Conservatives didn't find Bush to be very conservative. Not when social spending triples. Look at his approval rating when he left office. Says it all. The polls do show that a huge part of the electorate (enough for a slam dunk landslide) are there for a conservative candidate with a good amount of charisma.
So they nominated McCain, arguably more liberal than several of their other choices, for Pres. And then voted for Obama, who is more liberal than McCain, all because they didn't find Bush sufficiently conservative. Agreed. Too bad there aren't any. barfo
By your own admission, McCain was too liberal to appeal to conservatives. There haven't been any Democrats all along, until Obama. And he's a rock star who's an empty suit.
Right, so why did the conservative party in this oh so conservative nation nominate him, do you think? Since everyone is so conservative, why didn't one of the other losers win? That aint true. Clinton was pretty charismatic. JFK and LBJ too. barfo
There were a lot of candidates who split up the vote and pounded away at one another. McCain probably got the nod for the same reason Dole did. Looks like you're going to lose so you nominate a guy to say "thanks for all you did in your long career." Clinton was a failed governor from a failed state and mostly incompetent for the first 2 years (at least). He had no coattails - the Dems lost seats every election in his term, and the house and senate together for the first time in like 50 years. And you prove my point by going back 40-50 years to find another.
And frankly, seeing how the economic plans have gone and the result, we'd certainly be better off with Romney right now. The real surprise of the last election was Giuliani. Also a liberal republican, quite famous for his role in 9/11 and turning NYC around before that (you might remember how their bonds had turned to crap). He had money and charisma. He failed the dog food test though, or decided to half-ass it and wait for a weaker opponent.
What's any of that got to do with charisma? Not exactly. The only president I had to skip over was Carter. I'm not sure where we are going here anyway. You want to list all the charismatic Republicans to prove that Rs are more charismatic than Ds? Go ahead. You got Reagan, who else? barfo
Charisma? I guess, in a creepy sort of way. He would have been better cast as a pedophile than a politician. He certainly sucked as a candidate. What is the dog food test? Haven't heard that phrase before. barfo
Why is that? Again, you proved my point. To prove it even further, the Dems ran nothing but real far left leaning guys that whole time and they got clobbered in the elections.
1. Ran nobody with charisma 2. Country is quite conservative, rejects liberals unless it's "throw the bums out" mentality.
1. Clinton and Obama yes, Gore and Kerry no. 2 out of the last 4, leading to 3 wins, 2 losses. 2. Could easily make the opposite claim. Control swings back and forth between the two parties. There's a lot of bums to be thrown out. But I don't dispute that the country is quite conservative. It is, in an absolute sense. And has been for many many years. barfo
I don't think it's conservative in an absolute sense. Iran? Saudi Arabia? China? Mexico? Much more conservative in many many ways. Compared to many Western European countries, of course, we're conservative, but compared to most of the world I would bet we're liberal/progressive. Ed O.
Yeah, it depends on what set you consider. My point from last night was this is all a rather pointless exercise - whether we are conservative relative to China or France or any absolute scale matters not much when arguing over who will win the next election here. barfo
People answering the poll questions have a sense of conservative and liberal from living here, not China or France. They didn't answer, thinking to themselves, "well, I'm a whole lot to the right of some chinese communist, so I'm conservative."
So, your claim is that the average person in the US is more conservative than, uh, the average person in the US? This is very Lake Wobegon. barfo
My claim is their political philosophy is a LOT closer to the right end of OUR spectrum than to the left. I'd also argue that our right is nowhere near as close to Adolph and Benito as our left is to Mao or Stalin.
So you are saying that American extreme left-wingers are further from the average citizen than American extreme right-wingers? Even if that were true, which it probably isn't, it doesn't seem very important, unless of course you happen to belong to one of those fringe elements yourself. barfo
It is true, you got it right. Since we're talking about polling and how it relates to govt. policies and elections, it matters a lot. Obama is a pretty smart fellow and knows how to campaign (but not govern, unfortunately). He's clearly rejected the loony left of his base (that was his ATM tho). He sent more troops to afghanistan, is keeping the effort in Iraq going, refuses to get behind fishing expeditions to find dirt on the bush administration, has the gay population furious with him, is destroying the unions (the ones that own GM, you know), and is doing away with social security like no republican before him could. I'd say he's reading the same polls I am.
