Based on his policy prescriptions, Ron Paul would have made a first rate GOP candidate for president… about 100 years ago.

A fiat currency is based on nothing. The only reason it has any value is that it once WAS based on a commodity.

Wrong. We don’t have “fiat currency”; it’s based on the productivity of our private sector. You should read a beginning econ book on the functions of money sometime.
One of them, which is no longer applicable is “a store of value”, indicating intrinsic value. In fact, in our system, things are worth what people are willing to pay for them, and so value is the resultant of supply and demand, not the quantity of a certain metal available at any given time.
Modern free enterprise uses money as a medium of exchange and as a unit of accounting.

Your way is the way of stagnation and govt-controlled rationing. Our present way is the way of free people making free choices. Your way is based on fear. You are willing to trade security for freedom, on the economic level. Not a good idea, but typical of Paul type isolationism and refusal to deal with the realities of modern economics and politics.

Here are the facts: we don’t have a balanced budget. We use a fiat currency. We have military bases all over the world.

These are positives, not negatives. The real problem is wasteful and unproductive social spending. Paul’s nutball isolationism is a menace.

Brenarlo,

For the record, I happen to agree with you on the need for a balanced budget. That’s one of the things Paul and I see eye-to-eye on. However, it’s not the only issue he talks about (I think he’s wrong on many of the others) and his approach is terribly off-putting.

Here are the facts: we don’t have a balanced budget. We use a fiat currency. We have military bases all over the world. These things are all true, and have been going on for years. It’s going to take work, effort, and some persuasive power to dial them back.

The Congressman’s supporters stomping their feet and saying “I want it NOW!” like a bunch of toddlers only marginalizes Paul’s ideas. Which sucks on the occasions when he happens to be right. Without some willingness to talk like adults, though, we never even get to have the conversation.

Why don’t you just call us rubes and get it over with?

Fine. Rubes.

As the leader of the free world, it would be nice if our allies respected us because our leaders reflected our intelligence, worldliness, and could maybe hold their own in a conversation regarding our allies’ writers and philosophers, and not just because we are rubes with the fanciest guns on the block.

So yes. I believe that our president ought to have more than a rudimentary understanding of economics to be an effective foreign policy executive.

Sarah Palin, who could not name a handful of major newspapers, is a rube. A fiscally conservative rube (supposedly), but a rube all the same. She might make an ideal voter, but certainly not an ideal leader of the free world.

And now that the elections are over, it is a relief to finally voice my reservations. Hopefully, our next candidate will not be such a transparent, caricatured attempt to sway “Joe Six-Pack.” Maybe Joe Six-Pack, a talented plumber, would prefer someone a bit more intellectually qualified to deal with the other leaders of the world than other plumbers.

The WSJ offered a somewhat different take on the nature of younger, and more independent, voters here.

Back in 1954, only 22% of voters identified themselves as independents, according to the American National Election Survey. Fifty years later the number was nearly double. Now, two out of five Americans can’t name anything they like about the Democrats, and 50% say the same about Republicans…

This is the new mainstream in American politics, and it’s growing among younger voters. More than 40% of college undergraduates identify themselves as independents, according to a summer 2008 survey by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP). “Half of young Americans do not identify with traditional party or ideological labels — they are the new center in American politics,” says John Della Volpe of IOP.

This trend extends to 30- to 45-year-old Generation X voters as well, says the author of “X Saves the World,” Jeff Gordinier: “Gen Xers tend to be pretty post-ideological and pragmatic, there is less allegiance to any one party or any one way of thinking.”

For Americans who’ve grown accustomed to hundreds of cable channels and unlimited choices on the Internet, politics is the last place people are expected to be satisfied with a choice between Brand A and Brand B.

Putting a fiscally conservative agenda at the top in general instead of a socially conservative agenda would help too.

This is exactly what I think the repub party will miss the point on. It will regroup and go more socially conservative while the average voter is fairly central on social issues. They lost the faith of their base when they lost the fiscal conservative values. That is why I actually did switch to the “big L” as the repubs have had many chances to return to a more libertarian basis.

Yes the republicans need to engage the youth vote. However this is something that the parents and mentors will have to establish. The youth of today is being brainwashed by teachers whom push the liberal agenda for the most part. We as parents need to teach our children the value of of being self made instead of entitlements, earmarks. If we the republicans could track those young people standing in the crowds screaming for Barrack we would find out that many of them will be singing a different tune in 15 to 20 years. It is easy to back the giveaways when you have nothing but not so easy when you are of a age of discernment and the give aways come from your purse or wallet, and the ability to provide for your own family.

jvftz,

I saw this on Fox this morning.

Its hard to swallow the notion that the black vote for Obama was based on anything policy-related and not purely on racial identification. One need only have watched the TV networks Tuesday night to see that.

On the other hand, those “black and Hispanic” voters you mention aren’t likely the same younger voters referred to by Rob and the WSJ.

As for abortion, while I heartily agree with your characterization of it as “evil” I think that the ambivalence of younger voters is directly related to conservatives having lost much of the past several decades’ culture wars to the moral equivalence “progressives.” Its not hard to question the fitness or the willingness to defend this country of someone who fiercely defends any and all abortions and who spent 20 years listening to the sermons Jeremiah Wright.

Putting a fiscally conservative agenda at the top in general instead of a socially conservative agenda would help too.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s WAY past time to take the party back from the religious extremists that Bush sold it to in 2000. If we didn’t come across as hypocritical, moralizing geezers it would do a lot to bring younger people back into the fold.

Putting a fiscally conservative agenda at the top in general instead of a socially conservative agenda would help too.

Not putting provincials (fiscally conservative as some of they are) who sputter “God this” and “God that” at the top of the ticket might help a bit too — especially since a majority of “youths” are conditioned by academia to appreciate intellect these days.

Maybe the GOP ought to chill with the Rove strategy of turning itself into an Evangelical, anti-”late-drinking-intellectual” party. Young people these days like lates… just saying.

I would have had a much easier time convincing my friends to vote for McCain if they couldn’t come back at me with, “But Palin sounds so fucking dumb.” Interview-editing aside, she really does.

I think the GOP would be well-served with every demographic if they actually returned to our ideological base: discussing the failures of big government, it’s fiscal irresponsibility, lack of quality outcomes, detachment from community life, and how it all relates to how life should be in our country.

I suspect that going with Big Ideas, dredging up Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations in debates, promoting the wonder of our Do It Yourself cultural history. This might let “us” steal back the intellectual edge that the Dems always aim for. Force the young to learn the arguments for and against varying economic theories and their applications, and….I can’t help but believe the outcome will favor conservatism.

And….p’raps some good ole fashioned witch hunts to force the criminals, snake-oil salesmen, and less-than-conservative repubs from office: show the nation a commitment to real values by only promoting good and virtuous leaders to positions of power. Kids eat that stuff up, it’s their youthful idealism

Rob – I think you hit the nail on the head with this:

I don’t think that just because someone talks about God they’re anti-intellectual.

Just because someone is vocal about their religion doesn’t make them anti-intellectual, stupid, etc. I suspect that what Hairy Polemic was getting at is by picking Palin as the #2 slot, she appeared really provincial in her way of speaking and simplistic in her views.

Where, as other comments have pointed out, the #1 slot was anything but a fiscal conservative. Combine that with the “provincial” impression… and well we saw what the results were.

jvftz,

I see your point, of course, but how valid is your assumption about Black voters’ stand on issues, or how meaningful, if they continue to vote overwhelmingly for candidates whose stand is antithetical to their own?

Besides, I maintain that very few Democrat voters actually vote FOR specific policy proposals. Instead they vote overwhelmingly against their presumed enemies, oblivious to the consequences.

Barack Obama spent weeks insisting, stupidly, that 20 years in the pew of Wright’s church meant nothing, despite his earlier pronouncements that Wright had been his mentor and spiritual advisor. Its what happens when one’s two guiding principles are moral relevance and situational ethics.

All of which simply reinforces my point about the necessity of not losing the culture war. Right and wrong matter!

Fly,

What are we compromising for? Compromising on things such as balanced budgets is EXACTLY what got the GOP in the mess they’re in. You either have a balanced budget or you do not. Once you legitimize an unbalanced budget by accepting it, then you’ve allowed for a debate as to how unbalanced should it be. We don’t want that debate. We want a balanced budget.

Here are the options: 1) you actually balance the budget now 2) you vote for a budget that reduces the growth in spending a little bit and legitimize the idea of having an unbalanced budget.

If you pick 2… you lose. We’ve been picking 2 for a long time.

It’s amazing how the free-market party is so ignorant to the consequences of its victories. The free-market has ushered an image-based advertising culture, boys and girls, get with the program (the Democrats certainly have).

… especially since a majority of “youths” are conditioned by academia to appreciate intellect these days.

Hairy,

I’d re-write that last sentence. Its the presumption of intellect that they are being conditioned to appreciate, not the real thing at all.

I have a pair of 19 year olds, and I’ve gone to great pains over the years to prepare them for the sanctimony of academia. The level of pretension the boys have encountered would be humorous… were it not so pitiful.

Its the presumption of intellect that they are being conditioned to appreciate, not the real thing at all.

Touche. But it is what it is. If you want the youth vote, then at least maintain the presumption of intellect.

Rob,

She couldn’t name newspapers off the top of her head in response to a gotcha question during a high-pressure interview?

Are you serious? Asking someone to name a few major newspapers is a gotcha question? Maybe if you’re 9 years old…

If she doesn’t sound like what ivory tower elitists think she should sound like…she’s stupid.

Nonesense. Fred Thompson sounds like a narcoleptic, but the things he says make him sound brilliant.

And I actually kind of like Palin’s accent. She doesn’t sound stupid, she speaks stupid. Her rhetoric is either backed by ignorant assumptions (like with the fruit fly research) or with religious conviction.

I don’t see why our leader has to fit into some cookie cutter that pleases the global political elite.

Because the alternative to pleasing our allies, is holding them under our boot. I don’t mind preemptive defense, but why be a bad guy if you can avoid looking it?

Hairy wants a movie President. Someone who looks and sounds good.

Ya. Sorry Rob, but the position carries charisma as a qualification these days. You may not like it, but you’re the one who started the thread about how the GOP could attract more “youth” voters.

So you can’t name a single con for us, huh 108?

And don’t try to pull a fast one and say something dumb like you are a real con. Because that is just silly.

Any political party that thinks the State has the right to define some people as non-humans is a totalitarian party that has no business existing in America.

Yes. But remember that millions of Americans feel that any political party that thinks the State has the right to deny women their freedom of choice has no business existing in America

But remember that millions of Americans feel that any political party that thinks the State has the right to deny women their freedom of choice has no business existing in America

Right; killing innocent babies as a method of birth control is so much better. /sarcasm

I don’t know of any “real conservatives”…

Your ignorance is noted.

Surely you would agree with me then, that the federal reserve shouldn’t be able to print money whenever it wants.

A false construct; this is just another propaganda item. The monetary supply does require some management, although it should be minimal; just enough to ensure economic growth.
I would hope that all the money needed would be printed.
Printing money doesn’t create value; our economic system does that.
Remember the bottom line of our system: Things and people are worth what someone is willing to pay for them.

Yes. But remember that millions of Americans feel that any political party that thinks the State has the right to deny women their freedom of choice has no business existing in America

That’s news?

Of course millions of people “feel” that way. I knew that.

That doesn’t change the fact that one side is opposing an injustice, and the other side is promoting an injustice.

Given enough time, those who promote an injustice fail, because human nature makes it impossible for an injustice to exist forever without resistance.

Abortion is the killing of people. Since these people who are being killed have committed no offense against anyone, killing these people is a crime, an injustice.

The fact that millions of people choose to deny the observable facts of biology is politically important, but the facts of biology do not change just because some people “feel” a certain way, or because some people make this or that political choice.

Robert108,

Surely you would agree with me then, that the federal reserve shouldn’t be able to print money whenever it wants.

Real conservatives, who aren’t either Senators or lawyers, scare the crap out of lefties and RINOs.

108, I don’t know of any “real conservatives” do you?
What are their names?

A false construct; this is just another propaganda item. The monetary supply does require some management, although it should be minimal; just enough to ensure economic growth

.

A college student recently sent me this regarding how the markets work. It should lighten spirits.

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf.
In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.”

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars.

They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys!

Now you have a better understanding of how the WALL STREET BAILOUT PLAN WILL WORK !!!!

Not putting provincials (fiscally conservative as some of they are) who sputter “God this” and “God that” at the top of the ticket might help a bit too–especially since a majority of “youths” are conditioned by academia to appreciate intellect these days.

Provincials? Seriously?

Why don’t you just call us rubes and get it over with?

Now, I’m pretty libertarian myself and I don’t think I can be accused of being anti-intellectual, but I don’t think that just because someone talks about God they’re anti-intellectual.

This party unity stuff has to work both ways, Harry.