Republicans vs Democrats: A rivalry gone too far

[NydaLynn]

"Past performance isn't an indicator of future results."

What moron said that? And what fool believes it??

Every mutual fund prospectus has that in the fine print, Ralph. Hell, that's the reason I don't plan to ever invest in stocks, bonds or mutual funds; I know this is a capitalist country, and a successful one at that, but I'm never going to read any document that might as well have "WARNING: YOU MAY LOSE YOUR MONEY" printed on the front cover and end up thinking that it's a good investment.

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -George Santayana

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun." -King Solomon (Ecclesiates 1:9)

On the ubject of mutual funds.. I don't trust them too much myself. CDs seem a better choice to me.

[Calbeck]

Speaking as a third-party supporter who has never been a Democrat or a Republican --- who has, in fact, run for office trying to defeat both parties:

I refuse to prevaricate on this matter. The fact is that the Democratic Party has spent most of its time since losing control of the House in 1994 demonizing --- yes, DEMONIZING --- Republicans. Starting with slogans like "The Gingrich who Stole Christmas", a banner headline which Newsweek ran for an article spouting all manner of horrible babykilling things the Republicans were going to do now that they were in power.

None, not one, of those things ever happened. Republican policies did not starve children, did not destroy Social Security, did not result in little old ladies being reduced to eating cat food. ALL of these things were claimed to be "imminent" by the Democrat Party's mainstream leadership. It's over a decade later, and I have watched Democrats grow ever more shrill, ever more willing to adopt double standards in order to defend their own poor conduct while castigating Republicans for lesser offenses.

A key example: when talking to a Democrat activist who was defending Clinton's behavior with an intern, I pointed out that the Democrat-held Congress of 1992 had run Senator Robert Packwood out of office on grounds of ethics --- for having an affair with HIS intern. The activist's response? "Well, we have a HUNDRED Senators, but only one President."

We should hold the President to LOWER standards than a Senator? Obviously not, but it was the first thing this activist could think of, and he refused to budge from it.

The truth is obvious: Democrats want back in power, and they have chosen to launch a massive, sustained propaganda effort to get there. They are fully engaged in The Big Lie. It is not, for example, reasonable to claim that Bush actually LIED about Iraqi WMDs to get Americans to support the war. In fact, he acted on the data available at the time, none of which was manufactured or even "sexed up". For years now, UN reports have grudgingly admitted that Iraqi WMDs which were confirmed as existing in 1991 remain unaccounted for. "Unaccounted for" does not mean "nonexistent", except to a Democratic Party looking to overstate their opposition's failings.

I hear Democrat activists routinely claiming that Bush and Cheney are the wave-front of a new, more virulent form of Fascism.

But it's the Democrats who currently practice the propaganda arts used by actual fascists...even to the point of Orwellian Doublespeak, whereby terms are "reinvented" to suit the immediate political needs of the party.

In the past twenty years, I have seen many scandals committed by both sides. I can name four major Republican political figures who have resigned, and each took responsibility for their actions when they did so. At the same time, I can name an equal number of major Democrat political figures who, regardless of how clearly guilty they were, chose to drag the country through bitter and partisan charades in their efforts to thwart the rule of law.

Because they did not want to lose power. Lose face. Lose control.

I have waited for their peers to upbraid them, hold them accountable, declare a refusal to "play along". It's happened, from time to time, on the Republican side. Not so with the Democrats.

I am no Republican, nor do I ever intend to become one. I continue to believe that both parties need to be removed from power, having grown too abusive of their authority.

But it is a fact that if there is any real threat to American democracy, it will come from a Democratic Party that re-acquires power in this fashion. Victory through propaganda is the surest road towards ensuring the rise of Fascism in America.

[BrockthePaine]

I liked that, Calbeck.

Although I've voted straight Republican in the past election, a great deal of it was "chosing the lesser of two evils". I'm not entirely at ease with voting for an independent candidate if it means the Democrats get to win, even if I better identify with the independent.

[JakeWasHere]

The more-than-two-party system has been mathematically proven (I don't remember by whom) to have a higher probability of producing a totalitarian, or at least restrictive, government than the two-party model.

There's always a chance that the right parties always band together against one party that presents an ominous threat, but when it comes to the polls there are too many choices; the majority may have voted for other people, but that vote is split among two or three different parties, thereby assuring that the party that couldn't get a majority vote wins by plurality anyway.

Think back to '92 and '96: Clinton got in both times because his opponents split the non-democratic vote, and a man whom a significant percentage of the country DIDN'T ACTUALLY WANT became President. If Perot hadn't chosen to run, he wouldn't have gone and stolen enough votes from either party to keep the Republicans from achieving a majority.

You can see how this system can be gamed very easily once you have a third and possibly fourth party jumping in. Imagine a party with totalitarian control-freak tendencies that's got candidates in the running for Parliament or Congress or what have you.

A.: We're not evil. [filthy liars]
B.: We're better than A, and here's why - etc. etc. etc.
C.: B is just the lesser of two evils. Vote for us!
D.: A, B, and C are all f__ked in the head. Vote for us!

There are going to be those who don't want to vote for A - it might even be the majority - but B, C, and D will split the vote and A will come out victorious anyway.

[BrockthePaine]

Regardless of the system used, the system still requires regular human calibration. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."

[StrangeWulf13]

May I humbly suggest that everyone here vote for the "lesser evil" of the Republican party to keep the Democrats out of power? If we do, they may eventually die off, and then the Repubs can split and we can have (more) reasonable debates in this country. You won't be forced to vote for one party just because the other is as ugly as sin.

'Course, it may be my predator instincts speaking here, having smelled donkey blood in the water...

[BrockthePaine]

There's just the one problem that we can't entirely tell the difference any more between many republicans, democrats, and John McCain. One of the things we need are term limits on all members of the government. Maybe even a "Year of Jubilee" so to speak, where everyone in a particular Congress is unseated and can't run again: such as if every eight years, there's just a ban on incumbents running again. People can move, say, between the House and the Senate, or from State to National, but an incumbent senator can't run again.

On the other hand, you'd end up with a lot of turmoil every eight years with the complete turnover... but then we'd be able to get rid of this class of professional politicians...

[Earl McClaw]

What's interesting is that in the U.S., the Democratic (sometimes called Democratic-Republican) Party was founde in 1792, and the Republican Party was founded in 1854.

Wikipedia seems to actually have a decent article / list of U.S. political parties:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_po ... ted_States
(What? No "Room Party"? One should be started!)

[Tbolt]

I agree with Brock, the term "Career Politician" should be an oxymoron. You should do your bit of civil service, and then be done with it. We might lose a few good officials that way, but it would keep fresh blood flowing through the system.

The American population needs to wake up. I don't vote party lines. R, or D in front of a candidate's name doesn't make them the best choice to represent my values. I vote for someone who is pro-life, pro-choice (I can choose to buy any gun I desire ), and pro small government. It is co-incidental that the majority of these candidates have an R designator, but a few local democrats have passed muster.

I was talking with my brother the other night and he had an interesting thought: Limit the president to one six year term. You don't have to waste the first four years of your office kissing enough butt to get in the second time, and with six years you should have enough time to make your policies felt.

I'm sure there are drawbacks, but any system made by humans will have flaws. Sinful people will find away corrupt any system no matter how well thought out.

[BrockthePaine]

The single six-year term is actually what the CSA chose to do when they wrote their constitution...

[The JAM]

A six year term is what we have down here.

[ChronicMisadventures]

On the ubject of mutual funds.. I don't trust them too much myself. CDs seem a better choice to me.

Depends on what the fund is and purposes of investing. CDs are among the safer instruments, but you basically lock your money in place until the CD comes due (or risk paying penalties to the bank). Mutual funds are a better choice than raw stocks for smaller investors since they (_if properly run_ and _if not a specialty fund_) offer the ability to diversify for a smaller cost than buying the component stocks seperately. ...course you also have to watch on mutual funds to make sure the corp isn't slipping in 'hidden' costs to the holders.

ALL of these things were claimed to be "imminent" by the Democrat Party's mainstream leadership. It's over a decade later, and I have watched Democrats grow ever more shrill, ever more willing to adopt double standards in order to defend their own poor conduct while castigating Republicans for lesser offenses.

I blame this in part on the Dems being long out of practice. They were used to being a majority in Congress for too long, their need to argue issues diminished and thus ability to debate in favor of their issues atrophied. Another problem is that on some issues they've staked out positions outside of the US mainstream in order to attract fringe voters and there's no way they can justify those positions to the more mainstream voters. Thus they attempt to distract instead.

(Btw, for anyone wondering: I'm an independent. I vote for individual candidates, not party line. Past decade or so my approval for the Democratic Party has been dropping like a rock tho. ...that we have the 2004 presidential-wannabe Dennis "vote for me, because I'm proposing a bill to outlaw space-based mind-control rays!" Kucinich (yes, he actually proposed that bill) as a Congressman here doesn't help my opinion).

[Calbeck]

Think back to '92 and '96: Clinton got in both times because his opponents split the non-democratic vote, and a man whom a significant percentage of the country DIDN'T ACTUALLY WANT became President.

Not, actually, the case. Perot attracted both disaffected Republicans AND Democrats, in roughly equal numbers. The simple fact is that Perot was a better candidate for President in the eyes of 20% of the American people than either Bush the Elder or Clinton.

Perot also won the Presidential Debates hands down, with approval polls for his performance higher than Bush all three times and higher than Clinton in two of three. Plus Perot polled in the LEAD according to Gallup in June of 1992 by one percentage point.

Perot, however, had no friends in the press and was routinely character-assassinated. He was attacked for being rich, for having big ears, for being short, and so on. He was accused of "quitting" by Newsweek when he remarked that an electoral tie between himself and Clinton --- entirely possible given Gallup's aforementioned poll, which put Perot only one point ahead of Clinton --- would result in Clinton's election since the Democrats controlled Congress (which makes the tiebreaking vote if the electoral college ties).

This simple, factual statement was attacked by Newsweek as "defeatist", and the press thereafter claimed on a near continual basis that Perot was a dropout, and his poll numbers slumped as a result.

On Election Night, 1992, exit polls asked "what person would you vote for if you thought they all had the same chance to win?"

40% voted Perot, a winning plurality. In short, America let itself be conned into believing "third parties and independents are a wasted vote", and got stuck with eight years of Clinton.

If Perot hadn't chosen to run, he wouldn't have gone and stolen enough votes

He didn't steal any votes. Republicans simply failed to run a superior candidate.

[Kerry Skydancer]

The twin parties are afraid to allow Australian Ballots. If a third party vote -isn't- wasted, they'd start losing their monopoly (well, duopoly) on power.