#112 Rob — “…if you do not see the certain evils in the concentration of Federal power due to Lincoln – hurting state’s (and individual) rights, you are not a conservative.”
Poly-sci based arguments always discuss Lincoln’s arrogation of power as if politics live in a vacuum. Simply put, Lincoln was responding — for the first time — to the closest thing to a real-time war as existed in that day due to the recently invented telegraph. If you take into account the effect that technology availability has played throughout history, a great deal more of what was done and why looks a bit different than the vacuum based premises you’re repeating.
I tire of arguments like yours that seek to dictate what a conservative is and is not based merely on your own inadequate understanding of historical events.
#113 Vivian — “GOP wins whenever the campaigns are about real issues.”
And what “real issues” do you have in mind? Many left voters voted that way due to a real issue to them — global warming. Others voted a pocketbook issue and simply believed that banking deregulation was a republican idea. Still others voted for doing something about health care. These are all real issues. The GOP lost on every one of them.
e.g. Vivian — “The ability to select schools of their own and pay for them via school vouchers would be a huge benefit.”
This is an issue to a MINORITY of the GOP voters and not an issue in any way with anyone else. I never vote left, and I think vouchers are an extremely short-sighted idea. Is that one of your real issues? I would think that if you’re going to invent issues then a reasonable starting point ought to be that most of your own party agrees with you.
I don’t think I heard Obama discuss vouchers. In fact I don’t think I heard *anyone* talk about them. I heard health care, war, financial crisis, and so on. No vouchers. Unsurprisingly with a war going on and money markets melting down and fed bailouts are being discussed, people were voting issues that meant something to them. Are you suggesting that the GOP ought to discount these other issues and say “no, no, we don’t need to talk about side issues like overseas wars and knowing WTF we’re doing vis a vis foreign policy; let’s talk about the really important stuff instead: school vouchers!”
