chess online
| From | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
 defeatedhow are the republicans going to change their message so as to attract women? rep. todd akin - -if it's a legimitimate rape, the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down.' richard mourdock - 'in that horrible situation of rape, that is something god intended.' state rep roger rivard - 'consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry... some girls, they rape so easy.' rep joe walsh - 'in cases of rape and incest, i am still pro-life.' candidate tom smith - having a baby out of wedlock...is similar to rape.' candidate john koster - 'on the rape thing... how does more violence on tnto a woman's body (abortion) make it better? vp candidate paul ryan - 'the method of conception (rape) doesn't change the definition of life.' and the gop wonders why it struggles with women. |
||
|
Jeff |
||
|
my thoughts from another forum I frequent "I thought about starting a new thread about election impressions, but meh. Here's as good as anywhere. People are kind of talking about the stuff I want to talk about anyway here, and it's probably not really all that important anyway. I'm actually more bummed today than I thought I would be. But why? It's not like Romney was "my guy" or that I'm a Republican or that my projection was wrong. I actually did think Romney was going to win. You can blame my contrarian skeptical nature as I have a hard time taking too much that comes from the mainstream media very serious. It is interesting that all of the GOP internal polls were wrong. I guess what really bothers me is that the country seemed to make the wrong choice when they had the chance to make the right one when it comes to the bigger ideas, because of the little ones. But, then, I suppose the GOP really has no one to blame but themselves, even if the media doesn't help them out. I think that the GOP lost last night on the back of stupid social issues, which the left was able to very effectively use against the GOP. Which brings me to the points brought up earlier in the thread that the GOP will need to embrace some of the libertarian sort of ideas if it wants to stay relevant. The GOP needs to drop the social issues, including illegal immigration. Unless you're actually going to take border security seriously, then what is the point. The GOP needs to start advertising a path to legalization for those here. When the subjects of gay marriage or abortion or marijuana come up the GOP needs to take a "meh" opinion, a politically agnostic opinion on these issues (we aren't going to advance these issues or fight/stand against these issues because we think there are other important things that need to happen; if people want these things, then they can have them) - take them completely off the table and there is no ammunition. The evangelicals? Come on. Get cynical, like I know you can be - who else are they going to vote for? Quit talking about cutting government programs and define the discussion in the context of "effective government". Make it clear social security, medicare, medicaid, and even *gasp* ACA are not going anywhere - make it clear social programs will be there to help people who need it - again removing any ammunition. Then you work for reform from within those systems as needed. Highlight the differences where it really matters in the taxes, economy, and government control. I think you pick up any straggler libertarian types by actually working to decrease the police state - though this will never happen . . . hell, most people don't even think it's a problem. 4 more years . . ." |
||
|
josh but as long as they continue to fight for out dated and archaic morality laws, they are out of step with mainstream america, and will lose. |
||
|
dmaestro 07-Nov-12, 18:55 |
But Z has a point. I will say that a more fiscally conservative but socially liberal GOP could actually get my vote under some circumstances, because that is the political background I came from, but it ain't gonna happen. Social conservatives are not going to relinquish their ability to wag the dog in our lifetime. It is going to take a centrist party, one with people not addicted to conspiracy theories. |
||
|
dmaestro 07-Nov-12, 19:02 |
www.boston.com |
||
|
Doubling down on social conservatism is a non-starter. The GOP will be leaving these ideas behind, you can count on that. These kinds of defeats cause a party to re-evaluate itself, similar to when Mondale got owned by Reagan because the Democrats decided to double down on Jimmy Carter style leftism and subsequently moved to the center. The MSM will continue to try and paint the GOP in a certain light, only time will tell if that is successful. |
||
|
Zorro www.youtube.com Another fool that comes to mind is Dick Morris who gave a hundred reasons why there was going to be a Romney landslide. I'm glad he switched sides. |
||
|
www.youtube.com |
||
|
d*** morris m.youtube.com |
||
|
dmaestro 08-Nov-12, 09:00 |
|
||
|
|
||
|
Senate Races Expose Extent of Republicans’ Gender Gap By JENNIFER STEINHAUER Republicans, hoping to gain seats in the Senate, knew that their limited appeal among minorities would be a problem, as would party infighting. But they did not expect to be derailed by the definition of rape. Comments by two Republican Senate candidates concerning pregnancies that result from rape — which came after months of battles in Congress over abortion, financing for contraception and a once-innocuous piece of legislation to protect victims of domestic violence — turned contagious as one Senate candidate after another fell short of victory. In Indiana and Missouri, where voters are reliably conservative, Republicans lost their Senate battles even as many of those voters rejected President Obama. In Wisconsin, the Republican candidate, a former governor, lost to a female lawmaker who is decidedly more liberal than much of the state. In Connecticut, women over all turned against a Republican candidate who frequently reminded voters that she was a grandmother. Being a woman did not offset being a Republican when it came to winning many Congressional seats among female voters. While one Republican woman, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, will join the Senate in January, Democrats will add four women as senators, including Heidi Heitkamp, who was declared the winner in the race for North Dakota’s open Senate seat, the last undecided contest. There are currently 17 women in the Senate; two of them, both Republicans, are retiring. Republicans in the House entered the election with just 24 women. Now, unless another one prevails in late tallies, there will be 21. By contrast, there are 52 women among the Democrats in the House, and 61 are expected in the next Congress. Some Republicans conceded that they had worked to marginalize Representative Todd Akin after he suggested during his failed bid for a Senate seat in Missouri that a woman’s body was able to prevent a pregnancy resulting from “legitimate rape.” They did so because they were worried that their party was increasingly seen among voters as preoccupied with issues like the one sponsored by Republicans in Virginia that would have required women to undergo vaginal sonograms before they could have an abortion. “We have a significant problem with female voters,” said John Weaver, a senior Republican strategist. Mr. Akin’s comments, Mr. Weaver said, “did not seem like outliers.” Nor, he added, were those made by Richard E. Mourdock, whose Senate campaign in Indiana was derailed in spectacular fashion after he said in a debate that it was “God’s will” when a pregnancy resulted from rape. “They did not seem foreign to our party,” Mr. Weaver said. “They seemed representative of our party.” The comments had resonance, some Republicans said, in part because Democrats, seizing on the remarks and repeating them, worked hard to tar the entire party as being insensitive to women. Congressional Republicans’ heavy focus on social issues affecting women — like their proposals to reduce financing for Planned Parenthood and their challenge of an Obama administration ruling requiring insurance coverage for contraception — set the groundwork for those perceptions. “What was really frustrating is that there was this myth manufactured by Democrats in Washington that the Republican Party as a whole is against women,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who said she watched with disappointment as her friend Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts was tarred by the broader fight and lost his bid for re-election, to a woman. “There is no doubt we need to do a better job as a party in reaching out to women, recruiting strong women candidates and sending a more positive message,” Ms. Collins said. Women were not just turned off by perceived threats to their reproductive rights, Mr. Weaver said, but also by the tough tone that the party has taken toward immigrants and the poor. “We have to reach across a whole host of policy reforms,” he said. “For instance, immigration may not seem like a women’s issue, but as Ronald Reagan and Bush 41 and Bush 43 for a while seemed to understand is that when you reach out to one group it helps you across the board. We need to be changing our tone, to be standing for something and not just against things. We can be for health care and for equal pay for equal work without undermining our conservative principles.” The problem with female voters was reflected at the top of the ticket: Mr. Obama beat Mitt Romney by 11 points among women. The numbers also lined up against Republicans in Congressional races. In Indiana, Mr. Mourdock’s opponent, Representative Joe Donnelly, won 53 percent of women’s votes, compared with Mr. Mourdock’s 41 percent, in a state that Mr. Romney won handily. In the Connecticut Senate race, men were evenly divided, 49 percent to 49 percent, but women favored the Democratic candidate, Representative Christopher S. Murphy, 60 percent to 39 percent, over the Republican, Linda E. McMahon. In Virginia, 56 percent of women voted for the Democrat, Tim Kaine, and 44 percent went to George Allen, the Republican, who lost the race. Some Democrats, after months of relentless criticism of Republicans on women’s issues, played down the importance of those concerns on Wednesday, preferring instead to credit the candidates they recruited. “Offensive comments from Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock did not decide this election,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Either way, Republicans said their party had work to do. “It has never made sense that my party, the party of individual freedom and personal responsibility, thinks the government should be involved in issues” like abortion, Ms. Collins said. “We are the party that trusts individuals to make their own decisions. That is one of the defining issues of the differences between Republicans and Democrats. So this is just bewildering to me.” |
||
|
dmaestro 08-Nov-12, 11:19 |
|
||
|
bharryb 08-Nov-12, 11:45 |
I watched this guy said it. I don't really hold this against him. It is not an ignorant comment, or a hateful one like most of the others. It was just a sincere point. I am pro choice, but essentially he is right. If you view a feotus as alive, harming it is not going to mend the violence that occured. It is simply not going to. He is not saying that it should not be allowed, all he said was that violence does not fix violence. |
||
|
harry i also have some sympathy for mourdock. he clearly does not feel rape is ok. in fact, i think he was simply being consistent with his worldview, i.e. that god knows all and is all-powerful. if that is your belief, and you think that god 'allows' war, famine, murder, rape, etc., then this is no different. if god allows a rape, and the woman gets impregnated, then it is as god wills, or, as muslims say, alhamdulillah. nonetheless, he would ban abortions in the case of rape because of his belief, and that is not ok. in all these cases, what i see happening is men taking a stance on what should be a woman's right to make her own choices. and that is the bottom line. compare this to what biden said in the vp debate: I refuse to impose it [my belief] on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the—the congressman. I—I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that—women they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor. In my view and the Supreme Court, I’m not going to interfere with that. and that, in a nutshell, is why women voted for democrats and not republicans. |
||
|
dmaestro 08-Nov-12, 12:14 |
|
||
|
janheckman 12-Nov-12, 09:40 |
Deleted by janheckman on 13-Nov-12, 05:07.
|
||
|
Romney might have won The Republican party needs to dump wing-tip minority dogma, because it is wrong and it doesn't fit well with the outside majority. Death to the Tea Party and most of what it stands for! |
Log in 
