How does (or did) the press manage to keep control over the message? By controlling who was allowed to be the messenger. Anybody can apply for the job.
I just see delegates being awarded to the people who lose elections. Or elections being bypassed in favor of handing delegates to “the good guys”.
I think it’s definitely rigged.
Yes, the system is rigged.
Not against Trump, specifically. But the system is rigged. The only people who don’t (or pretend to not) recognise it are the hacks who benefit from it.
Any time that the popular vote in any entity is negated and overridden by special rules the system is RIGGED. No exception.
Today’s politics is clear example of what the voters want verses what they will get. Rigged elections have ensured total corruption within all levels of government.
trump win the state, but his delegates goes to cruz. Yes its rigged
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
A better question might be, “Are there rents today?”
I think the answer is yes. Influence is rented... at 200K to 500K per hour (average length of a speech).
So many wrong linkages, wrong conclusions.
When the Elites, via many avenues, hold the electorate hostage to their desired outcome, of course the system is rigged, to their benefit.
One avenue of control is disenfranchisement. How is it that two privately owned organizations, the Democrat and Republican parties, hold control over who gets selected and elected for We the People’s public gov’t leadership positions?
That they all train their venom against the one man who has the financial ability to circumvent their choke hold, and expose them for who they are, tells the electorate just who is the only candidate that stands a chance to bust up their “system”.
The fact is, nearly everyone here on FReep has groused over the past 30 years, “How can it be that the lamestream lefties, and the RNC elites, have managed to hand us presidential candidates so bland and devoid of ideological vigor?”
Some of the methods are being exposed this year, and the voteless primaries, etc, are on display for all to see.
The writer has bunched-up panties, calling “whiner!” while whining away at windmills of his mind.
The Economist recently did a story on the way in which large firms in collusion with politicians has destroyed competition in this country. That there was: too much regulation; a need for patent reform; and that Obamacare as it stands is substantially harming the economy. Which would argue that indeed, the economy is rigged.
We need to restore competition.
See a pattern here?
Not only rigged, but we see the GOPe folks trying to fine tune the rigging to ensure the will of the people is smashed....
Things haven't changed since then.
For years, voting has been an absolutely futile process for a libertarian/conservative like me to feel I have a voice. But 2016 is the year I finally understand why. And this may be the first election in my adult life that I simply turn my back on the whole process. The system is rigged to work for those who work for the system, plain and simple. A self-employed, hard-working American believer has absolutely no say at any stage. That’s how the riggers want it.
yes
For the most part, the system is not rigged. And “rigging” can be a matter of degree. A lot of rigging is not covert; it’s more like in your face.
There is some covert political corruption, complete with fraudulent voting. This can rig results in close elections.
Is there systemic discrimination based on race and sex in America? Yes. It is called affirmative action. It discriminates for some, hence it discriminates against others. It discriminates against white men.
This can mean a longer wait for promotion. Still, good work will usually be rewarded. Maybe a better metaphor than “rigging” is the difference between having the wind at your back versus walking into a headwind. Persevere.
Unions spend member dues as they see fit. If you are Republican, some of your dues dollars will be given to Democratic party politicians. You had no choice in joining the union if you wanted the job. Union jobs are in decline - good riddance.
Might your children be taught values that you abhor in government schools? Yes. A politician running with a vouchers platform will face determined resistance. Just think of all the public school dollars at risk. Perhaps a bigger problem is that many people are accustomed to “public” schools and see nothing wrong with taking tax dollars and spending contrary to the wishes of either the tax-payer or the wishes of individual parents.
Many of our systems are not perfect. While some may be improved, all could be easily made much worse. The “anything would be better than this” argument has been shown false with every communist revolution.
A republic if you can keep it - Ben Franklin.
Regardless of what system we have, the result of any process depends on two things:
1) Do people educate themselves
2) Who shows up
The ignorance of the process by people on this site which attracts political junkies demonstrates how lazy we are to educate ourselves in this country where we take everything for granted.
People on this political site, people who donate money to campaigns, people who claim to be supporters of AFP, Heritage, FRC, NRA, etal dont show up.
The FR Georgia page lists over 50 FReepers in GA 5th Disrict and 30,000 R primary voters and only 0.015% show up to choose the delegates to the national convention? Of the hundreds of precincts over 95% of the precincts had ZERO people show up to vote for delegate.
If we dont show up and dont know the process, we have only ourselves to blame.
Now, although I reject people playing the victim card ... a victim of the establishment, the fact is that the establishment does do things of omission and comission to facilitate ignorance and lack of participation.
Omission. Just as many dont show up. Those who do show up only half-show up. At the GA 5th convention, one member of the credentials committee did not show up. The job fell to the one who did show up (the Trumpster who was slated and won a delegate slot to Cleveland). She had total control of the credentials and was not prepared. She made mistakes on who was, or was not, credentialed. She was not part of a conspiracy. She is a volunteer. She should be praised for the many thousands of volunteer hours she had dedicated to Trump and the cause. But she could not do it alone.
Omission. Those who do show up could do a better job of communicating when and where the meetings occur and what the significance is of those meetings. But they are volunteers and how many more hours should they volunteer when the rest of us are not volunteering anything?
Commission (sort of). At the GA 5th convention, the chair, parliamentarian, secretary and credentials chair ...those who controlled the conduct of the meeting were 4 of the 6 people on the slate created by the nominating committee.
When the chair and parliamentarian declared it would require a 2/3 vote to reject the slate they were on the appearance of conflict of interest arose. Due to extensive conversations with them, I can say that this was not part of a conscious plan or conspiracy. They had just not thought it through.
Commission (true conspiracy). I have not seen this in GA where Ive been 3 years. But it definitely did exist in the past in IL. When Bob Kjellander (Karl Rove college roomate) ran the IL GOP and the RNC as Treasurer, controller of the money and paid staff on behalf of Rove there was definitely a conscious conspiracy of House Speaker Hastert of Kjellander’s IL GOP closed club to keep outside the club anyone who was not a member.
They didnt want nobody what nobody sent, as Mike Royko describes IL politicians.
But even during those dark years in IL, the anti-establishment Republicans could win when they worked hard and worked smart eg Sen Peter Fitzgerald. We lost many times. And when we lost, it was always because we did not educate and prepare ourselve and/or we did not show up... and since there was a massive effort to educate and get people to show up we have only ourselves to blame that we lost.
Someone should tell Derek Hunter that it's been a week since the GOPe's Unipatsy, Teddie "Fat Dracula" Cruz, buried his arms in the Colorado Tar-Baby up to the elbows.
And now the Wyoming Tar-Baby is stuck to Cruz, too - Drudge mast headline: "CRUZ CELEBRATES ANOTHER VOTERLESS VICTORY! NO ELECTION IN WY..."
Hunter is clueless. Trump is playing these stupid nitwits like fiddles. :)