and Ron Paul is cool, imho...

I've used this smilie.

thankee

according to his long term Newsletter AND photos of him with neo-nazis and white supremacists.

They pointed to his Dad and his Compassionate Conservatism.....
Which is why GW Bush had approval ratings over 70% for 16 months
after 9/11.

As for Ron Paul....promoting racism is the new cool? Who Knew?

Fuck Ron Paul.

we're being played ,Shrub being the biggest misanthrope ever to hold the post ,is the only thing keeping Poppy's smarter son from fufilling his part in the whole scheme of Things.

against Obama

They're really that bad

No conspiracy here. Just a sad state of affairs -for Republicans.

I never thought of it, but they do need to kill off that wildebeast if they are going to survive intact.

If the tea leaves read that this election is going to be 1984 all over again, I can see them doing just that. Destroying the election chances to save the party village and clip the wings of the lunatic fringe so as to not have to deal with them any longer.

Hrm.

I try not to attribute to malice and conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence.

What has happened, I believe, is that the GOPer candidates, responding to the rantings of the Tea Party contingent and the God-botherers, have gone so far overboard in escalating the standard for what constitutes "conservative" that they have chased each other right off a cliff.

Mittens: "I'm severely conservative."
Ricky: "Women who use birth control are whores who should be burned as witches."
Newt: "We have to nuke Iran."
Ron: "Our government is controlled by the Trilateral Commission and the Queen of England, who is a crack dealer."
Mittens: "I'm more conservative than any of you, and I'll prove it by personally deporting all of my Mexican pool boys and chauffeurs."
Ricky: "I'll get the 19th Amendment repealed and send all the gay people to internment camps."
Newt: "We have to nuke Massachusetts."
Ron: "We have to nuke England to keep the Queen from controlling our currency."

And so on and so forth. Since at this point none of them can backtrack, having pushed the definition of "conservative" so far to the right that they would frighten Darth Vader, all they can do is double down. Now some of the GOP pundits, suits and power brokers are starting to see how nuts this all is, and they're getting nervous. But they don't know what to do.

(except for elections!)

Armey surely SHOULD be in a repug reeducation camp, given his Tea-pers!

they are the craziest and nuttiest of the bunch.

who wouldn't be just as bad. They really don't have a lot of sane party members to chose from right now.

... there is every chance that they will lose. The "crazy base" of their party is all that is left of them now. They'll have a rude awakening if they try to kick them to the curb.

Citizen's united has caused this mess...This circus could have been ended weeks ago. Prolong the reviewing period and the warts and all come out for display.

Enjoy the warts, I am.

This morning, I think I figured out why Mitt is the BushCo guy in the mix.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002346973

But, they're not working very hard to sell him, are they? Remember the hard sell they did on Junior?

Maybe they figure, they're going to lose and this way they get Santorum out of the way for good.

Those playing us could be perfectly willing to write off America as a lost cause. THEY don't have to live here. And we do, still, sit on a HELL of a lot of natural resources that could make someone a LOT of money if America were only a third world country without the power to organize and resist.

when they put McCain out there, then brought Palin in. With the economy in crisis, it seemed entirely possible that they would have wanted to sit this one out so Dems would be blamed for the poor economy and slow recovery.

So do I think that they are willing to throw this election too----I hope they have a legitimate reason for this lineup.

If Santorum or Gingrich win the nomination it will be catastrophic ass whipping for the GOP which will probably bring about an irrevocable split with one wing breaking off to form a new party. If Romney is their guy and loses by a wide margin, the party will be completely at the mercy of the right which will lead to nominate the goofy wing candidates next time. If he loses by a small margin, lots of grumbling but they'll stick together.

Barring unforeseen catastrophes (another 9/11; complete collapse of the economy; some outrageous but true scandal) Obama should waltz through this no matter who gets it. The fallout for the Republicans will be the interesting part.

I'm hoping for Santorum to win the nomination and suffer a devastating defeat in the general and then watch the Republicans split.

The downside will be that the Democrats will see no reason to move left and will try appealing (even more than they're doing now) to the homeless "moderates" and further water down the few remaining principles that the Democrats still, at least, mention occasionally.

This has been true pretty much since Eisenhower and Goldwater and particularly true since Raygun. The money conservatives will always be at odds with the Jesus conservatives over core issues and these issues take center stage during times when foreign policy isn't at the forefront of the American public's minds. But the Republican Party has been pretty united in its hawkishness (save for a few Ron Paul types) and all sides will compromise their issues during a crisis or war because they fundamentally believe that their guy can lead the country against America's enemies better than the Democrats can.

Democrats are the exact opposite. We have both hawks and doves in our party and every time there's a crisis or a war, we're usually pretty divided, ESPECIALLY if our guy is in charge.

History is a pretty good guide to this. Nixon and Reagan came into office when foreign policy was a decisive issue. Bush I came into office because of it as well, although it was less important than it was in 1980 and he got a lot of help from Dukakis being a total fuck-up. In 1992 he had his ass handed to him even though he drastically out-classed Clinton in the foreign policy arena because the country cared more about domestic issues. And in 2000 Gore won when there was relative peace and calm in the world. Of course the Supreme Court handed that one to some other dickwad.

And a year ago when Rick "Batshit" Santorum decided to enter the race, their odds were better than 50%.

I get that Obama is a centrist President on economic issues and would be considered at least center-right in just about any other western country on economic issues. I get that this upsets a lot of people and makes it difficult to do anything about the fact that way too much wealth is concentrated into the hands of way too few. I also get that it's much easier to make the (extremely valid) point that the Democrats are far too much like the Republicans, when the national focus is on issues of economic justice.

But inconvenient as it may be, the fact of the matter is that Rick Santorum and his ilk (who make up a substantial part of the Republican Party) want to turn this country into a Christian theocracy. And should he become the nominee, the President is the only thing standing in his away of getting to appoint a Supreme Court that will allow that to happen.

We need to push the Democratic Party (and the country, for that matter) to do better on issues of economic justice. But in the meantime, we can't just sit by and pretend that social issues don't drastically effect peoples' lives as well.

... are the rabid rightwingnuts.

Played by the web crazies like Pat Dollard... played by people like Beck...played by the truly crazy fundies...

Played into thinking that the country will die if Obama is re-elected.

I fear for his safety, and in doing so, I fear for our country.

Those people are talking now that there is a "Civil war without guns"... how much more of the lies and distortions will it take before the deluded take up guns.

Democracy requires an enlightened electorate and I confess to being a member who can not figure out what is going on with my democracy! Regarding the OP, there has been an enormous amount of money spent on republican candidates who could only fair poorly at best against President Obama. I keep asking myself: why??? If big money is the biggest problem in our democracy, (i do think it is), then why is it being blown on any of these four who are so hopelessly outmatched? I know that I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer but am I alone in thinking something smells awfully fishy?

from this Circus. And after all money is the bottom line no matter what the clowns say.