Condict won the election, but only by a narrow margin after Federalists from Elizabeth turned out a large number of women to vote for Crane. This was probably the first election in U.S. history in which a substantial group of women went to the polls.
Newspaper coverage of women voting was widespread in the state and included the publication of a new song titled, “The Freedom of Election.” The sarcastic last verse illustrates pretty much what the attitude of most New Jersey men must have been:
Then freedom hail! thy powers prevail
o’er prejudice and error;
No longer shall man tyrannize,
and rule the world in terror:
Now one and all, proclaim the fall
of Tyrants! - Open wide your throats,
And welcome in the peaceful scene,
of government in petticoats!!!
New Jersey newspapers debated whether the state constitution really intended for women to vote. Some argued that the words “all inhabitants” surely did not include children, slaves, and foreigners. If this were the case, they continued, women should not be allowed to vote either because they never had before. Others maintained that perhaps widows and single women who owned property worth 50 pounds should be able to vote. Married women were automatically excluded from voting since at this time all property in a marriage legally belonged to the husband.
One New Jersey opponent of woman suffrage wrote in 1799, “It is evident, that women, generally, are neither, by nature, nor habit, nor education, nor by their necessary condition in society, fitted to perform this duty [of voting] with credit to themselves, or advantage to the public.”
In 1806, Newark and Elizabeth again faced off at the polls, this time over the site of a new county courthouse. During three days of voting, partisans from both towns used every legal and illegal device to gather the most votes. Men and boys, white and black, citizens and aliens, residents and non-residents, voted (often many times). Women and girls, married and single, with and without property, joined the election frenzy. Finally, males dressed up as females and voted one more time.
Newark, with 1,600 qualified voters, counted over 5,000 votes; Elizabeth, with 1,000 legal voters, counted more than 2,200 votes. Although Newark claimed victory, the voting was so blatantly fraudulent that the state legislature canceled the election.
The following year, the state legislature passed a new election law to clear up the confusion over who was qualified to vote in New Jersey. The law declared that since it was “highly necessary to the safety, quiet, good order, and dignity of the state,” no persons were to be allowed to vote except free white men who either owned property worth 50 pounds or were taxpayers. Such voters would also have to be citizens and residents of the county where they voted. The campaign for this new election law was led by John Condict, the legislator who was nearly defeated in 1797 when many women voted for his opponent. Thus, in 1807, with little debate in the all-male state legislature, and no public protest from the state’s female population, the experiment with woman suffrage in New Jersey came to an end.
Expanding the Right to Vote
Although for a time some states like New Jersey wanted to limit suffrage, the trend throughout U.S. history has been to expand the right to vote. At first, the main debate was over property tests. But by the Civil War, most states had replaced the freehold and other property requirements with universal white manhood suffrage or something close to it.
With the end of slavery, reformers turned to securing the right to vote for black freedmen. While this was accomplished constitutionally with the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, another century passed before discrimination against black voters was finally suppressed. Women did not win the right to vote until the adoption of the 19th Amendment in 1920, over 100 years after women lost the vote in New Jersey.
In 1964, the 24th Amendment prohibited denying anyone the right to vote in federal elections for failing to pay a voting or any other tax. Finally, in 1971, the 26th Amendment reduced the legal voting age to 18 in all elections.
I am sure you know why not.
Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t Tom Delay still going through his legal difficulties?
All in all, considering the mess we are in, I can live with any of your scenarios. (Doesn’t mean I have to like them)
If Hitlery wins, build a bomb shelter, because their is a suitcase nuke coming to a neighborhood near you.
I don’t like that scenario.
I’m still hoping for a brokered convention.
And, I still love FRED.
One thing I’ve figured out, though, is that you are a real thinker.
I pay attention to your posts. ;o)
Presumably - I said it was a day dream.
Grand jury shopping (Earl) is like doctor shopping (Rush) a Dem tactic to slander conservatives. Interesting isn't it, how the Clinton's genuine legal difficulties and campaign finance corruptions do not count with the MSN but manufactured fables, such as Bush's military record reinvented, do.
Any genuine conservative is going to have some invented charge against him. If there is none, they will make one up. Whoever is the republican nominee this time around will have the same problem in some form.
This is part of the nightmare - fair and balanced is not in the MSN, including Fox.
Sorry, but a brokered convention isn’t going to happen now, or at least not the way we had both hoped for.
For a brokered convention Fred would have had to kickstarted his campaign in South Carolina and Giuliani would have had to do better than 3rd in Florida.
But none of that happened and the race is now already Romney vs. McCain.
This means either one of them jumps out front after Feb. 5th and goes on to sweep the rest of the contests, garnering the 1,191 delegates required, or it is a very close delegate race, with Huckabee holding the difference.
Rudy’s big states he staked his candidacy on are all winner takes all: Florida, New York, New Jersey. Those three would have given him over 200 delegates. But now it looks like he’s not going to win any of them, meaning he will go into the convention pretty much empty handed with almost no delegates and not enough leverage to matter.
This means the only brokered convention scenario will be with Romney and McCain both just under the delegates needed, and Huckabee holding all the cards as kingmaker. This will not result in a deadlock that turns to Fred to ride in on a white horse. Sorry, but it just doesn’t. I wish it did too, but I think you are starting to see where this would inevitably lead...
This brokered convention has only one possible outcome, and it is the worst of all plausible possibilities left: a McCain-Huckabee ticket.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.