True?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Cartoons, Immigration
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 and is filed under Cartoons, Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 24th, 2006 at 11:14 am
To a degree. Conservatives are fairly incensed at Bush’s lack of strength on the border issue but we still believe he has the leadership qualities neccesary to run the country. Besides, whenever we think about what we could have gotten, we’re much better off with the lesser of two evils here.
As to the Democrats, the Senate’s approval rating is LOWER than the President’s, and the Democrats in particular are around 18%.
I’m fairly certain most people are annoyed with both parties because of Immigration, Senatorial spinelessness, and barrels of pork.
However, given a choice between a GOP candidate who might actually try to have a conservative backbone for once, and a Liberal Democrat (Of the Kerry-Boxer-Biden Stripe) who I know would sell America off for a nickel, I know where my loyalties lie.
May 24th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Brian, if you think Kerry and Boxer have anything (beyond a party label) in common, you have not been paying attention to how really, really far out my Senator is. Only the dedication of the California Republican Party in nominating right-wing nut cases to run against her has allowed her to get to, and stay in, the Senate.
May 24th, 2006 at 11:46 am
I’ve got to say… while I’d like to leave the GOP, where am I to go?
I certainly don’t trust the democrats on security. Neither party seems
really interested in doing anything about immigration. And spending – fuhget about it!
2008 will probably be another election where I vote AGAINST a candidate, rather than for one.
May 24th, 2006 at 11:53 am
Seriously, what wj said. Frankly though, I think a huge percentage of elections are won (this goes for both the Democrats and the Republicans) simply because the other side ran an imbecile or a lunatic against them.
I tend to lean conservative, but I know for a fact that I would vote for Barack Obama over Alan Keyes if given the opportunity.
May 24th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I tend to lean conservative, but I know for a fact that I would vote for Barack Obama over Alan Keyes if given the opportunity.
That’s okay, I did it for you. You can thank me later :)
May 24th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
“I tend to lean conservative, but I know for a fact that I would vote for Barack Obama over Alan Keyes if given the opportunity.”
Please don’t take this as an insult or snarkiness, but that might be the funniest statements I’ve ever read. Just because Alan Keyes is…well…Alan Keyes. A vote for Alan Keyes isn’t a choice one makes, no more so than the devotees of David Koresh chose him over Billy Graham. One is an articulate mainstream-to-liberal black man and the other one is an articulate conservative black space alien.
May 24th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
BTW, I’d vote for the space alien.
May 24th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
If the cartoon was intended to convey lost of GOP support over immigration, I don’t agree. Immigration seems to be one of those issues that cuts the grain. The Rep/Dem contrast wrt immigration is not as apparently stark to me as the contrast over abortion or foreign policy.
The GOP is losing support, but not over this. The cartoon would have reflected reality better (though I admit not as funny a play on words) had the bubble mentioned the government spending issue.
May 24th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
I guess that means I had gotten a couple years ahead of the news cycle. =)
May 24th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
This is a very rough time for republicans (or it should be). The Bush administration controls all 3 braches of government and many Americans realize we this country is plummeting in the wrong direction. As the fed keeps raising rates things will only go further downhill on the economic front, Bush’s only “quasi” success story.
May 24th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
DosPeros: I don’t think Alan Keyes had that many “devotees” in Illinois. Frankly. But that didn’t stop him from getting somewhere around 20% of the vote anyways. If reality were exactly as you say, that number shouldn’t have broken out of the single digits. Some people vote down party lines no matter who’s running. Or even more likely, some people vote pro-life as if voting pro-life was, in fact, their religion, and damn the consequences and side-effects of that choice! These people aren’t Alan Keyes’s “devotees” — they’re fanatically devoted to the planks he happens to be standing on.
My point was simply that I’d much prefer to vote for people based on first, their character, and then, what they stand for, rather than the other way around. Because frankly, I don’t honestly believe that the ideological differences between conservatism and liberalism on their own are enough to reshape the world either for better or worse. But if you have the right person, at the right time, in the right position, regardless of their political stance, there is nothing stopping such a person from making the world a dramatically better place.
It’s a shame that so few such people have any interest in getting involved in politics.
May 24th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
I was being flippant regarding Keyes. You are obviously correct, those who vote for him are voting for his ideology. This of course is the difference between Obama and Keyes. Obama will get votes regardless of his ideological posture because he is preceived as a strong black leader, charismatic, a good guy and all the rest. Keyes does not have the same attraction. He is a very articulate nerd.
His popularity is ideological driven, not personality driven. So perhaps I had the “devotees” turned around and the term is more aptly applied to those that choose a cult of personality over an ideological or philosophical underpinning in a candidate. Ideally, a candidate comes with both like Ronald Reagan, and you have a true leader.
May 25th, 2006 at 11:19 am
I’m confused, “emigration”? Does the cartoon refer to the people emigrating from the GOP or should the balloon have said “immigration”?
Vicky
May 25th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Alex: even if you’re correct, the people who are dissatisfied with Republican administration don’t have much choice. The dissatisfied’ choices are: stay with the GOP and hope it gets better; run to the Dems (whether this would be an informed decision on their part would be variable), and hope they’ll do better; stay home, and tend to their own houses; find non-Dem, non-Rep leadership.
Once again I feel as if people aren’t getting this important message: all the railing in the world against Bush & Co. amounts to ZERO so long as the best alternatives the railers deign to present are equal in suck.
The only solution I ever seem to see is for everyone (who has an election they can vote in) to vote Democrat in 2006. The trouble is, that doesn’t look like a solution to me at all. It doesn’t even look like a stopgap solution or “a good start” or even “a decent start”.
May 25th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Well, it would go a long way toward telling the GOP that they can’t take a certain share of votes for granted. On the downside, it might also embolden the Dems to attempt some really stupid stuff. But I think that’s an overblown fear. Whatever you think of Dem or GOP intentions, the GOP would still control the White House, still have a sizable minority in both houses of Congress, and the judiciary will still lean right. Bush might finally have to exercise his veto pen, but the worst we risk is congressional paralysis.
Plus, I don’t think either party is going to “destroy the country” as far as security and other bread-and-butter issues.
So for me, the upcoming election is a referendum on the governing party. And they deserve to go down in flames. Big, hot, center-of-the-sun-type flames, the ashes burned and reburned until the electrons have been stripped from their atoms, leaving nothing but a subatomic mist in their wake.
Do I think the Dems will do better? Well, they’d have a hard time doing worse. And it would be a mistake to give the Reps a pass on their proven failures merely out of fear of what Dems *might* do.
That said, it can get complicated. I like my own Representative (Ramstad), and will probably vote for him even though he’s GOP. So I’m both part of the problem (voting for a GOP candidate) and part of the solution (voting for a moderate). My excuse is that if the GOP had more Ramstads, they wouldn’t be in the mess they’re in.
May 26th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Well Sean, I’d say, stick to that excuse. To some extent, all politics -is- local, after all. And it would suck to punish Ramstad for the actions of his party colleagues (I’ll assume you’re right and Ramstad really is the best man for the job).
Hopefully there’ll be enough people fed up enough with their respective Congresspeople to throw them out or give them a scare as appropriate.