Political Topics And Discussion > America's view of GOP crumbles with Iraq

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Grizzly

Feb 18 2007, 01:46 PM

Here is a great editorial written by Thomas Schaller for the Salt Lake Tribune. I especially agree with these parts of the commentary.

QUOTE

Why? The short answer is that President Bush's war of choice in Iraq has destroyed the partisan brand Republicans spent the past four decades building.
That brand was based upon four pillars: that Republicans are more trustworthy on defense and military issues; that they know when and where markets can replace or improve government; that they are more competent administrators of those functions government can't privatize; and, finally, that their public philosophy is imbued with moral authority.
The war demolished all four claims.

In uniform or out, Americans think Iraq is a disaster, oppose escalation and blame Bush and his party for the mess in Mesopotamia. Heading into the 2006 mid-terms, polls showed Republicans trailing Democrats as the party most trusted to handle Iraq and terrorism. Nationally, Bush's war approval ratings hover around 30 percent.
Military members are skeptical, too. A Military Times poll released in December revealed that only 35 percent of military members approved of the president's handling of the war - despite the fact that 46 percent of them are self-identified Republicans (down from 60 percent in previous Military Times polls) while just 16 percent are Democrats.

QUOTE

You wouldn't sign a three-year $250,000 lease for a vehicle you could buy outright for $50,000, but our government does. The "cost-plus" procurement protocol pays contractors a fixed percentage on top of whatever they spend, encouraging them to spend as much and as inefficiently as possible. So rather than vehicles with minor mechanical damage being repaired, many are junked in favor of expensive replacements.

Enjoy!

Nomad

Feb 18 2007, 09:49 PM

This guy sure quote a lot of polls. Polls are meaningless unless the pollsters reveal the EXACT questions they asked. Nice try though................

ustrader

Feb 18 2007, 11:08 PM

QUOTE (Grizzly @ Feb 19 2007, 03:46 AM)

Here is a great editorial written by Thomas Schaller for the Salt Lake Tribune. I especially agree with these parts of the commentary.
Enjoy!

By Thomas F. Schaller
Special to The Baltimore Sun

Schaller is an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of Whistling Past Dixie.

Thomas F. Schaller is associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-author of a forthcoming book from SUNY Press on black state legislators. He has published academic articles in Constitutional Political Economy, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Public Choice, and Publius. In addition to appearances on C-SPAN, National Public Radio and various other television and radio programs, he has written op-eds for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Salon.com, and The American Prospect online, and is the political writer for Baltimore magazine

QUOTE

Objectivity:

* is an independent mental attitude which requires internal auditors to perform audits in such a manner that they have an honest belief in their work product and that no significant quality compromises are made. Objectivity requires internal auditors not to subordinate their judgment on audit matters to that of others. (

* is the universal understanding of a social action which is based on the combination of adequate interpretation of motivation and its empirical verification. Without adequate interpretation, our understanding left unsatisfied. But without empirical demonstration, a theoretical interpretation would be empty.

* state of being detached from, and external to, whatever is being perceived or affirmed, often previously seen as aiding neutrality and therefore accuracy in judgement, but now seen as impossible or inappropriate.

* The ability to view something without influence of feelings or emotions.

* Expressing no particular opinion, neither for nor against, a topic or issue.

Schaller; A true objective...

Believe
Why I believe in our president ( wink, wink)

by Thomas F. Schaller, Executive Editor
10.26.04

Yada...Yada...

In objective conclusion;

Finally, I believe a white man of privilege who was accepted to Yale University despite a middling performance in prep school; was accepted to Harvard Business School despite a middling performance at Yale; was admitted to the Texas Air National Guard despite no flight background and an entrance exam score in the bottom quartile; was given funds by Osama bin Laden's father to start a failed oil company; and was chosen to serve as Texas governor and 43rd President of the United States despite a lifelong record of mediocrity, is a man with the moral authority to criticize affirmative action as a policy that gives opportunities to the undeserving.

Make no mistake: I believe that President Bush, just as he promised he would, has restored honor and integrity to the White House and united us as Americans.

http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=249

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectio...articleId=11674

A potrait of Schaller's collective idiom's of relativism's reality;

Schaller likes to apply evolutionary theory to contemporary politics in his classes. "Evolutionary psychology informs our understanding of what sorts of people emerge as leaders, whether by force or by election," he says. One of Schaller’s courses incorporates Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer-winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel. "It shows how the peopling of the planet was a function of random factors that have nothing to do with the inherent superiority of any particular ethnicity or ideology," Schaller says. Classic Neo-relativism

Schaller, Breeds the political science department’s legislative Collectivist internship program, which assigns students to Virus offices of local and congressional politicians including Governor Parris Glendening, and current gubernatorial candidates Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and GOP congressman Robert Ehrlich.

Many interns go on to paid jobs straight out of college, while many more attend graduate or law school after UMBC HAVING BEEN BRED with future plans for a government service career. "They are some of the finest students I have taught, and I am proud to be associated with them," says Schaller.

Politics also play a big role in Schaller’s family life. His fiancée, Traci Siegel, is the executive director of the Women’s Vote Center project at the Democratic National Committee. "Our first real date was a Saturday picnic on the 4th of July weekend in 2000 — on the lawn of the White House!" Schaller says.

Naturally, dinner table discussions in the Schaller home revolve around political issues. "We really built our relationship during the turmoil of that bizarre presidential recount following the 2000 election," Schaller says. "People may never know who really won in Florida, but from my point of view, the real winner of the recount was me."

(Translation;

From the vitrol and anger arising from that 2000 election, I became, an obscure WINNER, using the confused outcomed from that election, and my new Democratic "insider connections" to sell my "incites" to the suckers of nay.

Taking me from an obscure LOSER that my going nowhere quick career was as an invisible Associate Professor merely lying in oblivion waiting for TENURE, in a hope of reaching that true collectivist's Narvana, TENURE!!

http://www.umbc.edu/window/schaller.html

Grizzly

Feb 19 2007, 11:57 AM

QUOTE (ustrader @ Feb 19 2007, 01:08 AM)

By Thomas F. Schaller
Special to The Baltimore Sun

Schaller is an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and author of Whistling Past Dixie.

Yes he is progressive, trader. I won't try to hide it. But others have started topics before using conservative writers.

QUOTE ("ustrader")

Believe
Why I believe in our president ( wink, wink)

by Thomas F. Schaller, Executive Editor
10.26.04

Yada...Yada...
In objective conclusion;

Finally, I believe a white man of privilege who was accepted to Yale University despite a middling performance in prep school; was accepted to Harvard Business School despite a middling performance at Yale; was admitted to the Texas Air National Guard despite no flight background and an entrance exam score in the bottom quartile; was given funds by Osama bin Laden's father to start a failed oil company; and was chosen to serve as Texas governor and 43rd President of the United States despite a lifelong record of mediocrity, is a man with the moral authority to criticize affirmative action as a policy that gives opportunities to the undeserving.

Make no mistake: I believe that President Bush, just as he promised he would, has restored honor and integrity to the White House and united us as Americans.

http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=249

QUOTE ("Gadflyer.com")

*Note to readers: Though I often disagreed with the views expressed by the late Michael Kelly, I always respected his opinions and, especially, his style – which he famously displayed in his February 4, 1998 Washington Post column. I do not intend to denigrate Mr. Kelly, his life or his life's work by so blatantly appropriating his rhetorical style; indeed, I consider the imitation posthumously flattering.

A parody nonetheless of Michael Kelly's earlier editorial of Clinton.

QUOTE ("ustrader")

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectio...articleId=11674

Nice article, trader. Thanks. What do you think about this part?

QUOTE

...What’s neither amusing nor ironic, but rather sad, is the state of political advice when it comes to the Democrats’ problems in the South. Saunders’ consultancy career, after all, depends on solving the following riddle: How is it that working-class whites -- especially those in the rural parts of the South who sit side by side with similarly situated working-class southern blacks at high school sporting events on Friday nights, shop at the same businesses on Saturday afternoon, attend similar (if different denominational) Christian churches on Sunday morning, and send their kids to the same public schools the following Monday -- troop to the ballot box on the first Tuesday every other November vote and pull the lever for the Republicans while their black neighbors are voting overwhelmingly Democratic? The answer is complex but, of course, is rooted in race...

Yes, indeed. The day the Democrats lost the 'Solid South'; sad one, but necessary because it was the right thing to do, wouldn't you say?

Also, don't you think that Mr. Schaller's statement on those four pillars were correct ones? America has seem to lose it's faith in what the GOP has preached for some time now. Apparently the base of those 4 pillars have collapsed?

ustrader

Feb 19 2007, 02:17 PM

QUOTE (Grizzly @ Feb 20 2007, 01:57 AM)

Yes he is progressive, trader. I won't try to hide it. But others have started topics before using conservative writers.

Nor did I. The issue I raised, is not in the right or wrong nor of it being about even progressive and non-progresssive idioms.

Instead, one where one can or should NOT argue with an the nature of an opinion beyond perhaps its factual basis and motivations if distortions are note, for in that is merely one loudly yelling at another who is deaf and mute, who is not likely to hear you or really want to hear you even if they could.

My topic was exclusively as to when or if mendacity is hidden in pretense of objectivity. As we see is so often the underpinnings in either those who have a voice of venue to opine, especially from the concentration camps of all powerful "professor-dom's", over dominate progressive Academia, verse those who have none to little in such venues within these madras like “same think” breeding grounds. Where, the few opposed to progressive idioms are being shouted down and or excluded outright from this near exclusive PILLAR of progressive voiced venues. Venues sit on one way only same think breeding grounds, laid out as if objective, but far from such, as this fellow clearly, a insider Democratic pundit espousing as if intellectually objective, as a academic’s were always endowed as such in Molly Ivins venoms of Dan rather-ism’s of the day. Yet, as we see often, underpinned in breeding as to some measure of non-objective propensity, as this Democratic insider so clearly shows in his progressive.

A parody nonetheless of Michael Kelly's earlier editorial of Clinton.

Nice article, trader. Thanks. What do you think about this part?

Yes, indeed. The day the Democrats lost the 'Solid South'; sad one, but necessary because it was the right thing to do, wouldn't you say? Yet, I agree it was sad day, but for whom is the real meat of the issue, as the outcomes since have proven more sad for some than others, adding this non-monolithic nor really not diverse so called 4 pillars are not set in the stones of the vastly growing Southern origins, as much, if not equally, more embedded within the western and heartland cultures and values that the progressive idioms of elite coasters seem to think they represent, which they do not, as this election has proven in even as to the type and disposition of the Blue Dog democrats have proven..

Also, don't you think that Mr. Schaller's statement on those four pillars were correct ones? We agree, that is, in part, why I laid the parity on the table. America has seem to lose it's faith in what the GOP has preached for some time now. Apparently the base of those 4 pillars have collapsed?

Two or three words you use, give rise to the clear uncertainty you have in your statement Seems to, and, apparently, being self evident of that. I would not assume that the lost, if any at all, of this, which may or may not exists, as if clearly distinctive as presumed in this one size fits all base that is assumed to be a monolithic encapsulation culled as such in having only this narrow diversity as in and of ONLY these 4 pillars.

Nor, would I presume, as you have, that the Democrats have not lost as much and thus far proven more from what it has turned its progressive backs on. As it has slithered away from the center into this noxious foam of far left progressivism that is far a more monolithic set of smaller pillars, which merely bellow to different monologues of collectivist progressivism.

Oddly, in measure of effectiveness, often than not, at ever major venue where it became the majority it has proven far less effective and compatible in coexisting with human nature’s innate propensity and desire to sit its own bars of achievement and success. Something afar from the tethering of all in a egalitarian soup to a bar of lowering standards, that sits success and achievement more toward the lowest common denominator than in being all you can be as is natural for humans. Offered up in collectivist’s offerings, to its god of effective mediocrity, as if that was the utopian standard bearer of greatness when it is really merely the road to mediocrity.

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