2017 Republican Thread

[Soxbadger]

the vast majority of americans can't think for themselves, come on.

 

Youre not going to win many supporters when you say things like this, even if you believe it to be true.

 

Who knows why people didnt get out for Hillary, but I am confident that if she had run a better campaign, she would have won.

[southsider2k5]

Quote where I mentioned Bernie Sanders.

 

Liberals and far left in terms of this election would be personified in Bernie Sanders running against Hillary Clinton and spending all of that time taking her to the mat.

[southsider2k5]

We can all come up with theories (and I have had many) but the truth is that they stayed home because they always stay home. Voter turnout in presidential elections has been consistently under 60% for the last 100 years. It briefly rose slightly over 60 during the Vietnam War, but that's it.

 

I didn't even realize this myself, but apparently turnout was down only 0.5% over 2012, while actual votes cast was up about 9 million votes. Even looking back through recent history 2008 is the outlier over the last 50ish years, and not the other way around. The turnout percentage is actually higher than a majority of elections dating back to 1976.

 

That honestly blows me away.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout...ntial_elections

[Chisoxfn]

Does voter turn out by state vary significantly when the state is a "battle ground" state. So for example, is voter turn out in Ohio much greater then say voter turn out in California (where maybe you have chunks of the population who don't vote because they already know that who they'd vote for will win, etc). Just curious. Probably not a major difference, but I would think to some extent it plays into account.

[Soxbadger]

Does voter turn out by state vary significantly when the state is a "battle ground" state. So for example, is voter turn out in Ohio much greater then say voter turn out in California (where maybe you have chunks of the population who don't vote because they already know that who they'd vote for will win, etc). Just curious. Probably not a major difference, but I would think to some extent it plays into account.

 

http://www.electproject.org/2016g

 

These are the stats. Someone else would need to cross reference those stats with voter "restriction" laws. Because from that data there doesnt seem to be a clear correlation. California had really low turnout, IL had pretty average.

[Reddy]

Youre not going to win many supporters when you say things like this, even if you believe it to be true.

 

Who knows why people didnt get out for Hillary, but I am confident that if she had run a better campaign, she would have won.

 

And I'm confident that if the Bernie wing and far left hadn't legitimized and parroted the far right talking points and created the false equivalency narrative, she also would have won.

 

[southsider2k5]

And I'm confident that if the Bernie wing and far left hadn't legitimized and parroted the far right talking points and created the false equivalency narrative, she also would have won.

 

She was a legitimately awful candidate. Twice she was anointed the next President. Twice she blew it. There was just nothing about Hillary Clinton that spoke to the American people by and large, other than she wasn't Donald Trump. She could barely hold off Bernie Sanders for the nomination, and she lost to the worst Presidential major party candidate since Andrew Jackson.

 

I mean you can try blaming the right wing for that, but if that was the case, how come they didn't work their magic to take down Barack Obama at some point?

[Soxbadger]

And I'm confident that if the Bernie wing and far left hadn't legitimized and parroted the far right talking points and created the false equivalency narrative, she also would have won.

 

Yes if she didnt have to battle Sanders she would have been a better position. But Trump had to battle Republicans too. The difference was Clinton just rarely seemed to "own" her positions. So Trump made her seem wishy-washy. I dont know if she truly was for or against TPP etc. The idea that I wasnt sure what she really believed, should raise huge red flags, because I really dislike Trump and dont think hes qualified to be my assistant.

Edited January 25, 2017 by Soxbadger

[EvilMonkey]

And I'm confident that if the Bernie wing and far left hadn't legitimized and parroted the far right talking points and created the false equivalency narrative, she also would have won.

I am curious what 'false narratives' you think there were about her.

[caulfield12]

Probably the millions the Russians put out there, but the majority of those came after the Billy Bush/Access Hollywood tape release. In theory, attacks from your own party should only make you a better candidate. She didn't learn as much as she needed to in 2008. Her husband lost the governorship in Arkansas after one term but never lot again. It seems she and her staff completely ignored him on the need to contest states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin until it was too late in the game...spending more time on North Carolina, for example.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/bern...nterview-215179

Those are just three key issues she flip flopped on when it became politically expedient.

 

 

At any rate, the following story makes a lot of sense...as well. There are 100+ reasons she lost, obviously.

 

Unlike many politicians, for whom loyalty is a one-way street, Clinton is loyal in return. And one of the lessons of her catastrophic defeat is the potential downside of loyalty. Clinton stuck by her husband through years of humiliating sexual scandals. She is sticking by him still, although a case could be made that his decision to stroll across the Phoenix airport for a chat with Attorney General Loretta Lynch effectively cost his wife the election, not only by reinforcing the public perception of the Clintons as inveterate string-pullers and corner-cutters, but by setting in motion the chain of events that led to FBI Director James Comey’s intervention in the campaign.

 

And through the series of scandals involving Abedin’s husband, touched off by his habit of sending sexually suggestive pictures to strange women, Clinton stuck by her aide. In retrospect it was all too predictable that this association would blow up eventually, as it did when the FBI examined a laptop used by both Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner, and discovered a trove of emails to and from Clinton. If anyone on her campaign staff foresaw the potential for this kind of disaster, they evidently didn’t bring it up to Clinton, or if they did, she didn’t act on it. Cutting ties with Abedin in the midst of that ghastly embarrassment would have been emotionally wrenching for Clinton, who has described Abedin as like a second daughter. It would have been cruel to Abedin, and it would have been, above all, disloyal. But it might have saved the election.

 

Clinton’s insistence on loyalty and discretion was shaped, no doubt, by her early experience in politics, in the 1970s and ’80s, when she was a lightning rod for her husband’s opponents, frequently on the defensive about imaginary scandals and invented conspiracy theories. The lesson of those years is that you minimize trouble by surrounding yourself with people who know how to keep their mouths shut. But that’s not how the world works now. You can build a wall around your headquarters, and hackers will penetrate it with ease; you can pen journalists inside a rope corral, but anyone with a smartphone can tweet a photo out to the world in seconds. You can’t control the news cycle any longer, so your best hope is to use all the tools of social and electronic media in a 24-hour race to get ahead of it. For all its vaunted expertise, the Clinton campaign never seemed to grasp that. And for all its internal chaos, the Trump team — or Trump himself — evidently did.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/clinton-trump-an...-174941337.html

Edited January 25, 2017 by caulfield12

[pettie4sox]

And I'm confident that if the Bernie wing and far left hadn't legitimized and parroted the far right talking points and created the false equivalency narrative, she also would have won.

 

If you are blaming her primary opponent of her losing that's pretty sad. It's time to face that if she was halfway decent should have crushed DT. Donald Trump is f***ing easy mode in video games. She lost to f***ing glass Joe, she is awful.

[pettie4sox]

She was a legitimately awful candidate. Twice she was anointed the next President. Twice she blew it. There was just nothing about Hillary Clinton that spoke to the American people by and large, other than she wasn't Donald Trump. She could barely hold off Bernie Sanders for the nomination, and she lost to the worst Presidential major party candidate since Andrew Jackson.

 

I mean you can try blaming the right wing for that, but if that was the case, how come they didn't work their magic to take down Barack Obama at some point?

 

If Obama ran for a 3rd term I bet he beats DT haha.

[southsider2k5]

If Obama ran for a 3rd term I bet he beats DT haha.

 

By 5 percentage points.

[Quin]

She was a legitimately awful candidate. Twice she was anointed the next President. Twice she blew it. There was just nothing about Hillary Clinton that spoke to the American people by and large, other than she wasn't Donald Trump. She could barely hold off Bernie Sanders for the nomination, and she lost to the worst Presidential major party candidate since Andrew Jackson.

 

I mean you can try blaming the right wing for that, but if that was the case, how come they didn't work their magic to take down Barack Obama at some point?

 

She had very little issue holding off Bernie

[ptatc]

Does voter turn out by state vary significantly when the state is a "battle ground" state. So for example, is voter turn out in Ohio much greater then say voter turn out in California (where maybe you have chunks of the population who don't vote because they already know that who they'd vote for will win, etc). Just curious. Probably not a major difference, but I would think to some extent it plays into account.

I was in eastern Ohio (Younstown state) for my daughter's track meet this past weekend. I know they said it was a battleground state. But everywhere I looked there were "trump digs coal" signs and bumper stickers. Even at the meet there were parents wearing "Trump is MY President T-Shirts." It was more campaign things than I have ever seen anywhere. His campaign did a really good job there.

[Balta1701]

By 5 percentage points.

So a narrow win only 2 points larger than Hillary's?

[Reddy]

She was a legitimately awful candidate. Twice she was anointed the next President. Twice she blew it. There was just nothing about Hillary Clinton that spoke to the American people by and large, other than she wasn't Donald Trump. She could barely hold off Bernie Sanders for the nomination, and she lost to the worst Presidential major party candidate since Andrew Jackson.

 

I mean you can try blaming the right wing for that, but if that was the case, how come they didn't work their magic to take down Barack Obama at some point?

 

You don't know how much your opinion means to me as resident hard-line GOPer and Reddy fan favorite.

 

[Reddy]

I am curious what 'false narratives' you think there were about her.

Damn near all of them. Emails? Come the f*** on. Literally every man who has ever been in the white house or any administration has had a private email server (see Trump and all of his advisers).

 

There was a false equivalency narrative created that equated Hillary with being "just as bad" for America as Trump. Literally four days into Trump and we're realizing how bulls*** that was. Too bad the left bought it.

 

[Reddy]

If you are blaming her primary opponent of her losing that's pretty sad. It's time to face that if she was halfway decent should have crushed DT. Donald Trump is f***ing easy mode in video games. She lost to f***ing glass Joe, she is awful.

At what point are people going to wake up and realize that Trump wasn't "easy mode"

 

If he were easy mode, why didn't any other GOP candidate beat him? He tapped into something that nobody realized was there besides Michael f***ing Moore.

[caulfield12]

You don't know how much your opinion means to me as resident hard-line GOPer and Reddy fan favorite.

 

Reddy, why did she want to be President, other than to be the first woman? It was never crystal clear. I don't even remember her campaign tagline, but we all know Trump's and Obama's. They tried 2-3 different ones but nothing stuck.

 

I also find it pretty telling that a lot of Clinton Foundation initiatives are being wound down now that they're seemingly permanently out of power...that indicates to that me their motivations for helping people were more calculated and political than altruistic and philanthropic. Helping people is a lifetime calling to service that doesn't just stop when you lose an election.

[caulfield12]

At what point are people going to wake up and realize that Trump wasn't "easy mode"

 

If he were easy mode, why didn't any other GOP candidate beat him? He tapped into something that nobody realized was there besides Michael f***ing Moore.

 

See third paragraph.

 

Bill Clinton saw it coming a mile away. But Mook would never listen to him. You would think all of his political experience would have been an asset.

 

Look where that speech was given, and when.

 

 

Said Clinton: "It's a devastating thing for a person to get up and look in the mirror every morning and think every tomorrow is going to be like yesterday. I can tell just by looking in your faces you know that just by being here, you can make your tomorrows different if you choose. That's what we've got to do for all Americans so we can all rise together."

(That's why she lost, they thought Trump would change things!)

 

Minnesota Sen. Al Franken was also on hand to address the audience. Clinton said Franken's endorsement — and others — shows that Hillary Clinton is popular outside the political establishment, even as he touted endorsements from lobby groups.

 

"You really think Al Franken is part of the political establishment? Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, the League of Conservation Voters? All the Latino organizations, the American Nurses Association, the Congressional Black Caucus?" he said.

 

Clinton also spoke about his wife's plan for student loan refinancing and making tuition aid more accessible to those in need if they are willing to work for it. (Too little, too late...Sanders already owned that issue.)

 

http://www.wpr.org/bill-clinton-campaigns-hillary-appleton

Edited January 26, 2017 by caulfield12

[Reddy]

See third paragraph.

 

Bill Clinton saw it coming a mile away. But Mook would never listen to him. You would think all of his political experience would have been an asset.

 

Look where that speech was given, and when.

 

 

Said Clinton: "It's a devastating thing for a person to get up and look in the mirror every morning and think every tomorrow is going to be like yesterday. I can tell just by looking in your faces you know that just by being here, you can make your tomorrows different if you choose. That's what we've got to do for all Americans so we can all rise together."

(That's why she lost, they thought Trump would change things!)

 

Minnesota Sen. Al Franken was also on hand to address the audience. Clinton said Franken's endorsement — and others — shows that Hillary Clinton is popular outside the political establishment, even as he touted endorsements from lobby groups.

 

"You really think Al Franken is part of the political establishment? Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, the League of Conservation Voters? All the Latino organizations, the American Nurses Association, the Congressional Black Caucus?" he said.

 

Clinton also spoke about his wife's plan for student loan refinancing and making tuition aid more accessible to those in need if they are willing to work for it. (Too little, too late...Sanders already owned that issue.)

 

http://www.wpr.org/bill-clinton-campaigns-hillary-appleton

 

I do wholeheartedly agree that Mook was the weak link in all of this. He's responsible more than any other person, IMO.

[Reddy]

Reddy, why did she want to be President, other than to be the first woman? It was never crystal clear. I don't even remember her campaign tagline, but we all know Trump's and Obama's. They tried 2-3 different ones but nothing stuck.

 

Uh. This is fundamentally untrue. They had one slogan: Stronger Together

 

One. From the beginning. And it's still being used at all of the rallies nationwide.

 

Why did Trump want to be President??? Are you seriously saying Clinton is more narcissistic than Trump?

[Quin]

Reddy, why did she want to be President, other than to be the first woman? It was never crystal clear. I don't even remember her campaign tagline, but we all know Trump's and Obama's. They tried 2-3 different ones but nothing stuck.

 

I also find it pretty telling that a lot of Clinton Foundation initiatives are being wound down now that they're seemingly permanently out of power...that indicates to that me their motivations for helping people were more calculated and political than altruistic and philanthropic. Helping people is a lifetime calling to service that doesn't just stop when you lose an election.

 

Uh, her 30 years of public service and campaign platform kinda made it clear.

[caulfield12]

Uh. This is fundamentally untrue. They had one slogan: Stronger Together

 

One. From the beginning. And it's still being used at all of the rallies nationwide.

 

Why did Trump want to be President??? Are you seriously saying Clinton is more narcissistic than Trump?

 

 

Not outwardly...I do feel that a part of her thought she had earned the job for suffering right wing conspiracies going all the way back to Bill's first run for Congress in 1974...for staying with her husband...weathering the storms of Washington. Felt she deserved the job might be pushing it, but there was some entitlement.

 

Trump's motivations don't matter. At least half of that 62.5 million wanted to take back America from Washington, Hollywood, BLM, political correctness, apologizing for American Exceptionalism, sanctuary cities, affirmative action, atheists, the gay/lesbian rights movement, Muslims, scientists who care more about the environment than American jobs, Mexicans...anything conflicting with Eisenhower's 1957 America. That they would get a conservative SC justice as part of the bargain didn't hurt.

Edited January 26, 2017 by caulfield12