Posted on 05/06/2007 8:54:22 AM PDT by jdm
Funny how all the Ghouliani apologists here have all but disappeared now that he is beginning to sink the polls.
Hypocrisy is hypocrisy.
Thompson should be held to account for his support, then position change, on CFR. Is it a matter of conviction or of political expedience? When he, not his bots, answer that, then the issue may be put to rest.
Good news indeed. I just do not understand the level of support for McCain. Name recognition and that’s it?
With both the right and the left trashing Rudy, it’s not too surprising.
Just wait til he gets going, though.
Well-stated.
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He just got going and thats the problem. If faced with real questions he makes a jackass of himself and is forced to hide from the press.
He can’t even do townhall meetings if questions will be asked.
He was dictator of NYC and the liberals clapped and cheered because he protected them from squeegee men.
His liberal ideas wont sell anywhere but a liberal sewer like NYC. Stick a fork in Rooty.
The primaries are 9 months away, the election 17 months away; and GWB is PRESIDENT until then. Remember 1991? 8 dems in the race vs Bush I. It seems axiomatic that the side that sees the most opportunity to win the presidency has the most candidates/ferment.
By early february the political dynamic will look much different, count on it. The most UNITED party will win in 08’.
1. The Clinton's methodology is simple.
Don't waste time boosting yourself, destroy
the competition.
2. The goal for the conservatives is simple.
Clinton must NOT win. Choose the Pubbie who
can beat Hillary.
Rudy is on his way out. Good thing if we have a chance for winning in 2008.
Good job folks, we pushed liberal Rudy out of the lifeboat and stopped his bid to liberalize the Republican Party!
Thompson-Romney Two conservatives for the price of one and Mitt has a lot of money collected.
Saying the same thing over and over again, sir, does not make your argument anymore correct than the first time you said it. Try something else.
HUNTER/BROWNBACK
HUNTER/THOMPSON
HUNTER/and whoever Hunter picks.
THOMPSON - HUNTER
I’d like to see Thompson - JC Watts with Hunter as Secretary of Defense.
Bush was correctly seen by many limited government conservatives as someone who would lead the GOP further down the path of big government conservatism. McCain was seen, correctly so at the time, as more conservative than Bush from the stand point of limiting government. McCain has moved leftward sense. I did not support either in the 2000 GOP primaries, but can understand why someone would of picked McCain over Bush.
He's been going downhill ever since he started to open his mouth about the abortion issue. He simply cannot spin away either his past actions or his current views.
And his rabid support of gun control hasn't even come up as a major issue yet on the public radar.
Giuliani’s early lead was primarily due to name recognition. When that is the case, it’s a good bet that the lead won’t last long once the real games begin.
So, you give Thompson a pass, but I doubt you would give Hillary one.
I fail to see the distinction.
That's a really pathetic attempt at an analogy.
Fred said that he voted for the campaign finance bill because in the real world, if you give a business executive large sums of money and they in turn make decisions that benefit you, that businessman goes to jail.
If you listen to how the advocates of campaign finance portray it, it appears to make sense. The problem is that the way it is portrayed, and the way the law actually works are very different. Fred said that he bought into the idea of trying to limit the influence of campaign donations on public officials. However, now that he has seen the law in action, it does not do what it was portrayed to do and should be repealed.
He made a mistake. He admits he made a mistake. However, he also explained his intentions.
So what is Hillary's most recent explanation for why she voted for the war, and why she is trying to pull out now, not to mention why her support one way or the other keeps wavering?
Most importantly, does it match the rest of what she has said and done? Is she in general consistent on such issues?
If you fail to see the distinction between how Hillary portrays herself however she thinks will benefit her at that particular point in time, and how Fred's far more consistent voting record, and far more consistent expression of his views, then you must be working awfully hard to hold your eyes shut.
Let's be consistent. If we skewer one pol for flipflopping and changing his mind, let's do it for all that flipflop for change their minds.
Maybe you should actually look at what the candidate has to say as to why they voted how they did, and see if their goals and intentions really are reasonably consistent. Fred's are.
In reality, things don't always work out like we think they will. In reality we all make mistakes.
But if you look at Fred's actions he's pretty consistent. He argued against campaign donations in the form of unlimited soft money. At the same time he worked to raise the limits on hard money donations.
In Fred's own campaign, it was pretty obvious that he didn't like going and begging groups for money. People have criticized him for not being aggressive enough in campaigning, but his actually campaigning and addressing issues isn't what they were talking about, it was the fact that he doesn't aggressively fundraise for his campaign to the extent that other candidates do.
Look at how he is "campaigning" now. He is getting his voice heard on the issues and making himself known by working as a commentator and by blogging.
Instead of having to spend his time raising funds, and indebting himself to the groups that help him raise those funds, he is doing a non-traditional campaign.
He won't be able to keep that up forever, because the campaign finance laws won't allow him to continue on as a radio commentator after he declares his candidacy. He's going to have to go out on the campaign trail and beat the bushes for campaign money just like everyone else at that point. However, he doesn't plan on raising and spending the kinds of money his opponents have been.
[I'm not giving him a pass on this. I want a full explanation. This bill, CFR, is a direct infringement on the First Amendment. Thompson owes the voters a better explanation than 'oh sorry, it's not working the way we intended'.]
Of course he does. That campaign finance law has been a horrible infringement on people's First Amendment rights. He did not advocate the more egregious parts of it, and actually pushed for the raising of the hard money limits, which loosened some of the previous limitations on free speech, but he did vote for the bill as a whole, and shares in the blame for it being passed. He therefore has a responsibility not only to explain his actions, but to work to change the law.
I agree that he needs to speak more clearly on this. I have not found a good article he has written or interview he has given where he lays it all out for people in one place.
What he has said has been consistent, but either he is hesitant to speak on this in detail, or he underestimates the importance of the issue. It may also be that a real solution to the problem of the influence of money in politics doesn't really exist, so while he should denounce the mess that is McCain-Feingold, proposing what should replace it is a bit more difficult.
Talking about doing away with campaign finance laws altogether will give the media an opportunity to attack him as a greedy lawyer who wants to be able to accept unlimited bribes.
It is going to be a difficult subject to deal with, but I agree with you that he needs to provide a much more clear and complete answer if he's going to win the trust of the many who oppose him due to his past efforts on campaign finance.
In the same respect, Rudy owns a full explanation of his position on abortion and on gun contol and his infringment on the Second Amendment.
Rudy has a long and consistent history on those issues, and his current claims simply are not consistent with his past efforts. Even worse is how Rudy attacked those issues.
Of course that brings us back to Fred. While what Fred has described as his goals in campaign finance reform seem noble, the law is a direct infringement on the First Amendment, and hardly consistent with his generally small government, federalist stance on issues.
It appears that the issues that Fred pushed for in the bill, such as raising the limits on hard money donations are actually consistent with his small government stance, but the law as a whole is not.
McCain-Feingold happened when he was relatively new to the Senate. Did he get outmaneuvered by more skilled politicians into supporting a horrible bill while trying to push for some minor, positive reforms within the larger scope of the legislation? It kind of seems that way consider what he was pushing for, and his otherwise reasonably consistent small government, conservative voting record.
Let's hold ALL their feet to the fire. We don't have to settle for---and end up with second-rate politicians.
Fair enough. While I like what I've seen from Fred so far, I do agree that we need to hear a lot more from him, especially on the issue of CFR and protecting the First Amendment rights of the people.
She would be the hottest is US history, she can campaign on an "at least I'm not an ugly communist retard" plank.
I can tell you that were it not for Thompson we would all be singing hail to Hitlery Klintoon next year unless Giuliani were the GOP canidate.
Apparently in a nation of 300 million people the GOP can't seem to come up with anybody to lead them other than an abortion lover and a guy who marries a woman half his age.
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