Ok, so, here's a fun article highlighting who should have been John McCain's running mate in 2008. He instead chose to go with the hot younger chick who then turned around and used him and everyone else in the GOP to make a small fortune before running off and leaving the GOP in shambles. I'm not one of the GOP koolaid drinkers so I'll be blunt:
Obama won in large part because the GOP is a mess, and they have only themselves to blame for being out of office. The delusions/denial that prop up candidates like: * Newt I'm a massive hypocrite Gingrich or * Rick I'm a loose cannon Perry or * Michelle I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT Bachmann ...are simply staggering. Even Romney acts like an amateur enough of the time to make me scratch my head. There's a history to the current situation and while I'm not entirely unsympathetic, I also realize that this is global power politics at stake, and there's no room for pity voting.
That having been said, accepting responsibility for failure allows for growth by fixing what went wrong and trying again. The person or group that fails, wises up, tries again, and succeeds is the great example of victory through perseverence. What I'm getting at here is that perhaps Condi is still the smartest, best choice for VP or even the president, that the GOP could hope to run. Palin took the GOP for a ride, divorced them and walked away with half...but a lot of smart people, including Fareed Zakaria, were calling for Condi to run in 2008 and she's been involved with global affairs for the better part of 30 years.
Personally, I'm unaffiliated and tend to vote for who I think will do the best overall job of managing the country...and this includes a healthy dose of Democratic votes on my part. I do wish I could be one of those people with a blind allegiance to a political party or some silly ideology, philosophy, or belief system...but I'm not. If a political party makes stupid decisions and makes themselves irrelevant, then so be it, this isn't a charity or my family: it's a brutal fucking power struggle, and America has to win. In the face of a lineup of real buffoons, I think that Rice is the most all around credible Republican in Washington at this point.
What do you all think?
I agree that Palin was an utter debacle. McCain's decision to pick her clearly showed his lack of judgment.
I disagree strongly however that Romney is an amateur. He's a very smart guy who has been successful in both the private sector and in government. In term of experience, he is way ahead and more qualified than Obama was when he ran in 2008. It's not even close.
I truly fail to see how Palin was a bad choice. Hindsight is 20/20, but she was a vibrant, pro life governor and a woman. His polling numbers when up after she was announced and her intro speech was great.
Yes, she turned out to be less than perfect, but in the heat of the moment she was pretty good.
Bachman is a fool, but Dem's have their clowns. Just because Obama is the incumbent we don't get to see the uber liberal tools the Dem's put up.
Honestly, a decent enough chunk of Americans support Bachman. She represents some people. Maybe you(we) are smarter than her or whatever, but representative Democracy means even retards have a voice. Sucks, but when you start thinking you know better than everyone else you are even more dangerous than the dumbest American.
So are you gonna call her? Or just hit it and quit it?
A lot of things appear clearer in hindsight.
Ad hoc explanations sound plausible even when trying to describe complex human phenomena.
I gotta agree with ANT on this one. Palin wasn't the problem.
After 8 years of Bush, the GOP could've run a Brad Pitt - George Clooney ticket with the promise of a $10,000 grant to every family in America on inauguration day and they still would've lost.
Bush nuked the party. Maybe forever.
Agree with Eddie.
I did some analysis on this a while back. If you look at the list of female, Republican governors and Congressmen, you have a very limited choice.
Condie would have been great, IMO, but she was a Bush person and would have tainted the campaign. She was/is too powerful to be a VP anyway.
Colin Powell, NOT Condi, would have been the best running mate to John McCain.
from my perspective, once McCain picked Palin he lost all credibility because he was obviously playing politics instead of choosing someone who would be better suited for the role. Also, what exactly does Rice bring to the table over Obama? He has actually handled foreign policy issues pretty well.
Condi brings a massive contact list, a Phd, and 30 years of experience to Obama's set of high minded ideals...and no experience. He's largely continued the planned wind down on the foreign policies from the last decade (I talked with a DOD guy in 2009 and he told me then that they had planned out a withdrawal two years prior). However, Obama has largely left the organic liberation movements of the Arab Spring to fend for themselves, and frankly, he's a fucking asshole for having done so.
I actually think I'd rather have a parliamentary-style system in the US. I think it would make the process more intelligent and do away with the two-party system.
We don't have a two-party system just by tradition; it's because of game theory. It's the Nash equilibrium to just have a "left" and "right" party, because anything else would just split the vote and be counterproductive. Now not to say that many parliamentary-style government don't screw up, because clearly the EU is in a mess right now, but I'd rather have an actual discussion about policy during party primaries instead of Bachman whining about whatever, Pelosi sucking Occupy's dick, Obama bitching about Bush, Gingrich having more wives than Mitt Romney yet still being considered a serious candidate, ect.
Then again, we'd still have to deal with the fact that the same dumbass whose judgment is so bad that Maroon 5 and Nickelback have financially-successful music careers has just as much say as I do as who the next commander in chief should be. This is why I support the lottery, since lottery funds usually go towards education, so it's basically a transfer payment and reallocation of capital from dumbasses to smart people. But I digress.
The reason why the largest US embassy in the world is in Baghdad (not London or something like that) is so we can have a military base without actually calling it a military base. And I'm completely fine with that also, my prediction is that Iraq actually does NOT fall apart, but that's another post for another time.
Completely agree, but also add Iran to the list. We had a serious chance to put Ahmadenijad out of business in 2009 but passed. Granted that Mousavi was NOT a reformer, despite CNN and Christiane Amanpour fawning over him (do some research on Mousavi, he may play the reformer card now to western media but the dude was definitely a hardliner back in the day), but there was legit public support in Iran for democracy and it got the Tiananmen Square treatment.
Condie would have been a terrible VP choice. The people wanted nothing to do with Bush or anything associated with him. Bringing in his Secretary of State (no matter how smart of qualified she is) would have been seen as Bush's Third term and Obama would have won by an even bigger margin.
McCain needed a game-changer to have a chance against Obama and swung for the fences with Palin.
You guys can't be serious about Condoleezza Rice. You might as well sell naming rights to the fucking White House.
Rice is such a shameless corporate shill that Chevron named a fucking supertanker after her. That's just what this country needs...
but she seems so kind and sweet...
1) You cannot have a black man as a VP when the first Black man was just nominated to be President.
2) Palin energized the female vote, which was pretty upset that Hillary didn't get the nomination. Perfect strategy.
People hate on Palin and think it was a dumb choice because they have had 2-3 years to hear her and make a judgement. When she was governor of Alaska she was popular and energetic. None of the lunacy we know now.
baaahahaha i hope i wasn't the only one who caught that
Rice does look a little manly haha
Didn't McCain run with Joe Lieberman back in 2000?
Honestly all I want the Republicans to do is to select a real conservative... not a fiscal liberal whose "conservatism" is defined by irrelevant, religious, social issues such as gay marriage. Gay marriage and abortion were essentially the main topics during G.W.'s first election.
Lets be fair, Obama was a young, undistinguished, relative new Congressman. Lets not make it out like he was so much more qualified than she was.
I still think an amazing combo would be Romney Huntsman, not that it would happen but i like the foreign policy and business backgrounds blending.
Ron Paul & Huntsman
My post was actually in reference to someone saying Colin Powell should have been the VP nomination.
side note, VP of the USA might be the best job ever. WTF does Joe Biden do all day?
Put his foot in his mouth?
The VP has no official duties per the Constitution besides to break ties in the Senate. I bet Joe is drunk 95% of the time he is awake.
What did Dan Quale or Al Gore do either? Bush made the mistake of having Cheney as VP and had to deal with a hard ass.
The VP rule is this. Someone who compliments in the polls and who will shut the fuck up and be happy with silver. Biden was an east coast white dude and established Congressman. He now plays checkers all day.
That's exactly why Ron Paul would never agree to be anyone's VP.
ANT I think Joe, Dan, and Al all had the level of wealth they wanted at the time they started their vice precidencies so not doing anything and getting paid 6 figures tax free seemed like a good gig. Cheney is a greedy motherfucker with many many more corporate ties (CEO of Halliburton for fucks sake) so he used his vice-presidency to further his hisinterest and those of his closed ones.
Personally, I would take scotch and checkers all day over actual work.
I think jojo said it best
How the hell do you embed images? Anyway, Joe Biden washing his Trans Am...
http://imgur.com/OO6AE
[quote=eriginal]How the hell do you embed images? Anyway, Joe Biden washing his Trans Am...
http://imgur.com/OO6AE[/quote]
You just know he's got a half rack of Busch Lights and a boombox blaring Bachman Turner Overdrive on the roof of the car.
condoskeeza rice is a mediocrity and a fraud. when she tried to test her fluent russian out on russian radio she sounded like a first-grader. what's her experience? political hack and academic bureaucrat? yeah yeah she is a black woman so calling her out on her bullshit qualifications and her incompetence makes me a racist.
bachmann and gingrich are fascists. i mean in the dictionary sense of the word. they want a corporate-government unitary state with police state powers and a vae victis law of the jungle foreign policy.
palin, not so bright. and it shows
paul will never get elected because he will take away the printing press and war, and the profits that go along with it.
romney will be smashed by the dems as a downsizer-in-chief. plus that mormon cult thing will not bring out the jeeeezus enthusiast vote. too bad, he and that other mormon loon in the race seem like the least retarded most of the time.
that mormon loon begot some hot mormon poon
I also dont think Palin was the problem with the McCain ticket, in fact I think she could have been a huge asset if prioperly presented. GW Bush made a career out of having people call him stupid and then turning it around by accusing them of being "Northeastern elitists"...the strategy was actually invented and perfected by George HW Bush advisor Lee Atwater. Palin could have played into that narrative perfectly when the democrats started to attack her in the same way. The problem was that Mccain refused to go there because at his heart he hated the Bush/Rove machine and wanted to run a campaign that he saw as more noble and respectable.
If you are a fan of politics the below frontline doc on Lee Atwater is a classic and really entertaining...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/atwater/
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