Monday, August 19, 2013

Moderates Need Not Apply ... J. D. Longstreet

Moderates Need Not Apply
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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I have no clue, at this writing, whom the next republican  candidate for President of the USA will be.  But I do know this:  for the GOP to even be in the running, their candidate had better be conservative -- and conservative to the core.

Christie and Brown can save their time and money.  Rubio has a snowball's chance in Hades.  He's finished so far as the conservative core of the GOP is concerned.  The immigration debacle showed him for what he really is and conservatives do not like being duped.  He's done.

If the GOP insists on offering up another moderate he/she will go the way of Dole, McCain, and Romney.

Ted Cruz?  I don't think Cruz is qualified to be President of the USA.  I mean by the circumstances of his birth, understand.  I think he'd probably make a hell of a president, but I don't expect he'll ever see the inside of the Oval Office -- except as a visitor.

OK.  I can see some of you think that just because the democrats have an illegal poser in the office as US President that the republicans can do the same thing.  Well, dear reader, you are W R O N G!

I am in my eighth decade of living in the United States and one thing I have learned about US politics -- above all others -- is this:  There are two sets of morals and two sets of laws governing the democrats and the republicans.  Basically, it works like this:  Anything the democrats can get away with is moral and legal.  Everything the republicans do is, at best, questionable and probably immoral AND illegal.  If you keep that in mind you will seldom go wrong in 21st century America.

If you have been fooling yourself into believing the democrats are going to allow a conservative candidate with an actual chance to beat Hillary to get his name on a ballot for President of the US then please, allow me to disabuse you of that deeply mistaken belief.  It will not happen.

Had the GOP had the intestinal fortitude God gave a gnat, Obama would have been challenged and his name scrubbed from the list of candidates before the 2008 election. But they didn't - and we now have a communist centered government in the (temporarily) United States of America.

A couple of things on the 2016 election:

One: Hillary will be the Democratic Party candidate.

Two: She will win.


(A hurried disclaimer -- or caveat -- is in order, I believe:  "...  barring an act of God.")

No matter if the GOP runs a moderate or a conservative a host of GOP voters WILL stay home.  That is a given.  The party is that riven ... and don't forget, the GOP is leaderless, too.

Then there is this:  The GOP has already lost the 2016 Electoral College vote.

Myra Adams , in a column at The Daily Beast dot com, says the GOP’s biggest problem is that Democrats start with 246 electoral votes. 

The American electorate spends little (if any) time trying to decipher and understand the electoral college and how it is the Electoral Vote that decides elections for President in America.

There are a total of 538 electoral votes.  The candidate receiving 270 of those votes wins -- period!  And yes, it is possible, indeed it has happened a number of times, that a candidate can win the popular vote amongst the electorate and STILL LOSE THE ELECTION -- BECAUSE HIS OPPOSITION WON THE 270 ELECTORAL VOTES.

When you seriously analyze the electoral vote and add the number of electoral votes from the "blue" states you will quickly see that the democrats begin each Presidential Election cycle with over 90% of the electoral college already assured.

Ms. Adams explains it this way:  "After totaling the electoral votes in all the terminally blue states, an inconvenient math emerges, providing even a below average Democrat presidential candidate a potential starting advantage of 246. Here are the states and their votes:

CA (55), NY (29), PA (20), IL (20), MI (16), NJ (14), WA (12), MA (11), MN (10), WI (10), MD (10), CT (7), OR (7), HI (4), ME (4), NH (4), RT (4), VT (3), DE (3), DC (3).

Let me repeat, if only for the shock value: 246 votes out of 270 is 91 percent. That means the Democrat candidate needs to win only 24 more votes out of the remaining 292. (There are a total of 538 electoral votes.)"
  SOURCE:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/18/can-a-republican-win-270-electoral-votes-in-2016-or-ever.html

Ms. Adams states that 63% of Americans favor dumping the Electoral College and going solely with the poplar vote.  I'm not so sure about that, but that is a topic for another day.

Ms. Adams says:  "To change from the Electoral College to direct voting would require a constitutional amendment. But it is highly doubtful that such an amendment would gain any traction in Congress since Democrat leaders have grown fond of the severely slanted Electoral College and have no incentive to make such a change. (Yes, Democrats also remember Al Gore in 2000, but that was ancient electoral math.)"  SOURCE: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/18/can-a-republican-win-270-electoral-votes-in-2016-or-ever.html  

So.  You can see an awful lot of work remains for the GOP to field a winning candidate for 2016.   It will be even more daunting if, as I suspect, Hillary is the dem's candidate.

Conservatives should not fool themselves.  Fielding a moderate candidate will not be a winning answer nor will fielding a candidate open to legal challenge in the courts as to his qualifications for the office of President.

The GOP needs leadership and it needs it badly. 

This is a defining moment for the GOP.  I am of the opinion that should the republicans go with another moderate candidate, they will create a third party as a result.  That "third party" could be an entirely new party, or -- it could turn out to be the Republican Party itself!

© J. D. Longstreet
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2 comments:

Unknown said...

I agree. Read John Titor's posts. You'll be surprised with what you'll find.

toto said...

To abolish the Electoral College would need a constitutional amendment, and could be stopped by states with as little as 3% of the U.S. population.

Instead, The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC), by state laws.

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.

When the bill is enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The presidential election system that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).

Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in recent closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%.
Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The bill has passed 32 state legislative chambers in 21 rural, small, medium, and large states with 243 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 10 jurisdictions with 136 electoral votes – 50.4% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote