General Republican Party/Primary Discussion

[Yuki [old]]

Santorum and Gingrich don't have any chance of picking up independents or disenfranchised democrats.

This is a valid point; however, my main concern is that if Romney gets the GOP nomination, people like mattj are going to just stay home on election day because of their dislike of Romney, and I get the feeling that there are just enough people in the "anybody but Romney" camp of the Republican party that not only will "swing states" like Ohio and Nevada turn blue, but so will a few random states in the mid-west or south, therby giving the Democratic party a -larger- win margin than if they had gone with Gingrich or Santorum haha.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't think any of these guys have the numbers or momentum to pull off a win against an incumbent president, even one who's haters are very, very vocal in their displeasure. This is why I believe that it's in the GOP's best interest to pick a nominee who will be able to pull off one hell of a head-turning debate performance on TV against Obama on the level of Reagan vs Carter in 1980 if they even want a chance at victory, and to be frank, I think Obama would basically destroy Romney on national television lol.

 

[Deck Knight]

The problem with the HHS mandate is that it violates "politics has no place in religion", the other side of "religion has no place in politics" (Which is only true insofar as churches should not have the authority to force people to worship that religion.)

And there's plenty of reasons for why state-run health care is bad. I condemn it as morally indefensible for reasons I outlined earlier. But To re-summarize: Any policy which compels the labor of physicians while simultaneously declaring access to their skills is an unlimited right is no different than saying anyone in the medical profession is a slave.

Health Care doesn't exist without doctors. There are a limited number of doctors. A limited number of doctors by definition cannot service an unlimited number of patients (which is what a right IS - unlimited and unalienable). Eventually, after declaring doctors can only make a certain amount and must service everyone who comes into the door - a literal everyone because the government mandates access and encourages participation - they start running out of skilled people who want to live that life. Then another round of rationing occurs. The situation implodes in a long, slow death spiral.

One other thing about atheists: they mistake "being a nice guy" for a serious level of conviction - the level of conviction that tells you to spend your time and fortune erecting a hospital to care for sick, poor people, or erecting a school that reaches out to depressed, crime-ridden neighborhoods that could risk the safety of your employees. I have not and never demonized anyone for being an atheist. I've merely pointed out the obvious and irrefutable fact that atheists have no mooring for their moral behavior outside their own value system - a system which is generally limited in its negative tendencies by what is legal.

An atheist goes through life with this general line of thought: "I'm a nice guy/gal. I don't hurt anybody. I don't need God. Therefore, no one needs God."

That's a fairly neutral view with no implications, since it's just an individual thought and not indicative of what public policy should be. Here's what happens when it gets more adversarial:

"No one needs God. People who do believe in God support things I don't like. Ha ha, kind of stupid to go through life thinking you'll be punished by an invisible sky daddy if you act the wrong way. Look at those stupid people. Unlike me, who arrives at my values individually, they spend their lives in fear. If we just banned them from doing that maybe they'd see science and reason like me. Religion poisons everything. Religion is the opiate of the people."

I've heard some level of these things from basically every experience. There is no respect for the positive aspects or influence of religion. All they ever seem to see is a bunch of people in fear for their souls. They don't even take into consideration that religious people account for both faith and reason, and that the religions have been thinking about and discussing morality and moral issues for a long time, building up a library of knowledge that far exceeds what an individual leading their own life has access to. Social conservatism is all about conserving. Conserving history, learning from the past and not repeating the moral failings of yesterday. It is about vigilance, analysis, and understanding. That's why most social conservatives are religious.

Also iDunno:

Christianity has a commandment against murder, and the acts of all previous Catholics and Christians will be judged by that standard, a standard which has not changed since Moses came down from Sinai. While I could go into everything about Just War Theory and the fact the Crusades were a Christian vs. Muslim thing (and the Muslims ended up in Spain by the end of it), I'll just ask why you think the bloodiest regimes not of the 1600s and 1700s or the Medieval Era, but of the 1900s were all atheist regimes whose program of tyranny included eradicating the only organized resistor to absolute secular authority: religion. They won't be judged by atheists because atheists have two standards for values: their personal opinion and secular legal authority.

Considering how many of them are still Marxists, I don't feel safe trusting either of their standards. Personally they have no problem crushing the bourgeois with the force of government, and their preferred means of oppression not only has the approval of the state - it is the state. At least I can hold a man of God to his own professed moral standards. I can't hold a man who thinks he is God to any standard; he has none to speak of.

The preponderance of the world lives under tyranny and squalor. People who think that because all they've ever experienced are Western values, that is how the world thinks are kidding themselves. China is America with a billion additional peasants, all who live under oppressive tyranny. The idea western values are the norm and how human beings operate instinctively is an absurd notion. It happens here in America because we're religious society and we organize ourselves with moral standards that we hold with a conviction stronger than the one we apply to following the secular laws.

In Canada they can toss you in jail for opposing the government's view on certain social issues publicly. They do not have real free speech, they have a charter not worth the paper it's printed on. In England they leave people to die on hospital beds because the rationing officer never approved someone to use the resources to clean their beds. These are increasingly secularized Western civilized societies which already have microtyrannies. Our Constitution makes America's general immunity to those microtyrannies possible, and our Constitution gets it authority by appealing to God, and by having people who believe their rights are granted them unalienably by their Creator remain constantly vigilant in defense of them.

Obama is a tyrant. This HHS mandate proves it. If you cannot vote for the Republican, vote against Obama. But if you refuse to understand the implications of the government forcing religious institutions to violate their consciences because you don't "empathize with religion" (how this whole discussion got started) then you're missing the point completely. Santorum is going to bring that fight to the president and articulate it, which is why I support him. I'll still vote for Romney, but I don't know if he has the spine to stand up to a proven tyrant like Obama.

All I know is that we cannot, must not lose this election, which in all practical analysis means a Republican in the White House.

 

[mattj]

This is a good point, actually; Romney's running mate is likely going to have to provide compensation for his Mormonism ...

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but actually, if I believed that Romney took his Mormonism seriously, and seriously believed the things that the Mormon church teaches, and had a record of acting on those things, I don't think I would have a problem with him at all. I've read and heard studies that have claimed that many American's don't like the fact that he's a Mormon, but me personally as a Christian, aside of the whole Godhead and salvation and textual issues (which are admittedly huge), what the current Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints teaches is extremely socially conservative, and as a social conservative I love that. My problem with Romney has nothing to do with his religion. It has everything to do with his record. What he has supported and opposed, and what claims he has made and actions he has done in the past. They really don't line up with what he says he believes as a member of the LDS. If they did, I seriously think I'd be backing him right now.

 

[Ice-eyes]

I think the general consensus is that Romney has crossed the line between political pragmatism and saying what people want to hear solely for political gain to the point that no-one believes what he wants to hear any more. The moderates don't think he'd be a bad president - but they're not so sure, because they're not sure whether he'll be prepared to go back on enough of the things he said in order to win the nomination. The conservatives think he'd be a better president than Obama, but they're not so sure, because they're not sure whether he'll be prepared to honour enough of the things he said in order to win the nomination.

What I really want to know is this. Why is which presidential candidate hates gay marriage or abortion or divorce the most so important when it's unlikely to significantly affect the course of their presidency, should they actually make it to the White House?

 

[iDunno]

I am going to choose to ignore Deck Knight's post and I suggest that others who feel incensed by it to do the same. This thread has been doing a pretty good job getting back on topic. Plus, everything he says is pretty much just self masturbation so responding to it just serves to degrade your own self confidence as you realize that everything good about you is a lie and that Deck Knight is the only true human.

@Ice-eyes: Religious people have been seeking to incorporate their religious laws in national legislation for centuries. It's unrealistic to think that religious manipulation in political affairs could be ended so quickly. Anti gay marriage and abortion are just modern equivalents to ancient policies like those in Post-Constantine Rome where pagan religions were basically liquidated and followers of them murdered in hoards and enslaved others. I'm not saying they are as bad as them - just that they are the same in principle. They want people to think like them, so why not force them? Kinda like Mao Zedong and Karl Marx, one could say. hmmm HHS hmmmmm

 

[Myzozoa]

Deck Knight believes in a cultural, physical, social, and economic reality that does not change over time or place or space. He's what could be called an Objectivist. Not so much in a Randian sense (though he is very much a Randian in some ways), but in the sense that he doesn't believe in differences between individual human beings as something that actually exists or is valid. That's why he believes that homosexuality is criminal and that Christian values should be the core of American politics. I think it's very silly and you only need to use google to find critiques of it, but it's very useful for fracturing voices of opposition by invoking this type of identity-ignoring politics.

 

[iDunno]

It is also the easiest argumentto make because it allows you to shut your eyes and ears and say lalalala when things aren't going your way.

 

[capefeather]

You know, I think that this could serve as a lesson to Republicans (and maybe Democrats, too). Just from the posts here it's obvious that there's going to be a huge spoiler effect that might allow Obama to win no matter who's on the other side, or people are going to have to commit what basically amounts to strategic voting. The system is broken because the system the U.S. elects people with is broken. I mean, Electoral College? Primaries/caucuses? wtf? I hope that, down the road, combined with the Coffee Party and Occupy movements, people will eventually get the opportunity to change the core of how people are elected.

As someone who has studied somewhat deeply into math and physics (though I know that, deep in the hearts of other people, even this really, really isn't needed), I am a firm believer in the use of empirical evidence and the reduction of arguments to really obvious and basic premises/assumptions ("obvious" and "basic" meaning things like "a = b => b = a" and "the laws of physics are the same when I move to a different location"). I see a statement of morals as ultimately a logical statement that could be an assumption or an implication from another assumption. Logically, it is much more economical for such a statement to be the latter. Now, clearly, the base assumptions about how society should run are morally based, but like I said, these should be very basic, very obvious ideas. The bible itself gives an example of a two-axiom system that supposedly the rest is supposed to follow from. So basically, the very idea of liking a candidate based on complicated, vague moral standards is absurd to me, and I agree with Ice-eyes again in asking why anyone would do such a thing.

I know I shouldn't derail with a response to Deck Knight but I'll keep this short. Basically I disagree with basically all of his premises. The health care problem is a logistical and economic one, not a moral one (they're still paid, they're still there because (presumably) they want to be, etc.). You don't have to be religious to love something enough to abandon the rest of your life to do it. The given characterization of atheism/agnosticism applies only to the loud few who make it their business to bash other belief systems for whatever reason. And the reply to iDunno just degenerates to more character attacks (many atheists are Marxists? wut). The point about what moral code to use if there isn't any from "god" is an elaborate point that I'll refrain from talking about, lest I truly derail the thread.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

I cannot countenance any "right" that cannot meet the standard of being inherent to humanity, intangible and thus unlimited in availability, and whose application does not compel others to give up their unalienable rights. Abortion (tangible product or service, violates right to life), gay marriage (gay relationships are not conducive to human continuance and thus cannot be inherent to humanity in the absolute, benefits are tangible and require a legal definition for access, putting it in the realm of general public policy), and health care (tangible product or service, compels the labor of physicians) do not pass those tests.

i wish more people would think like you and i do, my friend. this is really quite a simple, elegant argument, yet still some people just refuse to accept it (to be fair -- they are mostly secular marxists). out of curiosity, do you think you could help me explain the following issues to the people who just don't get it?

1. guns and warfare, being detrimental to human continuance, should be permanently outlawed.

2. the police force compels the labour of officers, denying them their unalienable rights, and should therefore be dissolved.

3. heterosexual marriages between infertile couples (including all of those in which the female is past menopause) are not conducive to human continuance, and should not be recognized. regular fertility tests must be taken to keep a valid marriage license.

4. food, being limited in availability, is not a human right. you have a right to life, not to food.

5. our lord's deliverance, being intangible and thus unlimited in availability, is an unalienable right to be amended to the constitution. everyone needs god, whether they know it or not.

 

[Myzozoa]

C''mon Umbreon Dan you forgot to capitalize 'Lord.'

 

[Ice-eyes]

You know, I think that this could serve as a lesson to Republicans (and maybe Democrats, too). Just from the posts here it's obvious that there's going to be a huge spoiler effect that might allow Obama to win no matter who's on the other side, or people are going to have to commit what basically amounts to strategic voting. The system is broken because the system the U.S. elects people with is broken. I mean, Electoral College? Primaries/caucuses? wtf? I hope that, down the road, combined with the Coffee Party and Occupy movements, people will eventually get the opportunity to change the core of how people are elected.

As long as the constitution is sacred, I don't see any kind of major electoral reform ever happening.

 

[Deck Knight]

Since you asked so nicely Umbreon_Dan:

i wish more people would think like you and i do, my friend. this is really quite a simple, elegant argument, yet still some people just refuse to accept it (to be fair -- they are mostly secular marxists). out of curiosity, do you think you could help me explain the following issues to the people who just don't get it?

1. guns and warfare, being detrimental to human continuance, should be permanently outlawed.

Note that Constitutionally, it's the right to bear arms. The right is not that everyone must have free access to a government subsidized gun, only that a person cannot be compelled against getting a firearm for the protection of their family.

I wish we could ban war, but that isn't enforceable in any real sense. War is the last resort of a sovereign nation against external political or economic pressure (or a military strike, obviously).

2. the police force compels the labour of officers, denying them their unalienable rights, and should therefore be dissolved.

This is where you fail to see the distinction: police protection is not a right, it is a public policy. Just because something is not founded in a right does not mean it should be abolished as a public policy. The problem with health care specifically is that health care applies to every single human being that breathes. Whereas the police don't actually protect you in the immediate sense. They prosecute and hold criminals, but if the police station is 20 minutes away and a robber is at your house now... that firearm that you have the right to bear would be real handy to have.

3. heterosexual marriages between infertile couples (including all of those in which the female is past menopause) are not conducive to human continuance, and should not be recognized. regular fertility tests must be taken to keep a valid marriage license.

Since I don't believe a right to marriage exists (there is a right to free association. There is no right to define whatever that relationship is in your own terms if there is some public benefit involved.) and believe marriage is a public policy, if you could get people to vote for your ridiculously coercive idea regulating the public benefit aspect of marriage it would probably be fine.

4. food, being limited in availability, is not a human right. you have a right to life, not to food.

That is correct. Much like the first right we discusses was the right to bear arms and not the firearm itself, the right to not have your life inflicted on does not compel people to feed you.

5. our lord's deliverance, being intangible and thus unlimited in availability, is an unalienable right to be amended to the constitution. everyone needs god, whether they know it or not.

This particular one would compel people who don't believe in God to violate their own belief that God doesn't exist, possibly imperiling their right to free speech. Not to mention on the substance it's not enforceable in any meaningful way. How would you determine that someone's right to deliverance had been violated? While I'm sure there's a bunch of atheists that would like to prosecute God for not providing deliverance, it'd be rather paradoxical if they could actually do it.

My heresies from Smogon's cultural and political moors are basically that I believe things to be public policy what they believe to be rights. I don't believe you deserve to be treated as some special being just because you have the hots for someone of the same gender, or you're visibly a minority, or you're female. If you're a gay or black or woman asshole I'm going to tell you same as if you're a straight or white or male asshole. I'm not walking on eggshells just because you're going to cry hatred, discrimination, and bigotry if I do.

I'm more than happy to explain them to the community at large because I give you all the benefit of the doubt you are listening and are open-minded to opposing views. If I'm wrong, just tell me so - I'll keep track so in the future, I won't waste my time explaining my philosophy to people uninterested in hearing my perspective.

Ice-eyes: America is not a Democracy, we're a Constitutional Republic. It means that our President is the President of the 50 States. Which is to say, Electorally, the vote of Rhode Island has a population-weighted value to the vote of California that is not in direct proportion to the number of people there (e.g. it's 55 to 3 instead of 80 million to 3 million ([yeah, I didn't check wikipedia on this first]). The system is designed so that more populous states do not dictate national policy without the input of less populous states. The U.S. Senate is the ultimate check on majoritanianism - each of the 50 states gets 2 Senators to represent it.

There are of course pratical problems with the primary/caucus system, but it bears repeating that the United States is not a Democracy. It is a Constitutionally-limited Republic that elects its representatives through democratic means.

 

[Alan]

1. guns and warfare, being detrimental to human continuance, should be permanently outlawed.

You can't ban warfare. Conflict is a basic element of the human nature. An attempt to ban warfare is akin to an attempt to ban love or sadness or joy. People are always going to fight, albeit for some very stupid reasons (re: Kashmir) and as long as patriotism or nationalism exists, there will always be people willing to die for said reasons.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

C''mon Umbreon Dan you forgot to capitalize 'Lord.'

my keyboard doesn't have capital keys. it's okay, i think he will forgive me given the circumstances.

You can't ban warfare. Conflict is a basic element of the human nature. An attempt to ban warfare is akin to an attempt to ban love or sadness or joy. People are always going to fight, albeit for some very stupid reasons (re: Kashmir) and as long as patriotism or nationalism exists, there will always be people willing to die for said reasons.

of course you can. warfare is an act undertaken between two or more consenting parties. if one side decides not to fight, the war is over. (it might become mass murder at this point, but that's more conducive to human continuance than outright warfare.)

i was thinking of responding to deck knight but i just keep giggling

 

[Yuki [old]]

The system is designed so that more populous states do not dictate national policy without the input of less populous states.

but uh

if california has 50+ delegated and rhode island only has three, doesn't that mean california gets "more of a say" anyway..?


i have two problems with the electoral college system and i'm curious to hear what your thoughts on them are:

1) it's mathematically possible for one presidential candidate to have the higher popular vote total but still lose the election because he didn't campaign hard enough in ohio or something: how is this a fair election process?

2) as alluded to above, it prioritizes certain states regardless of their population count simply because they don't always vote the same way: wouldn't it make more sense for the leader of the 50 states to be forced to spend time and money traveling to every state in the nation to at least try to convince the people in that state that he's worth voting for?

 

[iDunno]

It's based on the population of the state. There are more people in California => they get more electoral votes. It's a weird system since it doesn't really matter if you only get a little over 50% of California because you get all 55 electoral votes anyway.

 

[Yuki [old]]

It's a weird system since it doesn't really matter if you only get a little over 50% of California because you get all 55 electoral votes anyway.

This is actually THE biggest problem I have with the system, I don't know how I let myself forget to bring this up in my last post lol.

Especially when you consider that at the primary level, some states have a "winner-take-all" approach to party delegates, but others have a system where they're split by which counties you won in or something like that. Why does the federal government have the authority to regulate general elections, but not state presidential primaries? if we were talking about the governor or state house of representatives for each individual state then yeah allowing them to come up with their own election process would be acceptable and make sense, but i don't get why state's rights comes into play here when who wins the election is something that will effect all of the states equally.

 

[Ice-eyes]

This is actually THE biggest problem I have with the system, I don't know how I let myself forget to bring this up in my last post lol.

Especially when you consider that at the primary level, some states have a "winner-take-all" approach to party delegates, but others have a system where they're split by which counties you won in or something like that. Why does the federal government have the authority to regulate general elections, but not state presidential primaries? if we were talking about the governor or state house of representatives for each individual state then yeah allowing them to come up with their own election process would be acceptable and make sense, but i don't get why state's rights comes into play here when who wins the election is something that will effect all of the states equally.

There are no problems. The system is flawless. Anyone who argues otherwise is a traitor to the constitution, spitting on the graves of the Founding Fathers of our great nation.

 

[doomvendingmachine]

It's based on the population of the state. There are more people in California => they get more electoral votes. It's a weird system since it doesn't really matter if you only get a little over 50% of California because you get all 55 electoral votes anyway.

It's not just weird, it's flat out bad, and it's the single largest reason why a legitimate 3rd party will never take hold in the United States. When only the winner gets all of seats for a congressional district, presidential election, etc, it means a 3rd party can never get a foothold by just gaining a few seats / delegates / whatever to expand from. He or she has to win his or her electoral area outright to gain any representation at all. I don't really understand the pros of it either. Isn't it inherently less democratic?

 

[JimBob]

but uh

if california has 50+ delegated and rhode island only has three, doesn't that mean california gets "more of a say" anyway..?

Well, the president isn't the only part of Government. While California has more say in the electoral college, Rhode Island (which has 4 votes, not 3 - it's a densely populated state!)
has the same number of senators. New England as a whole may have only 33 electoral votes to California's 55 (they do have less than half its population after all!), but they make up for it by having 12 senators to California's 2.

Checks and balances, man.


edit: @doomvendingmachine - yeah, you've pointed out the most gigantic flaw in the system. This two-party thing is a pain, especially when the two parties are almost the same.

 

[Stratos]

That is correct.

THANK GOD AT LEAST ONE OTHER PERSON ON THIS SITE UNDERSTANDS HOW THE WORLD WORKS.

People, rights are verbs. nouns, by their nature, will ALWAYS be limited. if you try to ensure nouns, you WILL fail. there is a reason that Jefferson, when he penned the Declaration, wrote we had a right to the PURSUIT of happiness. The government cannot give you happiness, it cannot give you anything, it can only (at least effectively) make an environment in which you can get yourself these things.

We have a right to own food. We have a right to get food. We do not have a right to food.

edit: also i'm pretty sure nobody is defending the two-party system here.

 

[capefeather]

That's pretty insulting, Pwnemon... and I noticed you used this post to respond to me in the other topic (why you posted it here is beyond me considering that) and in the end, it has nothing to do with anything. It all, as I said in the other thread, depends on what you mean by "right".

Especially when you consider that at the primary level, some states have a "winner-take-all" approach to party delegates, but others have a system where they're split by which counties you won in or something like that. Why does the federal government have the authority to regulate general elections, but not state presidential primaries? if we were talking about the governor or state house of representatives for each individual state then yeah allowing them to come up with their own election process would be acceptable and make sense, but i don't get why state's rights comes into play here when who wins the election is something that will effect all of the states equally.

all hail the holy practice of gerrymandering

 

[Stratos]

I posted in this thread before I saw yours, cape.

also, I don't think it's insulting - maybe the first sentence, but it really is a common misconception that people have a right to nouns, and I wanted to opine on the subject.

 

[Myzozoa]

Except that some rights, like the right to food, are necessary to ensuring that their is an 'environment in which you can get yourself these things.' Whatever the other things are. Equality has never existed, and it will never exist, but you cannot ignore basic human rights and then claim that all people have equal opportunity so poor people should stop complaining. Also I suggest you avoid posting until you really understand the implications of what it means to say that people don't have the right to food. You just sound stupid.

 

[Stratos]

Except that some rights, like the right to food, are necessary to ensuring that there is an 'environment in which you can get yourself these things.' Whatever the other things are.

nope. if i understand correctly what you're saying here, at least.

Equality has never existed, and it will never exist, but you cannot ignore basic human rights and then claim that all people have equal opportunity so poor people should stop complaining.

did i say this? nope.

Also I suggest you avoid posting until you really understand the implications of what it means to say that people don't have the right to food. You just sound stupid.

nope. i suggest you stop posting until you understand what i meant when i said you don't have a right to food.