Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

'I'll never understand how politicians can get so much support when they're the type of people who, as neighbors or coworkers, others would rightly avoid and wholly mistrust.'

There's also the line of thinking that goes, "Of course they're all liars and thieves and douchenozzles: they're politicians. If they weren't lying shits, they'd go into a more honest line of work. If we're going to elect a lying shit no matter what, I at least want to vote for one whose rhetoric aligns most closely with my own views."

Put another way: Power should only be entrusted to people who don't want it.

On this view, thinking you deserve to be president is pathological to begin with; it is almost a disqualifying factor on its own. And yet you need to run to be elected, and we're supposed to have a president. So we have to pick from among the people who want the job.

Yeah, but there are a lot of candidates these days that don't even strive to be "likeable" in that vague way that politicians are considered likeable. Some of this gaggle of republican candidates come off as deeply unpleasant people to an extent that I imagine for many isn't even ameliorated by party affiliation.

thinking you deserve to be president is pathological to begin with

I do p much think this tbh - which is one of the reasons Obama is such an interesting president. Where others' pathologies are nakedly obvious (both Clintons, Dubya, Nixon, Reagan etc.), Obama's are much harder to detect.

Power should only be entrusted to people who don't want it.

This is pithy and I've been guilty of flippantly tossing it around more than once over the decades, but it would be truer to say that people who truly don't want power will generally be inept at handling great power, because they have no practice wielding it. It would be like handing a chain saw to a person who has never even held one and telling them to fell a hundred fifty foot tree growing next to high voltage lines.

imo the pathological nature of the job is in the willing acceptance of, even enthusiasm for, having a job where you will be directly responsible for the deaths of innocent people. No matter what you do as president, this is something that is gonna happen, and because of decisions you make. Accepting that is p messed up imo, only crazy people with advanced compartmentalization skills can/would do it.

people in this thread finding the republican candidates unlikable shocker. also, anyone that pays taxes has to willingly accept that some of that money will be used to drop bombs on innocent people.

true, but I think that's different from actually being the one calling the shots

“And what he did is absolutely abominable, especially to us in the pro-life movement,..."--Huckabee

Nice trick. The real victims here are the pro-lifers.

he probably noticed how after every jihadi attack everyone got really worried about islamophobia

No, I read that more as "They already think we're crazy, this guy isn't helping."

restraint probably kept him from going full-on christian blowback victimization

You're probably right.

I think of that line by Lincoln's longtime law partner: the ceaseless tick-tock of Lincoln's ambition. To enjoy power isn't itself corrupting. FDR enjoyed power too, used it well and not so well (used it less well than Lincoln but was in office longer).

after every jihadi attack there are reprisals against muslims

i doubt the same thing happens to pro-lifers but i'll keep my eyes open

You're right, Austin, but he just can't help position himself as also being at least a kind of victim in this. it's absolutely pathological.

it's p clear what huckabee means tho

i suppose the closest thing to a left wing shooting we've had in a while is the Family Research Council shooting, which the shooter said he got off a list from the SPLC

GOP considers Islamists leftists afaict

Like, "They already think we're crazy. Now they think we're shoot up the place crazy. Woe is us."

I can see that.

And yeah, it's uncomfortable. But at least it's in line with the usual batshit Huckabee rhetoric.

GOP considers Islamists leftists afaict

Actual LOL.

i think huck means "abortion is murder, murder is murder, murder is bad"

"except for kids murdering dogs, that's cool"

it's v true jihadists couldn't be 'further' from 'the right' #freedom

Xpost

Huckabee is saying domestic terrorism is especially abominable to those with the ethical purity and resolve to be 'pro-lifers' afaict.

or just especially abominable because the ironic lol of "pro-life" ppl murdering is clear even to huckabee

Wait, these guys are still running?

who the fuck even knows

Well it took great bravery to say in public that murdering people is v bad.

'There is no excuse for killing other people whether it's happening inside the Planned Parenthood headquarters, inside their clinics where millions of babies die, or whether it's people attacking Planned Parenthood,' he said during an interview on CNN.
'I don't know of anybody who has suggested violence toward Planned Parenthood personnel or some act of violence towards their clinics. I've not heard that, not from one single pro-life person.'

Not a single pro-life person ever personally warned Huckabee that he was about to go murder anyone at PP.

"yo Huck, just a heads-up..."

Definitely pro-life persons pretty narrowly isn't he.

“After all these years and millions of babies that have gone to their death, violence is to be anticipated,” said Judie Brown, president of American Life League, in a phone interview with MSNBC. “Because it’s acceptable to violently kill a baby, so why isn’t it acceptable to violently kill other people?”

“We never approve of violence against anybody, whether it’s the unborn babies or the clients of Planned Parenthood or anybody else,” Ann Scheidler, vice president of the Pro-Life Action League, told MSNBC. But, she added, “it’s not the fault of the pro-life movement that someone found out that Planned Parenthood is doing these things. It’s the fault of Planned Parenthood for selling the baby parts.”

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/abortion-opponents-defense-colorado-planned-parenthood-shooting

"we live in a world of moral relativism where the original sin is abortion" is part of the story i hadn't heard before

Oh man, this thread is a goldmine for laughs today.

buttload of laughs

"we live in a world of moral relativism where the original sin is abortion" is part of the story i hadn't heard before

― rap is dad (it's a boy!), Monday, November 30, 2015 5:38 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've heard this a lot, actually. from protestant pro-life folks, but more credibly from catholics who champion the "consistent life ethic"— in their view things like abortion, the death penalty, and a variety of things those of us on this board are likely to detest (poverty, war) are all part of the cheapening of human life.

anyway here's an attempt to parse the meaning of the trump phenomenon: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/birthers-trumpists-and-a-crisis-for-the-gop/2015/09/04/3b3e2074-5308-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html

it's easy to forgot btw that the tribalism of american politics have meant that the pro-life position is associated with the right but it wasn't always thus. until the 1970s abortion wasn't really a partisan issue. anyway.

i mean it was an "issue," but those opposed to legal abortion were distributed among the major parties, as were those in favor.

From that WaPo opinion article by the "Harvard political theorist" linked just above:

If the Republicans can hang on to the convictions that make them the party of Lincoln, we ought to see the party split. For the good of the country, we should hope for it.

So not going to happen.

...what we’re confronting truly is the rise of a new party. Provided, that is, the Republicans don’t sell their souls.

That sale is all but final.

ha, I had a Catholic friend whose priest would basically come out and say, "no Catholic can ever be a Democrat" and "JFK would have been a Republican" re: abortion

uh they stopped being the party of Lincoln in 1876.

tbf if any new party emerged and called itself the whigs i'd probably join

http://gfx2.aftonbladet-cdn.se/image/14477494/485/normal/e987d71475bb7/AFGHAN-WHIGSbred.jpg

In more mundane news, specifics on Clinton infrastructure spending proposals and Sanders...

Hillary Clinton is calling for a $275 billion boost in federal infrastructure spending over five years and the creation of an infrastructure bank, arguing that the measures will help create jobs while modernizing the nation’s ailing roads and bridges…The Democratic presidential front-runner plans to spend the next month laying out what her campaign is calling her “jobs agenda,” including ideas for upping federal support for research and manufacturing.

That $275 billion falls well short of the $1 trillion in infrastructure spending that Bernie Sanders wants, another sign Clinton is not embracing the robust economic agenda favored by the Sanders/Warren wing of the party. Oh, and seven in 10 Americans back this sort of spending.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/11/30/morning-plum-yes-donald-trumps-demagoguery-just-got-even-uglier/

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-11-29/hillary-clinton-calls-for-275-billion-in-federal-infrastructure-spending

https://mobile.twitter.com/Timodc/status/671733195960905728

just in time for interest rates to go up .. xp

whut

um, that's the real JEB! communications director twitter acct?