Quote:
Originally Posted by JayJamJah
If you don't think partisan allegiance is the driving force behind modern politics then you fail greatly to understand the basics of the system. Only by catering to your constituency and the mainliners in your party can you get the nomination.
Obama was an exciting, independent and logical thinking senator on the rise 2 years ago, he could boast having no connections to any lobbyist organizations and was outspoken against lobbyist politics. Now he has selected Joe Biden as his running mate, why because the polls suggest his major flaws are inexperience and peoples lack of comfort with his religious background.
I'm guessing your young, probably in your twenties and like you mentioned in closing, not to sound dismissive or condescending, but set through 5 or 6 more elections, watch the names and faces change but the actions stay the same and then tell me if you still think there is anything more then an ideological difference between the two.
You can look at it as cynical and it is, but the crux of my argument is based in fact and logic not in emotion or bitterness.
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So whats wrong with taking someone that has a skill set you're lacking?
Pick a party and look at the last three presidents from each of them. Little is similar in their approach to anything. Even Bush, who wanted so badly to be Reagan, mandated so much from the executive that he became in most occurences the anti-reagan. A reporter once asked "what would reagan think of government intervention stopping stem cell research." William Buckley said about 41 "he's conservative but he's not a conservative."
Never mind Nixon.
And the Democrats are much more startiling. Clinton, Carter, Johnson?
You have a man who practiced conservative economics, a man who is the icon for the middle east peace process, and a warhawk who was the biggest washington insider of his time.
I'm still not getting it. Show me where I'm wrong.
As for catering to any given constituency, thats where you greatly fail to understand the basics of the system. Their parties base is courted in primaries and abandoned in Gen. Elections.
All the successful politicians know "your fringe base has no where to go. That eases up only slightly when we move toward the center."
This is the only election a pro-choice person might vote for someone who's pro-life, and thats only because these nutjub Clinton supporters are still "fighting the good fight." But 9 times out of 10 any one who supports a liberal agenda is ignored by the Democrats because their never going to support a republican.
In fact the thing they
don't do is support a partisan agenda.