OK fine I know that a political caucus is not as exciting as The Hangover although it would be hilarious if Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum went out for a night on the town in that fashion. The next political contest in this never-ending soap opera for the Republican party is in Nevada. Now causes and primaries are two different animals with two different types of voters. I see Nevada being very good for Romney and Paul and not so good for Gingrich. Paul is able to capitalize people who are very passionate and willing to speak their minds. In casus formats candidates need people like that who are willing to get on a pulpit and speak for their candidate and his position. Gingrich has been his own bully pulpit and he is going into a state where his style of politics I don’t think will take the day. Romney has the Mormon factor. People like to vote for those who look like them and believe like them. I think that his background will resonate with voters in Nevada, since Nevada is more than just Vegas. I was on the Yahoo elections page looking at new articles and saw their front page. It had pictures of all the candidates with their photos grayed out as the candidate dropped out of the race. As in Big Brother or some other reality show, and that made me think. Is that what this race as turned into? A reality show where the winner or looser isn’t the candidate but the American people.
The New Hampshire Primary is the first Primary that these candidates had to face. Remember as I have stated in a previous post, a cacus is a collection of those who hold the same political beliefs who then choose among the candidates. More in a town meeting type format. A Primary is when there is an actual election. According to 2012newhampshireprimary.comMitt Romney won with 39.3% of the vote giving him 5 delegates at the convention, Ron Paul took second with 22.9% of the vote receiving 3 delegates, and Huntsman received 16.9% of the vote receiving 2 delegates. Now a few, such as myself wonder if all of the negative press by Santorum and Gingrich actually hurt their chances because both only received 9.4% of the vote. The major players in this election, although the media do not like to admit it, are Romney and Paul. Both who stand by their principles and who do not sway towards popular opinion just because they think it will get them elected. This proves this model wrong. I am looking forward to South Carolina, that is an important state for Republicans. I want to see what will happen next.
I know that is quite the blanket statement but that’s the best way to describe what’s going on at the New Hampshire primary. Just reading the comments that Gingrich especially making about Romney, there is NO WAY IN HECK, that Gingrich will ever win as a Republican. Republicans are about free market economy, survival of the fittest, and about everyone having an equal ability to become rich. Gingrich is making comments that better belong on an Occupy Wall Street poster. There is no way that if Gingrich’s comments do help him, that he will make it past South Carolina. He is feeding into popular support and is showing that he has no backbone as a candidate. Santorum on the other hand clearly stated his support for the free market and has not been playing into the game of “Bash Mitt Romney.” While these men are playing out the New Hampshire primaries like the movie Mean Girls what will happen to the Republican party and the election. It’s only eleven months away.
New Hampshire, first in the nation to vote for a potential candidate. What? Is that statement off to you considering that Iowa was so important. Remember Iowa was a Caucus, a collection of people from the party stating which candidate they like the best. Imagine picking teams for kick ball in grade school, and then imagine that you had millions of dollars and annoying television adds playing behind you. New Hampshire is a primary. A primary is where you actually vote, and cast a secret ballot. You don’t have the embarrassment of your friends knowing which guy you support. Now why is New Hampshire a “hail mary” pass for some of these candidates. Many of these candidates, Gingrich and Huntsman as examples, were only able to pull single digit numbers in Iowa. Not good at all, and if they are not able to pull double digit numbers at least in New Hampshire it shows their campaigns to be ineffective and that their support should go to another candidate. Hopefully after New Hampshire we will have two or three RepublicanCandidates and the party can start solidifying, if not there is no way that the party can get themselves back together in time to beat Obama in the general election.
Wow bronchitis is really horrible. I am sorry readers, I have been seeing doctors who have been trying to help me get healthy and I am now officially on the mend. So to the task at hand, Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich is now more interesting to write about after the Herman Cain scandal and debacle. I find it funny how Cain was pushed out of the race due to his sexual past and Gingrich is now being embraced as the new lead candidate, even though his past is far from clean. I mean leaving your first wife of 20 years when she is dying of cancer is never a good thing. Gingrich was once the golden boy for the Republican party, in the early 1990s he helped write the “Contract with America,” and wrestle control of the House and Senate away from the Democrats in 1995. This man though is very abrasive and his style of politics led to his resigning as Speaker of the House and his descent into lobbying and writing historical fiction. He is great with the spoken word and a debate of Gingrich versus Obama would definitely be fun to watch.
Gingrich’s website asks you to “help with the 21st century’s contract with America” which harkens back to his glory days. All of Gingrich’s ideas are standard republican. This is what many people worry about, he would move with the changing wind. Nobody likes that. I’m sure you can tell I am not the biggest Gingrich supporter. Considering how brash he is, I feel as though we would have 4 years of nothing getting done, and he is supposed to be the closest thing we have to a Catholic running for the White House? It doesn’t seem right. Honestly I cannot see any way of Gingrich winning if anyone in America has a memory whatsoever.
Welcome back readers for the first blog of the holiday season. Today’s candidate we are looking at is Gary Johnson. Johnson is another one of these candidates that I see as Democrats in Republican clothing. Either these men don’t want to face a sitting president who is without question one of the greatest orators of the 20th century or their views have changed to become more Libertarian, whatever the case I do see this transition as something that can only be good for the Republican party, but I don’t see this as having a big effect in this election.
Johnson is a former two term governor of New Mexico with a lot of gains and successes for New Mexico. He cut a lot of costs and waste in the New Mexico budget. He is more willing to cut costs than raise taxes, a fiscal conservative, and this is something that the American people are looking for. A social Libertarian with fiscal conservative traits.
When you go to Gary Johnson’s homepage he is very clear about what he wants to do. Bring home the troops and strengthen America’s defense and present a balance budget and veto anything that doesn’t go with that budget. He wants to end the “assault on privacy,” by allowing the Patriot Act to expire and believes the government should be neutral on personal beliefs, meaning that abortion and gay marriage are OK by him. He believes the internet shouldn’t be regulated and that offline and online crimes should be treated identically.
His website is very interesting and engaging and very easy to read. There is no confusion on his point of view and I do find this candidate one to take a look at. He is one of the candidates that are underplayed, maybe due to funding, and I hope that people take a second look at him before voting.
Now as the Cain sexual harassment scandal takes a hold of the Republican campaign Herman Cain has a new strategy for fighting the allegations, by blaming his fellow candidate Rick Perry for releasing the information to the media. Perry is now saying that it wasn’t him, that it could have been Mitt Romney. This new game of finger-pointing and the name and blame game are doing one thing, eating up precious media time, and precious time in general. Normally it is difficult to defeat a sitting president in office. And Obama has not engratiated himself to his base in the last 6 months. The Republicans really have a shot at defeating President Obama if they can get their act together. What this sex scandal is doing is turning people off from both the party and voting. These sex scandals make the average person less involved in politics and not more. Obama has a large base that will never turn their back on him, and all these sex scandal and finger-pointing are doing is bringing the middle of the road people into Obama’s waiting arms.
To my readers I am sorry this is late. I have been stressed and ill the last two weeks.
Buddy Roemer used to be a mover and shaker in Washington DC. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 1981-1988 for Louisiana‘s fourth district. He left to run for governor of Louisiana, and was governor from 1988-1992. Roemer did something surprising though, March 11,1991 Roemer switched parties and became a Republican. This switch dismayed many voters. He attempted to run again for governor in 1995, but lost. Since this Roemer has spent most of his time in the financial world and living a private life. Most of what I have read about him seems surprised that he has decided to run for president. It’s hard pressed to find much said about Roemer, or even his platform other than he is for campaign finance reform, and plans to limit campaign contributions to $100 per person.
Roemer’s website is the best place to find information about him. His website is clean and well organized and has a section called “ask Buddy” where it looks as though my Roemer answers questions to the American people himself. I find his views to actually be very ballanced. He’s pro-life, for clean air and water, closing tax loop holes, and bringing industry back to America. Honestly this candidate isn’t discussed much in the press but he’s one to really take a look at. In this time in history a practical president may be one we need.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and one of the leading candidates for the 2008 Republican primary. Romney is giving his candidacy another go, and many in the know believe that he may be the best person for the job during this struggling economy. Romney was a long time venture capitalist, and many believe because of his background that he would be well suited for the nation during this budget and debt crisis. Romney is a Mormon who has been married to his wife since 1969. He has 5 sons and 16 grandchildren. When elected as governor of Massachusetts the state was in monumental debt, loosing jobs, and businesses were fleeing the state (sound familiar) and he was able in the span of 5 years to turn all that around and to leave the state with some savings. Romney was also able to save the Salt Lake City Olympic games from he brink of disaster after all of the issues that those Olympic games arose. This candidate is well educated and has a good background to be president.
Now his stance on many social issues. Mitt Romney has become more and more conservative as politics has needed him to be. He has always been fiscally conservative, but as the primary for any presidential campaign has drawn near Romney has shown himself to be more conservative. A good example of this would be Romney’s change of heart about abortion and stem cell research in 2005 where he changed his position after he had an epiphany while visiting a stem cell research plant. His position is now that he believes that abortion is fundamentally the taking of a human life. Romney is the sort of candidate that changes his opinion based on what the people want, so it is difficult to know exactly what his core principles are. Accept that he is fiscally conservative, that is the only thing about him that hasn’t changed. Being LDS is something to note about this candidate. The American people do have a lot of preconceived notions about a person who is Mormon, and that most believe that his being Mormon will have an effect on his candidacy. While I do believe that Romney has a lot of the business aspect that could help the country in this time of crisis I really don’t know what he would do about everything else. He changes his position so much about social issues I don’t know what to believe about him.
AMERICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY! Let me say this again for all of you gasping at my statement. AMERICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. Ok then what are we? America is a DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. Now what does that mean to those of us without a Political Science degree. It means that America has 50 states and when the framers of the constitution designed the constitution they kept the states in mind, hence the 10th amendment which in layman’s terms says that any rights not specifically given to the federal government belong to the states. Now what does that mean. For the first 100-150 years of American history the federal government dealt with international stuff and interstate commerce and the state governments took care of the people. Then the Industrial Revolution happened, and things began to get messy. The common man, meaning the common business man, wasn’t taking the individual man’s interest to heart. The constitution was designed for an America that was an agrarian state, not an international power player. Teddy Roosevelt began some of the earliest Progressive movements that had federal laws touching the lives of the individual. We all love the Pure Food and Drug Act and things of that nature. Teddy Roosevelt though didn’t interfere with the state governments as much as he could, he campaigned for a minimum age requirement, and compulsory education, and a minimum wage, and got them, but all of these laws were on the state level. No no, his cousins Franklin Roosevelt and Elenore Roosevelt were the ones who gave the federal government the powers in has today. As president FDR brought us medicare, Medicaid, social security and welfare. These programs are the pains of all fiscal Conservatives, things that people want and that law makers seriously don’t want to pay for. Now why did I give you this history lesson?
Today’s political climate is very, how should I put this gently, heated. OK pundits and newscaster and politicians act like idiotic wild dogs. And we can’t say this is all a brand new thing. We all know what happened to Aaron Burr. The difference is the internet and CNN. What these things do is disseminate information quickly and not always accurately. In a 21st century America what is the role of the federal government in relation to the state government? I think the reality of all this is that we as Americans are deciding what a 21st century government looks like. The new Republican majority in the house seems to want to move the government closer to the founder’s original intentions, but I don’t think this will work. In a 21st century world Americans and the world expect a strong central government with a strong presidency. People assume that Obama is the leader and law making body of America when in reality he can make as many laws as I can slam dunk baskets. Instead of moving to an old model law makers need to create a whole new model of the roles that each part of the government should play. Look I know that America is a continent and not a country, and having a normal model of government, on leader heading the whole country would be difficult, but there needs to be something in the middle. Don’t you agree?
We over here at Petdal have finished up the long awaited delivery of The Sexy Politco website. We gave the site it’s own scheme of purple and orange and made it 100% interactive with the users. It’s not just a blog, it’s a place for real knowledge developed by great political commentators. We would like [...]
