Sarpedon writes: I argued that single point because it was the only one that was respectable. You want to argue the other issues? fine,
Getting us into foreign wars and spending huge amounts of money on defense doesn't improve our security. It puts money into the hands of rich corporations that support the campaigns of republican corporations. Iraq and Afganistan didn't make us more secure. This should be obvious.
I agree with this. How is Obama's policy any different? He's bombed seven countries during his term. This is a peacetime record by a large margin. He didn't get out of Iraq when promised. He got out when we were kicked out by the Iraqis. He escalated Afghanistan and, after promising to withdraw in 2014, now says he's going to keep 10,000 troops there. However, this isn't one of the issues that you listed. Republicans will seek to exploit this issue, however. Rand Paul is currently the only Republican who might try to exploit in on the dovish side although others might see an advantage to that as time goes on. But other GOP candidates will seek to exploit it from the hawkish side. Obama doesn't follow through, etc.
Married women vote Republican? This means republicans aren't misogynistic? That's a silly conclusion to make. That's like saying republicans aren't anti-poor because poor whites vote for them. Or that democrats aren't racist because blacks vote for them.
Polls have shown that when you factor out income, race and other factors, women do not have any bias against Republicans. Who defines misogyny better than the alleged "victims" of it? All you're claiming is that Republicans don't follow the politically correct line. So what? How is that going to affect the election? Mark Udall has been running ads all campaign season about how his opponent is anti-women, and he's done nothing but decline in the polls.
Opposing gay marriage isn't anti-gay? Sorry, the Supreme Court ruled that laws built on animus aren't constitutional, and that is the basis of most of the bans being struck down. In several cases, all that had to be done to establish animus was to submit the documents that the legislators submitted themselves to explain their reasons for passing the bans. Just because the gay bashers have lost every single other plank on their platform doesn't mean that this last plank isn't anti-gay. Also should be obvious.
I'm not interested in how the Supreme Court distorts the constitution. Gay marriage was openly opposed by Bill Clinton not that long ago even while he tried to introduce gays into the military. These are separate issues. Just because someone doesn't favor every single thing that activists demand doesn't mean that they are somehow against that entire group. This isn't going to be a major issue in most elections and won't necessarily hurt Republicans where it is. And that is the point of this discussion. I'm not challenging your positions on these issue even though I mostly disagree with you. I'm challenging your claim that these issues will somehow become the central issues in the way the GOP "frames" the debate for 2016. I'm saying they won't emphasize these issues and that it won't particularly hurt them if they do.
How can the republicans discuss the budget? They've tried, and utterly failed to produce anything workable. The Ryan budget is basically theft: people who have been paying for medicare for their entire lives are now seeing it called a 'hand out' and see politicians attempting to steal what they've spent their life paying for. When you promise something to someone and take their money, and don't give what you promised, you are a thief. That's just one example.
The Ryan budget isn't theft. The theft has already occurred. Medicare, like social security, faces the demographic time bomb of the aging of the baby boomer generation. Yet little was done to reduce Medicare costs. What was done by Newt Gingrich and acquiesced to by Bill Clinton was to cap doctors payments at below market prices. What really needed to be done was to reform health care regulations, particularly insurance regulations, to reduce the underlying costs. Instead Bush pushed through his under-financed prescription drug program and Obama has raided Medicare to help pay for Obamacare. No wonder costs have to be cut. No wonder Medicare is in trouble.
In fact, the Ryan budget is way, way too little, too late. Politicians of both parties are simply going to run out the clock until a crisis is upon us and then far more drastic cuts will be needed. Democrats will probably say that we just need to let old people die. (What, then, was the point of Medicare in the first place?) When you don't have the money it is absurd to say we need to do it anyway. It's like saying that I'm being cruel to my son because I don't buy him a bicycle. What if I don't have the money? Should I buy him a bicycle and then starve him to death?
Democrats have their heads in the sand completely on budgetary issues. Republicans sometimes pull their head out and take a peek, don't like what they see, and put their heads back.
Tea Party budgeting has been tried in Kansas, and to a lesser extent Wisconsin. Kansas is a disastrous failure, and Wisconsin lags behind all of its neighbors in economic recovery. Tea party voodoo economics have been tried, and failed. Like a Communist, you close your eyes to the obvious failures, and cling to your ideology
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I don't know what you mean by "Tea Party" budgeting. Do you mean not spending money you don't have? Most states are required to balance their budgets by their constitution. When you talk about states approaching the "fiscal cliff," Kansas and Wisconsin are not on the list. The states with the worst finances are California, Illinois, and New Jersey. They are the three states with less than AA credit ratings. They are the states that have to pay high interest rates on their debts, and Tea Party candidates regularly get trounced in elections in those states.
