At this point -- put Romney in office and then attend every Tea Party and Republican meeting.

Anytime anyone who brings this shit up -- ask the simple question "Where is this in the Constitution?" while holding up your copy of the Constitution and handing out copies to everyone.

When they say porn -- Ask where is that listed?
Wen they say Christian values -- Ask where is that listed?

It is their right to have a belief -- no where can they force that belief on anyone else.

When they say DOMA or gay marriage -- where is it listed in the Constitution?

Repeat ad nauseum. Hold your political party's feet to the fire. The truth can not lose.

Sad but true: the Tea Party has been take over by the religious fanatics. There was a brief hope that the Tea Party could become a force for limited government; instead, it has become a vehicle for people who want to dictate other people's behavior.

There has also been remarkably little coverage of the shenanigans at the Republican National Convention. By standing rules, there should have been two candidates, Romney and Paul, because anyone with five delegations supporting his candidacy has to be admitted as a candidate. The Romney camp managed to force through a rules-change that change the minimum from five to eight, coincidentally just enough higher to prevent Paul from being an official candidate.

Corrupt. Both the Democrats and the Republicans - the parties are simply corrupt. The back-room deals determine who will be nominated; there is zero interest in what the voters actually want. It is somehow Romney's turn, and the Republican party has done everything in its power to ensure he gets his turn. Look at what happened to any other candidate who showed potential (e.g., McCain); they were shot down in flames, either openly or secretly, by their own party.

"...It is dishonest for the Republican Party to go on pretending that big-government conservatives and small-government conservatives belong in the same political party. Their aims are so fundamentally at odds that they cancel each other out."

I would probably make this same argument from the left.

It's why I strongly suggest that if you can't advocate either for Obama or Romney at the national level, or in any local race support the D or the R, that you choose the most likely third party candidate of any third party running.

It won't help in 2012, but as in Alice's Restaurant it may start a movement, gaining momentum in 2016, and perhaps having a real effect by 2020 or 2024.

(pirates damnit, pirates)

As I explain to European contacts, our electoral system makes it almost impossible for a viable third party to exist. In European parliamentary systems, if no one party scores enough seats to form a government, then two or more form a coalition to govern. Our parties are coalitions prior to the election. Sometimes that creates some very odd bedfellows. Note Rand Paul and John McCain in the same party, for example. A vote for a third party at the national level is futile, and we can't afford futile this year.

The Republicans are assholes. But nonetheless...

It often seems like the typical liberal-minded person of today wants nothing more from their political involvement than to convey to others that they're smarter and better looking than Jed Clampett.

See, here's the thing. Gay rights, weed legalization, abortion rights, etc.: You've won all those battles even if Repubs still say they want to try to take those victories away from you. It's too late for their efforts to be anything more than rhetoric. There isn't going to be an American theocracy imposed.

The things the Dems want to take away from you, however--your economic freedoms that mean more to your way of life than anything else--those can still be lost and the Dems won't stop until they've done it. Make a choice that affects people's lives, or live a life of frustration while waiting for a nation of 300 million to come around to your 3rd party candidate.

Good comment Gene

This isn't mine; nonetheless, I feel compelled to post it here:

AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of this old disease. The disease is called "Gonorrhea Lectim." It 's pronounced "Gonna re-elect em" and it is a terrible obamanation. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior involving putting your cranium up your rectum. Many victims contracted it in 2008...But now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-3 years, are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is.

It's sad because Gonorrhea Lectim is easily cured with a new drug just coming on the market called Votemout. You take the first dose now and the second dose in Nov. 2012 and simply don't engage in such behavior again; otherwise, it could become permanent and eventually wipe out all life as we know it.You may want to pass this important message on to all those bright folks you really care about.

Someone posted it on my FB page, I'll try to find out where it came from.
Oh yeah, Gene, I agree with Cridmeister. Good comment.

Gene gets it. We all have to make do with what's on the table. Also, if you don't think your third party guy will sell you out to broker deals you are kidding yourself. Its all about compromise and sometimes that means giving a little bit here to get a little bit there. There is no such thing as ideological purity in politics.

> You've won all those battles even if Repubs
> still say they want to try to take those victories
> away from you.

Very much like when Obama promised to close Guantanamo.

And even Barbara Bush (Dubya's Mom) supports abortion rights.

The Republican Partys in the middle of a massive transition - much like one the Democrats began experiencing in the 1928 election that culminated twenty years later with Harry Truman basically telling the Southern, more-conservative Democrats that the party had no place for them. The Democratic Party continued its leftward drift from there, giving us the ultra-leftists like Nancy Pelosi, George Miller, et al as the party's elder statesmen and driving force.

Starting around the '60s, socially-conservative more-religious folks began to feel left out of national politics. Social taboos were falling. Religion was fading from the mainstream of public life. Carter even mocked the concerns of socially conservative voters when he was president.

Until Carter, these voters had been spread across both parties. Once Carter let them know they weren't welcome in the Democratic Party, Reagan wedded them to the Goldwater and Rockefeller wings of the Republican Party. With that marriage, he had a coalition that brought the Republicans three straight presidential election victories.

The coalition began to crumble as the social conservatives gained ascendancy over the other two factions. In the next four straight elections, Republicans refused to put up a candidate that did not pass a social-conservative litmus test that included opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and secular humanism. Fiscal conservative concerns were all but ignored, or tried to blend in with the social conservatives. George HW Bush, a Rockefeller Republican, tacked right in 1992. Bob Dole tacked hard right in 1996. George W. Bush, already socially-conservative and something of a Rockefeller Republican tacked right in 2000 and 2004.

John McCain, despite his less-than-stellar social-conservative credentials won the nomination in 2008 because the party was already changing. The evangelicals no longer had the ability to dicatate the candidate and their favored candidate (Huckabee) instead split the party, giving McCain the nomination.

==============================

Field Guide to Republicans:

Progressive Republicans (the Rockefeller Republicans or Roosevelt Republicans) - These are the Republicans who want a Great Leader who can do Great Things. They are Crusader Conservatives - generally reliable on limited government, but willing to go off the reservation for big government crusades.

Socially Conservative Republicans - These Republicans are willing to accept Big Government, so long as the government does socially conservative things, and willing to increase the size of the government to do those things.

Goldwater Republicans (Fiscal Conservatives) - These Republicans vote for limited government, individual liberty and strong defense; they may have various opinions on social issues, but they subsume those views to the goal at hand: limiting the government.

["I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom." ~ Barry Goldwater]

==============================

While the Socially Conservative Republicans still hold enough power in the party to dictate the party platform at the convention, they are no longer able to dictate the candidate or even enforce the platform.

Mitt Romney, a Mormon who governed Massachusetts as a social moderate but a fiscal conservative won the nomination over the socially conservative, big government Rick Santorum and the crusading Newt Gingrich.

Romney and Ryan may be opposed to abortion and gay marriage, but they're not running to overturn Roe v. Wade or implement DOMA, they're running to overturn ObamaCare and implement entitlement reforms.

The fiscal conservatives will still throw bones to the social conservatives to keep them from bolting the party, but you won't see abortion or gay marriage as signature issues ... or a priority when they take office.

Congress still has some holdover old-school Republicans like Boehner, McConnell, McCain, Akin et al. Over the next few years, watch as they fade away or become singularities (like Joseph Lieberman was for the Democrats).

However, the Republican presidential candidate bench is filled with Goldwater Republicans: Chris Christie, Bobby Jindahl, Rick Snyder, Scott Walker, Bob McDonnell, Mitch Daniels, etc. There are still a few social conservatives (Nikki Haley comes to mind), but they are playing down the social conservative issues in favor of the fiscal conservative issues.

That means this ain't your daddy's Republican Party.

Politicians who criticize loudest have the most to hide.

My beloved GOP -- in its continued defense of my dividends -- will win this election in coalition with our colleagues in religious fundamentalism and our colleagues on Wall Street. As of a few week ago, we no longer need libertarians. Libertarians won't get what they want, except the thrill of seeing the Eisenhower centrist sent packing, something the Birchers never came close to doing in the 1950s.
At the risk of Libertarians becoming useful idiots for *two* wings of the GOP (my dividends' tax rates *and* fundamentalists opposed to abortion) why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?

""The things the Dems want to take away from you, however--your economic freedoms that mean more to your way of life than anything else--those can still be lost and the Dems won't stop until they've done it. Make a choice that affects people's lives, or live a life of frustration while waiting for a nation of 300 million to come around to your 3rd party candidate.""

ABSOLUTELY spot on Gene! Hey, I would love a better candidate and a better party. One that would talk the talk and walk the walk. One that would put the clamps on spending/get our financial house in sustainable order....while also staying out of the personal lives of individuals/stop the over the top morality preaching. However a viable choice that gives me that does NOT exist in 2012. In the election of 2012 there are 2 viable choices, period. And if you are predisposed to vote for viable candidate A but instead vote for non viable candidate X, you have given 1/2 a vote to viable candidate B and their policies. And in the election of 2012, support of viable candidate B (even with 1/2 a vote) is to help ensure government involvement in everything (at least everything they can get away with being involved in) (look to California as to how that will unfold). How you get medical services, what kind of car you can buy, where you can go, how companies hire employees, what foods you can eat, what you can say (see Europe for that coming fun), what fundamental laws of America should be disregarded, etc etc etc etc etc etc.

That is reality! And one more awesome wrinkle to that reality: once viable candidate B is reelected and gets 1 more strategic SCOTUS appointment, there will be very little legal recourse to these policies. These policies will stand unchangeable, at minimum, for the next 20 to 30 to ?? years. So yeah, in January of 2013, having a conversation about how Gary Johnson's ideas were really good while Government is full steam ahead at controlling/sanitizing every aspect of our lives, well, it just seems kind of silly.

I don't think the tea party has been 'taken over'; I do believe the Evil Party and the media is pushing that idea as hard as they can.

As to the Stupid Party, someone had a cartoon a while back: "D=Socialist, R=Socialist Lite". Which, from the upper levels seems to be about right. Which is why there's so much behind-the-scenes fighting, between the weenies who want to keep themselves in power so they can make deals, and those saying "Either live up to what you claim to believe, or get the hell out."