Electoral Votes

[anygunanywhere]

When both choices are Democrats, a Democrat will win.

I am a fiscal conservative. To paraphrase the great Ronald Reagan, “I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”

I am a Libertarian.

No offense, but being a libertarian means you (not personally) do not take stances on any issue. As long as they are left alone they don't care what others do. That is not the definition of liberty.

I do agree that the GOP left me.

Anygunanywhere

I don't understand, the LP does not have a platform? The LP does not take stances on any issues? I may disagree with some of the issues they have in the platform, but when it comes to fiscal matters, I do agree with the platform.

So wishing to be left alone and leaving others alone is not liberty? Come again? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Liberty and freedom means to do what is right , what you should, not what you want.

Anygunanywhere

[snatchel]

Thank you for the acknowledgement, snatchel. Much appreciated.

Tolerance, with respect to the dems, gays, and others who want to advance their cause is a one way street. Those who want me to be tolerant have no tolerance for me and my beliefs.

Faithful Catholics, and many more from the other mainstream faiths are now the persecuted simply because we want to be left alone and celebrate our religious freedoms without having social engineering and practices that we do not support forced upon us.


Morality is not subjective. Morality is objective.


Anygunanywhere

As a Catholic, I am in the same boat as you. While I agree morally with many of the things we are talking about, I won't go so far as to prevent those that disagree with us.

Again, it goes back to my belief that I am not culpable for their lack of morality. God will understand that I am doing what I believe is best for my family and me. If I want any morality kept in my country, I must do what it takes to keep the republican party well represented in our government--even if that means I vote for a guy who turns a blind eye to sinful matters that frankly, he doesn't have any business in anyway.

It's difficult to be conservative while not being hypocritical. We all hate Bloomberg.... gosh, we hate him. I despise that man mostly because he thinks that as a politician, he has the right to get into people's business.... be it their guns, forcing women to breast feed, or whatever else. Yet here we all are, discussing how we want a politician to get into a gay man's business about who he marries. I don't know where the line is because we all draw the line where it fits in our own morals--be it conservative or liberal morals. This is why I disagree that morality is objective.

At the end of the day, as long as we can keep Republicans in office, I will still be able to attend mass, teach my children about God, pray at night with my family, and speak like this on a public forum.

To be honest, I don't think that you and I are going to ever agree on this issue. Topics like abortion, gay marriage, and other matters along those lines have deep roots in all of us. We think how we think, and while what I say here may make sense to you, you will never agree with me. So, Moderators, thank you for your tolerance in this matter. These things are not easy to talk about and I think that the fact that we as a forum can discuss issues like this in a civil, adult manner speaks volumes about the maturity and tolerance of the members here as well.

[Jaguar]

When both choices are Democrats, a Democrat will win.

I am a fiscal conservative. To paraphrase the great Ronald Reagan, “I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”

I am a Libertarian.

No offense, but being a libertarian means you (not personally) do not take stances on any issue. As long as they are left alone they don't care what others do. That is not the definition of liberty.

I do agree that the GOP left me.

Anygunanywhere

I don't understand, the LP does not have a platform? The LP does not take stances on any issues? I may disagree with some of the issues they have in the platform, but when it comes to fiscal matters, I do agree with the platform.

So wishing to be left alone and leaving others alone is not liberty? Come again? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Liberty and freedom means to do what is right , what you should, not what you want.

Anygunanywhere

Who gets to decide what is right, and who gets to enforce people doing what is determined to be right? Two consenting adults exchanging favors for money, you say it is not right, they say it is. Since your side is in power, you throw them in jail for committing an act they believe is okay. I believe both parties are wrong, but why not just leave each other alone.

But back to fiscal conservatives. Obama thought investing my money in green energy was right. Romney thinks investing my money in green energy is right. I’d like to tell both of them to spend their own darn money and leave me alone.

In the second debate, the very first question was a softball over the plate to Romney who whiffed on it. A college student was worried about future employment opportunity. Romney basically said to this kid who again, is worried about his future (paraphrased), “I support Pell grants, I want to take more money from some people and give it to college students, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to find a job and pay for your loans.”

Liberty is not having to pay for other’s college tuition. I have two kids in college and my wife and I pay for it. When you have kids in college, you pay for it (not you, you, but you in general). Liberty is not being forced at the end of a gun to pay for someone else’s college education.

[anygunanywhere]

Yet here we all are, discussing how we want a politician to get into a gay man's business about who he marries. [/color][/b]

I do not care what they do. Just don't make my Church perform the ceremony. If a JP wants to embrace it I do not care.

Anygunanywhere

[anygunanywhere]

Liberty is not having to pay for other’s college tuition. I have two kids in college and my wife and I pay for it. When you have kids in college, you pay for it (not you, you, but you in general). Liberty is not being forced at the end of a gun to pay for someone else’s college education.

Agree.

Anygunanywhere

[ctsmith9962]

When both choices are Democrats, a Democrat will win.

I am a fiscal conservative. To paraphrase the great Ronald Reagan, “I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.”

I am a Libertarian.

No offense, but being a libertarian means you (not personally) do not take stances on any issue. As long as they are left alone they don't care what others do. That is not the definition of liberty.

I do agree that the GOP left me.

Anygunanywhere

I don't understand, the LP does not have a platform? The LP does not take stances on any issues? I may disagree with some of the issues they have in the platform, but when it comes to fiscal matters, I do agree with the platform.

So wishing to be left alone and leaving others alone is not liberty? Come again? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Liberty and freedom means to do what is right , what you should, not what you want.

Anygunanywhere

Who gets to decide what is right, and who gets to enforce people doing what is determined to be right? Two consenting adults exchanging favors for money, you say it is not right, they say it is. Since your side is in power, you throw them in jail for committing an act they believe is okay. I believe both parties are wrong, but why not just leave each other alone.

But back to fiscal conservatives. Obama thought investing my money in green energy was right. Romney thinks investing my money in green energy is right. I’d like to tell both of them to spend their own darn money and leave me alone.

In the second debate, the very first question was a softball over the plate to Romney who whiffed on it. A college student was worried about future employment opportunity. Romney basically said to this kid who again, is worried about his future (paraphrased), “I support Pell grants, I want to take more money from some people and give it to college students, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to find a job and pay for your loans.”

Liberty is not having to pay for other’s college tuition. I have two kids in college and my wife and I pay for it. When you have kids in college, you pay for it (not you, you, but you in general). Liberty is not being forced at the end of a gun to pay for someone else’s college education.

I think people should be able to do what they want as long as it does not have a negitive impact on others. I used to be a christian but I no longer belive in the Bible from doing my own searching. Do I think gay marriage is right? Part of me says no but the other part says who am I to tell people how to live. Same with guns. We have people that do not like them but they have no right to tell me what I can and can not have.

[koolaid]

This isn't about a slippery slope, this is about the government being involved in marriage at all. If we really wanted the government out of our bedrooms then we wouldn't have the government issue marriage licenses. We've already repealed laws against sodomy and there's no law preventing two people of the same sex from living together. Yet those who advocate gay marriage invite the government into their bedrooms and demand approval.

If the marriage contract had anything to do with "you can now have sex with this person" you may have a point, but that has very little to do with it.

As I said in my last post, marriage is a contract. It confers certain rights to the parties involved, and requires the government to enforce. Inheritance, benefits, hospital visits, parental rights, and all manner of other things are involved. Trying to distill that to "welp, we don't throw gays in jail for having consensual sex any more, so they should be happy!" is missing the point.

[talltex]

This isn't about a slippery slope, this is about the government being involved in marriage at all. If we really wanted the government out of our bedrooms then we wouldn't have the government issue marriage licenses. We've already repealed laws against sodomy and there's no law preventing two people of the same sex from living together. Yet those who advocate gay marriage invite the government into their bedrooms and demand approval.

If the marriage contract had anything to do with "you can now have sex with this person" you may have a point, but that has very little to do with it.

As I said in my last post, marriage is a contract. It confers certain rights to the parties involved, and requires the government to enforce. Inheritance, benefits, hospital visits, parental rights, and all manner of other things are involved. Trying to distill that to "welp, we don't throw gays in jail for having consensual sex any more, so they should be happy!" is missing the point.

That's why they want the legal marriage...because at present, they have no legal standing when it comes to insurance, health issues, can't file a joint return, can't receive death benefits, can't receive social security survivor benefits and so on...all the benefits that heterosexual couples take for granted. Can't say I blame them..they pay in the same money...they should receive the same privileges.

[The Annoyed Man]

I call bull corn. From your article:

Slate OPINION: Mitt Romney lost the election because he couldn't separate himself from the Republican Party’s growing extremism.

Sonnyboy, that "growing extremism" was MAINSTREAM THINKING just 10-12 years ago. It has been mainstream thinking for all of my 60 years. When a party does NOT change its values to fit the fad du jour, that's not "growing extremism." That's "standing your ground for something." The "growing extremism" is entirely on the part of the left. We have been dragged leftward kicking and screaming, and now the right is finally putting its foot down and refusing to cooperate with getting dragged any further......and that's extremism? Please. The left calls anyone an "extremist" who refuses to submit to their extremist tyranny.

Ronald Reagan famously said that he did not leave the democrat party; it left him. In other words, his values did not change, while his former party slid into extremism.

THAT is the true version.

Personally, I've about had it. Big Brother is going to do what it does—no matter how I vote—because Big Brother is what a majority of Americans want. End of story. From now on, I'll concern myself with local matters and turn my back on the rest of it. And by the way, abortion—or, as I like to call it what it really IS, "killing babies"—doesn't happen in the bedroom. It happens in purpose-built abattoirs funded by the radical left through extorting taxes from the rest of us. A MORAL person doesn't even need to appeal to religion to understand that particular evil. The sooner alleged "americans" face that truth, the sooner we can come to an HONEST appraisal of whether or not we DESERVE to continue as a nation, or to be scraped off the planet like a fungus by a vengeful God.

Well I will give you Methuselahan rights to refer to me as "SonnyBoy" By virtue of your 5 more years bruiting your versions of facts on this earth, but I do hope you are smiling when you use that term. Quite simply the country is evolving and what you view as standing your ground is being viewed by a greater number of people as extremism. Our great nation will continue to grow and prosper, with the Grace of God and the willingness of people to work together for the common good. I believe in less government whenever possible. I also believe that that governement has no place in our houses. I also belive that government must be a balance point between the disparate economic forces that truly threaten to tear us apart. If you look back to the late 1800's you may note that we have gone through an economic cycle in which the large corporations got larger, the middle class was in jeopardy and wise heads realized that balance in the marketplace and society was necessary for continued growth. Anti-trust laws and labor laws camw about and brought balance back into the system. We are at a point now where I believe some rebalancing is needed.

A basic difference between us is I am willing to let you live in the world as you view it, I draw the line where it comes to others pushing their beliefs on me.

A final wish if I could, I wish we would as a country would realize the truly destructive nature of the election process that we have grown into. A shorter election cycle and campaign spending linits would go a long way to focusing our public dialogue onto the key points facing the country each election.

OK, I apologize for the "sonnyboy," it's just that your post came off as having been written by one who was not old enough to have a sense of historical perspective.....so I assumed that you are younger than you are.

That said, have you listened to yourself? You sound just like they do. There is a fundamental difference between you and me. I believe in a baseline of morality which is timeless and which has stood mankind in good stead for millennia, across cultures. You believe in a fungible baseline, which keeps changing as extremists push it ever outward..........but I'm the extremist.

Wow.

http://marketdailynews.com/2012/11/08/a ... f268ccf668

And this fundamental shift to the left will be felt in some of the highest institutions in the land. Quite a few Supreme Court justices are in their seventies, and it is quite likely that Barack Obama will get the opportunity to nominate several new justices to the court before the end of his next term.

That means that all of the conservative hopes for the Supreme Court are probably dead in the water at this point. It appears extremely unlikely that Roe v. Wade will ever be overturned, and the court is probably only going to get even more liberal from this point forward.

So what does all of this mean?

Well, it essentially means that the culture war is over and the social conservatives lost. Obviously I would consider this to be a bad thing, because I am someone who believes deeply in traditional values.

The American people have chosen a direction, and the path that they have chosen is the path of “progressive” morality. We are already seeing the consequences of this kind of morality play out all around us, and those consequences are only going to get worse.

But to stop the monumental cultural shift that is taking place right now in this country would take a miracle of epic proportions. Older voters that tend to be more socially conservative will continue to die off, and they will continue to be replaced by younger voters that tend to be more socially liberal.

The American people have made their choices, and those choices will continue to be reinforced by the education system, by the mainstream media, by the entertainment industry and by the federal government.

America has changed, and things will never be the same again.

Just so that we're clear......the VAST MAJORITY of voters who agree with you, that fossils like me are extremists, and not themselves, ALSO want you to surrender your firearms and learn to live happily under their superior wisdom and intellect and benevolent direction. Good luck with that. YOUR president (not mine) is going to appoint justices in the Kagan/Sotomayor mold if Scalia, Kennedy, or Thomas retires. Then say permanent goodbye to the 2nd Amendment, but go ahead and throw us extremist traditionalists on the ash heap of history.

Where does the line form to burn the Constitution? Let's get this nastiness over with so that I can get on with life.

[donkey]

If the marriage contract had anything to do with "you can now have sex with this person" you may have a point, but that has very little to do with it.

As I said in my last post, marriage is a contract. It confers certain rights to the parties involved, and requires the government to enforce. Inheritance, benefits, hospital visits, parental rights, and all manner of other things are involved. Trying to distill that to "welp, we don't throw gays in jail for having consensual sex any more, so they should be happy!" is missing the point.

The point I've been trying to make is that supporting gay marriage is supporting more government involvement not less. If people truly wanted the government out of the bedroom, then they would advocate that the government not deal with marriage at all, not for straight couples and not for gay couples. I'm not arguing for or against gay marriage. I'm saying that it's disingenous to suggest that legalizing gay marriage equal less government in the bedroom.

[mamabearCali]

Therein lies the fundamental difference between us. I don't believe that I have the right to tell a Jewish deli or anyone else what they may or may not do as long as it is not illegal and doesn't infringe on my rights or safety. I don't believe the government should have the right to do so either. I understand your position and support your right to feel that way and I'm certainly not trying to change your mind. Your opposition is based on your own religious beliefs and you obviously feel very strongly about them. However, our government was founded on the concept of religious freedom and one of the basic tenents was that the government should not tell people how to think and what to believe, and for that reason I think they should leave religious issues up to the individual.

You missed my point about the Jewish deli......An orthodox Jew believes it is wrong to eat pork. Would you be ok with a law requiring all Deli's including Jewish Deli's serve ham, no matter what they wanted?

They are forcing by law religious people who believe that abortion is a sin to participate in it financially. How is that different than forcing a Jew to serve pork?

[rwg3]

I call bull corn. From your article:Just so that we're clear......the VAST MAJORITY of voters who agree with you, that fossils like me are extremists, and not themselves, ALSO want you to surrender your firearms and learn to live happily under their superior wisdom and intellect and benevolent direction. Good luck with that. YOUR president (not mine) is going to appoint justices in the Kagan/Sotomayor mold if Scalia, Kennedy, or Thomas retires. Then say permanent goodbye to the 2nd Amendment, but go ahead and throw us extremist traditionalists on the ash heap of history.

Where does the line form to burn the Constitution? Let's get this nastiness over with so that I can get on with life.

Gracious apology accepted, not really necessary but nice. Don't assume I voted for the man, but I will say as an American, the process happened and as of today yes he is my president, as he is the president of all citizens, like it or not.

I suspect we may not agree on many things in the political arena, but I do respect your obvious intellect and your knowledge in the shooting sports. We had different upbringings and teachings, different life experiences. Mine have taught me to focus on problem solving, and the article is a valid point of view on why the Republican party did not achieve it's goal. It is not a definitive summation of the issues, but it is far too soon after the election to hope for a comprehensive answer. I suspect that many discussions mirroring the one here is happening in the Republican realm. I do hope that the end result of it is that the party can find common ground that all can agree to. I for one believe that we as a nation will survive and prosper.

[koolaid]

The point I've been trying to make is that supporting gay marriage is supporting more government involvement not less. If people truly wanted the government out of the bedroom, then they would advocate that the government not deal with marriage at all, not for straight couples and not for gay couples. I'm not arguing for or against gay marriage. I'm saying that it's disingenous to suggest that legalizing gay marriage equal less government in the bedroom.

Right, but the point you are missing is that marriage equality has nothing to do with the bedroom. In fact, repealing DOMA would result in less laws. A constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is more law. DOMA is more law. Individual states having to deal with the legalities that arise from contracts in their state not being recognized in other states or by the federal government is more law.

Nobody is arguing that the government should get out of marriage entirely because it doesn't make any sense. It is impossible to enforce contracts, even private contracts, without the courts, which are part of the government. It is impossible to file a joint tax return without the IRS, also the government. It is impossible to obtain social security benefits without the government.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with electoral votes and we seem to be at a standstill, so I'll bow out.

[Kythas]

Alfonzo Rachel gives a great explanation on why Republicans lost. If y'all haven't been watching his videos, you should.

http://alfonzorachel.com/915/one-of-the ... presidency

[mamabearCali]

Pretty good explanation