With all of the disenchanted former Obama lovers, six months ago I would have though that this is the GOP's race to lose...I see they're doing a pretty good job of it.

Sad to say, the GOP has no real winner running.

Mitt, is a hot air balloon. No substance.
Newt, to much bagage.
Ron Paul, to old and to far out.
Perry, should hang it up.
Bachman, well, she is gone.
Santorum, to smiley and meely mouth. Talks a lot and says nothing.
Huntsman, gone.

Possibles?

Christie, size will kill him.
Jeb Busch, a Busch, country not ready for another one. He could be a good one. Hope he is sane enough to stay retired and live like a human being.
Trump, well he is The Donald.

GOP is in trouble, no new Ronald Reagan to come forward on his white horse. Heck, the whole country is in trouble!

Hi Tom.

He did manage to hold off on using emoticons. :) I know it had to have been hard for him!

I know. Ironic, given this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by steveg (Post 2115596) Santorum, to smiley . . . .

I liked the part about another Busch in the White House, though.

Ron Paul keeps toting himself as Libertarian and has run as a Libertarian before but I have a hard time understanding how. His social issue positions are bordering on "moral majority" grounds. He believes that marriage should have nothing to do with the government, only churches, life begins at conception, etc. He even wants to eliminate the Department of Education. He thinks that healthcare providers should just give away free care to everybody who can't afford it.

I just don't think he's in touch with reality at all.

Just saw on the Today show that Michelle Bachman has officially quit the race. Phew. One less crazy to deal with.

Not true. Iowa has a very complicated system to award delegates. They won't be awarded until June 16 when they have their Iowa State Republican Convention. If by then a front runner breaks away, he may actually get all the

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...l?ref=politics

If you go to the link, ignore the very partisan first part and skip to the last part about apportioning delegates.

That would be a fairly standard libertarian view -- that marriage is a contract between two people and that the government has no business being involved in it. From the party's platform: "Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships." Saying churches should be involved is, I think, another way of saying that it is a person's personal values (and religious beliefs, if any), not the law, that should govern what that person does marriage-wise, and people should be free to marry in accordance with their values.

Now, calling for government restrictions on abortion, on the other hand, is very un-Libertarian.


Right. I heard this explained on NPR Tuesday -- the caucus votes are not binding on convention delegates.

I know you and I have had this discussion before, but there are a minority of Libertarians that believe that an unborn baby has rights (I would personally argue from conception, but others obviously set the milestone at viability), and denying its right to live is the ultimate Libertarian violation. I'm happily camped in this minority.

Good point. Thanks for reminding me.

FWIW, I was going by the Libertarian Party's platform, which says: "Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.'

But you are quite right.

Either way, point out to me a candidate that openly personally agrees with every point of their party's platform, and I'll point out a liar. Of course, I'd have probably just as good odds picking out a liar by closing my eyes and spinning in a circle around any DC government building. ;)

I used to be a Libertarian, but a lot of the Libertarian positions just don't make sense. What happens if the government gets out of marriage? Spouses are denied the ~1500 rights that are currently granted to them? Some number of these can be arranged individually by legal contract, but the others just disappear? For example, I can make Mr. DBB my beneficiary without the government's help, but I can't give him the right to visit me in the hospital. I guess Ron Paul would say I should choose a different hospital?

I think, and I can't admit to knowing as much about Libertarianism as I should, that they think the government just doesn't need to be involved in these issues. Why should the president or your congressman care who is with you in a hospital room? It's this kind of stuff that makes me love the libertarians. It's when people start to twist it from government stays out to something that is exactly NOT that that I have a problem.

But there are a lot of issues where people say, "well, not THAT... the government needs to interfere with THAT..." and it's not a system that will work very well if you pick and choose. For example, you can't cut taxes down to literally the bare minimum but keep military bases in Germany. Doesn't work both ways. Using the military again, you have to reassess what it REALLY means to have a national defense. A true libertarian should think we defend our own borders, and our national defense does NOT mean protecting our oil. And regarding abortions, their stance (and it sounds like it is) should be, if you don't believe in them, don't have one... the government doesn't dictate. And I'd be ok with from viability as long as tax dollars didn't go toward saving any babies that should be miscarriages. And ALL drugs should be legal. What you do to yourself in your own home is your business. Not that you get to rob banks, beat your wife, burn down your neighbor's house, etc., in the process. That's infringing on someone else's freedoms. But if you can afford it and want to ruin your life, go for it.

If I could get a group of libertarians to be THAT, I'd be all in.

Okay, let me give you a different example. One of the rights of marriage granted by most (all?) states is that you can own property together so that, upon death, full ownership passes directly to the surviving spouse without having to go through probate. AFAIK, marriage is the only legal arrangement that allows this. If you eliminate the government's involvement with marriage, that right would disappear. So, the Libertarians want everything to go through the courts when someone dies? Isn't that actually advocating for more government?

I'm just saying that I think a lot of Libertarian "solutions" look simple on the surface, but then you are down the rabbit hole when you try to figure out the details.

We need to dig up John Heinz. Even dead for decades, he's a better bet than any of the wabols running now.

WHAAAAAAAAT?? This shit is bananas. I can't believe they would actually get away with this for a minute.

The ground is flying at my mom's cemetery because she's spinning about 90 MPH in her grave. Folks, this is NOT what the Republican party was created to stand for.

There's a quote going around the FB-osphere that alleges to be from Barry Goldwater warning the GOP about what could happen if the religious fringe got a hold of the party. If it's actually a quote, it was prescient.

You keep missing the "government not involved" part of Libertarianism. When someone dies, the next of kin would go claim the deceased's possessions and go about their business. The only time a 3rd party would get involved would be in a case where there was a dispute of who got what.

Admittedly, Libertarian is really not a practical form of government, because it more or less requires people to police themselves, which people obviously are incapable of doing. It doesn't mean that I don't agree with them more than any other party, though.

Any time the deceased owes money to anyone, for any reason, there is a 3rd party involved. Do you want to wager a guess at what percentage of estates have some type of outstanding debt upon death?

While I agree with several planks in the Libertarian platform (especially defense/foreign policy), most Libertarian candidates are peddling simple solutions to problems that are very complex. Libertarians claim they are interested in protecting life and property, but property law can be very complicated, and in many cases, there are reasons why it is so.

I think these are great discussion points. There is no example of libertarian government anywhere in the world so we can't know how it would work in a real world scenario. But I do think both parties would do well to take some of the ideas and try to apply them. The Dems could take some of the fiscal issues of governing at a minimum (drug laws are easy but I think there are some bureaucracies that could be eliminated without causing the sky to fall) and Reps could take some of the social ideals (get the government out of the bedroom in all its permutations, for instance) and they'd steal independents, non-believers and the wishy-washy for their own. I don't think Ron Paul can win, probably not even the primaries, but I think if he plays his cards right he could impact the way some people look at government. And that has to be good.

The debt-paying of the deceased still does not require government intercession, unless the next of kin refuse to pay. You're confusing lack of government regulations and interference with lack of law. As to next-of-kin, if government stayed out of marriages, you would have to have a will/legal document declaring your spouse as next-of-kin, otherwise it would default to your closest blood relation (most likely). So, the next-of-kin would pay the debts, and would be sued if they refused, but that goes back to the "dispute over who gets what" that I mentioned above.

I don't think there is any single party that has it right, not by a longshot. I also don't think that something espoused by one candidate means that it is really representative of the entire party. If nothing else, Ron Paul (who, I know, is not even a big-L Libertarian) gets people talking, but the guy stood up and said that you should let people die if they show up to the emergency room with no insurance. I often wonder if he is even serious, or just, well, trolling.

And what happens when debts exceed the value of the estate? The next of kin is stuck either paying them off him/herself or being slapped with multiple lawsuits?

My original point was that the spousal relationship grants certain specific rights that are not granted elsewhere, and that eliminating them brings up tons of other questions. Maybe there is a way to address all of those questions, item by item (marriage grants about 1500 rights, depending on your state), but it is complex and takes time.

I'm not arguing your philosophy (though I think we'd differ on many points), I'm arguing that Ron Paul can't just take government out of marriage and go on his merry way without addressing hundreds, if not thousands, of other issues.

^^^I actually have no idea under our current laws what does happen to someone, married or not, who had more debt than assets upon death. I couldn't speak to that.

My overall counterpoint to yours about marriage was that many of the "rights" granted by marriage wouldn't be necessary under a libertarian government. They would be a non-issue.

I don't see how those rights would be a non-issue. Community property is only afforded through a legal marriage, not through a domestic partnership. Your "next of kin", without legal marriage, would have to be a blood relative. You can't just designate a "next of kin". So your kids could come and take your half of a house that you purchased with a domestic partner? That just wouldn't work. Your kids would get your retirement, investments, savings, etc. If a couple had a joint savings account, how do you determine how much of it goes to the next of kin and how much of it goes to the co-signer on the account? Health insurance benefits, retirement funds, joint property... it would all be totally messed up. There would ALWAYS be a dispute about who gets what. Isn't that why marriages were created in the first place?

I see absolutely no reason for marriage in any form if it doesn't give you some legal rights. What would be the point?

ETA: Most unsecured debts are erased on death. I know someone whose father took out parent student loans and they were erased when he passed away, even though the child was perfectly capable of paying them off. All debts that were in his name alone were simply erased. His spouse did not have to take responsibility for them. My mom had no debt when she passed away so I don't know how that would have been handled given her other assets. And probate was a nightmare. It is just now being closed because it took 4 years to sell her condo. What a nightmare.

I'm surprised no one has brought up this little nugget of Newtonian genius:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...ZdP_story.html

It's as if he just woke up yesterday and decided to go into politics.

First of all, most Christians would say that marriage was created by God in the Garden of Eden before any laws existed (well, except that pesky one about eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge) with the point being joining the man and the woman as one flesh in partnership. Oh yeah, that.

Legal documents would have to be drawn up on joint property, but it could be done.

An alternate solution is that we become like many European and Central American countries and recognize a civil union that is separate from a religious marriage.

Man and woman can be joined as one flesh in partnership without any legal or religious backing.

In our country, marriage is a civil union. That's what he wants to do away with.

Oh, that's another good point. Indivisible assets, such as one house, with many heirs.

I had no idea that size was a requirement for winning or losing elected office. Summoning ghost of William Howard Taft....

Are you intentionally spelling 41 and 43's name wrong?

I haven't seen it yet but if it's smart and on the money, I have no doubt that it's a real quote.

Goldwater had so much more going for him than what LBJ painted him as (i.e. the nutjob who would push the nuke button at the drop of a hat). We would have probably been out of Vietnam a hell of a lot earlier had he won, and no, not because he would have nuked them. Arrrrgh, can't start thinking about this stuff or it just makes me upset.

It's Tom.

Obama will probably win the election again. More than likely, Romney will end up being the nominee even though it seems that people cannot connect with him that well. I also think that Ron Paul will run as a third-party candidate (he implied he would if he doesn't receive the nomination) and that some of the votes that may have gone Romney's way will be "spoiled" towards Ron Paul. Personally, I actually really support Ron Paul out of the GOP. He is the only one up there that I feel is trying to become President for reasons other than just becoming President.

Candidate Match Game

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politic...ate-match-game

I got Obama, Perry, and Huntsman #Interesting

Man oh man. Huntsman's comments here made me see him in a whole new (positive) light. Probably impossible for him to get the nomination but he won my respect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZq7DN4g3Ro

I've been pulling for Huntsman to win.. but I just don't feel as though he's been in the spotlight as much as the other candidates. Maybe it's because he's not a whack job? Who knows.

If Huntsman doesn't pull through, I'll be rooting for Romney.. especially if he selects Christie as his Vice Presidential running-mate, should he make it that far.

Yeah I predict a Romney/Christie ticket come November.

Big criticism today of Romney's use of, "I would fire them".

I got Obama, Hunstman, and Paul - but it's because the only issue I weighted was immigration (my other hot-button was not there). When I un-weighted that, I got Paul, Huntsman, and Obama. Funny Obama showed up, considering I refuse to vote Republican because none of them are fiscally conservative enough for me, and I think Obama's a dishonest idiot with his interests elsewhere and not with the US people.

Why would Christie agree to this?

He's seen as a perfectly viable candidate on his own, and the VP -> President pathway is no longer really viewed as important or even viable anymore. Tying himself to Romney's campaign, meanwhile, has the chance to sully his image, connecting Christie to the negatives that will be hung on Romney.

I just don't see any upside for Christie.

He is?

I thought his Republican career was sort of in the dumper over the gay thing.

I think it would depend on how Christie actually performed as the #2. And I'm not sure at all that the VP slot on a losing ticket cannot necessarily have some benefit.

Several presidents have been VP on previous tickets (winning and losing)before ascending to the Oval Office. Nixon in '56, Johnson in '60, Bush(41) in
'80, and (depending on your view of the Supreme Court's involvement in 2000) Gore should have ascended in '00.

Add to that candidates who ran, and were defeated either for their parties nomination or in the general before later becoming president (Nixon
'60, Reagan '76) and the question of "sullied" becomes quite subjective in political circles. While of course it's preferable to win rather than lose, many experts suggests the "name recognition" earned from a previous run can be just as helpful in future efforts.