Posted on 02/24/2007 10:59:07 PM PST by FairOpinion
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen laments the fact that candidates are under heavy pressure to tailor their beliefs (or rhetoric) to "get past ideological bottlenecks" in early primary states:
"For Republicans, it's the religious right; for Democrats, it's economic pressure groups such as teachers unions. The rest of us can only stand by, helpless, waiting for extremists to pick a man or woman on the basis of issues that mean less to us."
For Republican candidates, the toughest litmus tests are not about any actual policy alternatives, foreign or domestic, but about "social issues." What most social issues have in common is that they are none of the federal government's business, let alone the president's.
The federal government will never pass a law banning or permitting abortion, so a presidential candidate's opinion on that subject has no practical relevance.
The federal government will never pass a law banning or prohibiting states and religious organizations from defining marriage, and presidents cannot enact constitutional amendments, so gay marriage is not a federal issue, either.
Licensing of handguns is mainly a local issue, and no candidate is about to push for ending the federal ban on machine guns and assault rifles.
...polls show that a substantial majority of Republican voters approve of Giuliani's positions on all social issues, so the demand for ideological purity in these cases seems to require that candidates capitulate to a minority of the minority party. That does not sound like a recipe for success.
In the general election, however, the winner will emphasize concrete ideas about those issues a president can actually affect and be properly optimistic about the wondrous U.S. economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
This piece would fit better on DU than FR.
7 of the 9 current SCOTUS members were appointed by Republicans, and yet it is still not a truly conservative court.
All the more reason for Republicans to reject liberal Republicans for high office. It's hard enough to get a decent appointee from "conservative" Presidents.
Couldn't tell it by this piece of leftist writing.
Point granted, but hopefully there will be some choice other than Rudy or Hillary, neither of which appeal to me.
Garbage.
"hopefully there will be some choice other than Rudy or Hillary, neither of which appeal to me."
Well, in my view we should be very happy that the choice hopefully won't be McCain vs. Hillary.
Yep, them DU'ers have always been rudy fans. /s
http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID66/574.html
In fact, some of the comments are almost a mirror image of some I have seen coming from the Rudy trashers.
Exactly -- if we had been given genuine constructionists instead of those people, who knows but that legal abortion would have become a thing of the past.
Romney is the only one I think I can stomach at this point, and we don't know whether or not he's genuinely pro-life. Hope he is, but ...
polls show that a substantial majority of Republican voters approve of Giuliani's positions on all social issues
A Majority. Baloney!!
A majority don't even know what his positions are. The poll numbers are nothing but name ID at this point.
I take it you're another Rooty accolyte who is conveniently forgetting his NARAL roots, his protection of illegal aliens, his honorary membership in the communist Stonewall Vets, his lawsuit designed to put gun manufacterers out of biz, etc., etc., etc.
So now you're posting crapweasel commies from the Washington Post.
He's about as conservative as Trotsky.
There are thousands of laws on the books which do just that.
We do not need any more, and should get rid of most that we have.
The federal government will never pass a law banning or permitting abortion, so a presidential candidate's opinion on that subject has no practical relevance.
We have banned certain proceedures. We could ban a non-parent or guardian taking a minor across state lines. Things like the Mexico City policy, medicare funding for abortion all matter.
Some hope the Supreme Court judges might limit Roe v. Wade, and thus return some authority to the states, but the next president is unlikely to have many chances to change this relatively young court.
How old are Souter and Ginsburg?
The federal government will never pass a law banning or prohibiting states and religious organizations from defining marriage, and presidents cannot enact constitutional amendments, so gay marriage is not a federal issue, either.
What about something as pressing as whether New York now needs to recognize civil commitment ceremonies from New Jersey? That is a Federal issue.
The federal government cannot prohibit stem cell research from occurring somewhere in the world, and the Feds are unlikely to meddle in private or state efforts to either discourage or support such research.
1. We could ban Fetal stem cell research.
2. The federal government funds such research. We could stop doing so.
Licensing of handguns is mainly a local issue, and no candidate is about to push for ending the federal ban on machine guns and assault rifles.
We could end the stupid rules on banning semi-automatic guns that look like "assault rifles" to the ignorant.
We can protect the firearms industry against the unConstitutional legal assaults by cities like New York.
Yet polls show that a substantial majority of Republican voters approve of Giuliani's positions on all social issues, so the demand for ideological purity in these cases seems to require that candidates capitulate to a minority of the minority party. That does not sound like a recipe for success.
Really. I'd love to see those polls.
Reporters compiling lists of where candidates stand on the issues could simplify the process by asking where candidates stand on issues in which a presidential decision might actually be involved -- such as avoiding wars, establishing a workable immigration policy or restraining runaway federal spending.
Isolationism, open-borders lunacy, and a plug for fiscal restraint. Sounds liberal to me. Besides, most American like the Federal programs that benefit them.
I'm not surprise that the author is from Cato.
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