Conservatives Lost Both Governor’s Races Yesterday

Did any moron claiming that Virginia is some sort of Republican bastion bother to even look up the list of governors for that state. The majority of the last 10 governors have been Democrats and in fact of the previous three terms two of them were held by a Democrat. Democrats had the vast majority of the last 20 governorships. How the hell does this qualify as a red state? I swear liberals have the mental capacity of a baby's poop stain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_Virginia

14 of the last twenty were Democrats. 6 of the last 10 were Democrats.

 

I like to use Ronald Reagan's Misery Index - the sum of inflation and unemployment. That's a good measure of the well-being of the middle class. You can see it charted here and pick your own range of years. I did 1950 through 2012. As expected, it went up in the 1970s and down after that. Also as expected, it rises during recessions. Looking at 62 years of data, there's no clear correlation to political party. Political people over-estimate the effect of government on the economy. People want to improve their material condition, so they'll find a way if any such exists. Only a government in pursuit of a moral vision and indifferent to the people's well-being could suppress it.

A case can be made that the Obama Administration, for the first time in US history, is such a government. For evidence, look at the Labor Force Participation Rate here. As you see, it started to fall when Obama took office (which could be blamed on Bush) but it continues to fall, with no sign of a let-up. That suggests that, at best, the Obama Administration has done nothing to help.

Then ask yourself - liberal moralizing aside - what the economic impact of the Administration's energy policy (higher prices to suppress consumption of oil and coal; discourage drilling for oil or gas) might be. What about Obamacare? Forget for a moment your moral reasons for it. What impact will it have on the economy (vast increase in total health spending, people uninsured because they can't afford the new higher premiums, new army of bureaucrats to administer)? These are only notable examples. Democrats pursue "social justice" and equality at the expense of prosperity. If they had their way, we'd all be equally poor, except for Democratic bosses.

 

So the left will celebrate, not because he is a going to be good for their state, but because he is a liberal democrat. Virginia elected themselves a crook as a governor

 

Welcome, Mac1!

It's a long road to 2016. No one can know what might happen by then. Today's big news might be forgotten by then. Christie is a charismatic politician. He has the personality, and that goes a very long way. People who don't understand the issues still know who they like. But if Hillary is the Democratic nominee she'll be hard to beat because of her genitalia. The same people who voted for Obama because of his skin pigmentation will want to vote for Hillary because she has PC genitals. Many, many women, including Republican women, would be eager to vote for her. Democrats know all this. They almost nominated Hillary in 2008. Now it's her turn. So a Christie/Hillary election would be a charming, brilliant centrist man vs. a shrill, didactic leftist woman. I have to give the edge to the woman.

 

I disagree that conservative women will vote for Billary. They will not give up their principles to vote in a failure just because she happens to be female.

 

Yep!! Extremists are hated more by Americans (overall) than any particular 'label' one can put out there. Unfortunately for many Republicans... the most 'extreme' politics or policies are emanating from the Right (Tea Party influenced, Astro-Turf, right-wing interests financed by BIG MONEY).

Not that the Left isn't similar to the Right in many ways... but that "extremism" is what it is. These RADICAL, take us back to the past or keep things they way they are now... type of operators DO NOT appeal to the majority of Americans.

I mean, when you have people offering up ATTACKS on the poor, minorities and women... that is a lot like what we SHOULD have left behind last century. Reasonable Americans DO NOT wish to go back and STAY there.

And surely, people want something a bit more leftist or progressive than that; it's normal for decent, reasonable/logical people to realize and understand that we cannot and should not try to remain in the PAST as a nation. Hell... we 'should' look at history to learn lessons from it, not as a MODEL so that we can REPEAT the same BS we suffered through already.

 

Perhaps not conservative women, but women from the political center, who might have "leanings," but no clear ideology, would probably flock to her. They did in the 2008 primaries. Remember the hand-wringing among Democrats - "do we want brown skin or a vagina?" Among Democrats, that debate was what 2008 was about. A 2016 race against the very fat (so not very sexy) Christie would probably swing to Hillary. Don't make the mistake of thinking average voters are as informed and committed as we are. Most voters are what Rush calls "low information" voters. They're swayed by superficials. I remember four of my mom's lady friends agreeing they would vote for Bill Clinton because they thought he was sexy. People like that might vote for Hillary.

 

The liberals will destroy this country with their socialistic ethic. As long as they don't have total unchecked control of both houses of Congress and the President like they did when they passed Obamacare we may still have a chance for recovery from the past 5 years.

 

The President's veto power dashes any hope of recovery until he leaves office. Even worse, RINO Republicans - the "establishment" - are in bed with Democrats. The people can change things if they want by unceasing waves of pressure on politicians, and by advancing Constitutional amendments through an amendment convention. So long as most people routinely look to government for answers to all problems, the war is already lost. A supine and dependent people is what "liberals" and RINOs want.

 

LOL, using the RINO term?

A republican that sticks to his fiscal conservative roots but is willing to compromise on social issues. Why is that such a threat to you? Is abortion and gay marriage really that sensitive of a topic?

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It is offensive that you think non-neoconservatives will "destroy" the country. If you don't like it then get out. ACA and democratic rule is here to stay. Unless the GOP takes Chris Christie's advice (the only future that can exist for the GOP), they will become a faint memory in a sea of a brown population. Scary?

 

RINOs don't stick with fiscal conservatism. They're big spenders along with Democrats, so your premise is inaccurate. RINOs are not defined by flexibility on social issues, though some may be on some issues. They're defined by a lack of concern with any Republican principles, whether on fiscal, monetary, diplomatic, or social issues, though they may find it convenient in their states or districts to run on the Republican line. That's opportunism, not flexibility. I strongly support both abortion and gay marriage, but consider myself conservative because of my fiscal, monetary, and diplomatic opinions. Were you intellectually honest, your post would not have displayed so self-congratulatory a tone.

 

I just find that a completely inaccurate assessment of the modern day "RINO."

As far as fiscal conservatism, most hard-liners don't understand the difference between a state budget and a federal budget. States require balanced budgets, the federal government does not. "RINOs" liking a big military is hardly anti-conservative. I'm a self-identified liberal but I am very much pro-miliatary spending. Big military protects American interests and security, which is why it is bi-partisan concept. We don't need to relive World War II.

 

We agree on the need for national defense.

Re fiscal matters, it's most Democrats who don't understand the difference between Federal and state budgets. They abuse the Federal ability to run deficits and print money, which is why the Federal government is now bankrupt in all but name, and why the dollar has been eroded by "soft devaluation" to the point that China is pushing to replace the dollar with the yuan as the global reserve currency. They try to push unfunded liabilities on the states, e.g., the Medicaid expansion provision of Obamacare, heedless of the states' need to balance their budgets. The liberal theme is to spend without limit for things they want, assuming that somehow the money will appear to pay for it all. Conservatives want to balance budgets. As you point out, the states do it because they must. If only the Federal government had similar constraints, it would be forced to find intelligent and creative solutions to problems rather than spending "someone else's money." RINOs - George Bush, for example - acknowledge no such constraints.

 

The federal government doesn't have the same constraints as the states. IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT BANKRUPT. The government cannot go bankrupt. It has no means to live beyond. I bolded what you said because every conservative America says the same thing with no factual evidence to back it up. China being a "superpower" is a complete joke. The dollar's status as reserve currency is not in any kind of jeopardy. Nearly 2/3 of all global transactions used in 2012 were in the U.S. dollar - FACT. There is no "soft devaluation" to speak of. Inflation and interest rates are at historical lows. All the political grandstanding is conservative whining about problems that do not exist. The reason Republican politicians perpetuate these lies is to hide the ugly behind the scenes fact that corporate goons have doubled their portion of U.S. wealth. Keeping this nonsense going keeps people like you thinking the government needs to spend less money, which is achieved by firing workers and scaling back programs that help the poor and middle class.

 

I won't reply to your routine invocation of Democratic virtue and Republican vice (I bet you just hug yourself in front of mirrors), but what you say about money is demonstrably untrue.

Bankruptcy is the inability to pay outstanding debts. The Federal government has long been able to do this in name only, by supplementing tax revenue with borrowing and printing money. You're right that the government can't go bankrupt, but only in the narrowest and most technical sense, a sense with little practical meaning.

Anyone allowed to print their own money could claim to be immune to bankruptcy, but creditors know they're being paid in a devalued currency. When the money supply rises more quickly than the GDP, that is, by definition, inflation. Inflation is a way of saying that the money buys less, that the goods and services available in exchange for a unit of money have diminished. When done persistently on a large scale, this is what's called "soft devaluation" - instead of making an official devaluation, we get an effective devaluation. Soft devaluation has been the de facto policy of the Treasury for a long time, the intention being to make US exports more competitive and imports more expensive, which has the same effect as tariffs. This policy has deeply antagonized US trading partners, whose economies depend on exports to the US. Back in 2010, Tim Geithner was openly rebuked by other countries for doing this, and it became a major source of friction with Europe and Asia.

Then of course there's borrowing. But ask yourself how well-off someone is who can only pay his debts by taking out new loans. Democrats like to pretend, perhaps to themselves as much as anyone, that this process of rolling over loans into new loans, while adding still more debt on top of that, can continue indefinitely. In fact, this is the economic assumption underpinning all other Democratic policies. But as indebtedness grows, so does interest. Debt service consumes an ever larger percent of the Federal budget, displacing needed programs. The Democratic response is not to pay down debt and limit borrowing, but rather to borrow still more so that they can spend more while paying more interest. But a moment's thought should tell you that doing this will make debt and interest on debt grow geometrically until there's an eventual collapse. This has happened in one country after another throughout history. Yet Democrats, caught up in self-love for their caring and generosity (with other people's money) believe that economic laws will tip-toe from the room out of respect for their superior virtue. If only it were so!

Here are a few facts, taken from the FRED data base of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank -

Here's the St. Louis Adjusted Monetary Base (the money supply). It grew by 104% from January 14, 2009, to October 30, 2013. (Click on "view data" to see the numbers behind the chart.)
Now here's the GNP. It grew by 16.6% from January 1, 2009, to April 1, 2013. (Click on "view data" to see the numbers behind the chart.)
Now make the comparison - money supply up 104% while GNP up only 16.6%. That's inflation of the most extreme sort. You haven't seen it all in retail prices because much of the money is retained in the banking system without entering the consumer economy, but our trading partners are keenly aware of these numbers.

Now here's Total Public Debt as Percent of GDP. It rose from 77.4% on January 1, 2009, to 100.5% on April 1, 2013. Most economists say that when the percent rises above 90%, it harms the economy. See this paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

For the Fiscal 2013 budget, the government borrowed $901B to be able to spend $3,803B. (See here. Page 209, Table S-1) That means the government borrowed 23.7% of the money it spent. Can the government do this indefinitely? Democrats act as if it could.

As our economic situation continues to deteriorate, it does little good for you to proclaim how virtuous are the purposes for which we're spending money we don't have. The facts make plain that we are bankrupt now, granting the Fed can print money, and collapse grows closer unless steps to avert it are taken soon.

 

I live in Jersey. Christie is not a Liberal. Maybe by Red State standards, he is a Liberal. But by New Jersey standards, this guy is a right winger. All politics are relative.

True story. My friend's friend lived in Colorado. She had certain political believes. The people in Boulder called her a Liberal. She moved to Boston. Same political believes, she did not change. The people in Boston called her a Conservative.

Christie is a hard core Conservative by New Jersey standards. Some might even say a Right Wing nut job. He can't adopt the policies of Red States and get elected.