What I’m really getting at is I caught an interview of Rand Paul on some Sunday morning ABC talk show this morning and he actually seemed pretty legit. None of the establishment rhetoric contract with America bullshit, but some reasonable ideas about smaller government. I’m glad to have him in the senate. I’ll be keeping an eye on him.
Oh, and Chris Lee is the best politician to come out of WNY since Grover Cleveland.
And Ron Paul. The current federal government needs as much of a libertarian bend as possible since it’s pretty much decided to ignore the constitution.
Are you serious? She’s in the top 5 suckiest of all. Her latest escapade was spreading the lie about the $200 million a day trip to Asia.
Olympia Snowe
Susan Collins
Joseph Cao (He lost though)
Scott Brown shows flashes of being independent but he kind of has to seeing as he’s from Mass.
Nucky Thompson :lol:
That’s about it from me.
No, I like people with a brain who can think for themselves and not just follow what the jesus freak-big business coalition tells them to. At least the Democrats actually vote their mind sometimes… (makes for a hell of a time to get anything passed but I can see the value in it) the Republican leadership calls anyone to the left of Joseph Stalin a RINO.
Joseph Stalin was a communist/lenninist/marxist…there is nothing left of that.
Evidently I need to define the political spectrum for you before we can even have any type of political discussion…
Basically as most people see it, politics is the balance between government control and individual control.
On the left end of the spectrum we have total government control over everything in your life…communisim/socialism/marxism/etc. Don’t forget that the NAZIs were the “National Socialist Party” in Germany.
On the right, we have no government control at all which would result in complete freedom for the individual but would also end up causing the complete breakdown of society and total anarchy.
In the center we have some government control and some decisions left up to the individual.
Conservatives are right-of-center…they want less government control and services, more individual freedoms and are willing to take on more individual responsibilities as well.
Liberals are left-of-center…they are for more government control and services and have a tendency to rely more on government for help and services.
Generally Republicans are thought of as conservatives and Democrats are thought of as liberals but this does not always apply…take McShame for example…there is no bigger RINO in existence!!
I like these type of individuals as well, unfortunately it seems that even the best well-intentioned young senators and representatives go to Washington and smell all that special-intrest money and become instantly corrupt.
If you look at the last two years, the Democrats have been voting TOTALLY in step with the party line. I guess they just all happen to have the same mindset.
The Blue Dogs and Lieberman, Nelson et al in the Senate played hardball on every major initiative the Dems tried to push through the last two years, and got almost all of them watered down significantly or killed completely. They’re the ones that cost us the public option when we still technically had 60 Senate votes. The Stupak bloc in the house almost cost us health care completely over some stupid abortion nonsense. Bank and credit card reform lost most of its teeth. The jobs bill that we needed is DOA. They blocked energy, too. Feingold, one of the most independent and best Dem senators, and the only one with the balls to go against the PATRIOT act, just went down to a noob. The Republicans got more pushed through with 50 Senators and Dick Cheney than the Dems did with 60 because they don’t tolerate dissent in their ranks. Back home, you guys pushed Specter out of the party after being in it for decades because he was willing to listen to reason.
Ummm…if I remember correctly, the health care vote went right down party lines. Yeah, a few senators held out to see what they could extort out of Obama and a few actually got some stuff, but most just voted in lock step with the party.
I think remember something about a 700 billion dollar stimulus bill that was supposed to create jobs…the money was actually funneled through 527’s to help Democrats get re-elected…and no jobs were created whatsoever.
If, by energy, you mean Cap-and-Trade, then all I can say is THANK GOD for that!!
Didn’t like Feingold but also don’t really like a lot of what is in the Patiot act either…
Nope, he jumped parties because he knew he couldn’t win the primary…he was a sleazy RINO his whole career and he finally joined the correct party IMO.
The final health care vote went down party lines. There were still a bunch of Dems that voted no on the reconciliation bill. They had to keep changing things to add every vote and ended up with a lot of shit that shouldn’t have been in there, and didn’t get any bipartisan support because the Republicans promised political death to anyone who could get behind it, including Cao in his district of black Democrats. Are you serious that you really believe the stimulus didn’t create any jobs? You didn’t see the highway crews everywhere, the articles about small businesses that flat-out said they created jobs due to stimulus grants, the rescue of local school districts from massive layoffs that they had planned, and so on and so forth? I could go on forever. Do you live in a cave? 527 groups to help Democrats? WTF? You will get along great with Blue Eyed Devil.
We call our centrists moderates, or Blue Dogs. You call yours RINO’s and primary them out. In order to not be a RINO you have to filibuster every single piece of legislation proposed and not even allow for a vote on it.
Back to the original point of the thread: Rand Paul actually has some potential on fiscal issues. Where he loses me is he’s supposed to be such a libertarian, but also super hardcore against abortion and gay marriage. I don’t get it.
Ha. Yeah. Conservatives want small government. That’s why they tell us who to marry and where to put what religious structures, block good science because stem cells are sort of baby-like, hold people without trial, wiretap without a warrant, wage war without declaring it, and funnel ungodly amounts of money into a huge standing army. About the only time that they actually practice smaller government is when it involves spending money on the American people directly. I guess if you say something often enough and with enough conviction people will believe it even if there is no evidence to support it.
Which is why I am making a list of republicans who don’t suck because the party seems to be made up of posturing dolts who don’t actually stand for anything in the rhetoric they spew. But the good ones don’t get attention from the media, so I’m trying to find them. Rand Paul’s got some good ideas. Chris Lee just does his shit representing the people who sent him to Washington and trying to get our own people working by trying to set them up for opportunity not handing them money.
Robert Gates- he actually seems genuinely interested in finding ways for the military to save money, and he’s one of the few Republicans willing to cooperate across party lines, and is against the usual blank checkbook they like to give the armed forces. He’s done a great job of moving the military budget toward modern warfare and special forces, and away from Soviet-style programs. He took over a shit sandwich from Rumsfeld and is in the process of making it palatable. He seems pretty progressive on social things like DADT and women on submarines as well.
