The ideal Republican candidate for 2012? (parade, Clinton, Obama, economy)
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Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.He was also involved in the House Banking scandal.
Newt Gingrich, we already know he has the ability to balance the budget..
Gingrich would be an interesting candidate, and would appeal to many people. But he has some personal history that could cause him major problems on the campaign trail. It's possible he wouldn't survive the Republican primaries.
I am not a Republican and do not like partisan politics but I would consider voting for a good Republican candidate if they were willing to go back to the basics. The only problem that I see is that I just do not see anybody that would represent someone like me. Jindal is OK but I do not think he has what it takes, I personally dislike Palin immensely because of her anti-intellectual approach to things and her obsession with religion and God. Michael Steele, you have got to be kidding right? I also dislike nutcases like Michelle Bachmann, the woman is just a nutcase and should not be in politics. I don't like Tim Pawlenty either, he is the type of "moderate" Republican that does not do anything for me, almost like a John McCain. Who would be the ideal Conservative candidate for 2012?
This is largely a pro forma question. There is no way that a Republican, of any kind, will win the election in 2012. For a number of reasons:
First, the majority of Americans, after the debacle of the last 8 years, will not trust a Republican administration for quite awhile to come.
Second, people vote not just for a person, but also for a party. The party is in shambles, with one clown after another (Steele, Cantor, Jindal, Palin, Boehner) digging a deeper and deeper hole. These people are frighteningly and bizarrely stupid. The party has no cohesive mission and thus no center.
Third, the party refuses to take the risk of creating a new "base." It is enslaved to the extreme right-wing, largely uneducated, born-again Christian, and largely racist mob, and as long as it refuses to disengage from them, it will not win another national election outside of those districts.
In sum, there is absolutely no basis whatsoever on which the majority of the American people can lay their trust for governing in the Republican Party.
This is largely a pro forma question. There is no way that a Republican, of any kind, will win the election in 2012. For a number of reasons:
First, the majority of Americans, after the debacle of the last 8 years, will not trust a Republican administration for quite awhile to come.
I disagree! With the economy getting worse and Obama not being able to fullfill his promises, Americans will be ready for "Hope and Change" in 2012. Remember, Obama beat McCain by a relatively small margin.
I disagree! With the economy getting worse and Obama not being able to fullfill his promises, Americans will be ready for "Hope and Change" in 2012. Remember, Obama beat McCain by a relatively small margin.
There is no President in the last 70 years who has ever inherited such a mess. In fact, no President in the history of the United States. Even the Great Depression did not require that our President pull the GLOBAL economy out of the quicksand. The fact that the world is in a economic meltdown is not Obama's fault. And it's absurd to assert such a notion. All leading economists--right and left--have stated repeatedly that this began back with Reagan and the whole "trickle-down" nonsense (Reagan's version of "Let them eat cake"). Obama is being advised by the brightest economic minds available. Economists that would have, no doubt, also advised a Republican President. Are you suggesting he would have been more capable, even if--by his own admission--he doesn't know anything about economics? Have you seen the Republicans' alternative "budget" plan? HUGE tax cuts for the wealthy. That's their big plan. Even though such cuts merely resulted in the corporate outsourcing of American business overseas and the collapse of American manufacturing, and the expansion of the amassing of private wealth for the corporate elite and their cronies. Giving breaks to the wealthy is what got us into this mess to begin with.
My ideal of the perfect Republican candidate would espouse the following positions:
* get to a balanced budget as quickly as possible.
* work on paying down the national debt so that it doesn't get passed down to future generations.
* regulate the financial industries in such a way so as not to stifle creativity, but not permitting what has gone on in the last 10 years.
* regulate the oversite of our food supply and put lots of inspectors at any incoming port, especially where food is involved.
* have a 'fair' trade policy, not 'free' trade where it's open season on middle class workers. I would support strong tariffs to protect our way of life and our jobs. Bring back nearly all outsourced jobs to America. This alone would solve other problems.
* no more illegal immigration. Deport those who came here legally.
* end the H1B visa program. There's plenty of unemployed people in this country who can do the work. Enough of companies hiring the cheapest foreign help. Severe penalties for sending American jobs overseas.
* have a steady, constant growth objective in the economy. No more bubbles.
* protecting the American people from foreign threats with a strong military is top priority, but no more wasteful spending by the military, especially the enriching of private and politically connected contractors.
* get our noses out of other countries business. We have enough of our own problems. Wind down the 2 wars in the middle east and bring our troops home. This includes pulling back troops from other parts of the world who are fully capable of taking care of themselves.
* put a moritorium on foreign aid and aid to the UN. Work with our friends and don't reward our enemies.
* get tough on crime and build more prisons if necessary to house the non-reformable and career criminals.
* quit trying to criminalize every activity in human life just to make a buck off of it (such as red light cameras, seat belt laws, etc.). In other words, leave personal choices to individuals.
* reduce taxes to manageable levels. Reward hard work, but outsized rewards and bonuses for incompetent work should be taxed at high levels.
* get serious about campaign reform and take the big money out of elections.
* finally, get America back to what made us great by taking care of ourselves first and not the rest of the world. In general, adopt a more isolationist policy.
I see most of what you say as pipe dreams, mostly because of the influence of BIG BUSINESS (via their lobbyists) in Washington, D.C. I also think that some points you make are in conflict with each other.
Balanced budget is a philosophical principle not a workable policy. Deficit spending should occur during business cycle downturns to mitigate economic damage. But the budget should be engineered to produce surpluses during cyclic upturns. I think the issue today with the budget is that of having CLEAR PRIORITIES for domestic policies. But those priorities are clearly different for Dems versus Repubs. It would be more helpful for both sides to agree on "middle of the road" priorities that can be preserved from admin to admin. This could be done by the Congress, but that body also is rife with internal conflicts and partisan bickering.
Your comments about being tough on crime are contradictory. USA already has way too many in jails mostly due to ridiculous drug laws, which are striking the poor the hardest (and which party benefits the most from that?). There should be fact-based and research-based policies that are cost-effective. Doing so would probably result in fewer drug laws and thereby fewer in jail. Most crimes are a function of poverty. If the nation would treat drug use as a public health issue, while at the same time putting into place programs that would disincentivize drug use and promote public disapproval of drug use, maybe the nation could turn the corner on this problem.
Getting America's nose out of other nations' business is a non-starter as long as we are so dependent on imports of strategic goods like petroleum. Deal with the petroleum issue first in a sustainable manner.
Whether to reduce taxes is one of the results of resetting the nation's economic priorities. Reducing taxes produces less of a bang for the buck than fiscal stimulus, that's a basic fact. Re-examine the ratio of revenues from corporate taxes versus individual taxes.
Reducing excessive spending by the US military is certainly a requirement to restore fiscal sanity. Why does the US need to spend 5X more than the rest of the world combined. This makes us part of the world's problem rather than the solution.
Fix America's healthcare mess. This is putting American labor at a disadvantage versus other advanced nations. That's a basic fact. Dealing with healthcare would be a trigger to phase in changes to all of the federal taxes, including the income taxes. A consumption-oriented tax would be part of the next phase.
Last edited by ParkTwain; 03-29-2009 at 02:23 PM..
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