If Al Gore was president....
 

If Al Gore was president...

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If Al Gore was president, even the Democrats would all have become Republicans.

-Rudey

Don't you wish we could believe Al Gore
 

Monday, Jan. 15, 2007 12:40 a.m. EST

Al Gore: I'm Not Running for President

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said on Monday he would not run in the next presidential race, despite rumors that he might build on the higher profile created by his environmental campaign to do so.

Asked whether he had plans to stand in the 2008 election, Gore ruled it out, adding: "I'm involved in a different kind of campaign."

During a visit to Japan to promote his award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" ...

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2...25.shtml?s=icp

I believe him as much as I believe any other politician who says she/he "is not" running.

Heard it all before.

everyone in politics wants to be president, that is like being a boxer and saying "i don't want a title fight" you want the title fight whether or not you are too old to train for one is another question


even Gilmore is running, and no one here can figure out why

It is called Egomanicia!

I ran for a public official job twice. Thank god I did not win!!!!!!!!!!!:D

Some one asked me why I was running for city council of KCK?

Told them it was a moment of stupid and $50.00!

Everyone is getting into the Democrat fray; even Dodd announced, although his run seems like more of a "last chance" thing. He's wanted to do it for a while, but Lieberman had pre-empted him.

I won't believe it yet, although I can't wait to hear the spin when some of the candidates on both sides get low poll/primary totals.

Who do you expect to be the viable party candidates next time around? I draw a big blank for both parties. Some folks seem attractive, but I can't see them getting enough of the party behind them.

Viable GOP candidates: McCain, Rudy, Romney
Talked about/VP possibilities: Jeb, Huckabee, Brownback


Viable Dem candidates: Hillary, Obama

Could win(but DNC won't help)/VP possibilities: Edwards, Bayh

My ill informed opinions:

GOP: This maybe because I'm in Georgia and my frame of reference is messed up, but McCain, Rudy, and Romney won't bring out the bible thumper base. (I like all of them all right, but there's a group of GOP voters that you will lose with any of them; although maybe less so with McCain) Jeb won't appeal to anyone. Huckabee and Brownback, I've got no opinion.

Does anyone really like Hillary? Obama, we all like, but we fear he lacks substance and experience. We want to be the kind of people who would vote for him, but I don't know if we feel confident he can broker the power. Maybe the combination would have it all. Hillary seems ruthless; Obama brings the character. Would either be the VP for the other?


Edwards doesn't do much for me: a plaintiffs' lawyer who went into politics: that's a good thing? Bayh, I have no opinion.

Romney is the most conservative of the big 3. He's the best speaker as well. Most conservatives in the know think he'll be the real deal come primary time. Him not doing well with evangelicals only matters for the primary. Theres a big difference between being reluctant to vote for a mormon and voting for Hillary. I really would prefer not to see Jeb on a ticket, but interestingly he polls well as a VP candidate. I still think there will be reluctance to put a Bush on in 08, but Jeb will be involved in presidential politics at some point in the future.

For the left, Obama is a good candidate but once again, I think him running is a potentially severe mistake. I don't think he can win yet, and taking it all the way to the primary or general would mean getting dirty (Edwards 04) and that damages a candidate. Bayh would be a great candidate, but thankfully the DNC won't push him (Same thing as Romney, except that Romney is/will get a lot of RNC support).

Romney has more social liberal positions than you might think, or at least he has in the past.

It's not a problem for me and might be an asset to others, but if evangelicals are critical, I'm not sure they'll vote for him.

Trust me, I'm aware of Romney's positions. You're right, they have been less than staunch in the past, but that seems to have changed somewhat. Again, if he gets to the general, it won't matter with evangelicals. They're not going to vote for Hillary or Obama.

Sure if they vote, they aren't going to vote for Hillary, but I think there's a chance that they just won't vote.

If the party abandons their positions, I think they may try to punish the party to flex their political muscle.

I suspect that Hillary being on the opposing ticket will get the evangelicals to the polls. I think whoever gets to the general among Rudy, McCain and Romney will win.

Hillary's rhetoric is less of a complete turn off to them than you think. I don't know if they hate her enough to vote for a pro-choice or pro-gay marriage candidate just to vote against her.


I think Hillary's actual positions would turn them off that much, but she and Bill both have the gift of saying things that make them seem more moderate than maybe they are.

Less than I think? No offense, but I don't think you're gonna provide me with any new insight into the minds of evangelical voters. I guess we'll have to wait until 08, but I'd be happy to examine how much of that vote Hillary got when its over...

Sorry, I'm bad about judging how a comment is going to seem. I didn't mean to seem like I was schooling you in evangelicals. I think were in the same area of the country. Our frame of reference is pretty similar, I suspect.

I don't think they will vote FOR Hillary. I think they won't vote at all if they think the GOP fails to respond to their issues.

Imagine Rudy is the GOP candidate. I don't think there a single social issue that he will take the evangelical position on. They won't be jonesing to vote for him.

I think that it's possible or even likely, that Hillary, if running against him, would keep her rhetoric moderate enough that it doesn't piss them off enough to go and vote AGAINST her. I agree that it's unlikely that they will vote FOR her.

If the rhetoric of the candidates is the same on the issues, AND the GOP's position seems to reflect having pushed the evagelicals out, I think they might stay home.

Double post, whatever.

I wanted to note that I suspect that if Rudy were the GOP guy, then the party will pick up votes from social liberals who want lower taxes and less government expansion than I suspect we're going to get in the next two years. So I'm not saying that without pandering to evangelicals the GOP will lose.

I don't know. I just think the GOP will face the same kind of internal issues that the Democrats will. Dems issue: netroots/moveon left vs. center. GOP issue: evangelical right vs. center.

I think that if both parties go toward the center, the GOP runs more of a risk of alienating a core group. (But maybe they'll throw some provocative initiates on the state ballots in fall of 2008 to get them to the polls.)

Now I know there are other Dem hopefuls but I find it interesting that Hillary wants to be the first 'female president'; Obama wants to be the first 'African-American' (although I just learned today that his mom is white and dad was african american, totally didn't know that). And what's his name from New Mexico wants to be the first "hispanic" president.

Can I seriously just have a president who doesn't want to be a "first" and actually, I don't know, be good?!?

I guess I'm asking for too much. LOL.

Don't worry about it, and seeing as i go to your alma mater, we probably are in the same part of the country. What I think you're underestimating is how much many evangelicals hate Hillary Clinton. I'm pretty conservative, but I don't abhor her like many do. Now, I think there is a legitimate chance that a weaker GOP candidate could result in less motivation among the base, but I still have a hard time imagining it would be a swing big enough to allow Hillary to win. She's done a good job at shaking off some of her brash image, but people still remember her, and all those quotes are gonna come back over the next year. This is why I think the only real shot the Democrats have is to run a moderate-feel-good candidate. Obama will be that guy in the future, but he's not there yet. I think there's two ways to draw weak republicans or weak dems over to the other side. The first is that you run a moderate candidate, and your more intense faction wants to look elsewhere. I don't see that happening here, because even if Rudy is the GOP nominee, theres not going to be a Democratic candidate who can get those votes. Likewise, it won't happen with democrats switching to the GOP. On the other hand, I think sometimes you'll get crossover when the opposing candidate is a little more moderate and optimistic while your party's candidate is a little father out than the general party. Again, I don't see this being an issue for the GOP because whoever gets the nomination will be quite a change from W. All of the big 3 GOP guys are going to be more moderate, and all have better leadership potential off the bat. On the other hand, say Hillary is the nominee with McCain. I think theres a chance that centrist dems would cross over, because despite her efforts to reign in her image, Hillary is still somebody that is very polarizing, even within her own party. Of course, things happen, there could be a third candidate which messes up the voting, but as it stands I think the only person Hillary could beat would be Mitt Romney, and I think that will change once the country really starts finding out about him. In my opinion he is probably the most presidential of the three, and as displayed by early fund raising he has by far the most momentum among GOP candidates. It'll be interesting, I'm excited about seeing it play out.

I thought you were an Auburn guy.

Anyway, not that any of this reflects my personal positions, but I can see that there are a lot of people out there who want to believe. They want optimism and hope. They've lost faith in the political process and politics as usual. Being an outsider or a national political novice could count in Obama's favor. Being multi-racial, too, can count in his favor because people like to be self-congratulatory when it comes to issues of race. Don't undercount the number of people who would love to be able to self-righteously tell everybody: look at me; I support the multi-racial guy.

I understand it when you say that you don't think he's there yet, but I think this could be a Jimmy Carter election kind of election (not that that was a good thing, either, in 1976). His not being ready is part of what makes him attractive because he's unsullied.

Hillary. I agree that she's polarizing. But on some level she really would compliment Obama's weaknesses. A ticket that had both of them might be strong in the general election because there's of course no way they can both come out of the primaries. I don't know if her ego could take it though.

I have no idea what will happen with the GOP.

As a republican I hope they run together. I just don't think she can win, regardless of who is with her. I think you're right to a degree about Obama, he's refreshing. However, I think his issue stances will preclude many people from crossing over and voting for him. I also think the racial thing will likely not work in his favor. There are a lot of people who would vote for him because of that, but there is probably an equal faction who would be hesitant because of it. I also think what people say and what people will do in a voting booth can be quite different. We'll see how it pans out. I am an Auburn guy, but i'm here for grad school.

Coulters earlier article about global warming from like 2 weeks ago was much better than that one.

Al: "NO"
 

Late Friday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) tried to get Senate Republicans to allow former Vice President Al Gore to stage a global warming concert on Capitol grounds. But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected to Reid's request, and the resolution authorizing the concert, for now, remains stuck in the Rules and Administration Committee.

The teacher in me wonders if Gore were president would I be putting up with the craptastic law called NCLB?

Methinks not.

no one who thinks that capitol building would be a good place for a concert should be president

he might try to have the afterparty at a library or something, god, how boring. He finally comes up with something cool (concerts are cooler than documentaries....they just are) and lames it up by wanting it to happen at congress.

But I don't know, maybe someone boring should be president.

Al Gore is nuts. He took that whole losing thing pretty hard.

I don't know. We had a Democratic governor in Georgia whose educational reforms were as intense: end of course test in every class in high school, teacher evaluation based on student performance, the end of tenure.*

He lost his re-election bid to a Republican guy who while he hasn't increased funding as much as some folks want and wasn't able to give teachers a raise a few years when state revenue was down, has pushed for small raises two years in a row, created a Master teacher distinction with a 10% incentive, and for two years now pushed for each teacher to get a $100 gift card that we could decide how to spend. $100 bucks isn't much, but it's more than anyone has ever given us before.

I don't think Al would have been especially bad, but I don't know that you can assume that he wouldn't have screwed around with education reform just because of party affiliation. (Forgive me for that assumption if your comment was based on considerably more than that.)


*Some of these "reforms" don't bother me, and some of the problems with NCLB are what the states and local systems did trying to comply with the law itself.

Oh totally fine :D

I definately agree that he probably would have screwed with education reform, I just have a feeling NCLB wouldn't have come to play with Gore as president. But who knows. Unfortunately we are stuck with it and I don't see it going away anytime soon (as much as I would love for it to go the way of the dinosaur but that is a WHOLE other thread :D)

I just find it interesting that NCLB came from a conservative, Republican president. One would expect a greater deference to federalism, where education is supposed to be the province of the states, not of the federal government. But I guess that went out the window a long time ago.

Well, MysticCat, it's really hard to make the argument based on anything he's done really that Bush is a truly conservative president who defers to federalism.

He may be religiously and socially conservative, but for restraint and federalism, he is not the right guy.

(He may have ended up getting justices through who will support it, so his legacy may end up different than the actually presidency.)

I agree though the progress from Republicans wanting to get rid of the federal Department of Education to NCLB is bizarre. (And no doubt, it's one of the reasons why some people believe that NCLB isn't REALLY about reforming education: for them, it's about declaring all the public schools failing.)

Vouchers. Discuss.

I agree completely. I guess my facetiousness was too subtle.

Fiscal conservatism is dead. Unless Thompson or Romney wins the presidency, then maybe we'll have a shot, who knows.

On the other side, you have Edwards running a robin hood "steal from the rich" campaign.

Sorry, I guess it was for me.

I know too many people who don't know what conservatives really are or should be. I work with someone active in the Republican party who wanted to see laws regulating what previews could be shown at G rated movies because the last time she took her kid to a movie, the previews were too scary. The idea that maybe we didn't need the government to regulate movie previews hadn't occurred to her, I guess. (Surely, this is an area where private pressure could accomplish the desired end without governmental regulation.)

Vouchers: I doubt they will really amount to a net improvement, but it wouldn't bother me to try them. But it's very hard to find anyone who can clearly articulate how a voucher system would work if every kid was entitled to one.

Would we privatize all aspects of what had been public school? If so, how?

People who want to ban what can be shown in theatres are the same ones who would burn you at the stake if they could.

There is much talk about how people feel.

Please explain to Me the difference of:

1. Liberal.
2. Concervative.
3. Moderat.

There seems to be a problem about whom people are?

........with spelling.

Here Tom

Liberals- love animals, love the environment, hate religion, hate war, love controversy, love minorities, love women, hate white men, hate SUV's, hate the rich, love the poor, hate capitalism, hate guns, are sympathetic to criminals, hate personal responsibility...

Conservatives- like to eat animals, love religion, like war, disregard the poor and minorities, love suv's and trucks, love capitalism, love personal responsibility, love offending people, love guns, hate criminals, hate academia, love Israel...

Moderates- Like E entertainment television, read USA Today, care about the Anna Nicole saga, don't know what capitalism is, agree with whatever the media consensus is on the status of the Iraq war, will decide who they're voting for in 2008 based on what ties the candidates wear at the debates...

Hope that helps.