I admit it, I’m on board:
It’s cheap, I admit it. But after 8 years of “Bush lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction,” I’m having a hard time caring.
Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
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Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
I admit it, I’m on board:
It’s cheap, I admit it. But after 8 years of “Bush lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction,” I’m having a hard time caring.
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Dean:
I think someone else already posted this here…
I listened to it. I have a hard time believing it’s not a bunch of cherry-picked responses.
I know lots of people who voted for Obama and I don’t think any of them are as monumentally ignorant as this bunch. And I refuse to get into the mud with the Left and claim that Obama was only elected because the American people suddenly got stupid. That’s their game, I don’t play it. Besides, if this is how Republicans are going to fight Obama, it will be just as effective as how Democrats fought Bush.
Instead of insulting the voters, Republicans should be defining the narrative of Obama himself. There’s plenty to work with there.
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Barn. Door. Horse.
The most informed voters they could find? Hmmm. They all had to give permission to show themselves looking like idiots, right? CosCon is right, it does look fishy. Kind of Michael Moore tactics.
This seems to be a dramatization of this Zogby poll.
And to be quite honest, I would have a hard time believing that a series of videotaped interviews of McCain supporters would have shown them looking much smarter.
We have to be realistic about what democracy actually means: the voting public is not made up of a bunch of political wonks who spend all their time writing impassioned essays. It’s made up of regular people who only think about politics once every four years, and who chiefly get their voting directions from friends, family, and maybe a TV ad or two. And that’s a feature, not a bug. Democracy means trusting even an uninformed populace to make the generally right decision.
Of course, if the argument is that a biased media is sabotaging the concept of an uninformed populace, then there’s a point to be made. But this isn’t a great way to lead into it if they’re trying to score scientific points.
Then again, if who they’re trying to appeal to is the “uninformed general populace” and not a bunch of political bloggers, well…
"it will be just as effective as how Democrats fought Bush."
You mean, it will work and a republican will be elected president, assuming that they don’t nominate an actual traitor (Kerry, according to his own account, conspired with the enemy in a time of war to coordinate anti-war activities in this country)?
People are getting really clever with video editing these days.Â
I would not be surprised if that is a true representation of all Obama voters. I’m sure McCain would love to have a couple million extra ignorant people vote for him.
If a candidate can inspire the uninformed to vote in their favor than more power to them.
Generally, the people that read blogs are the INFORMED. We eat, sleep & breathe politics on an almost daily basis. We make up maybe 10% of the entire population of the US. The other 90% are at various levels, from somewhat informed to not at all informed.
Sometimes I wish I was blissfully ignorant of the world around me. My life would be less stressful.
To be honest, if I knew nothing about politics or what was going on in the world, I would have voted for Obama based on the fact that he was younger and looks more Presidential than McCain.
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ctl:
Democrats had multiple strategies in their battles with Bush. Their initial strategy was to say that he stole the election. When that lost steam they moved to "voters are stupid." This is the period where books like "What’s wrong with Kansas?" came out whining incessantly about how stupid the voters were.
The result was the 2004 election where Bush won convincingly and made gains in both the House and Senate.
Then the Democrats abandoned that strategy and elevated their "Bush is stupid, evil and corrupt" strategy to a full-on press. And THAT is the strategy that worked.
One problem Republicans have in trying to mirror that strategy is that the Press is not going to saturate the culture with it as they did when they were trying to get Bush and the Republicans out and Obama in.
One thing Republicans have to do is not just adopt ALL Democrat strategies, but figure out which ones WORKED. The "voters are stupid" one did NOT work.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Hottest 60s sitcom babe?
Zogby actually performed a scientific poll that confirmed this.  (I’ll put a link up in a second post).Â
Zogby took all kinds of heat from Obama’s minions, with claims of creating a “push pollâ€, yada, yada, all that stuff we’re used to hearing when a fact doesn’t fit the narrative…
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1642
What Zogby is trying to do is not to show that Obama voters are stupid, but to show that they were intentionally kept ignorant by a mainstream media that was in the tank for Obama.
I think his poll results do a credible job of demonstrating that. 85% of Obama voters know that "Sarah Palin" said she could see Russia from "her house" (which is not true, that’s what TINA FEY said on Saturday Night Live) but less than 30% of Obama voters know that Obama said he had campaigned in 57 states. In fact in the interview more than half of those interviewed said it was Sarah Palin who had said such a stupid thing.
I think the demonstration that voters were kept intentionally ignorant of Obama’s and Biden’s negatives, while flooded overwhelmingly with McCain’s and Palin’s negatives (some of which were untrue) is an absolutely true and fair statement.
And it’s still happening. Yesterday CNN had a headline story about Obama’s doodles vs. Palin’s doodles. The conclusion of the “experts” and “person in the street” interviews? Obama is a brilliant, talented person while Palin is immature and scatterbrained.
Hmm… paint me shocked that CNN would publish that story… not
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Hottest 60s sitcom babe?
And now Al-Zawahri comes out of the gate swinging, and calls Obama a “house negroâ€.   How will the media handle that one?
Cosmic,
I don’t see this video so much as "the voters are stupid" as "the media is in the tank for obama so deep they’re caught in the under-gravel filter". Admittedly, I only watched the first 45 seconds.
I think that the strategy would have to be to tie Obama to the sheer dishonesty of his media cheering squad; the meme that one wants is that Obama wants voters completely uninformed, and his media lapdogs helped.
I mean, recent years in politics have shown how little a message needs to have any sort of congress with reality. And I suspect that Obama is weakest in his rock star aura. Americans don’t like losers, but we do prefer underdogs.
I mean, when was the last time that a genuinely popular person was the hero of a movie? (I mean popular within the movie.)
ctl:
Hmm… I don’t watch enough movies, but I guess it depends on with WHOM the leading character is popular. Iron Man seemed pretty popular. The Hulk, not so much. Bond? Nah.
Can’t really draw a conclusion from that…
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Hottest 60s sitcom babe?
I know someone who thought that John McCain was an astronaut. Ho hum.
It’s sort of amusing that the guy who runs this actually thinks that figuring out that Obama voters digested and believed less right-wing talking points than they did left-wing talking points is actually a meaningful measure of mainstream media coverage. There are lots of other sources and avenues of rumor and gossip: by and large, people read and digest very little of what the MSM does cover. There are lots of people that can’t find Iraq on the map: but that’s not because they were never taught where it was, its because they didn’t remember it themselves. And the fact that Obama supporters are more likely to buy into and then regurgitate anti-Republican rhetoric and less likely to buy into anti-Democrat rhetoric should not come as a great surprise to anyone. Other than, I guess Ziegler.
"And it’s still happening. Yesterday CNN had a headline story about Obama’s doodles vs. Palin’s doodles. The conclusion of the “experts†and “person in the street†interviews? Obama is a brilliant, talented person while Palin is immature and scatterbrained."
A fluff piece certainly, but how is this different that the mainstream media coverage that, say, declared that Gore couldn’t decide who he was in 2000 because he had the temerity to wear different outfits to different events?Â
And isn’t it sort of possible that, well, the different conclusions reflect a certain reality, and if so, what is the media supposed to do, exactly? Present falsehoods to balance out reality?Â
You can hate and disagree with Obama all you want, but the guy really is pretty smart, ambitious, well informed and worldly. He was a conn law proffessor for goodness sakes. Maybe you think that makes him all the more dangerous. But not all people are equally brilliant. And frankly, now that the election over, you don’t think it’s okay to admit that, gosh darn it, Palin really WAS a shallow, scatterbrained mess of a candidate who doesn’t even come close to most other Republican politicians in terms of her grasp of, well, just about anything?
Bad:
Here’s a challenge for you. Go find me the CNN "fluff" or "lifestyle" story that reflects positively on Palin and negatively on Obama. Go on. Try. It’s gotta be easier than finding a needle in a haystack… doesn’t it? They can’t ALL be Obama PR pieces can they?
Your opinion of Sarah Palin is completely at odds with what the woman has accomplished. I assume you think she accomplished those things purely by accident.
You are so blinded by your partisanship that you don’t even recognize that you have slandered and slimed a woman you never met and for whom you have no direct knowledge of her capabilities or accomplishments. In my opinion you are simply reacting to your partisan bias. That’s all. I have a higher opinion of Sarah Palin than you do. Who is right? Well, I guess time will tell Bad. The same goes for your “brilliant” Obama. He isn’t chasing the tiger anymore, he’s riding it now. We’ll see if he acts as well as he talks.
And if you want to talk about “hate” your comments about Sarah Palin are far more “hateful” than anything I’ve said about Obama. In fact I have had several positive things that I’ve said about the man. He strikes me as a smart, canny, engaging man with a gift for oratory and writing and an ability to radiate empathy for people. Those are all good things.
Of course I also think he’s a socialist who blames America first. But that’s ideology, not personal ability. That’s not “hate” Bad. I don’t call him stupid, evil, ignorant, cowardly, etc…
Do liberals own mirrors? I wonder sometimes. Is that why so many have beards?
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Hottest 60s sitcom babe?
Er, Obama was never a law professor, Constitutional or otherwise. He taught a few classes, which anyone with a master’s degree (or law degree) can do.
Another win for America, another loss for the Bush Administration. I remember when Dean said that Bush could lock up people for any reason whatsover and no one could do anything about it. Where’s your Mea Culpa Dean?
http://tinyurl.com/6ylqxl
Another win for the Constitution and a loss for the Bush Adminstration.
Remember when Dean told us that the White House could lock up "suspected enemy combatants" for any reason whatsover and that there could be no appeal?
Where is the Mea Culpa?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081121/ap_on_go_ot/guantanamo_detainees
SFJim,
You have to release some terrorists in order for there to be a crisis for Obama within the first 6 months.
These 5 yo-yo’s go free and start causing problems in the States. Supreme Commander Obama comes down hard on these guys and they go back to Guantanamo.
Obama enacts the same Prison policy as Bush had. But this time it was Obama who enacted it, so naturally, its the best thing ever.
Â
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Well that’s interesting, two nearly-identical bit of stupid troll-postings from names that have never posted here on our WordPress blog. From the same person using different names, or is there some campaign on or something?
It is utterly false to suggest I ever said, or believe, that the White House could lock up “suspected enemy combatants” "for any reason whatsoever and that there could be no appeal." If someone told you I did, they lied to you and owe you and me an apology. If you made this up yourself(ves), you owe me the apology.
It’s possible in the middle of an argument somewhere I said something vaguely like that, but even then I doubt it. What I would have said is that in a war, people caught in a combat zone don’t have much in the way of due process rights. Their status is hazy legally, and morally ambiguous. The question becomes tricky when you have a war with an ambiguous ending.
So far I’m not particularly unhappy with how this has gone down. No real reason to be. It would be an outright lie to suggest that the administration was in the habit of just randomly declaring people enemy combatants though, and detaining them forever just to be mean. Yeesh.
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