Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jack Bauer on November 7, 2012 at 7:49pm

The American people always get the government they deserve.

I think there were some assumptions about the electorate that were turned on its head last night.  In 2008, we could fall back on the idea that the electorate was hoodwinked by a smooth-talking black candidate that they knew nothing about.  This time, not so.

The problem wasn't Romney -- he wasn't Dole or McCain.  He ran a good campaign.  I didn't agree with every decision -- I'd have attacked harder on some issues -- but I'm not confident that doing it my way would've made a difference.  The problem wasn't the Tea Party, or the establishment, or the Chris Christie photo op, or Hurricane Sandy, or pulling punches on Benghazi, or tactics, or ads, or debates.  It wasn't anything Romney did or said.

For Republicans, at the moment, the problem is the voters.  The fact is, we are simply not a majority right now.  We can't fix the problem by denying it ... and pretending this was about Romney or his campaign.  This is not an unrecoverable problem, though.  I imagine Kerry supporters felt similarly in 2004.  I know Republicans did when Clinton was re-elected in 1996.

I think we're in for a long four years -- but, there isn't anywhere else in the world I'd rather weather the storm than Texas.

JB

Permalink Reply by StaggerLee on November 8, 2012 at 7:55am

     I am truly saddened. I fully agree with Walter Williams' perspective, "I don't hold President Obama completely responsible for his unconstitutional actions. It's the American people who are to blame..." (Full article here.).  I never dreamed I'd be considered part of the conservative minority, glaringly out of step with mainstream beliefs.  So, I am pretty much indifferent to Obama's win  because I am reeling by what apparently are the commonly held beliefs of my fellow countrymen!

      Perhaps I was simply naive or maybe even willfully blind. All I know is that now I am saddened and fearful that the America I grew up loving will be an unknown place to my kids aside from the old man's remember when stories.  Maybe every generation comes to feel that way eventually. It sure hurts none the less. 

Permalink Reply by Rick Shelton on November 8, 2012 at 8:31am

At first, without reading the Mr. Williams' article, I was going to say that his not holding the President responsible for his actions was one of the more idiotic things I'd ever heard. After reading his article I understand what he is saying. Our culture has devolved into a psychotic mess where no one is to blame for their own actions no matter how heinous. Rapists claim they were abused and that gives the excuse to rape, thieves claim they are too poor and down-trodden which gives them license to steal from others, bullys can claim that they are abused or mistreated at home or are going through a 'tough time' which gives them a reason to be a bully.
We all have some idea through our education, talking to others, church, and social groups of what is a lawful action and what is not. Generally speaking if an action harms another then it is not a legal action, I know there are exceptions to this but I'm talking about the norm not the exception. Because of pop-psychology we have become a nation of enablers of moral turpitude and lawlessness among our citizens. We need to change this trend. We are ultimately responsible for our actions not matter what. I don't know of a religion that give provisional passes for breaking it's laws. The 8th Commandment doesn't say "Thou shall not steal, unless you're poor and then it's ok"; it says "Thou shall not steal." period, no excuses, no provisions.

Permalink Reply by StaggerLee on November 8, 2012 at 12:20pm

My take on  Williams' quote is more that while he is certainly responsible for his actions, the majority of voters are culpable in providing him the ability to perpetrate them on the nation.

Permalink Reply by Titus Techera on November 8, 2012 at 2:27pm

1. Rapists did not invent the defense by legal insanity. & it is not impossible to imagine the American justice system doing without the expertise of psychologists, psychiatrists, &c. Those people neither know nor care about justice, but now they matter more than justice.

2. Thieves seem to have been awarded Miranda rights on the principle that since organized crime knows how to beat the justice system at least often enough to be noticeable, it is discrimination against less well-organized or less clever criminals that they should not also beat the system at least as often. Affirmative action for underachieving criminals, perhaps...

3. As for law, that's passe, as they say in France, where it's also passe. Not even illegal immigrants are illegal anymore--undocumented worker & so forth have replaced that. Breaking the laws in that case does not matter, unless it makes a case in the favor of the law-breaker. If not even the distinction between citizen & alien matters, how can the rest of the laws affecting citizens matter?

Permalink Reply by Will on November 8, 2012 at 9:25am

2 minutes after Fox called it for Obama, I had 2 people taunting me. I guess that could be a celebration.

As I said here before (check the thread on the Fourth Turning), I wasn't sure I wanted the GOP to take the blame for the next 4 years. Obama will try to put it on them, and he's skilled, but ultimately, it's hard to escape the association of having your face plastered all over the news when the news is bad. Romney would have had his face plastered on it, and he's not the blamemeister anyway. We might end up with 20 years of Democratic House, Senate, and White House, just as happened after Hoover. I suppose the media may just report on how great things are going while the country declines, but I'm not sure if that will work.

Although I went to bed feeling like we'd dodged a bullet, I woke remembering that Obamacare is still with us, so we'll have 4 years to get used to having government control our health care, having access to our data, and to the higher costs. When something bad happens for a while, it becomes status quo, and people stop resisting. We also have 4 years of increasing insecurity in the world.

I've been hearing 2 reactions from conservatives on FB who are bluer than me:
* God is still in control, and
* Let's retreat into our subculture

I'll go with 1 but not 2. The greater culture, in the form of the administration, isn't going to let you retreat. And that was true before Obama, too -- it's more interested in controlling the fine detail of our lives, but the mechanism was already there.

Got a boy wanting my attention now, so I'll stop here. But I'll agree with some who said: the problem here is way bigger than the one who's fundamentally transforming the country we love. It was already being transformed. We couldn't stop the gradual process and we can't stop the accelerated one.

Permalink Reply by Paul_of_TX on November 8, 2012 at 10:12am

I agree with you that if there is a silver lining it is that Obama will be the one that will be in the White House while we suffer for his action over the next four years. With the media and a lying administration our nation is stupid enough to elect another democrat hand picked by Obama in 2016 and that is really scary.

Permalink Reply by Native Son on November 8, 2012 at 9:37am

Here's the OP's observations based onyesterday (11/7).

Muted reaction in most circles, nobody observed jumping for joy or cringing in disappointment.

(FYI, I live in a pretty much blue area, with a fairish sized streak of "no new taxes!" folks.)

An interesting reaction being that some folks seem to have gone with "better the devil we know" on the presidential ballot, but a lot of differences on the state & local ballot items.  Some real surprises on some of the state propositions, going BOTH ways.

My persoanl take is going to be watching the Senate majority leader, especially during the lame duck session leading up to the "sequestration" date.  Senator Reid, IMHO, has been the President's "hatchet man", effectively killing any budget bills that have been passed by the House, and simultaneously providing "plausable deniability" to the White House.

 

Permalink Reply by LShieldes on November 8, 2012 at 10:37am

I'm cautiously pumped.

I was most happy that several of the far right candidates for Senate were slapped down for the stupid shit that they said.

Then yesterday Boehner came out and said that he is willing to work with the President....as long as the President does exactly what the Republicans want.

So basically, we are going to ahve 4 more years of the same old shit because the House won't pass anything that the Senate will pass. The senate will be forced to find the new majority 60 votes to get anything done. And the President will be to blame because these jerkoffs can't do their damn job.

Also, with that now done, we have the next 2 months of horseshit to follow with the "fiscal cliff". Then maybe, just maybe if some grownups actually show up on both sides and work together we might be in a place where the corporations stop sitting on their profits and reinvest and we can really get the country moving again.

Permalink Reply by Rick Shelton on November 8, 2012 at 3:50pm

I too was happy that those two Senate candidate idiots who put their @$$es in their mouths weren't elected, and I'm Republican.

Permalink Reply by SB on November 8, 2012 at 11:49am

In the months leading up to the election, several opinion polls were published citing very low voter confidence in the current batch of elected officials (including the President), low confidence in America’s ability to pull out of this recession and a near majority concluded that we, as a country, were headed down the ‘wrong track’.  In addition, polling just prior to the election showed that a majority thought Romney was a better choice to bring back the economy.

But that isn't how people voted.  This vote was about keeping the status quo. In my mind there are only two possible explanations: 1) people were lying in the opinion polls, or 2) voters lack the courage to vote for the change they know we need.  

Permalink Reply by Rick Shelton on November 8, 2012 at 3:52pm

No, people are just stupid.  We saw the same thing happen in New Orleans just after Katrina and the mess the Mayor's administration made of the recovery.  I guess to punish the Mayor they voted him back into office, same with Obama.

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