U.S. 2012 Election

[TheHead]

Swastikas should probably be swapped with crosses.  Just saying

 

[vonGarvin]

Swastikas should probably be swapped with crosses.  Just saying

Then find your own pic and post it.

 

[a_majoor]

For people who don't think voter fraud is a potential problem:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/11/video-nh-poll-workers-shown-handing-out-ballots-in-dead-peoples-names/

VIDEO: NH poll workers shown handing out ballots in dead peoples’ names
Published: 1:15 PM 01/11/2012 | Updated: 3:56 PM 01/11/2012
 
By Alex Pappas - The Daily Caller
Bio | Archive | Email Alex Pappas

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Video footage provided exclusively to The Daily Caller shows election workers in New Hampshire giving out ballots in the names of dead voters at multiple voting precincts during the state’s primary election on Tuesday.

The bombshell video is the work of conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe and his organization, Project Veritas.

Voters in the Granite State are not required to present identification to vote. O’Keefe’s investigators were able to obtain ballots under the names of dead voters at polling locations Tuesday by simply asking for them, he said.

“Live free or die,” an election worker told one of the investigators in the video. “This is New Hampshire. No ID needed.”

WATCH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-uVhhIlPk0&feature=player_embedded


In an interview with TheDC on Wednesday, O’Keefe said the exposé shows how voter fraud can be easier to perpetrate when identification isn’t required.

“There is fraud going on and our goal is to visualize it for people,” he said. (RELATED: Complete election coverage on The Daily Caller)

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/11/video-nh-poll-workers-shown-handing-out-ballots-in-dead-peoples-names/#ixzz1jBgVVokc

 

[cupper]

I hope someone explained the legal consequences to the asshats investigators that voter fraud carries huge fines and prison terms.

And at the same time explain to O'Keefe the concept of conspiracy.

I'm sure they would all make wonderful prison wives.

 

[Redeye]

I hope someone explained the legal consequences to the asshats investigators that voter fraud carries huge fines and prison terms.

And at the same time explain to O'Keefe the concept of conspiracy.

I'm sure they would all make wonderful prison wives.

Fortunately, given his track record, O'Keefe has pretty close to zero credibility, so we can safely dismiss this story. And yeah, hope O'Keefe has yet another run in with the law.

 

[tomahawk6]

The economy is bad and his policies wont make it better. If folks think they are worse off now than in 08,the democrats are toast.Nothing has changed from the November election.As an added bonus gas prices have risen over .30 a gallon this week.If this continues  through the summer it will be bad for the democrats.Mr Obama's plan to give Russia top secret missile information plus cutting civilian and military jobs have people upset.

 

[a_majoor]

People who can ignore documentary evidence or shrug it off as "not credible" are bound to be surprised all the time when reality does not conform to their views.

This is an interesting thing to watch. I haven't followed the Ron Paul campaign, but now that the numbers are starting to show up from the early primaries, it seem he is making some real inroads. How this will play out over the remainder of the primaries is the real interesting question:

http://reason.com/blog/2012/01/11/the-best-not-romney-is-someone-who-is-ge

Ron Paul's Secret: The Best Not-Romney Is Someone Who Is Genuinely Not Like Mitt Romney

Peter Suderman | January 11, 2012

The GOP primary race so far has resembled nothing so much as a reality TV show. And in the way that reality TV stars are famous for being famous, Mitt Romney increasingly looks to be inevitable because of his inevitability. With a celluloid-thin win in Iowa earlier this month followed up by a decisive win in New Hampshire last night, Romney is the clear front runner in the race, despite continued lukewarm feelings toward him from much of the Republican elite as well as the conservative activist base.

That’s not to say that the base hasn’t made its discomfort known. Party activists and leaders have strained and fumbled for a credible anti-Romney since last summer, but never found one with staying power. The hunt is still on. The Washington Post reports that some conservative activists are now engaged in a last minute scramble to find a viable alternative to Romney. Their repeated failures so far, however, do not bode well for any last-ditch efforts to find and promote a consensus alternative.

One by one, the parade of GOP not-Mitts up until now has fallen by the wayside—Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now Santorum have all had their 15 minutes and then been yanked off stage. Huntsman, whose third place finish last night barely passes for a moment in the sun, can almost certainly expect similar treatment. Each of these candidates has been greeted with excitement, only to be pushed to the sidelines after revealing significant weaknesses. Early contenders—Bachmann, Perry, and Cain—simply didn’t appear up to the task of running a competent campaign, much less a White House. More recent possible alternatives—Gingrich and Santorum—have proven themselves to be flaky big-government conservatives with unappealing personalities and ideas.

Each of the candidates has different problems, but the thread that unites them is that they’ve all offered some variant on relatively conventional Republicanism. And if you’re going to nominate a conventional Republican, then why not nominate Romney, who (at least since he left office in Massachusetts) has offered nothing if not dutiful adherence to convention. At this point, practically his whole appeal is based on some abstract collective ideal of generic Republicanism—pro-business, anti-tax; pro-America, anti-Obama.

There’s one candidate, of course, who I have yet to mention: Rep. Ron Paul. Unlike the numerous GOP flavors of the week, Paul has been building his support and his momentum slowly. After his solid second-place finish in New Hampshire last night, Paul has arguably emerged as the most effective anti-Romney candidate in the GOP field. And one thing you can say about Paul is that he is not offering anything that could be described as conventional Republicanism; his campaign is built on opposition to defense spending and overseas adventurism, a critique of the Federal Reserve, and a return to constitutionally limited government. Compare this to the shrugging acceptance with which Romney’s vanilla campaign and laundry list of GOP priorities have been greeted; Paul, in contrast, has managed to generate tremendous, unusual enthusiasm. Indeed, he’s the only candidate in the race who has been able to sustain and build such enthusiasm over time. Who knew? The most effective anti-Romney turns out to be someone who is genuinely not like Mitt Romney.

Read Brian Doherty on Ron Paul's amazing night in New Hampshire. Read Jacob Sullum on why Paul should be proud to be outside the GOP mainstream.

 

[Redeye]

Ron Paul's an interesting candidate, that's for sure. He's certainly come off as more consistent, and a lot of commentary suggest that his popularity comes in part from younger voters who are sick of wars and military adventurism, not looking forward to paying for any of it it, and like what on the surface seems to jive with more liberal social views - things like decriminalization/legalization of cannabis, for example. When I read anything written by Paul supports I tend to notice they don't have a very deep grasp of economics or monetary system, which helps too.

His problem could be that his past is coming back to haunt him. Earlier writings of his (which he's trying hard to distance himself from) suggest he's a bit of a racist, and his view of things like civil rights and treatment of persons with disabilities will probably push away a lot of those same voters, as will his stance on abortion. I don't get how people talk about small, limited government out of one side of their mouth and then about limiting the freedom of people to make their own choices about reproduction out of the other. But that's just me. It seems like there's some liberal types who think Ron Paul just might be a good alternative. Frankly, most of his ideas about the economy are somewhat terrifying, but again, that's my take.

Paul beating out Romney, as unlikely as that is, would make for a very, very interesting race. There's certainly a lot of things that he and President Obama could have a vibrant debate about, which under Romney won't really happen. Romney will be forced to continue to try to defend his supposed dislike of President Obama's reforms, while the Obama campaign can simply continue highlighting that despite those efforts, their program is largely inspired by Governor Romney's own policies. There's also the attacks on his economic ideas coming in from a myriad of sources.

Watching "the blogosphere" and "the Twitterverse", I'm laughing that Romney's critics are saying the same things often said about the Liberal Party here - that if you don't like what they're selling today, come back tomorrow. One said something like, "Romney is expected to win the NH Primary", to which another responded, "Yeah, but which Romney?" He certainly sounds like he's trying to come off as all things to all people, and I don't know how well that will sell in the general election campaign. The Primary campaign is bringing out lots of points that will feed well into that campaign though.

 

[Kirkhill]

A Romney-Paul Ticket?

Paul seems to be going out of his way not to get involved in the personality wars and was encouraging his people to stay away from slagging Romney.

I haven't heard anything that suggests Romney has the knives out for Paul personally..... but I haven't been listening that closely.

Could Romney and Paul find enough common ground?  Ahdunno.  Jus' Curious.

I'm hoping the Yanks don't elect another "Leader". A "Governor" would do just fine.

 

[Redeye]

Romney-Paul would be interesting indeed! I don't know if that would actually work, though. I can't see Paul accepting a VP position, especially when his position seems to be diametrically opposed to the rest of the field in a lot of ways.

I don't think anyone has knives out for Paul really - in Romney's case it's mostly for Gingrich, I think.

A Romney-Paul Ticket?

Paul seems to be going out of his way not to get involved in the personality wars and was encouraging his people to stay away from slagging Romney.

I haven't heard anything that suggests Romney has the knives out for Paul personally..... but I haven't been listening that closely.

Could Romney and Paul find enough common ground?  Ahdunno.  Jus' Curious.

I'm hoping the Yanks don't elect another "Leader". A "Governor" would do just fine.

 

[vonGarvin]

as will his stance on abortion. I don't get how people talk about small, limited government out of one side of their mouth and then about limiting the freedom of people to make their own choices about reproduction out of the other.

He's arguing that everyone has a right to not have their lives ended prematurely.  And, of course, he's arguing that human life starts at conception.  So, in short he's saying that a person's right to life > a person's right to choose.  I'm not saying you have to agree with him, but it's not the false dichotomy you posit above. 

To counter his argument (his bill failed to become law), you only have to argue that human life begins later than conception, that's all. 

 

[Redeye]

He's arguing that everyone has a right to not have their lives ended prematurely.  And, of course, he's arguing that human life starts at conception.  So, in short he's saying that a person's right to life > a person's right to choose.  I'm not saying you have to agree with him, but it's not the false dichotomy you posit above. 

To counter his argument (his bill failed to become law), you only have to argue that human life begins later than conception, that's all.

It's the spillover effects, which some lefties do take to extremes, but have worthy arguments. Should people who miscarry be investigated for negligence? What of all those lives that begin at conception that we never know about because non-implantation, etc? In any case, I wasn't looking to get into the weeds on what is a complex issue that's still not closed in the USA, but rather to note that it's interesting that Congressman Paul attracts a lot of generally liberal people, but when they discover his stance on things like abortion, they'll likely lose interest quickly.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I agree ...

Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/cartoon/editorial-cartoons-january-2012/article2287771/?from=2299341

 

[tomahawk6]

The NE US is pretty liberal.So called moderate Republicans may do well there but the real test is how well they draw votes in the south and the midwest. The Northeast,rustbelt and west coast is pretty much democrat country.I want a conservative but its looking like Romney unless Palin jumps in.

 

[a_majoor]

I still think Governor Palin will play Kingmaker in the downline elections like she did in 2010. Her endorsement for President will probably be done at the last possible minute to discombobulate the Legacy media. There is lots of time to prepare for 2016...

 

[Kalatzi]

I don't suppose thatThe REpublicans with the possible exception of Ron Paul will get back to their roots.

"I want to take you back to the 1850s, a time of tension just before the American Civil War. A new politics was spreading across the lands the likes of which few could comprehend. The result was the creation of a new political party in a small schoolhouse within a small Wisconsin town. This party was to be called the ‘Republican Party’. Assuming you already know all that perhaps it is best I just dive right into the subject at hand.

...

The NRA was chiefly concerned with the concentration of wealth, something they tied to the horrors of the old world. They felt there should not be a right to the unlimited accumulation of wealth in this country. The association soon turned towards what is described as “a spectrum the most revolutionary anarchist and socialist currents in American life”. This hostility towards concentrated wealth made them hostile to the South especially seeing as how it was governed largely by wealthy gentry using slavery in replace of paid labor, further amassing their wealth concentration and depriving laborers of good wages.

Some historians have tied the NRA’s most important members to being under the influence of Socialism, Trade Unionism, and of course Abolitionism. By the late 1840s they had taken up the issue of a new Homestead Act

...

In 1860 a paramilitary group of the Republican Party was formed called the Wide Awake Republicans, identifying themselves as ‘Wide Awakes’. One reported incident was on October 3, 1860 in Chicago when 10,000 Wide Awakes marched in a three – mile precession. By the end of 1860 the New York Tribune had estimated there to be over 400,000 drilled and uniformed Wide Awakes nationwide"

Perhaps there is a "Sound asleep" movement?

Link to article here http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread797646/pg1

 

[Edward Campbell]

Too bad, in a way, the best of a very weak field, and I'm including Barack Obama amongst the very weakest, has left the race, according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/worldview/huntsmans-exit-may-seal-romneys-fate-in-gop-race/article2303927/

Huntsman’s exit may seal Romney’s fate in GOP race

KONRAD YAKABUSKI

Washington— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Monday, January 16, 2012


There may have been moments in recent months when Jon Huntsman was actually running for the Republican presidential nomination, but they have seemed few and far between. Instead, he seemed to have been conducting an odd experiment in partisan defiance.

The experiment ended in failure on Monday, as Mr. Huntsman withdrew from the race and threw his support behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

His exit and endorsement give Mr. Romney a boost – as if the front-runner needed one, as a new Fox News poll out Monday put him 26 percentage points ahead of his closest rival nationally.

But the extra votes will not hurt in South Carolina, where the Jan. 21 Republican primary is likely to be a closer race and Mr. Romney would dearly love to seal the deal with a win in the Southern contest that has an unblemished track record of picking the nominee.

Mr. Huntsman, the former Utah governor and ex-U.S. ambassador to China, was once considered the Republican secret weapon. And perhaps, in different circumstances, there might have been a constituency for his post-partisan promise of anti-hot button politics.

That constituency is just not in the Republican Party in 2012.

An early establishment favourite, who was considered to have even more cross-partisan appeal than Mr. Romney, Mr. Huntsman alienated many in the party’s upper crust with his calls to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

He defied the anti-tax zealots in the party as the only GOP candidate who refused to sign Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge. He defied the social conservative powerbrokers, refusing to sign the “marriage pledge” repudiating same-sex unions.

Indeed, Mr. Huntsman was the only candidate who, in the face of a slew of “purity” tests imposed on the contestants by the various extreme factions holding sway in the party, dared to stand up and declare: “Enough.”

Barely a week ago, Mr. Romney charged that Mr. Huntsman had spent the past two years as a servant of the Obama administration instead of helping to get Republicans elected in the 2010 midterm elections – as if putting country ahead of party was a mark against him.

“The American people are tired of the partisan division,” Mr. Huntsman responded in a Jan. 8 debate in New Hampshire. “We have to change our direction in terms of coming together as Americans first and foremost.”

That argument had more resonance in New Hampshire, where independent voters made up almost half of those who took part in the Jan. 10 Republican primary, allowing Mr. Huntsman to place a respectable third with 17 per cent support.

But it has nearly zero traction in South Carolina, where the Jan. 21 primary will be a slugfest between the pure fiscal and pure social conservatives in the party.

It would not have mattered that the leading newspaper in the state capital, Columbia, endorsed Mr. Huntsman on the weekend. His campaign was likely headed for a last-place finish in South Carolina.

He might have fared better in Florida, which holds its delegate-rich primary on Jan. 31 and where Mr. Huntsman had set up his campaign headquarters. But competing in Florida, one of the country’s most expensive advertising markets, requires big money. Mr. Huntsman’s campaign had reportedly refused an infusion from his wealthy father.

It might not have helped anyway. The Huntsman campaign had bigger problems than his moderation. Though he got better as the campaign progressed, he was the most unnatural politician of the bunch and stiffer even than Mr. Romney.

It is still hard to believe that he was actually running for the nomination. It seems more likely he was angling for a plum cabinet post – perhaps Secretary of State, though his Afghanistan stand made that problematic – or doing a practice run for the nomination in 2016 or beyond.

After all, Mr. Huntsman is only 50. And even Republicans mellow with age, don’t they?

Maybe, I think the odds are about 50/50, Romney can beat Obama in November ... it is pretty certain that none of the others can. I think Obama has done enough damage to America ... I doubt that even Sarah Palin could do significantly worse.

 

[Redeye]

Too bad, in a way, the best of a very weak field, and I'm including Barack Obama amongst the very weakest, has left the race, according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/worldview/huntsmans-exit-may-seal-romneys-fate-in-gop-race/article2303927/

Maybe, I think the odds are about 50/50, Romney can beat Obama in November ... it is pretty certain that none of the others can. I think Obama has done enough damage to America ... I doubt that even Sarah Palin could do significantly worse.

s

Polls consistently put Romney behind Obama - regardless of which agency does the poll (and the various ones seem to have an "ideological bent". Rasmussen, for example, constantly seems to report results more favourable to the right, Gallup seems to wind up a little to the left. Most pundits have been pretty sure that it would be Romney that would eventually get the nomination and that the others were basically sideshows. Huntsman seemed to be fairly reasonable and moderate, but some of my favourite pundits immediately wrote him off exactly for that reason. He was reasonable enough to court independents, he might even have caught the attention of Democrats disenchanted with President Obama.

Romney's got a lot of conservative detractors, though, and I wonder how that will play in the final contest. It won't be hard for people to thrash him for a variety of reasons. He's seen as being a weathervane, selling whatever he thinks people want to hear on any given day. He can be attacked for his credibility on healthcare, given that "RomneyCare" is (despite his claims otherwise) more or less identical to the premise of "ObamaCare", but actually apparently covered undocumented workers, and apparently covered abortion services. He's being vilified for the nature of his business, and the quotemining job done by Perry will haunt him long after the primaries are over, I suspect.

How all those things play out with the various constituents of the Republican Party will be what matters. They may decide to hold their nose and vote for him to prevent President Obama being re-elected, and I don't know that that will be enough.

President Obama, on the other hand, will have to run on his record. First, he'll have to convince the "emoprog" far left that in fact he has accomplished things during his term. They whine constantly that he's not done enough when he has done quite a lot. Then he'll have to highlight the state of the economy (the so called "bikini graph") will highlight this. He'll need to have Congressional candidates thoroughly and publicly thrash the Congress for deadlocking US politics since the 2010 midterms to highlight that obstruction was their main problem. This, too, shouldn't be hard. There's some great clips out there that showed that the GOP had no intention of working to fix the country's problems because their main concern was blocking re-election. They've got footage of a few people saying as much, most notable GOP Senate Leader McConnell.

They can also attack the GOP on being beholden to special interests - ask why they might be perceived as putting pledges to the likes of Grover Norquist ahead of their duties to all Americans, for example. They're going to have to build a strong narrative, but I think they can do it. I certainly expect that whatever the results are (and however they are interpreted - remember that Mr. Boehner likes to talk about doing "what the American people want" despite his House's approval rating  being somewhat lower than that of gonorrhea among Americans), they will amount to a categoric rejection of how divided and ineffective the governing of the country has been. It'll thus be a matter of at who's feet they lay the blame.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Polls consistently put Romney behind Obama ...

Maybe ... this doesn't look all that "consistent:" Obama leads in 5, Romney in 3 and they are tied in 1.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Yeah and the polls had Harper in trouble until the votes started getting counted.

Polls only give the results that the person commissioning it want. They are absolutely that last thing to depend on for insight or decision.