Posted on 06/03/2015 2:59:46 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
".......Annie [composite techie-must read full article to grasp how "she's" defined]has voted for the Democrats in the last few elections, both because everyone she knows does and because they stand against the less tolerant elements of the Republican Party, which seem frighteningly antediluvian to her. The war on terror struck her as about the dumbest thing she’s seen any government do, a massive overreaction with no planning or strategy to it.(She feels roughly the same about the war on drugs.)Yet she saw that Democrats were just as slow as Republicans to sour on the United States’ involvement in the Middle East and equally supportive of the government increasing surveillance, bullying tech companies, and hacking into Google and Yahoo. She’s not thrilled with what Edward Snowden did, but she’s more appalled that Obama keeps defending the NSA after what Snowden revealed. She thinks Obama is a well-meaning hypocrite who’s full of hot air. She doesn’t really care for Clinton. She doesn’t have much respect for either major party and feels little loyalty to the Democrats. It’s Republican insanity that keeps her voting for them. But this Rand Paul guy—other Republicans really seem to hate him,......
You probably disagree with Annie on a bunch of her positions—I know I do. That’s not the point. The point is that there are a lot of people like her out there, men and women. They are more or less absent from our public discourse(sometimes they pop up on Hacker News, Reddit, or UrbanBaby),but they have money and they vote, and they are becoming increasingly politically aware now that they feel the push of government on their own lives, their employers, and their children. The lack of surveillance reform, in particular, strikes people like Annie as a big middle finger extended in their direction by the government......
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
If the Democrats can't win, they damn well will work to make sure that Jeb Bush wins, by splitting the vote.
Read this too [visually 3 small parts - so don't miss any of it] Generation Vexed:
"........Conservatives will never out-snark, out-mock, or out-tweet the popular culture that embraced Barack Obama as a semi-religious icon. But Millennials are right at the beginning of what promises to be an unpleasant, extended encounter with the facts of life, and it may be that they will soon figure out that there is more to understanding those facts than snark and emojis. Mocking them would be easy, while persuading them will prove difficult and frustrating, because conservatism, unromantic disposition that it is, is in the end an exercise in calculating a balance of human imperfections. The Millennials do not understand that — not quite yet."
Keeping in mind that our Presidents have been GWB and Obama for 14 years and that's a lot of built-up dissatisfaction. There's also dissatisfaction from a lot of older voters who remember the potential and expectations for the US in the '50s and '60s and are disgusted with how things are now.
The article mentions the Federal Reserve. Rand Paul hasn't even brought that issue up yet. That can bring in a lot more fed-up voters, if the mainstream candidates continue continue to mostly support the status quo.
Is there enough fear or dissatisfaction or disgust with the way DC is messing up the US to propel Rand Paul's candidacy? Who knows? But yet again with the NSA vote, Rand Paul got out there, ruffled feathers, and made mostly uninvolved US voters take notice.
FReepers cannot imagine what urban teachers propagandists are teaching today's youth. They make no qualms about stating that Republicans and conservatives are bigots and evil. School kids get one and only one side and it's absolutely Marxist radical and anti-American.
We need school choice asap.
I’m okay with Rand Paul functioning as a starter Republican.
Better that then in via the GOPe route.
"Annie" is right about the "no planning or strategy to it" part.
Bingo! Right on target!
Well meaning? No, not in the least. But the rest of that description is pretty much on target.
People here love to bash Rand Paul, but lately he's been on the right side of several issues, unlike many of the so-called "Constitutional Conservatives" running for office.
Obama and most of Congress.
Of course they're upset. They spent $1.5 billion building this place in Utah to store the records of every phone call, email and internet search made in America and Snowden went and pissed all over it.
What are they going to do with it now? Maybe a senior center? Indoor ice hockey?
Name 3. Drugs? Immigration? NSA? Iraq? Foreign Affairs?
What’s the difference between Ron & Rand?
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