What will Republicans conclude went wrong?

Apparently, they’ve already concluded that changing demographics (i.e. those lazy, no-job-holding,want-free-stuff non whites are all at fault, all 50% of the US population) are the reason that they lost. Not through any fault of their own, of course.

It couldn’t have had anything to do with a society that accepts that women have the ability and right to make decision about their own reproductive health, or a society that is tired of excuses and justifications for rape.

It couldn’t have had anything to do with a society that doesn’t see the need to deny basic civil rights to a group of people based on who they love; that don’t fear that “marriage” is so fragile that it needs protecting from a group of people who offer no threat.

It couldn’t have had anything to do with the GOP being a party containing plenty of anti-intellectualism, anti-science, anti-progress, and religious zealotry who believe that “Freedom of Religion” means the Christian religion only.

It couldn’t have been a reaction to a short-sighted and even destructive attitude about the future of fossil fuels, climate change, and the conservation of natural resources.

It couldn’t have been a concern about pulling the rug out from under a social safety network to fund the black hole of military spending.

Maybe they’re correct; maybe the days of white male hegemony are finally over. Hopefully.

The liberal media screwed them.

I am pretty sure they will not conclude that they are dated, stuffy, and restrictive. Or that the middle class would rather have their tax dollars go to the poor and to the special interest groups than go to the rich.

Actually, they would rather their tax dollars go to themselves, but that will never happen!

This Q kind of relates.

On my facebook Republicans think what went wrong is not enough Republicans went out to vote. Not all the votes have been counted. Military personnel abroad were prevented from voting. Military absentee votes have not been counted. Various TV stations were showing different electoral counts througout the night, so the vote is unreliable and there is some sort of fraud going on. But, that is the average guy on the ground. The people at the helm of the party, I think they will think they just need to go after one more demographic group more strategically and they can win. They may try to run a minority next time like a Hispanic or black person, but I think it is a mistake to just simply think outward appearance will work. I see a whole bunch of mistakes and wrong assumptions they could make trying to do that.

Talk show take is that the Republican Party “elites” forced them to choose a Massachusett Moderate and the core of the party did not get out and vote. And that they did not give him their support because he was not conservative enough and did not accurately represent their beliefs.

Basically, they are saying that “America” wanted a “true” conservative.

Apparently they are still stuck with the conclusion that they should’ve been more conservative, they shouldn’t have picked a moderate Republican from the liberal North East part of the country, and they should have chosen a Christian….

As this is what all the Republican talking heads are saying on TV so far. Apparently they also believe that no one in the military should have even considered voting for Obama…an further they believe that Colin Powell only voted for Obama because he is black.

These are some delusional f*cks if you want my opinion.

They only reason the control the house is because of the South & the rural areas, IMO, voting straight ticket Republican.

They’re not breeding enough rural & suburban married white men. Maybe they will change their position and start supporting science in an attempt to clone the pale among us.

@tom_g either that or they will change the voting requirements. Oh wait…......

relevant (maybe. Edit: Ok, not relevant. But fun. Flag if you want.)

The electronic vote rigging machines failed.

Yep @tom_g on FB, several friends said similar things like “It’s a very sad day for America”...“Four years from now we’ll all be poor & jobless” Ugh! Notice how everyone sad is white? Same with my :( FB friends.

Did any of you see the Karl Rove incident on Fox when Fox called the election? Holy Sh*t Batman, that was some crazy TV.

@SpatzieLover I didn’t see it. What happened?

@SpatzieLover – I watched that clip of Rove. Very odd. Usually, I assume that their spin is merely partisan garbage and they are really intelligent people who want to convince others of something that isn’t true. In the Rove case, it really seemed that he was trying to convince himself. I mean, he didn’t really believe the crap coming out of his mouth, right?

When Gore lost and then Kerry what did the Democrats conclude? I ask as an exercise of putting ourselves in the Reublican’s shoes from their perspective. What I think of when asked my own question was we as Democrats felt we needed to get better at the game, better at repeating messages like the Republicans, better marketing, better getting out the vote. I don’t think liberals thought was should change our stance on issues to win. What do you thnk? It might explain why many Republicans are not thinking the party really needs to change fundamentally.

Just a thought.

@JLeslie I can’t find it in one video clip, but here HuffPost has a group of them altogether.

You need to watch a couple of videos to see that he makes the anchors go to the back of the station where the mathematicians/projectionists are questioned as to whether they are confident in their numbers.

Rove has an on air meltdown when Chris Wallace states that Fox News is projecting Obama as the President.

@JLeslie I agree with you.

You can see in Obama’s campaign and in the Senators that won Republican seats how Democrats changed their game. They took campaigning to an individual level for undecided voters, they used social media to encourage people to vote, and used the Net to help people find their wards to vote at.

Dems didn’t need to change their political stance, as it isn’t as far from the middle as the Republican stance is. It’s impossible for Republicans to keep talking about rape and about a young earth and be considered intelligent enough to run this country, by people living in any city. There message resonates with rural & Southern voters. Unfortunately, rural isn’t growing, cities are.

Republicans have talking heads that aren’t crazy. I happen to like Megan McCain. Even she doesn’t have a clue how the party can continue with their current stance.

@SpatzieLover; I did see it and was ashamed at how pleased I was. He seemed like a rabid dog.

They will probably conclude they did not have a good enough candidate.
I think Obama is mediocre at best as a Chief Executive. But he is a compelling character to be sure. And wildly popular among his constituents.
Romney would probably have been a successful president, but he just didn’t have the same charisma as the President. Wrong candidate for 2012.

I could watch that Rove bit on Fox every day for the rest of my life.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Because Rove is not a stupid man. He had to know what the polls in Ohio were showing. But then, his entire job is to make it seem like Romney is winning, not just to motivate the base but also so GOP donors continue to give him money. So what happens? Was he just lying? Or did he actually believe his own bullshit?

Watching that video, it looks like it’s a mixture of both, and I think it’s such a microcosm of the entire GOP and their supporters. I mean you can see it in his jowly blubbering face, the combination of desperation, genuine shock, and pleading all at once. There is a part of his brain that is drinking his kool-aid, and there is a part of his brain that knows it’s bullshit and knows its job is to sell bullshit to rubes.

The interaction between these two brain compartments, the back-and-forth between knowingly propogating BS and believing one’s own BS, is the metaphorical pulse of the Republican party entity.

They weren’t ideologically pure enough. (And you don’t get much more ideologically pure than Akin or Mourdock, but nevermind that.)

Given their mentality, they’ll probably lay the blame at the feet of “all those damn negro voters!”

This morning’s Wall Street Journal has a long excuse that Romney had to spend too much time in May, June, and July raising funds that he couldn’t get his point across. Meanwhile the Kochs and Adelson spent hundreds of millions. The WSJ article completely misses the rest of the campaign.

And as Jon Stewart pointed out last night, FOX is saying it’s because all of the non whites in the electorate that want stuff from the government.

They’re blaming the non whites? Have they looked at demagraphics lately?

@Adirondackwannabe It appears from their words that they not only blame non-whites, but also question their intelligence by stating the non-whites voted for Obama based on skin color alone. As a white person, even I find that demeaning.

@zenvelo Hey wait! I’m white and I want free stuff too!

@SpatzieLover Wow, just when I think humans couldn’t get any dumber someone comes around and says oh yes we can.

@Adirondackwannabe So far, other than Megan McCain, I have heard no Republican or Rep pundit say anything that remotely makes any sense. It’s sad, really. As an independent voter, I’d prefer both sides to be balanced.

Karl Rove is at it again. He’s now on Fox stating that Obama suceeded by suppressing the vote.

I am enjoying him losing it way too much. It brings back the Gore election memories.

“What will Republicans conclude went wrong?”
The elections.

People who pay taxes vote red, people who live off of those taxes vote blue, and Obama is very good at making people public aid recipients.

^I live in a very high tax state @DrBill, and pay my fair share of taxes.
I live in the blue state of Wisconsin.
It seems to me Illinois has higher taxes than us, and they are a win for the blue team as well.

@DrBill, I love how you think you can just say things that aren’t true without any accountability.

Many Republican voters are elderly, do not work, and receive Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Many non-elderly people who do not work and receive public benefits do not vote—and many of those that do actually vote Republican.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/how-do-the-47-vote/

@SpatzieLover
yes Illinois has one of the highest taxes in the country, Obama helped bankrupt Illinois before he went to cripple the country. We also have a tremendous number of people on some type of public aid.

@Qingu
I also love how you can distort facts to your liking. Since you don’t know it, Social Security and medicare are not Public aid, they were paid into by the people who receive it. I hope one day you can open your eyes to see the facts, so you don’t have to make stuff up.

@DrBill, can I ask you an honest question? How old are you?

@DrBill California is a navy blue state, and just voted to tax itself.

We Californians are beginning to accept responsibility for funding government, which was abandoned under Republican control of the State House and the Orange County conservatives.

O’Reilly sums it up. Link.

Ugh, of course @mazingerz88, O’Reilly states that “minorities want stuff” and have a sense of “entitlement”. So far no Rep pundit are calling this a mandate, nor are they discussing the fact that they lost the union votes in Michigan, Wisconsin & Ohio.

@Qingu
Well, he has not been gobbled up by that wolf yet, so… I guess he is very young.

@DrBill Yes, my generation has been, and continue to be, raped of Social Security tax for our whole working lives. How dare anyone put me in the category of “welfare queen” when I am finally old enough to reap the benefit.

@ragingloli

Well, he has not been gobbled up by that wolf yet, so… I guess he is very young.

Do you mean the cardboard cutout that he’s holding in his avatar photo?

The only thing this Liberal Republican will say is that Mitt was about as personable as a rock, his smile was always frozen, and his Stepford family and religion kind of freaked me out. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

I voted for him, don’t get me wrong, they’ll pick a new candidate and if they lose again in 4 years they may change some platforms.

@Brian1946
No.
I am referring to the wolf from The Boy who cried Wolf fable.

America isn’t ready for a guy with a dozen kids to move into the White House and tear it up. Ha-ha!

Uhm… food stamps and welfare are paid into by people who receive it as well. The vast majority of welfare and SNAP recipients are short-time recipients who need some help between jobs. That’s kind of why the programs exist.

@KNOWITALL some of the Rep pundits are saying that a large number of the base stayed home because Romney was not conservative enough. They never say (maybe it doesn’t occur to them) that it is possible that they stayed home because he was TOO conservative. What are your thoughts on this?

it is true that welfare is “suppose” to be short time, but there are also third generation recipients, who are teaching their children how to qualify so they will be the 4th generation. These are the people I was referring to.

I think we need the program, because it serves a noble cause. It is the abusers that consider it a way of life that is the burden. I have no problem having my taxes go to help the needy, or those who cannot work. I do have a problem paying for people who won’t work.

@rojo He just didn’t sell us at all. I have voted candidates for the last several elections, I voted for Bill Clinton back in the day, so even though a lot of us feel a little more strongly attached to the values of one party over another, there’s a bunch of us who relate to both parties.

The in-fighting, negativity, Obama’s record versus Mitt’s non-personality, it was seen as a no-win situation for a lot of people I’ve talked to. I encouraged everyone to vote but people were pretty dispirited tbh.

@DrBill, there are also social security and Medicare recipients who haven’t paid into the tax system that funds their ability to live.

Also Christian conservatives don’t relate to the Mormons much either. I mean how many church couples are into multiple wives and all that? None, we are extremely traditional with values and in life.

When you think about Christian conservative values, Ryan would have been a better & more relatable fit for us than Romney and may have pulled a lot more votes.

@DrBill @Qingu All the programs you mentioned do have problems but the solution is not to do away with them. We need to identify what the problems are and resolve them, not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It would help if we, as a society, could suggest possible solutions to the individual problems instead of just whining.

I am not sure what the Republicans will think went wrong, but personally I think that they set themselves up to fail due to their exclusionary tactics & their attacks against women. The world, especially in the United States, has become much more multi-ethnic & the Republicans are doing their best to exclude the immigrants (even though as a nation, we are a nation of immigrants), their racism became very blatant against both African-Americans & Hispanic-Americans & you can’t win elections by excluding these people. The various Republicans who spoke about Rape went much too far in saying that getting pregnant from a Rape – that it was “God’s will” that the woman should carry the child. All in all, they did not take into account anyone’s view except their own biased viewpoint.

@KNOWITALL, to be fair to Mormons, they outlawed polygamy years ago. Only crazy subsects of Mormons, rejected by the main church, support polygamy.

As for Ryan, I think his “no exceptions for rape” abortion policy might have proven rather unpopular among some voters. Also Ryan’s objectivism—and his phony walk-back of his admiration for Ayn-Rand—might turn off some Christians as well.

@rojo, er, not sure why you’re lumping me in with the good doctor. I support social safety net programs. :)

It was mostly his business record of sending jobs out of the country, keeping his money in the Cayman Islands, his stand on immigration, and the threat to take away health care from millions of sick people.

If he would have just offered an alternative to the health care program that would help those people, he probably could have tipped the scale.

Sigh. For those who are so concerned about their taxes, take a look at what your taxes went to last year: link

Sure, we all would live to allocate our tax dollars in a way that contributes most to things we most value. But that isn’t how it works. I wouldn’t contribute more than $2 towards defense, for example. Here’s a sampling of what that little tool estimates my taxes went to:

- $1840 “national defense”
– $333 veteran’s benefits
– $325 Federal military and civilian employee retirement and disability
– $273 food and nutrition assistance
– $266 Education and Job Training
– $170 unemployment insurance
– $148 housing assistance
– $44 NASA
– $29 National Science Foundation and additional science research and laboratories
– $29 disaster relief

Call me a f*cking whambulance if I find a need to complain that my $148 is too much to help people have a roof over their head, or my $273 is too much to help families (like myself at one point, and others in my family) to eat.

There are those who pay less taxes than I do and therefore are paying less towards these programs, and will readily admit that not everyone “cheats the system”. So, what exactly are you paying per month to support the “cheaters”? $10? $200? Isn’t this the cost of having these valuable programs? We could theoretically lower the number of people who are “abusing” these programs by growing the agencies that managing them. But you wouldn’t be in favor of more money going to them. So suck it up, whining shits.

I have no problem with the amount of taxes I pay. I wish higher incomes paid a higher percentage of their taxes so we could really tackle the problems facing this country.

So, check out that link, enter your info, and try to suppress your tears long enough to figure out that you’re not paying as much as you think towards these programs. But you are paying for a shit ton of deadly, unnecessary wars.

@KNOWITALL Even if Ryan were the perfect Republican candidate policy-wise, he is way too young and undisciplined to handle being president. He loses his cool after just about every interview that doesn’t go his way. That’s not even counting that his policies are far too extreme to attract non-Republicans to vote for him.

I do believe these programs need to be there, (there are people who need and depend on it) but the programs need a serious overhaul. Such as you should not qualify for medicaid (not Medicare) if you make over $70,000/year.

@Qingu not lumping you together but you mentioned two programs that are needed but would benefit from updating and changing to keep them working. Nothing is perfect and everything can be improved but we end up with black/white, up/down, in/out arguments and do not actually do anything to improve the programs.

Given the many responses, I will not even try to deal with every post but will at least deal with every poster. If you jumped into a debate downstream, I’ll leave you on your own on that for tonight.

@syz What a great answer. Let me just note that not all us old white guys belong on that list of sins.

@Adirondackwannabe It’s always safe to blame the “librul” media. Never mind that most media now is owned by 6 uber-corporation.

@Skaggfacemutt Spot on. Boehner and McConnell are already falsely claiming that the election demonstrates a mandate for ensuring that programs for the poor get cut, but not the Bush tax breaks for millionaires.

@JLeslie Thanks. I saw the referenced question early on. Responded to it, in fact. But I appreciated seeing all the additional input.

Regarding their delusional analysis of what went wrong, why am I feeling so singularly sanguine about that? :-)

@rojo Oh wow do I ever hope that’s their final answer. Get way more extreme next election.

@SpatzieLover I heartily concur with your conclusion of their party. I keep holding out hope they will wake up and reshape the party into a force for good in the 21st century. But if they are determined to play 19th century politics, then they will eventually be replaced. Single party rule is not something I view nearly as positively as the fascist wing of the Republican Party does.

@tom_g Cruel. Dance on their grave. :-)

@Lightlyseared Ha! Shows what you get when you hire programmers who don’t believe in math or science. But hey, they did at least try.

@gailcalled When you are dealing with someone who has danced on the graves of so many you admired, a little gallows humor is to be expected.

@josie Charisma may be just what it takes for the coming 4 years.

@Qingu Correction. Karl Rove’s job is to make sure billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers will give his PACs hundreds of millions of dollars again in the next election cycle. That is literally his job. He takes a nice little chunk of those “charitable” donations from billionaires trying to buy a government to do favors for themselves, and keeps it for himself.

@bolwerk Well put. GA.

@ucme Well, we have Bill O’Reilly linked in the OP claiming the problem was whites (now just a scant 72% of the electorate) are now a minority.

@zenvelo GA. Yes, never mind that including the superPACs, Republicans outspent Democrats 3 to 1. The danger is we will conclude that this means money is unimportant in politics and give up on efforts to fix the travesty of Citizens United. Think of where Democrats in the Senate and Congressional races, and state legislatures would have been if the playing field had been level. The Citizens United decision stinks and the smell of it must be buried.

@rebbel Yes, I guess declaring elections null and void—not a part of democracy—would give them the hegemony they dream of.

@DrBill Way wrong! Even Mitt Romney knew that 47% of Americans are making so little they currently are not hit with the Federal Income Tax. I’m pretty sure that 100% minus 47% comes out to 53%, which should be plenty to win an election, no?

This lie about no taxes is particularly disgusting. It shows how out-of-touch Republican defend-our-poor-millionaires efforts have gotten. The 47% who earn so little they are exempt from federal taxes still pay Payroll Withholding Tax, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, property taxes and on and on. In fact, most of them pay a greater percentage of their total income in taxes then Mitt Romney did, even in the two tax returns he was willing to release.

@mazingerz88 Yes, there’s a link to that clip in the OP.

@ragingloli I think @DrBill has photoshopped in a giant cat on his extended arms. Either the photoshopping extended to aging his face artificially, or he isn’t all that much younger than me.

@Brian1946 Is that a cardboard cutout. I just assumed it was photoshopped in, because that’s what I would do.

@KNOWITALL Thanks for the feedback from the Republican side.

@Seek_Kolinahr You are very right. Thanks.

@DrBill Are you sure there are still generational welfare recipients? Bill Clinton signed the “workfare” requirements in as Welfare Reform. Now, each state it to see that all who are not disabled get training if needed and return to the workforce withing 5 years.

@Linda_Owl Thanks. You’re quite right it was policies, and not having a black guy and a Hispanic on stage. But I see them planning to fix the demographic problem by recruiting a few token people of color, much like Alan West.

@YARNLADY That couldn’t have helped, particularly in a time when the economy has been hit so hard by outsourcing.

@tom_g Thanks for sharing those numbers. It really puts the tax issue in perspective.

@glacial Copy that. So true.

@tom_g, do those figures reflect your tax dollars for one year?

^ yes – but it’s just a few of the values

Oh, okay. I see.

@ETpro 1, your talking about people who won’t work and those that are under employed, I was talking about only those who won’t work.

2. photoshop was not involved, took a picture of Catgut, enlarged it, gluded it to a cardboard backer, then took the picture holding it.

3. Yes they do exist. The time limits only apply to one of the dozen programs public aid deals with. When these people use up their time they just switch programs and start again. I personally know several 3rd generation families who admit they are teaching their children how to qualify. I wish Clintion’s plan did work the way it was intended.

@DrBill

When you come up with a workable idea that will allow us to filter out the mooches from the short-term “I just need some help” crowd or the legit “I can’t work” crowd, I’d be thrilled to hear it.

And no, drug testing them won’t work. Not all mooches do drugs, and a lot of normal, hard working people like bagels.

I’m in Missouri, which is the heartland of Christian conservatism. As soon as most people heard Mormon, we get cult-like images in our heads. Ryan may be a hothead but that’s a completely different ballgame than Mormonism. They were feeling they were picking from two unrelatable candidates, a Mormom or a Muslim. It may not be factual but it’s the perception. I know my mom wrote in Hillary Clinton, and my mom is pretty religious…lol, go figure.

When Republikans like @DrBill talk about Republikans paying taxes and non-Republikans not paying taxes, they’re conflating different demographic groups – Obama voters disproportionately work for a living. Sorry, but it’s true.

Actually, it’s a form of sublimation. Republikan politicians must be well aware that the dumbest voters vote GOP. By and large, these are people who incapable of making innovative contributions to society or the U.S. economy. Some are grifters clever enough to stack the deck against everyone else. Others simply hold what might be regarded as menial-but-respectable positions in society. Joe the Plumber may perform a valuable function as a plumber (hey, I can’t plumb), but he’ll never get what Mitt Romney has in terms of wealth. Still others are just moronic, thinking things like Noah forget to pick up the dinosaurs or that God pulled a woman out of a rib. These are not the people who are liable to discover new medical procedures, new ways to to engineer, new ways to interact, solutions to problems, or new ways to think. This makes them uncomfortable, so they forged a narrative that puts themselves above everybody else.

Another thing that doesn’t get play, but that Republikan politicians must realize: blue states pay more in taxes than red states. Red states consume more in services than they pay in taxes, and blue states have it the other way.

Can we please not spell it Republikan?

Scientists have found that replacing c’s with k’s in any politically charged word lowers the value of discourse by upwards of 30%

I’d prefer to call them Repuglikans, but that’s a little rude. It’s confusing not to call them Republikans, since it means they could be conflated with the small-R republican party, which for some reason is called the Democratic Party.

“blue states pay more in taxes than red states. Red states consume more in services than they pay in taxes” is this correct?

@bolwerk
How dare you be so insulting, you choose your own party and stop dictating what parties you assume others are. This in nothing but a personal attack, and does prove you don’t even know how to spell it.

@rojo: yep, more or less.

@DrBill: it’s only insulting because it’s true. Claims like, “People who pay taxes vote red, people who live off of those taxes vote blue, and Obama is very good at making people public aid recipients,” are not true. In fact, the preponderance of evidence suggests the opposite is true. It’s no coincidence that 8 out of 10 of the high-earning counties voted for Obama.

FWIW, I think the Democrats are a corrupt and despicable lot too. Just generally, as (ironic-?)conservative Gore Vidal more or less put it, a bit less vicious and stupid.

Oh, and @DrBill, instead of getting angry at me for telling you the truth, maybe you should try to lift yourself up by the bootstraps and see what you can do to fix the situation in your party. Just sayin’.

@DrBill I agree with you about the attack but please recall what Andrew Jackson, a founder of the Democratic Party, said; “It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word”.

@KNOWITALL What are cult like images? I thought Christians used the word cult for Mormons simply to mean Mormons say they are Christians, but aren’t.

@bolwerk I find spelling republican that way very offensive too. Same as I find BHO or just using Hussein or The Muslim offensive. Not because I would even care if he is Muslim, but because that is a code for hate among those who use it. It is purposefully disrespectful and does not help us have a reasonable and rational debate.

@JLeslie: oh well. “Republikan” is an ideology, not an ethnic or even religious group. It’s well within bounds to mock it. But when Republikans stop being authoritarian thugs, I’ll stop spelling their name with a K. Deal?

Why is BHO “offensive” anyway? U.S. presidents are conventionally referred to by their three initials. FDR, JFK, LBJ most commonly. I’ve at least seen it for WJC and GWB too. But not RMN, GRF, RWR, or GHWB. And I have no idea what Jimmy Carter’s middle initial is.

Well, to this subject, here’s a refreshing breath of truth from an unlikely source, Karl (yes, with a K) Rove.

Kansas needs no introduction, but perhaps Amerika and Kalifornia do.

@ETpro: It’s the original clip of election night where Megyn Kelly is the one exhaling the refreshing breath of truth. Unless I am missing something…

@bolwerk then that means you are aware you are posting lies.

It is a weak mind that has to lie and call names to pretend to make a point.

Intelligent minds talk about ideas, idiots talk about other people.

@DrBill: I don’t see what your problem with descriptive labels is. The nature of the Republikan is no more a secret than the nature of a rattle snake. Also, what lies are you referring to? I even cited URLs that show you data on why what you said was untrue. Don’t sublimate that into me lying. Defend your claim, and stop lashing out at me.

@JLeslie Well if you’ve read anything about the Mormons or their Bible, if I’ve got the correct sect, which is a derivative related to Jehovah’s Witnesses, they are quite a bit different in their beliefs than Christians. You know, the whole golden plates story, etc….I don’t want to demean the faith, like Bolwerk does, but just helping clarify Conservative Christian perspective.

All I am saying is that Christians do missionary work, as does JW’s and Mormons, but it is actually a requirement of the faith from what I’ve been told by our local JW’s, unlike Christianity.

Chrisian Conservatives, imo, have a difficult time voting for a candidate of a different faith than them. It’s not just about abortion, or the creation theory, it’s about a total belief system that upholds the Christian faith that this country was founded on. If he was trying to appeal to them as voters, he didn’t do a very good job.

BTW- This is a liberal forum I know, but can’t we try to keep the discussion mature, and you guys argue in private messages?! sigh

@bolwerk you said I was a Republican, and that is a LIE that you told so it is proven, I have not even pointed out the you seem to have a learning disorder by not knowing how to spell it correctly, you may think it is cute, but it just proves ignorance.

@KNOWITALL: where did I even comment on faith? the only faith I arguably demeaned is the fact-free Republikan faith. I have great respect for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and its teaching of peace and tolerance.

@DrBill: I wasn’t lying. I had no idea you were not a Republikan. You repeated an ahem lie that Republikans repeat about how those who don’t “vote red” (as you put it) don’t work or pay taxes, and just live off others.

I’m really curious though. Why would someone who isn’t a Republikan want to repeat such a myth? And then get angry when shown it’s a myth?

@bolwerk no one has shown it to be a myth. If you had no idea, then you should not have posted it, but you seem to post a lot of things without having any idea. I’m really curious, why can’t you spell?

You can keep posting while you wait for you check, but I am going to work, someone has to support those that won’t

@bolwerk Yes, ‘fact-free Republikan faith’ is not inflammatory or demeaning at all is it?

I am a Christian and I’m a liberal Republican, those are facts and being Republican is a political stance which does tie into our faith to a degree but not completely.

Please understand please that not all of us believe SSM is wrong, not all of believe that abortion should be completely outlawed…you’re assuming quite a bit with your ‘name-calling’ labels, sir.

This election was truly an interesting event, and most of us seem to want to discuss it in a mature manner. Also, Obama has plenty of faults but is it really constructive or pertinent to this conversation to antagonize people in an online forum?

All I am asking is that you and DrBill try to keep it classy. And I can spell and I work full time and pay taxes.

@KNOWITALL When someone says cult I don’t think any of those things.

I can’t wait for the candidates to vote for are a Hispanic Jew and a Asian Buddhist. What will the Christians do?

@JLeslie It would be interesting….or a woman, tbh, most Christian Conservatives think a womans place is at home raising children and supporting her husband. :) I’m quite liberated for my area…lol

@DrBill: let’s just pretend for a second I haven’t shown it to be a myth. You haven’t shown it to be true.

But, go ahead, instead of spouting off and lobbing personal attacks at me, add up the columns: how much does red pay in taxes, how much does it get back in services? How about blue? Here are the numbers for 2005, where we see blue states paying $170B+ more in taxes than they get back in services. You can surely find updated numbers, if you prefer. You just may have to do the math yourself.

Not ready to back off your lie? About about these inconvenient facts:

•Most are employed: Sixty-two percent of the Obama voters work, including the 10 percent working only part time. A fourth are retired. Five percent say they’re temporarily unemployed.

•Most earn higher-than-average wages. Fifty-six percent have household incomes above the U.S. median of $50,000. Just 16 percent have incomes below $30,000, and about the same share (20 percent) have incomes of $100,000 or more.

•They’re all ages but skew younger than Romney’s voters: Twenty percent are senior citizens and 12 percent are under age 30.

•They’re more educated than the overall population: Forty-three percent boast four-year college degrees or above; 21 percent topped out with a high school diploma.

And why did 8 out of 10 of the highest-earning counties in the USA vote against Romney?

Come, Bill, who is lying?

@KNOWITALL: I’m not obligated to be nice to a party that regularly demeans and attempts to oppress gays, atheists, women, socialists,non-Christians, the poor, or just about anybody else that doesn’t fit into its worldview.* I’m not obligated to politely accept the labels of anyone who does those things. The odd exception to that rule doesn’t make the party stop being poison. As I told JLeslie, if they stop being oppressive, I’ll stop calling them out as the authoritarian thugs they are. Until then, I really don’t care too much about their crocodile tears. (If you read over my posting history, you’ll probably notice that I distinguish between Republican and Republikan. Lincoln was a Republican. Karl Rove is a Republikan.)

Also, I don’t buy this claptrap about tolerance for religion. I personally do tolerate religion, at least the brands that don’t seek to oppress others. Religious rights, which are held by people, should be respected. However, nobody is intellectually obligated to be nice to a religious position. Religions are ideas, not people, and it is well within the bounds of legitimate discourse to mock, belittle, and ridicule them, just as it’s within the bounds of legitimate discourse to mock/belittle/ridicule political parties, political positions, and political ideologies.

* why anybody who is against demeaning and oppressing all these groups would be a self-identified “Republican” is beyond me, but hey.

Oh, crap, I totally proved @DrBill wrong, but he ran away to flip burgers for his dad.

@bolwerk Because not all people are the same, hold the same values or think like you do.

I am all for SSM.

I’m personally Pro-life but am Pro-Choice for my sisters.

I’m all for helping the poor and do so as often as possible, but continuing to fund a broken, leaking welfare and medicaid system is just fiscally dumb.

I’m a non-church-going Christian who does believe in God, not the big business of making money through a church.

Atheists get as much respect from me as a Christian preacher, because I was taught to treat everyone with respect and love, not judgement.

If you’re going to judge everyone that voted Republican by your own warped little definition of ‘Republikan’ then you only do yourself a disservice and perpetuate myths.

Do you realize how Republicans perceive most liberals? Think about it.

@KNOWITALL: Where did I say all Republikans think alike? Where did I “judge everyone that voted Republican”? This is at least the fourth time in an hour that you have ascribed actions or positions to me that I do not hold.

The majority of Republican Party members authoritarians, of course – hence, Republikans. The majority subscribe to the hogwash I mentioned, and then some. There is no reason to let them off the hook for their poisoned values just because you are nice to gay people and tolerate some dissent. Like it or not, the party is a coherent set of ideas and has meaning, and needs to be treated as such. And, well, if people (not saying I) judge you based on that, is it surprising? Lie with dogs, get fleas.

As for how they perceive liberals, they don’t. “Liberal” is what they call people they don’t like, which is how everything from Marxism to jihadism gets called “liberal“in their minds. They don’t even know what the word means. By any strict definition, BHO (oops) is the conservative, and Mitt Romney is, in more ways, the liberal. They don’t know that.

@bolwerk I’m kind of turned on by your rage. Just a little.

I’m not enraged, honestly. Totally calm, cool, collected. I think @DrBill had the ragequit.

@bolwerk You are simply Republican-bashing. I hear nothing new or particularly enlightening in your comments. “They” “them” The majority”....I mean, what is the point?

Calm, cool rage is the hottest.

@KNOWITALL: You’re in a field full of black and rainbow berries. The black ones are poison. They make up 90% of the berry field. The rainbow ones are not poison. Quick: what sort of berry do you take home to your starving offspring?

Either your reading comprehension is too poor to see what I’m saying, or you’re just trying to deflect legitimate criticism of Republikans by bringing up personal traits about me.

Honey, I would never be selfish enough to birth children that I can’t support, so that analogy doesn’t apply to me, sorry. You may be a little crazy, I’m not sure what the point of all this blather really is.

@KNOWITALL: See how you keep on turning this into a personal attack on me? You lack the intellectual tools to comprehend what I’m saying. You aren’t capable of critically analyzing information, so you draw inaccurate conclusions. When cornered, you respond with ad hominems like “you may be a little crazy.” (Let’s say I’m crazy. And a raging homosexual, for good measure. How does that make me wrong?)

Whether you have children, or whether you can support, is of course irrelevant. It’s the model that matters.

@bolwerk How do I know the black ones are poisonous?

Everyone knows black things are Evil, and colors are Good. Probably in the Bible or somethin’? Ham v. Joseph!

Ham v. Joseph.

That was a case before the Supreme Court? I forget who argued it.

But rainbows are gay and if you catch the gay you’ll go to hell. Now I can’t eat ANY berries!

@bolwerk Are you still going on? Goodness….I quit caring once you got to the berry analogies. :)

@bolwerk Dear Mr Math wizard (tic)
Sixty-two percent of the Obama voters work, including the 10 percent working only part time. A fourth are retired. Five percent say they’re temporarily unemployed.
62% working
10% part time
25% retired
05% unemployed
102% Maybe you need to go back to grade school for some math classes

Most earn higher-than-average wages. Fifty-six percent have household incomes above the U.S. median of $50,000. Just 16 percent have incomes below $30,000, and about the same share (20 percent) have incomes of $100,000 or more.
So you admit Romney is supported by employed people.

They’re more educated than the overall population: Forty-three percent boast four-year college degrees or above; 21 percent topped out with a high school diploma.
so you admit Romney is supported by Smart people.

I am confident in saying I make more in a day than you do in a week. I do not work for my dead father, and I supported him the last several years of his life. Of course since your one of the terminally unemployed who has nothing better to do than post lies and wait for your welfare check you have plenty of time to look up unrelated articles. As you have proven once again you cannot reply to anyone’s post without changing everything about it, and answering something totally unrelated.

and to answer your question,
you are the only one posting lies.
you are the one who cannot do math
you are the one who can’t spell

@DrBill
“Sixty-two percent of the Obama voters work, including the 10 percent working only part time.”
Keyword here is ”including”, which every schoolboy knows, provided your school was not free, means the 10 percent are included in the 62 percent.

@DrBill, what is it exactly that you do? I don’t doubt you make a lot of money, it just fascinates me that people such as yourself are able to make a lot of money.

@ragingloli then we have 92%

@Qingu With two doctorates it’s pretty easy, even in a slow economy.

@gailcalled I should have been more specific. I was referring to what Rove said right at the end of the tape, that some other candidate running on the same failed platform would have won.

@DrBill May I assume that the “your” in the linked point 1 was supposed to be a “you’re” and that the first “won’t” was actually intended to be a “want”? If not, then you will need to restate your Point 1 question to me, because I can’t parse the sentence as written and make any other sense of it.

If I have rightly guessed its meaning, then I would agree that workfare is not perfect. I’d love to see it improved, but not at the risk of pulling the rug out from under people who truly need it. Consider the testimony this fellow jelly offered in an entirely non-political thread. I gather from other things you have said that you agree welfare provides a needed safety net for some.

On point 2, I stand corrected. :-) I’d have used Photoshop, because for me that would be dead easy. You took a more direct approach. My Spoony THE Cat sends greetings to Catgut.

On point 3, Any thoughts on how to design welfare so it fulfills its charter but becomes more impervious to true welfare abusers?

@bolwerk The “K” thing gets to me too, but I understand it. For decades now, the Republicans have stuck to their talking point of deliberately saying “Democ*rat* Party…” when they know perfectly well that correct usage is “Democratic Party.” Some propaganda wonk told them that the “rat” in “Democrat” made their opposition sound like rats, so always say Democrat with an emphasis on the “rat”. I have no problem using “RepubliKan” or “Repugnican” when Republican apologists make that deliberate error. But I did not notice anybody doing that here. If I missed it, feel free to point out my oversight.

This pretty much covers it.

Can we please not spell it Republikan?

I think I just gave @Qingu a GA for the first time. ;)

Not spell it Republikan-? Well, yes we kan-! : )

@KNOWITALL claims to be a liberal Republikan, but doesn’t care what other people think. With a smile! It really frightens me to think what she thinks a “conservative” Republikan must be.

@DrBill: I wouldn’t be, um, casting the first stone about things related to literacy or math. I really can’t beat @ragingloli to pointing out the obvious, but anybody with a background in statistics is familiar with things like rounding error. The CIA Factbook famously addresses this (see “Some percentage distributions do not add to 100. Why not?”).

More importantly, another thing to brush up on would be categorical logic. The article was clearly commenting on subsets of Obama voters. Even some of those categories you list can overlap somewhat. Some retired people perhaps work part time. Even if it accounts for only 92% of Obama voters, others are in various states of non-employment: students, housewives, discouraged workers, independently wealthy, etc..

Re ”So you admit Romney is supported by employed people”: this was in response to a breakdown of how much money employed Obama voters make, so I don’t know why I’m supposed to draw any conclusion about Romney based on it. Still, 8 out of 10 of the states with the lowest number of income tax payers vote Republikan, tellingly.

And I’m with @Qingu. What is it that you do that earns you more money than I make in a week, and who ties your shoes in the morning?

@ETpro: I used to spell the small-R republican party as Demokrat, but it’s not really accurate. They’re corrupt and all, not to mention conservative, but they don’t really have the hyper-authoritarian qualities of their friends across the aisle. Now about 80% of my spelling of Republikan is muscle memory, really.

Actually, I agree with the Republikan stance on Democrats. They’re not democratic at all. It’s just that Republikans shouldn’t exactly be throwing stones in glass houses.

Did I mention that we also have a republican party in Germany?
They are quite similar to the colonial original.

@ragingloli: Yeah, it does seem eerily similar. We should start calling the USA one die Republikaner. :-D

@bolwerk
Sounds quite reasonable.

It doesn’t matter who is in office. The details may be sightly different but we aren’t headed in any good direction anyway and no president is going to save us from it.

@JenniferP I disagree. The inexorable march of human history has been from extremes of tribalism, brutality and superstitions nonsense to ever increasing altruism knowledge. Global warming will probably introduce a hiatus in that progress, but this too shall pass. If we figure out technology to solve atmospheric pollution, and manage to avoid nuclear annihilation, I see great things for humanity’s future.

@ETpro, I hope that we will figure out how to solve all of those problems. I don’t know if I have the optimism you do.

@GracieT When we finally get to the level of distress where even the Luddites among us realize we have a problem, we do tend to find a solution to that problem and move on.

Isn’t that part of the myth of looking to technology as our protector and savior? It is hubris on our part to think we will always have the solution.
Don’t get me wrong. I VERY MUCH hope, and have the tendency to agree with the idea, that we will find a solution, but we can’t always be sure that we will always find a way out.

@GracieT I suspect in this case, @ETpro was referring to a human solution – compromise and a willingness to move forward, not a technological solution.

@GracieT & @glacial Actually, I suspect the solutions to global warming will involve both human behavioral change and technological advances. If we sought a solution only in behavioral change, we’d need to return to a largely agrarian society world wide and do most of farm labor by hand. The last time we actually lived that way would be around 1910. That’s when the number of farms and farm laborers peaked in the USA. Since then, we’ve expanded farm output with a shrinking agricultural labor force and increasing automation.

In 1910, the population of Earth was 1.75 billion. Today, it is over 7 billion. So if we eliminate technological solutions such as new sources of renewable, non-polluting energy generation, we probably have to settle for about 3 out of every four humans alive today dying with no replacement. I’m guessing that would lead to global war, as none of us wants to go quietly into the night leaving no progeny behind.

After some time watching the excretions of the contards on sodahead, there are two beliefs that they subscribe to:
1. Over half of all voters are communists, lazy, mooching parasites and anti-americans who either want free stuff or want to destroy america.
2. Obama won because of voter fraud.

@ETpro
You are smarter than I am and I can’t decipher what you are saying. I recognize the words you use but you put some of them together in a way that makes me have to think to figure out what you are saying. I do however believe we are on a fast-sinking ship and their is only one way out and it won’t be accomplished through human efforts. Jer. 10:23.