If there is one candidate Barack Obama will wipe the floor with, it's this guy. I haven't liked this guy from about the middle of November. His rhetoric is far to the right, he is going to alienate 65% of the American population who do not agree with his far-right conservative ideals. Yes he is energizing the white male conservative Christian base (why? I have no idea! Someone please tell me what they see in this guy?) with his anti-gay, anti-big government, anti-abortion, anti-women, I'm God's candidate blah blah blah speeches, but that is not going to win him votes in November.
If you guys nominate Rick Santorum, it's four more years of Barack Obama, guaranteed. Conservative pundits might like him, but I predict Americans in general will not.
I totally agree. Even though the Republicans can't quite decide if they like Romney or not, he is by far the best candidate beat Obama. He is conservative enough to get the Obama haters, but central enough to pick up a lot of the independents that were disenfranchised with the Obama administration. Santorum's only appeal is to the Tea Party, and even though I agree with some of the things they stand for, they just do not make up enough of the voting pool to elect Santorum over Obama.
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% with everything Finn just said.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason, in my opinion, why Mitt Romney hasn't completely locked up the nomination by now is Romneycare, which is why so many conservatives aren't on board with him at the moment. Santorum has done a good job at distinguishing himself from Romney (and Gingrich) on this issue, which is probably why he's the candidate who is currently enjoying the "anyone-but-Romney" wave that has risen and fallen for everyone else. Like those before Santorum, however, I see this as a short-term wave of support.
Why doesn't the support last longer for these marginal candidates? Lots of people blame Mitt Romney's Super PAC's sizable funds spent on negative ads. While that might play a part, I think the waning support has much more to do with the serious flaws and electability issues with their candidacies. Like Finn said, Santorum, like the others, will ultimately be unable to attract enough votes from independents and from the many who do not share his social views to even be competitive with Obama in this increasingly secular country.
So I've actually read several articles that Democrat authorities in Michigan are encouraging democrats to go vote for Rick Santorum in the Michigan primary for two reasons. Either it will draw this process out longer which is seeming to hurt the GOP's chance against Obama in the fall, or democrats would much rather face Santorum than Romney. Santorum's organization isn't as good, his policies cater further to the right, and he'll have a real hard time getting women to vote for him. It looks to me that the GOP is imploding right now over ego.
ReplyDeleteSo I ended up watching this whole debate (stupidly I might add, as I have two finals over the next two days). Santorum got it handed to him. He was booed by the crowd like 4 times. He was on defense all night, Ron Paul owned him at least twice. It did not go well for Santorum.
ReplyDeleteSome things these candidates say I have to bring up to see if this is like a GOP wide deal.
Santorum says his policies would favor turning education from federal to state levels, and then even moving it further to give from state to local community, and even further to the parents. He then proudly proclaimed all his 7 children are home schooled. Santorum wants all of America to be home schooled, that's basically what I got out of that. If you don't believe me, go watch that segment. What do you guys think about public schooling? (Santorum got it handed to him over No child left behind, he basically said he supported the president to take one for the team, kind of a bad thing to say although I don't entirely disagree with him. Paul told him that he should be loyal to the constitution and not to the party. ZINGER for Paul!)
I'll bring up more as I remember what they were.
You need to watch the documentary "Waiting for Superman" on Netflix. I highly recommend it. It does a great job highlighting all of the many problems with public education, and also highlights great ideas for education reform.
ReplyDeleteJust finished the recommended documentary. It was very good. However I'm still a little muddy on what the proposed reform is. Obviously this was about charter schools and how they can lift these minority children out of poverty. But only 17% of charter schools perform better than public schools (cited in the movie).
DeleteThe most interesting part of the movie for me was the stat that 1 in 80 doctors lose their medical license at a point, 1 in 90 lawyers lose their bar license at a point, and 1 in 2500 teachers lose their teaching license at some point. Wow, apparently teachers are 25x better than some of the best educated (a little biased, but we all are or will be doctors or lawyers, so I doubt I'll catch too much flack for that) people in this country. I haven't been open to the idea of merit based pay before, but I think it could work. The idea of tenure after 2 years is unbelievable, I didn't know about it before and definitely do not support that.
With that being said, I can think of MANY (I'm trying to be more like you guys with the capital letters for emphasis) teachers that were awesome throughout my schooling. I really don't have any complaints about my public schooling. I had teachers that opened my mind, inspired me to learn more, and now that I think about it, I wish those teachers would have been paid more.
Glad you liked it. I think the message wasn't so much about hyping charter schools as it was dumping on teachers unions (for good reason) which block meaningful reforms in public schools at every turn. You hit on two of those reforms in your comment - merit based pay and throwing out the ridiculous 2 year tenure system. I hate the tenure system. It was really bad at law school. The quality of the teaching from tenured profs vs. non-tenured profs, and their respective attitudes about student evaluations at the end of the semester, was obvious and palpable.
DeleteI don't know why merit based pay WOULDN'T (there's those all-caps again) work for teachers. It works in every other profession because it puts incentives in place for hard work and good results. The better you are at your craft, your pay should reflect that. On the other hand, if you suck and just phone it in every day, then you shouldn't get paid the same as someone who busts his or her tail off and bends over backwards for the students.
And I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion from those licensing statistics. It isn't that teachers are 25x better than doctors or lawyers. It's that lawyers and doctors don't have entrenched unions which negotiate deals with the government that make it virtually impossible to have one of their members de-licensed like the teachers unions do for their members (think about the "rubber room" in NYC or the "lemon dance," for example, that were seen on the documentary). Also, the state bar and medical boards have to regulate their members a lot more closely because the public is very dependent on doctors and lawyers for vital health and legal services. The bar and board regulators have to be much more proactive at weeding out the bad apples in those professions. I think those reasons do much more to explain the de-licensing disparity than the quality of the individual teacher, lawyer, or doctor.
I know it's hard to tell, but if you would have heard me say the 1 in 2500 comment in person, you would have picked up on a strong tone of sarcasm. But I agree with what you said.
DeleteCan't sleep after trial. So, Creighton, why are you asking about "you guys"? Shouldn't it be "Are WE going to nominate Santorum?" Best wishes on finals. Some time we ought to trade tips on all-nighters.
ReplyDeleteI say you guys because you are all registered card carrying republicans while I am technically a registered democrat. I'm considering voting republican this fall but I already know I would not vote for Santorum or Paul. Plus I can't vote in the primary.
ReplyDeleteI still don't understand why you aren't a card-carrying Republican like "us guys." Just think of the cool donation solicitation junk mail and Eagle Forum phone surveys you would receive! In Utah the so-called general election is just a post script to the main event - the Republican Primary. The mascot switch alone is worth any potential embarrassment. Remember the age old (just made up) ditty:
DeleteDon't be a Democrat, Don't be crass.
Go with the elephant, Not the donkey.
Haha! I love the jingle.
DeleteSorry, Santorum or Gingrich. I like Ron Paul.
ReplyDeleteHey guys we're all snobs and we've all been remade in the image of President Obama by our liberal college professors where our faith was obliterated because we all went to college according to Santorum.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe this guy.
Dang. I saved a copy of your mustache picture and tried to upload it on the "Obamiconme" site.
Deletehttp://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/
Unfortunately, the jpeg file was too big and blurry for it to upload properly. I would have "obamiconned" you with the caption: "College grad = Obama zombie" It would have been awesome.
If you can figure that out and send me a big poster of it, that would be the best present ever.
DeleteI know, right? I'll work on it and see what I can do, haha.
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