GOP Primary Megathread!

[Ideologue]

I keep getting the impression he doesn't recognize Americans as humans, and more like props in some sort of elaborate show put on for his amusement.

To be fair, there is something to be said for that ... 

One day, we're gonna take off our hat.

[Caliga]

Yeah, the Bang Bus.  Bow chicka bow wow.

It almost looks like an entirely different face.  Huh.

[Ideologue]

She got old.  Give her a break.  She's still not bad looking for her age cohort, and the eyes are the same.

Also, Gabrielle Giffords is pretty hot even though she got shot in the head.  I remember that time someone posted a picture of her during recovery and I said I liked her new haircut.

[Caliga]

She got old.  Give her a break.  She's still not bad looking for her age cohort, and the eyes are the same.

I was trying to make a joke about her love affair with plastic surgery.

[Ideologue]

I'm not familiar with her personal history, only that she's both electable and technically erectable.

[Tonitrus]

I'm not familiar with her personal history, only that she's both electable and technically erectable.

Well, so was Bill Clinton.

[Ideologue]

Is it crass to say that the best thing to come out of that was she stopped bleaching her fucking hair and got a haircut that doesn't look like she's a time traveler from 1959?

Amyway, all GOPtards got is that Alaskan who moves like she's got Parkinson's and Lady Ghoulface; our side can take bullets to their skulls and come out age cohort 9s.

But seriously, she's a great person, with great policies.  And she's married to an astronaut.  Why don't I ever get to vote for anyone like that?

[Ed Anger]

We had John fucking Glenn, who would bend a commie in half.

Even though I thought he was a mediocre senator.

[Razgovory]

Personally, I find Ide's thinness fetish creepy.  I'm more in the Cal boat when it comes to things like that.

John Glenn would have been a great President.  Man, I'm glad I don't remember the Democratic party of the 1980's.  Mondale?  Really?

[Ideologue]

Women have a wide range of body types, Raz.  From size 00 to size 4.

[Phillip V]

Santorum now gets to the sit in the frontrunner seat for the first time this election. What has happened to each (not-Romney) candidate who has (temporarily) sat there?

Look to the debate next week. Santoorum will get gang-raped.
Romney has never run an anti-Santorum TV ad yet. That will change.
Gingrich's billionaire bankroller Sheldon Adelson has signaled that he will give millions more to Gingrich's Super PAC to help knock Santorum from the top. Adelson said Romney is his backup candidate.

Romney will fend off Santorum this month. But then he will turn around a face another surge from Gingrich.
And Paul still has a significant role to play.

[CountDeMoney]

John Glenn would have been a great President.  Man, I'm glad I don't remember the Democratic party of the 1980's.  Mondale?  Really?

It was a rough time.  WHY NOT MARIO WHY NOT????

[Caliga]

 

[Sheilbh]

Personally, I much more interested in the nuts and bolts of government.  Can bills move through Congress?  Is the bureaucracy running well?  Is the government doing a good job in procurement.  Are regulations being enforced?  Are our roads in good shape?  Do our enemies fear us and do our Allies respect us.  Can the military kill people adequately?  The horse race and drama are mildly amusing, but at the end of the day I want the a government that actually works.

But how you define the answers to those questions will differ based on ideology and priorities.  Similarly the policies you decide to implement will change.  The key is to successfully link the policies that you want to deliver, the metrics of success that you want to measure to the horserace and to a grander campaign.  Without that you end up with the European Commission or the Green Party: well-meaning, occasionally interesting, generally futile.

This is what I mean about the American left annoying me is that they often seem so interested in governing that they actually forget there are voters.  I remember during the healthcare debate  the number of times I'd read left-wing writers and politicians proposing this wonky way of working an individual mandates vs this form of single payer.  There were endless reams of polls showing that actually people quite like the idea if you explain it to them.  All of this was being hashed out in public and in the private committees of which we got innumerable articles.

All the while Republicans went out there and campaigned against it.  They had a simple clear message and they explained it to the voters.  Because of that they were far more successful at defining popular impressions of the reform.  And I remember wondering in all of this where were the left?  I saw a pathetic amount of explaining of the options, or of campaigning for healthcare.  This should have been a moral crusade and it wasn't because too many liberals, in my view, are too into governing.  They look and act like New Dealers who don't realise they've lost their majority.  Weirdly we're going through almost exactly the same thing but in reverse on healthcare right now with the cack-handed coalition reforms.

I think that part of the reason Obama's started to succeed a little bit more (as well, of course, as the economy) is that they're linking politics to government again which you have to do. 

So it's absurd to disdain or ignore the stuff about how someone or a certain issue connects with voters, or what sort of campaign they're trying to create because that will tell you a huge amount about their governing style (as I say I've not been surprised by anything Obama's done so far because I think it's been very continuous from the campaign, from what I've read Clinton was the same).  Much as I love Monti for his technocratic ideas I think his real success has been communication which give them a greater chance of success and a wider measure of public support.

[Sheilbh]

John Glenn would have been a great President.  Man, I'm glad I don't remember the Democratic party of the 1980's.  Mondale?  Really?

It was a rough time.  WHY NOT MARIO WHY NOT????

Don't worry you can get to vote for Andrew.  Who, unlike his father (), is tribune of the homos.