Posted on 11/10/2008 12:33:31 PM PST by BlueStateBlues
Oh, please.
“Marxist” is perfectly legitimate as a functional shorthand for a person committed to forcible redistribution of wealth at every fundamental level, to the end that such redistribution provides a base for permanent political power.
Vice “left-liberal establishment statist” for “Marxist” and you don’t end up at a different destination in terms of practical impact of Obama’s views on American politics and national life.
What’s silly is insisting on hyper-technicalities that, in this context, do nothing but honor distinctions without a difference.
Why is that the Refusniks always feel so put upon when someone simply states that they disagree with how the Refusnik voted?
Get over yourself. You can vote for whomever you choose. The rest of us can tell you from now until the Lord comes back that we think you made a dumb choice.
That is not “telling you who to vote for.” It’s telling you our opinion of how you voted. If you’re not interested in hearing others opinions or having yours challenged, then why are you on FR in the first place?
The same as Bush, pretty strong on defense but no clue about the economy.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2129162/posts
Bush is not a conservative.
Well, you’ve helped Rats get elected if you failed to vote for the candidate who actually had a chance to beat them.
Oh boo hoo.
Reality bites, I guess.
Add up the votes won by Hunter, Tancredo, Thompson, Romney and Giuliani combined and accept that not one of them ever had a prayer of getting the nomination, regardless if you had been first in line to vote.
Why?
Because hardly anyone voted for them. Most of these candidates barely made it out of single digits.
“Why is that the Refusniks always feel so put upon when someone simply states that they disagree with how the Refusnik voted?”
I voted for McCain/Palin. Did you actually *read* my post?
Apparently not.
McCain was a poor choice. The country lost because of that, not Bob Barr.
And apparently lots of other members of the conservative wing, based on last week's results.
Quite to the contrary, I've always treated any conservative and any Freeper with respect when discussing different voting selections.
By and large it was the McCainiacs who seemed to take it personally and ramp up the attacks to air-raid siren levels when I suggested that voting for McCain was not a duty on the same level as obeying the Ten Commandments.
Lots of participants on this forum can remember that hysteria. It was only a few months ago.
A third party candidate CANNOT win the presidency unless one of the two now-major parties is displaced or the "third party" candidate effectively merges with one of the two now-major parties.
This reality is the result of the working together of three basically immutable aspects of our system of government:
(1) the winner-take-all system at the national level,
(2) the fact that candidates must win a majority of Electoral College votes to win the election,
(3) and the fact that, if no candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College vote, the Constitution requires the House of Representatives to decide the Election (and no third party—even Teddy Roosevelt’s-—has fielded more than a handful of candidates for Congress).
The ONLY way a third party candidate can win is for one or more of the above particulars to be radically eliminated. However, the wisdom of our founders is elegantly obvious in the way those three prongs work together to prevent the death spiral of extra-major-party factionalism (as well as regionalism and sectarianism).
These three prongs work together to keep factionalism something that is:
(1) sorted out primarily WITHIN parties (indeed, the function of primaries is to allow essentially mini-parties within the party to compete for the party's nomination),
and
(2) WITHOUT it being given unchecked and unbalanced capacity to throw a presidential election into chaos. (The European vision of coalition governments is rejected.)
Our system of electing our president is one that allows for protest (both in the primaries and in the general election), but which limits the possibility for chaos in the transition of power in our highest office. IOW, you can use your vote as a protest if you want, but the system is set up so that your protest is highly unlikely to throw the election outside the two major parties.
In this system, anyone who did not vote against Obama by voting for the only candidate with a chance to defeat him (McCain) helped Obama get elected. And vice versa for McCain.
Even if, say, 40% of eligible voters all voted for the same "third party" candidate (besides being highly remote), that still would not guarantee that the "third party" candidate would receive any, much less sufficient, electoral college votes to win. And that's with winning 40% of the popular vote!
For example, in 1860, in a four-way race, Stephen Douglas came in second with about 30% of the national popular vote, but he carried only two states and won just 12 electoral votes.
And most third party candidates in history have won well under 5% of the national popular vote and, usually, ZERO states.
Yet in 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidency with 43% of the popular vote because third party candidate Ross Perot received 19% of the popular vote. This left George H.W. Bush with about 38% of the popular vote and a loss that ushered in 8 years of the 'Toons. Another example of how, to win, a third party candidate must be more popular than BOTH the Republican and Democrat candidates and then must STILL win the EC.
If a third party candidate ever gets that much traction, we'll all know about it. And we'll know either a new MAJOR party is emerging or one of the old parties is being taken over/displaced. It will be a visable, attention-attracting, "wow" movement, not a bunch of Refusniks who can't even coalesce around any one conservative in the primaries, much less truly emerge a new party.
In sum:
For a third party candidate to win, he would have to be more popular than both the Republican and the Rat nominees.
At that point, he either uses one of the now-major parties as his vehicle or one of the now-major parties is displaced completely and the election becomes a binary operation between the old, remaining major party and the new major party.
IOW, although the two parties can change radically, even transforming to "new" parties, functionally it is still a two-party system and it is unlikely to ever be otherwise.
Therefore, refusal to vote for one major party candidate does indeed facilitate the election of the other major party candidate because, if someone wins the election, the winner will be one of the major party candidates.
If no one wins the election, Congress will choose the President. Since Congress will be composed primarily of members from the two major parties (even as it was during the Bull Moose movement, which had a presidential candidate but few or no members in Congress), it would be very remote for Congress to choose a president from outside either party. (If Perot had garnered enough votes to keep either Clinton or Bush from winning the EC, but not enough to win it himself, does anyone seriously believe Congress would have chosen Perot as President?)
This is why voting "third party"---by definition, for a candidate not from one of the two major parties---is Loserville and always will be. If a "third party" candidate's party is strong enough for him to be a viable candidate, then that party is no longer "third." Again, the important point to take from that is a "third party" candidate cannot win unless he is more popular than the candidates fielded by the two major parties combined. This is NOT someone who could barely get out of single digits in his own party's primaries.
True. And since we now have two parties that stand for perpetual incumbency and for ever-increasing government spending and government control of the economy, perhaps "displacement" is now what is called for.
Uh, I was responding to a particular post. This one.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2129540/posts?page=182#157
It’s uncalled for to react as though one has to pull one’s gun out because someone, anyone, disagrees with the way you voted.
I hardly expect someone like you to understand that, but perhaps some others will see that continuing to do the same thing time after time and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity, or perhaps simply mania.
The fact is, both the democrats and republicans have sold us down the river as evidenced by the biggest orgy of crony capitalism I've ever seen in my life. The past 8 years have seen the biggest expansion of government power since FDR, with a republican and alleged conservative at the helm, and yet you still cheer them on. Party Uber Alles!
It's sad, really, that people seem to have given up hope for something better.
"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
There is nothing sacrosanct about either major political party in this country and I think it's past time we were done with both of them, rather than to continue to act as mind-numbed robots pulling levers to make sure the other lizard doesn't get in.
Thanks to capitulating RINO's, the commies are now in control.
Thanks for nothing...
Well said DC
The turnout tallies of this election should make the GOP’s problem abundantly clear. Overall turnout was not significantly higher than in 2004. Some Bush voters switched sides, a lot of young, impressionable fools got caught up in the Obama hype, and most importantly a lot of Bush voters stayed home this year.
This site is called Free Republic, not The Great Republican Party Forum. Yes, America is a two party system. Yes, voting for a third party candidate is de facto support of the Democrat candidate. I am a registered Republican and voted for McCain for these reasons. But to demean conservatives and libertarians who believe in small government as ‘traitors’ or losers is ridiculous.
If the GOP could produce a candidate, and more importantly a platform, that stressed limited government and the rollback of creeping socialism they would triumph. Why do you think Bush’s approval ratings were so low? Many of us felt betrayed by the Farm Bill, the Prescription Bill, Amnesty, Harriet Myers, DHS, and so forth. My head will get taken off here for saying so, but what do you think of the Patriot Act now in the hands of Obama and a Democrat legislature?
All the GOP has to do is promote, practiced and govern by its stated principles and you wouldn’t have to worry about those ‘losertarians’ and their annoying critiques of your beloved politicians. They’d be Republicans again. And so would 55% of the country.
That was always the excuse, but I didn't see the GOP passing a lot of bills that would have warranted that treatment.
The GOP should have run a more freedom-oriented candidate.
Reagan had no problem putting together 2 massive landslides in spite of a much more viable 3rd party.
The only way we will get a pro-liberty majority in this country is if the two major parties realign:
- on the left you could have the elitist, authoritarian, big government party
- on the right you could have the individual liberty, small government party
Of course, about half of this site’s members would have to move to Daily Kos or elsewhere, having the same goals (top-down control of free people), differing only in the play book they want to use. They can argue amongst themselves on who should be the masters, but the rest of us would be slaves regardless.
All in all, not much chance of such realignment in the cards, so I reckon this country and Western civilization will continue to slide downward to the next Dark Ages. Such is the natural cycle of the human epoch.
That meshes nicely with Medicare Modernization Act, which was the biggest expansion of a Great Society program since LBJ. Remind me, who was running the show when that passed?
Who was it that was twisting arms on Capitol Hill to get this passed? Oh, right, that was Dennis Hastert, the sponsor. What party was he? And who was the President that was pushing for this piece of legislation? I've forgotten now.
I thought the latest election results had Ind. going for McCain.
I disagree. Race boosted turnout, not the message.
How could any message of limited government, by any candidate, possibly have dissuaded them from their desire to have the government “do more” in these times?
As I've said before, I don't think it could have. Just like Gore couldn't get out from under Clinton, the Republican candidate, no matter who was chosen, would have had a very difficult time getting out from under Bush.
And the thing is, I would have had no problem mortgaging the future for two Bush terms (which is what happened) if Bush would have been able to accomplish a conservative domestic agenda. Didn't happen. Other than advancing the cause of free trade and the appointment of a couple good Supreme Court justices (not that I'm downplaying these accomplishments at all--they are both very important), it's sort of a weak scorecard for eight years, six of which included a Republican-led Congress.
Way to go with pulling out the ignorant, literally, personal attacks. How weak. I won't act in kind. I'll just continue to engage your ideas without resorting to childish insult.
You can "be done" with the two major political parties all you want, but until one is displaced by a new party or transformed into essentially a new party, these are the two major parties that will produce the Presidents of the United States.
I went to great length to make that point. Blathering on about why there needs to be a displacement or transformation of one or both of the political parties, as you have done, in no way supports the idea that simply not "voting for either of the dominant socialist parties" (your terms) will "turn around" this country.
The point of my long dissertation on the history and function of third parties was to refute exactly that. Until a visible, measurable, VIABLE movement to (1) transform one of the existing major parties or (2) displace one of the existing major parties occurs, voting third party is a waste and sure Loserville.
And it does nothing to help create that VIABLE movement. Consistently helping to hand the country over to the worst candidate does nothing to create the viable movement described above.
Nor does recognizing this fact---and asking people with sense to consider actions that, unlike wasting your vote in Loserville, do actually have a chance to create that viable movement---constitute, as you lamely accuse, "cheering on" the parties we have now. Anymore than recognizing that if the Giants and Patriots are in the Super Bowl, either the Giants or the Patriots will win. "Voting" at the Super Bowl for a team that isn't even in the Super Bowl is crazy.
Reality: You don't create a new or transformed major political party in America (which is what is required to win the presidency) by folks going solo, splintering off and voting in onesies and twosies for a whole host of protest candidates. Anymore than, in the Super Bowl above, you change the FACT that either the Giants or Patriots will win by cheering for the Ravens.
Transforming the party or creating a new one DOES NOT START WITH VOTING FOR THIRD PARTY LOSERS IN THE GENERAL ELECTION FOR PRESIDENT. IT ENDS THERE.
If you vote "third party" in the general when there is no "third party" functioning (as our constitutional system necessitates) as one of the major political parties, you are wasting your vote.
The primaries prove this point. There were several more conservative candidates running, but hardly anyone voted for them, and not ONE captured the attention of a significant segment of primary voters anywhere.
Voting for one of those primary losers in the general election, for example, does NOTHING to help transform the party or create a new one. Obviously, hardly anyone voted for those candidates in the first place. Upon what basis would voting for these losers in the general election change anyone's mind? This point goes with even more force to voting for individuals who weren't even in the primaries.
Don't like the two major parties? Fine. But don't delude yourself that throwing your vote to a Third Party Loser in the general election for president is going to change them.
There are ways to transform the parties or create viable new ones (though difficult; again, it's not enough that "third parties" exist; to be viable, they have to have more support than one of the existing major political parties). But wasting your vote on Election Day, and thus indisputably, as throughout history, helping to hand the country over to the WORST candidate is not one of them.
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