An Appeal to the 62%: Georgia isn’t Indiana
Last night, Charlie Harper and I were on 11Alive discussing Presidential Politics. He remarked that everyone has a crazy uncle who says racist things, but nobody in the family wants him to have the nuclear codes. That about sums up the problem Republicans in Georgia face. You share some DNA with an irresponsible bigot, so what are you going to do about it?
Like retweeting DA King and reposting the Christian Index, voting for Donald Trump is a vote for a racist, sexist, and impractical demagogue. But Republicans other option is Hillary Clinton, so what do you do?
You can start by examining whether the perception you have about Hillary is reality, or was just a narrative to defeat policies and people with which you disagreed. In the 90’s, Hillary became the personification of the evils of healthcare reform. To defeat that idea, Hillary became an bogeyman, or bogeywoman, as misogyny was enlisted in this effort. Her failure to take her husband’s name, her manner, her suits, all became part of the conversation.
The 1993 Health Care Reform became HillaryCare, just as the 2009 one became ObamaCare. They made the idea about the person, and that time racism got called up from the minors to take part. The he’s “really a Muslim” and “not really an American” arguments were the symptoms.
This doesn’t make you sexist or racist because you opposed a health care law. But it also shouldn’t surprise you that when sexism and racism have been so much a part of the anti-Hillary and Barack rhetoric that the Republican primary was won by someone who is both racist and sexist.
Removing the tribalism engendered from those efforts, what’s left? She probably wants the CDC to be able to study gun violence. Is that so bad? Is it worse than being cool with a nuclear Saudi Arabia? Because on the issues that’s the choice here.
62% of Republican primary voters in Georgia preferred someone other than Trump in March. And over 80% of that group voted for someone whose parents emigrated here. That’s who has to make this decision.
You have decide if the gap between you and Hillary is greater than the gap between you and Trump. She’s not here to upset the apple cart, and in many areas there will be little change from Obama’s. It’s a moderate, and if you ask Bernie and his friends, a conservative agenda. If you are still closer to Trump, it might not be because of the issues.
You can’t keep your racist uncle from Thanksgiving, but you can keep Donald Trump out of the White House. For the good of the party and the nation, consider making other plans come November 8th.
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Too little; too late.
But there is a silver lining! After Clinton wins this you can all go back to the same old, tired strategy of obstructionism and (this time around) sexism to justify doing absolutely nothing to your base. You won’t have to change tactics at all! So easy.
Exactly. they should know by now Hillary is hyper-partisan, which is a plus for business as usual in Congress.
Limbaugh needs more than ratings to save him. Stations and advertisers fleeing from him due to high cost
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Americans are a lot more threatened by a leader that would stand down police when rioters are at their door or looting their government programs than the supposition that a president in a room full of military advisors is going to irrationally push a nuclear button.
one track thinking – try closer to home
Think about the riot threat for a moment and those that benefit from its use. Is it possible that it was created out of whole cloth in the same way the Obama was born in Kenya was? Take a sec and re-examine these “truths” we hold about Obama and Hillary and decide if they have actual factual basis. Not infowars, zerohedge, breitbart backing, but an actual basis in truth. They have the ring of truth from being oft-repeated but you aren’t the type to back a theory without a sound basis. Is this one actually sound?
Depends on where you live, Baltimore, Fergueson, Sanford, Miami, LA…..
For me it was being on the phone with a nurse relative in Baltimore into the night in her apartment and until she got through the police lines around the hospital. And watched the freely looting of people’s business. It was a relatives home in Florida looted and burned as access to their neighborhood was denied and left unprotected. I understand the hyperbole from both sides today and will accept my interpretations of personal experience can be flawed but they form my vision of reality.
I still have a spot of optimism as I am a rare person that hasn’t become heavily armed in the last several years. But then I choose to live in areas with a lot of good folks legally carrying.
I highly recommend the heavily armed option, Salty! When seconds matter, the police are minutes away!
I appreciate that response. My issue with is is not whether or not there have been riots, but whether the reaction of a Clinton administration would be better or worse than a Trump one. His statements about killing the family members of jihadis lead me to think vengeance might be his goal. I can’t imagine that type of reaction would lead to great results as applied to the situations you mentioned.
Speaking of vengeance: Back in the 80’s when all of our Americans were being kidnapped in Beruit, those a$$wipes thought it would be cool to do it to a Soviet/Russian, too. The Soviets nabbed a relative of one of the kidnappers and mailed his ears to the kidnappers and told them they’d receive the rest of his body if their kidnapped guy wasn’t released immediately. Guess what? He was released. I like vengeance in that case.
Trump is more likely to consider a first responder innocent until proven guilty when protecting life and property. Shooting looters in a curfue might get a few relatives involved better than vengeance. I’ll go with him and put you on a retainer. ?
Looters or terrorists
Hilly has a “moderate” agenda? She may be “Burnie lite” on domestic issues but that does not make her moderate. She would expand most all taxpayer funded domestic programs. She wants more troops in Syria, a no-fly zone and regime change. Hilly does not have a “moderate agenda.”
Only a small number of Republicans would agree with her Syria policy.
Lol. Thank you for this… I had to look at the URL 3 times to remind myself that I wasn’t reading The Onion. I needed a good laugh to start my day. Cheers!
Glad I could help! I’m not expecting you to vote for Hillary, BJ, just take a moment to consider if the demonization of her personally is justified in light of Trump’s actual hostility to the Constitution. I recognize that using Hillary in that way serves various ends, and if your nominee were Kasich, Bush, Rubio etc, your choice would be very easy, but despite party label, Trump isn’t really your guy. It’s tribalism, not policy. It’s hatred over solutions. I’ve met you and I respect that your core belief system is much more conservative than my own, but I doubt you’d be on board with denying American citizens the right to travel because they are Muslims. I also doubt you’d be in favor of the type of laws they have in Thailand to protect the ruler there. Both of those are things he’s suggested. He’s cool with a nuclear Saudi Arabia. Seriously. Is that really consistent with your beliefs? That’s setting aside his racist statements, his misogynistic statements and actions, and his encouragement of white supremacist support.
I entirely respect that Hillary’s positions are inconsistent with your own, but they are at least on the political spectrum. Trump’s are just authoritarianism, which is what we all say we don’t want.
But what does the Center for Disease Control (CDC) have to do with studying gun violence? Where does all of the black on black gun crime in Chicago fall in with Zika research, diabetes and cancer? Maybe that is like having NASA’s mission as underscored by Obama to figure out how Muslims have contributed anything to space! LOL! Sheeeesh!
The CDC’s mission: “CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same. CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.”
In short, the CDC is dedicated to solving public health issues. Whether you like it or not, gun violence is a public health issue. I guarantee the health of more Americans will be affected by gun violence every year for my hopefully long lifetime than whose health will be affected by Zika, Malaria, Dengue Fever, and Ebola combined.
Yawwwnnnnn…
wake up Noway. Think about it, if they put the ATF under the CDC we might have avoided Ruby Ridge or Waco and our stills won’t be busted up……we can talk it out with them !
The ‘talking’ branch is in the ‘National Institutes of Health’
LOL! +1
Presumably the CDC is very good at studying ‘epidemics’, and all the components that are involved with the propagation of such, including physical, social, environmental, etc.
I’ll just quote from http://www.cdc.gov/injury/about/index.html :
“For more than 20 years, CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (the Injury Center) has helped protect Americans from injuries and violence. We are the nation’s leading authority on injury and violence. We study violence and injuries and research the best ways to prevent them, applying science and creating real-world solutions to keep people safe, healthy, and productive.”
This includes CDC research on motor vehicle safety and injuries, child abuse, youth sports concussions, etc. Studying gun violence would fall SQUARELY within the Injury Center’s purview, were it not for the Congressional limitations.
More likely the National Institutes of Health would do the studies if the government allowed any thing.. There is also privately funded research underway, like that being done by the Pew and Johns Hopkins that could get government grants.
Even silly research can have value. Publically funded research in the yearly 1930’s on how melons rotted and decayed sounds like a waste of tax payer money. That research, along with research findings of 3 other European scientists were built off of each other work and lead to the creation antibiotics.
An incredible thing about the Trump campaign from an academic / political science perspective is the rare opportunity to observe a major party’s establishment cravenly coalescence around an racist egotistical reality TV showman with no coherent or consistent ideology.
It was a joke when someone many months ago said that Trump is like a blog comment section running for president, but it’s proving to be a more accurate a prediction than was ever realized at the time.
Tolerating racism, or winning. It’s been an no-brainer for two decades.
He has a consistent ideology, “I’m great. Disagree? You are a loser.”
“I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It’s the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she’s way behind in second place. She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.” – P.J. O’Rourke
For instance, Hillary wants to solve America’s debt problem through higher taxes; Donald wants to solve it by destroying America’s credit rating and crashing the world economy. Hillary is comfortable with fighting the war on terrorism with drone strikes that might kill innocents; Donald wants to fight the war on terrorism by committing war crimes that TARGET innocents. Hillary likes the Iran nuclear deal; Donald is pro-nuclear proliferation throughout the world. Hillary is wishy-washy on free trade; Donald openly welcomes a trade war. Hillary wants to stiffen hate crime laws; Donald wants to weaken First Amendment protection so he can more easily sue and silence people who say mean things about him. Hillary believes in a “vast right-wing conspiracy”; Donald made his name in politics by being a spokesman for Birtherism, and he proudly believes in a laundry list of conspiracy theories from ‘Vaccines cause autism’ to ‘The Chinese invented global warming’ to ‘Vince Foster was murdered’ to ‘Ted Cruz’s dad was part of the JFK assassination.’
Donald Trump isn’t just wrong. On a disturbingly frequent basis, he’s wrong in ways that don’t even have mainstream support, but which he seems to have adopted from listening to Alex Jones broadcasts.
^This
y’all all have to know that trump isn’t actually gonna do all that stuff if he wins right…he will be who he was before all this running for president stuff started…he’s not building any stupid wall, he’s not banning anyone from entering the country, or any of that…he will govern center, maybe even center left based on his entire life before he became a candidate…he probably isn’t even a billionaire, forbes says maybe 2 billion, but i’ve seen other sites say less than that even…
Don’t you find that whole issue with his wealth confusing? I mean the guy’s ego apparently is so fragile that he has to tie is self-worth as a person to his net worth. I’ve read similar stories and you’re right in that he might not even be a billionaire in the first place!
Even if he was a billionaire, he is still way outdone by Bezos, Gates, Waltons, etc.
Don’t forget the size of his hands. That screams egomaniac more than how much money he has.
so, the implication of this is that anybody who supports him and believes that who he “is” now is not who he “is” overall…is that it’s totes OK to vote for a deceiver of the masses. that’s actual lying, not even the decades of hyped-up charges of lying that hillary has had to live with.
Maybe this is the year Libertarians can do better than their typical 1 percent at the polls (for president), with a more credible candidate (former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson) than they usually have. Certainly neither Clinton nor Trump stands for smaller government, and neither seems too well acquainted with the Constitution. Doubtless many voters wonder how we came up with Clinton and Trump—for many, two bad choices, maybe not as bad as choosing between Hitler or Stalin, or George Wallace and David Duke, but you get the idea…..
Well, at any rate I think people can now stop saying we are the “greatest country” when two craven, fundamentally loathsome individuals are the country’s nominations for President.
I would vote for Obama or even W (without Dick) if they could run again.
Maybe some medical tragedy will hit one of them, I have no solutions for this.
We have met the enemy and he is us.
This came about because of the voters. So take away our right to vote!
We sure forfeited our freedom to think to the takers and talkers.
You know Joe Biden is kicking himself for the fact that he didn’t run. I don’t agree with Joe, but I don’t look at him as an evil, lying, racist, egomaniac. He would be president if he had run.
Biden not running this go round was part of the agreement made 8 years ago. Hillary got to be SoS for 4 years and run for president the remaining 4. She screwed the pooch a few times as SoS and it all didn’t go to plan but what the hey, she may still win by the largest landslide ever in the Electoral College. I’m still entertaining the idea that the spewing Creamsicle was part of a plan that far exceeded their wildest expectations.
Well, Matt, don’t put a curse on Hillary. I want her healthy enough to live in a jail cell.