PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

author=Jude

author=harmonic
Or in an ideal world, people will stop voting for a party because of which race they are.

Hint: Hispanics don't vote blue because of ethnicity. Mexican immigrants are generally socially conservative, so they are already primed to be won over by the GOP if it didn't take such a hard line on immigration.

You are correct in that hispanics have conservative social values. They have a very strong inclination toward a traditional family and catholicism. They also prefer having a job, rather than begging for free stuff.

The last big amnesty was a Republican one. My wife is a Peruvian immigrant (and a democrat voter) and she, as well as everyone in her family, and her friends, etc, all admit that any *practical* help for hispanic immigrants has come from Republican presidents. Democrats give lip service at best.

author=Solitayre
It's not like the Republicans have gone out of their way to alienate hispanics, and blacks, and arabs, and non-christians, and gays, and women. Those people only vote democrat because of a racial hivemind.

What was Romney's "merit?" If we're looking at his record as governor of MA, it's not so good...

Remove the sarcasm from your post and you're dead on. They haven't. We believe in the power of self-determination. Having your own money, not being dependent on the government. We believe in taking a hard line against societies around the world that douse their women in acid for dressing inappropriately. We believe in having the proper conditions that allow individuals to flourish by their own merits. We do not believe in telling demographic groups that they should feel victimized, and that they should hate white men and the rich. We do not believe in dividing people racially to serve our own political ends.

Romney's "merit"? I haven't researched Romney's record, but that's irrelevant. Wrong context. I meant that we judge by the content of character, not the color of skin. Much like the Southern Democrats who fought hard to maintain institutional racism in the 60's, the modern Democrats try to exacerbate this racism even further by turning Americans against each other.

You extrapolated an awful lot from my post. Kettle = black.

author=slashphoenix
Romney wanted to backtrack gay rights to virtually nil, and that was enough for me to not vote for him. I didn't want a president who is willing to treat an entire subset of our country as non-people in order to protect another group's traditions.

Fuck that, and fuck traditions that have anything to do with persecuting others, they have no valid justification for being preserved.

Read between the lines. It's not that hard this time. Romney has always been at best a centrist, and sort of a liberal.

Eeeeeveryone knew that he started sounding very conservative in order to appeal to the conservative base. He would not have governed like the psychopath monster that the left imagines. But I understand - the masses respond more readily to "fear the boogey man" than having to carefully consider reality and reason.

(I am not a social conservative, inb4 whatever)

author=slashphoenix
actively encouraging the segregation of American citizens - even if he's only claiming those are his beliefs to win votes, his actions have consequences.

That is a good point, and I agree fully. Tell that to our current president too, please, for he has done absolutely nothing to heal the immense division between demographic groups.

He has indeed done nothing to help. This country is more divided than ever.

He has exacerbated already existing racial and class tensions in an extremely transparent (and successful) attempt at convincing people that if you're female, or non-white, or gay, that the Republicans are all old evil white men who hate you. It cancels out any possibility of an intellectual, objective approach to comparing policy to policy when there is such overwhelming tribalistic fervor.

You don't unite people by turning them against one another. White men and rich people are not the enemy. They are your neighbors, your colleagues, your fellow Americans.

Volumes upon volumes of examples of liberal racism could be published if I had time. Perhaps someday. Twitchy.com often extracts and compiles twitter phrases. For instance, the "obama wins, fuck white people" one. Obviously Obama himself doesn't say that, but that's why I've said he's done nothing to help. It is not his job to "help black people." He's the president of every single American in the country, and is supposed to represent our *general* interests. Enough with the social engineering, and pandering to demographic groups.

That is a silly commercial, but as with most things, it's politics, and both sides make silly commercials.

harmonic
Remove the sarcasm from your post and you're dead on. They haven't.

Republicans by and large oppose gay marriage, and in many cases support limiting gay rights, such as being able to serve in the military, or for gay couples being permitted many of the benefits straight couples have. They often do this by citing gays as some sort of corrupting influence that poses a danger to traditional families in ways they fail to explain adequately. Opposing gay rights alienates gays.

A large number of republicans are in favor of regulating abortion. Abortion is a very contentious issue, I admit, and if you put a gun to my head I'd say I'm pro-life. But I don't think the government should have any say over this process and it should be between a woman and her family/doctor. Republicans often want to ban abortion across the board, and in many cases they demonstrate their belief in this through outdated or very ignorant thinking, or in the case of Todd Akin, astoundingly misogynistic thinking that demonstrates a basic lack of understanding of how human reproduction even works. Trying to regulate what woman can do with their bodies and talking down to them in doing so alienates woman.

Jude already explained how republicans have alienated Hispanic voters, who are an increasingly large demographic in this country.

Many news groups following the election cited this as a major problem for Republicans lately. They failed to appeal to minorities. Just appealing to angry white people doesn't win elections anymore. They need to change their approach to politics and how they approach their campaigns.

harmonic
Romney's "merit"? I haven't researched Romney's record, but that's irrelevant.

Romney's record as a governing official is 100% relevant to the conversation of whether Romney would make a strong governing official.

harmonic
You extrapolated an awful lot from my post. Kettle = black.

I did not say one word about how you, harmonic, think, in that post. Unless you mean my saying that you think democrats vote only along racial lines, which is exactly what you said.

author=Solitayre
stuff

You're arguing with a brick wall right now, regarding abortion and gay rights. As I've already stated, I'm not socially conservative. Ask a social conservative about those things. I do not think social issues are nearly as important as economic and foreign issues, therefore, I vote Republican. If we had a good libertarian party, with a machine capable of actually garnering sufficient support, I'd probably vote Libertarian. However, no, Republicans have not "alienated hispanics and blacks." We simply don't manipulate them into voting down party lines. We don't bribe them with entitlements and social engineering initiatives that demographic groups don't think they need until the Democrats tell them they need it. We don't instill a feeling of having been slighted by the rich white man. We play fair, which is why we lost.

author=Solitayre
Romney's record as a governing official is 100% relevant to the conversation of whether Romney would make a strong governing official.

...We weren't talking about whether Romney would make a strong governing official. Again, for the second time, when I said "Merit>identity" I meant policy, ideology is more important than skin color and genitals. Are you going to keep on that same strawman argument, or give it a rest and realize the context?

Social issues were much more important in this election than economics or foreign issues because the candidates differed very little on foreign policy (both support drones, both support pulling the troops by 2014 if possible, both want to avoid a nuclear Iran) and their economic policies differ, but both were extremely minimal (only addressing the deficit in small ways; also, both Romney and Obama's tax plans have been enacted before and both were successful, back in the late 80's and early 90's respectively).

Meanwhile, we had one side attempting to regress social issues to the point that we are justifying second-class citizenry (queer rights) simply to appease a large demographic (religious), despite the fact that these are humans and many will die if not allowed the same rights as everyone else - health insurance, worker's comp, medical leave, visitation rights, tax equality, and inheritance. These are millions of lives, human lives, real, actual people who are suffering because the idea of gay marriage is "weird" or "wrong".

Harmonic, it's very clear that you're a brick wall on all political issues, not just social ones. You claim that the Democratic party are the only political party to manipulate people into voting, while earlier admitting Romney is willing to espouse hardline conservative beliefs such as "Gays are trying to destroy your culture, Christians! Rise up and vote against them, less your heritage be denied!"

To claim that both parties don't play the manipulative, overly dramatic, pathetic game that is politics means you are either choosing to turn a blind eye to your own party's shortcomings, or that you truly believe that a politician trying to rile up angry demographics via emotional manipulation isn't wrong, as long as he's on your side.


EDIT: Jude is right; the economy was definitely the primary issue this election. My concern is that I believe the outcome of the economy would be positive regardless of who is elected, but the outcome of social rights wouldn't be. We'll never know, but that's what I found while deciding who to vote for.

author=Jude
I'll disagree. I think the economy was definitely the primary issue this election.

This. Though, I think slash was less calling it unimportant in general and more saying that it made very little difference in choosing canidates since they were similiar in economic views.