Free Republic

And just what's wrong with that? We are talking primaries after all, and why shouldn't I vote for the one candidate who best fits my values?

What's wrong with it, is that too many of us try to judge a candidate through the lens of a few litmus-test issues, and we demand conformance on them; when in fact we should be trying to find a person whose overall values provide a best fit to the solution of myriad issues, most of which have little to do with our litmus test values.

As a result, we end up with several candidates who are attractive on certain issues, and poor candidates overall. We end up having a very poor selection. If you look at McCain's campaign, he quite ably took advantage of that dynamic: his strategy was just to stay in long enough so that he could be the last guy standing.

I blame the GOP for this, as much as I blame the primary voters; a serious national party would be out there recruiting a set of good, general-purpose candidates. But that requires a kind of foresight and dedication that the GOP lacks.

And here's how it turns out: Suppose Ronald Reagan was running for president today. Let's apply a few of the litmus test issues that I have actually seen FReepers apply to discount a potential candidate.

Reagan was a former Democrat (used against Rick Perry)

Reagan was a former pro-abort who actually signed the Therapeutic Abortion law in California.

Reagan endorsed Truman for president and campaigned for him. (Used against anybody except Palin who supported McCain)

Reagan was soft on homosexuality: he joined Harvey Milk in opposing Proposition 6 (a 1978 California initiative that would have made it "legal for teachers to be fired if it were known they were gay or lesbian. A teacher could also be fired for publicly supporting homosexuality." (source) )

And if we cheat a little bit and look at his record as president ... signed the Immigration Reform Act of 1986 which granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

Presided over a huge increase in federal spending and deficits.

The man was a RINO!!!!

There is another sort of candidate, one who articulates a vision of growth and limited government which is not a novel idea on my part but one which was tried and proved true by Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately for your point, Mr. Reagan agreed with Barbour: “My 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy.”

The fact is that the FR echo chamber is evidence to the truth of Barbour's assertion about "purity" requirements among conservatives.

Where’s it written we want “purity”?

You can see it on several thousand FR threads. So-and-so is supposedly wishy-washy on abortion, or immigration, or unions, or gay marriage, or China, or whatever.... "He's a RINO, and he'll never get my vote."

You can even see that sort of thing on this very thread.

Barbour is right. But I don't expect many folks on this thread to admit it.

So you can believe Patti LaBelle's bodyguard's excuses for beating somebody senseless, or you can believe a West Point cadet and a video tape that corroborates his story.

I believe that any news article that relies on the word of a lawyer whose income depends on spinning the case in a certain way, is not reliable.

There is more to this story, as there always is when the lawyer is doing the talking.

And yet, FReepers can always be relied upon to gobble up the skittles and unicorns story that the lawyer spins for them.

Though the Constitution does not define “natural born”, it is clear that the meaning had been based upon principles included in a work quite popular with many of the Founders, the 1758 “Law of Nations” by Frenchman Emerich de Vattel

So the constitution "says so," even though it actually doesn't.

Sorry, this "natural born" charade is still just a bunch of folks grasping at straws. They're hoping to find a magic way to remove Obama that doesn't involve actual work.

“He was drunk” that’s the one size fits all, all-purpose smear to be pulled out in such situations, especially when the victim stumbles and falls. Disgusting!

The lawyer admits that King "had a few drinks." I think he was more drunk than not.

Are you suggesting that the police report was falsified?

Oh, and he played defense on the Army football team. He’s not a little guy, in other words.

Ah, yes, it's down at the bottom of the article.

King was verbally abusive when asked to move so LaBelle's people could load her luggage onto a cart.

And then King hit LaBelle's driver in the face.

And that's when the bodyguards moved in.

And King -- rather conveniently -- says "he could not remember what happened before or during the attack."

King's lawyer says he consumed "a few alcoholic drinks" -- that's the lawyer talking, so it's safe to assume that Mr. King was somewhat tipsy at the time.

WTF is wrong with the administration of West Point? They suspend this young man for getting beat up by two gangsta goons?!

Maybe they know more about the situation than we do.

"King's attorney, John Raley, said Thursday that his client had been suspended from West Point as a result of the episode and placed in a "mentorship" program which will require active-duty status of at least a year."

I strongly suspect that there's a whole lot more to this story than we're being told.

The fact is that a significant percentage of abortions are performed on whites women in their teens and early twenties from upper-middle class families.

And the fact is that black women have far more abortions, per capita, than women of any other race -- something like 36% of all abortions. (source)

Mr. Fox conveniently does not mention race in his discussion; and yet where crime and murders are concerned race matters -- it matters a lot. Blacks are far more likely to commit crimes, and far more likely to murder and be murdered, than people of other races.

To simply lump all races together, as Fox apparently has, acts to mask the racial component of the equation. FWIW, I think it's a cultural, rather than a genetic issue -- but the racial correlation is real and has to be included.

I am absolutely convinced there are some Dem operatives here who do that simply create divisions among the type of conservatives who frequent FR.

You may be correct, but I think the number of such people is small in comparison to the genuinely conservative people who are too proud of their own opinions to see the merit in other points of view. The truth is, we conservatives are and have always been our own worst enemies.

And as you said, lately on FR and other message boards it means anyone who disagrees with “me” on any particular issue. This makes the term almost useless nowadays. For that reason, and the fact that I’m sure I’ll be called one for writing the article, I have not done so yet. But thanks for posting, I find this an interesting topic.

And on the same note, it seems that those who use "RINO" in that sense, never get around to performing the one true service that their supposedly knowledgeable use of the term would imply: that of defining what constitutes a "True Republican."

And of course, they cannot do so -- because it seems that nobody in the GOP has been able to do that since the days of Reagan. There are lots of narrowly-focused interest groups, and like any political party lots of people who are more interested in gaining and keeping power, than in figuring out what they really stand for.

But as a matter of political philosophy, it seems that the GOP is pretty much without an anchor. And the conservatives in the GOP have, if anything, even a less-firm grasp of what it means to be "conservative."

I don’t understand why “compatilibilty” is such a big factor with these sites. eHarmony would never have placed my wife and me on the same planet.

To understand it, you first have to realize that on-line dating sites are nothing more than a way for people to shop for mates, in the same way people look for cars or houses. People think they know what/who they want in a mate, and they're in a hurry to get it.

You generally will not buy a car or a house that you initially dislike -- not when you can get something that does fit, elsewhere. People are looking for the same thing in mates, when they go to these sites.

And the site operators know this, and they cater to it. "Compatibility" is their bread and butter.

And the relationships they create -- while no doubt genuine -- seem to me to be built rather like the houses in a subdivision: sterile and mass-produced, built according to a template, and of somewhat uncertain durability; rather than being unique, somewhat quirky, and therefore somehow more robust, like the homes in older parts of towns.

They absolutely need you to like, or at least, not hate, the people with whom they set you up. Too many bad experiences, and you give up on them, and they go out of business.

Hence their reliance personality tests. The problem with those tests, is that they have no room for people like you and your wife, whose relationship probably bloomed among the imponderables that the on-line personality tests cannot possibly capture.

I'll put it to you this way: you just posted an on-line rant about eHarmony because they did something that pissed you off. That should be a clue as to why they really bounced you.

I almost think your profile revealed you as somebody who's a bit touchy and prone to, erm... forcefully expressing his opinions.

There is undoubtedly a woman somewhere who's patient enough to deal with that, and perceptive enough to see your better points despite the tendency. (I married such a woman, so I know it's possible.)

The success of an on-line matchmaker, otoh, depends on finding matches that seem to work well on first contact. Their matching model does not deal well with people whose personalities are somewhat prickly.

They include government spending/hiring in those numbers...

I know -- but even so, I think they're fudging the numbers, and it's almost certainly for political reasons.

The article itself does a pretty good job of suggesting that something is amiss in all of those statistics. With all of those drops in participation and employment, the whole "recovery" narrative looks decidedly strange.

This sort of stuff breeds serious cynicism -- it makes people pay attention (sort of) when they haven't been before. I think that's where political backlashes are born.

The great thing about Jon Stewart is that he calls it not as he sees it but as it obviously is.

Agreed. I think he's pretty funny.

Of course, he's unabashedly liberal, and his comedy often slants that way .... but he's not so caught up with the politics that he'll ignore the comedic opportunities. He's made Obama look pretty stupid several times.

I think a lot of FReepers don't like him for political reasons, because he often makes fun of conservatives. Well, there's material there, too -- and a lot of it.

Thanks -- that was exactly the article I was trying to find.

I was struck by this line:

The labor force — those who have a job or are looking for one — is getting smaller, even though the economy is growing and steadily adding jobs. That trend defies the rules of a normal economic recovery. Nobody is sure why it's happening.

I'm pretty sure why it's happening: somebody is lying about the numbers, and somebody else is believing the lies -- or pretending to.

Amish come in all colors.

Uh huh. You go ahead and think that.