December Republican Primary Poll

[bbarrick8383]

How much spilling of blood, loss of the family, and loss of freedom would have happened before the slaves were freed by the peaceful means you describe. How much longer would the Jim Crow-type ;aws have persisted.

Was the price of freeing the slaves too high? I don’t think so. Freedom sometimes costs lives and to dismantle the evil of slavery may cost many lives.

Lincoln was a great President and he only got greater until the day he was assassinated.

Not near as much I don’t reckon.

Killing one group of people is not a justifiable means to ending slavery. Killing is the greater evil of the two.

If you want to go down that road then you must not have any problem with America going to Iraq or any other country. I’m sure you support us going into Iran with that logic as well. Let’s just invade every country who our government decides needs to be rebuilt because they don’t like the way things are being done there.

What countries are Christians being martyred in these days? Is that not worse than slavery?

I bet you loved George Bush, right? I mean, liberals talk about all the bombs that killed civilians, but what about the civilians who were being tortured over there…what is the line of importance here when it comes to the greater evil?

Slavery>Murder>Torture…

Do you guys think reconstruction was so great, that you changed the name to nation building and decided to implement it into other countries as well? Is that why we build schools in foreign cities after we bomb them? Just kill off the ones you don’t like and put in power the ones you do?

 

[The_Rock]

Newt Gingrich: Pro-Life But Says Life Begins at Implantation

Excerpt:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is pro-life on the issue of abortion and frequently voted pro-life during his days in Congress. However, in a new interview, the former Speaker shows he needs to be educated on the scientific understanding that life begins at conception.

In a new interview with Jake Tapper of ABC News, Gingrich said human life begins at implantation rather than conception, which science has established as the starting point for human life.

Tapper asked him, “Abortion is a big issue here in Iowa among conservative Republican voters and Rick Santorum has said you are inconsistent. The big argument here is that you have supported in the past embryonic stem cell research and you made a comment about how these fertilized eggs, these embryos are not yet “pre-human” because they have not been implanted. This has upset conservatives in this state who worry you don’t see these fertilized eggs as human life. When do you think human life begins?”

“Well, I think the question of being implanted is a very big question,” Gingrich said. “My friends who have ideological positions that sound good don’t then follow through the logic of: ‘So how many additional potential lives are they talking about? What are they going to do as a practical matter to make this real?”"

“I think that if you take a position when a woman has fertilized egg and that’s been successfully implanted that now you’re dealing with life,” he added. “Because otherwise you’re going to open up an extraordinary range of very difficult questions.”

“So implantation is the moment for you,” Tapper said.

“Implantation and successful implantation. In addition I would say that I’ve never been for embryonic stem cell research per se. I have been for, there are a lot of different ways to get embryonic stem cells. I think if you can get embryonic stem cells for example from placental blood if you can get it in ways that do not involve the loss of a life that’s a perfectly legitimate avenue of approach,” Gingrich explained.
​

This is disturbing. Bachman has been warning that pro-lifers are not seeing the biggest threat to life now looming and indeed already here…the so called “morning after” pill. The pill kills the child by not allowing implantation. prolife.com/MorningAfterPill.html
Planned Parenthood has been racheting up the number of perscriptions for this abortifacient from 131,638 in the year 2000 to over 1,537,180 in 2009! Thats about 5 times as many abortion pills as compared to abortion procedures performed by PP.lifeissues.org/pp/index.html
Using Newt’s rational those 1,537,180 abortion pills could be considered “contraception”.​

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Had the CSA succeeded in separating without a war with the US, England and Europe would have bought their cotton. They weren’t boycotting because of slavery. They were boycotting because the CSA was an enemy of the USA.

As for the Constitution. It is a document that controls a government of a country. It isn’t scripture and shouldn’t be confused with scripture. It can’t stand alone without a country. It is useless if that country splits up. Look how many constitutions have been formed this year after so many revolutions…

But I think we have stayed on this topic long enough. I’ll leave you to the last word.

Nah, I’ll abide by my own recommendation to get back on topic. I appreciate your (name removed by moderator)ut though, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

How much spilling of blood, loss of the family, and loss of freedom would have happened before the slaves were freed by the peaceful means you describe. How much longer would the Jim Crow-type ;aws have persisted.

Was the price of freeing the slaves too high? I don’t think so. Freedom sometimes costs lives and to dismantle the evil of slavery may cost many lives.

Lincoln was a great President and he only got greater until the day he was assassinated.

So, I assume that you’ll be picking up a gun and working to eliminate abortion that way. If your thinking has merit, and abortion is a greater moral evil than slavery, then we have a moral duty to end the horror of abortion…RIGHT NOW…through every means possible, even violence.

 

[_Abyssinia]

ThinkProgress are criticizing Newt’s position on abortion and implantation as an ‘anti choice stance’’ and a ‘radical step backward.’

Implantation occurs 7 to 14 days after conception — well before most women even know they’re pregnant — and defining life at this point will essentially ban all abortions.

 

[bbarrick8383]

So, I assume that you’ll be picking up a gun and working to eliminate abortion that way. If your thinking has merit, and abortion is a greater moral evil than slavery, then we have a moral duty to end the horror of abortion…RIGHT NOW…through every means possible, even violence.

 

[Tsuwano]

Is united by force a good thing?

The nation isn’t united by force. It may have been reunited by force at one time, but most Americans now recognize the wisdom of Lincoln’s policy to preserve the Union and are now citizens of that same Union by desire.

 

[Tsuwano]

Not really. His overwhelming purpose was to save the Union, even if it meant ignoring parts of the constitution. And that he did, even when abolitionists wanted to give up. Had he been a strict consitutionalist, like Ron Paul, then the Union would not have been saved. Jefferson Davis was much more of a strict interpreter of the constitution of the United States and was more like Ron Paul as far as that is concerned.

The Constitution offers no recourse to those who would abolish the Union or seek to succeed from it. Since there is no means by which any state may legally succeed from the Union, Lincoln actually interpreted the Constitution more strictly than those who sought to ignore it and succeed from the Union. He admittedly ignored certain rights of some individuals in order to preserve the integrity of the document and the State it upholds as a whole. He did this reluctantly and sought to restore those rights to those very few individuals in the quickest manner possible without endangering the right of the Union to exist. Lincoln was placed in a position where the recognition of rights existed on a sliding scale. The right of an individual to express a view counter to the right of the State to exist when that State’s existence is in imminent danger is not greater than the rights of those who benefit from that State’s existence. The State has a right to defend itself from imminent danger. Lincoln recognized this and championed the Union’s right to defend itself even if it meant that some rights of some individuals were abrogated.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

The Constitution offers no recourse to those who would abolish the Union or seek to succeed from it. Since there is no means by which any state may legally succeed from the Union, Lincoln actually interpreted the Constitution more strictly than those who sought to ignore it and succeed from the Union. He admittedly ignored certain rights of some individuals in order to preserve the integrity of the document and the State it upholds as a whole. He did this reluctantly and sought to restore those rights to those very few individuals in the quickest manner possible without endangering the right of the Union to exist. Lincoln was placed in a position where the recognition of rights existed on a sliding scale. The right of an individual to express a view counter to the right of the State to exist when that State’s existence is in imminent danger is not greater than the rights of those who benefit from that State’s existence. The State has a right to defend itself from imminent danger. Lincoln recognized this and championed the Union’s right to defend itself even if it meant that some rights of some individuals were abrogated.

Explain the Declaration of Independence then. If one element of a nationality has no right to secede from another, then our break with Britain was illegal and without merit. THe point is, we CREATED the merit to justify our break with Britain. If a state can create an ethical and moral reason to separate from the US, then it should do so.

 

[Tsuwano]

He perpetuated a war that cose half a million American lives and it wasn’t about slavery until he was forced to make it about slavery.

Lets not get on this topic…it always gets really ugly.

You’re both right and wrong about this. The war was about slavery, at least from the point of view of the South. The South sought to succeed from the Union in order to protect its right, granted under the Constitution, to perpetuate slavery. The South perceived its identity and its cultural institutions, such a slavery, to be under threat. So, for the South, the war was very much about slavery at the core. The desire to succeed from the Union was for the purpose of protecting slavery. For Lincoln the war was not about slavery. He told the South time and time again that slavery was not the issue. For Lincoln, union was the issue and it was for the Union and the protection of its rights that he reluctantly went to war against the Southern insurrectionists. Lincoln did not perpetuate the war. The South did, first by its early victories in the war and its hopes to receive recognition from European states and then in its view of itself as exceptional and culturally superior to the immigrant North. If the South at any time had acquiesed to the Constitution and recognized that it had no right to separate itself from the Union, Lincoln would have held out an open hand. No such recognition was ever offered from the South until total defeat left independence impossible.

 

[Seamus_L]

I wonder if most mainstream Republicans have realised how changeable they appear to be. First it was the Bachmann surge, then it was time to get behind the only guy who can beat Obama, i,e Rick Perry, then Herman Cain was the man, and now it’s Newt Gingrich.

 

[Tsuwano]

Explain the Declaration of Independence then. If one element of a nationality has no right to secede from another, then our break with Britain was illegal and without merit. THe point is, we CREATED the merit to justify our break with Britain. If a state can create an ethical and moral reason to separate from the US, then it should do so.

The Declaration of Independence is not the Constitution of the United States. The individual States independently entered into union with one another through the Constitution, recognizing that there was no recourse in the document for disolution. A contract was established with all other States in recognizing the Constitution as the binding force of the Union. That contract cannot be broken. If a State feels that its rights and perogatives are violated in some way, it does have recourse to the laws of the land and may go to court over whatever issue it is bothered by, but it has no legal right to separate itself from the union it freely joined. Even if a moral right to separate itself from the Union was recognized, it does not possess a legal right. The Colonies were different legal entities altogether. They were not bound to the “Mother Country” in the same way as the States are bound to one another and, indeed, Great Britain did not recognize the Colonies as equal in rights to the States which made up Great Britain. If such equality had been recognized and if recourse to law had been present to the Colonies, then perhaps there never would have been a Revolutionary War and America would now have the same legal relationship with Britain as does Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other members of the Commonwealth. The Colonies did not create the merit, or moral reasons, for the break from Great Britain. That merit existed because of the inequality existing between the two groups and the lack of recourse to law. What the Colonies created was an overarching legal identity which it then forced Britain to recognize by force of arms. Of course, it is true that the South also attempted to creat a legal identity and it also hoped to force recognition through force of arms. It failed. In addition, it can be argued that the South had no merit in its argument to separate from the Union. The rights of the South were not trampled. If anything, the federal government bent over backwards to meet the demands of the South before it attempted to separate from the Union. It was only when the South unilaterally declared itself independent, without even a referendum, and then attempted to abrogate the rights of the federal government by forcing it to remove government installations on southern soil, that war came. It came reluctantly on the part of the federal government. It came blindly on the part of the southern states.

 

[LisaA]

I wonder if most mainstream Republicans have realised how changeable they appear to be. First it was the Bachmann surge, then it was time to get behind the only guy who can beat Obama, i,e Rick Perry, then Herman Cain was the man, and now it’s Newt Gingrich.

And that is a problem because? The point of the debates, primaries, etc is so that we get to KNOW the candidates better. A great debate performance, a win in a straw poll, an effective ad can profile a candidate that voters may not have considered. Similarly a poor prime time interview (does anyone doubt Katy Couric’s interview damaged Sarah Palin?) a stumbling debate (can we say Rick Perry), a purported scandal can take that rising star out of the sky.

I think it’s a GOOD THING that early on, various candidates take the front runner spot where they receive the scrutiny needed to determine if they can make the long journey to the White House. One of the biggest problems with Obama is that many voters DIDNT get to know him and what he was about. I’m very happy to see the group of Republicans duke it out this far from the election giving us time to hopefully make the right decision.

Lisa A

 

[havana1]

It’s going to be Romney. It’ was always going to be Romney. Everyone knew it was going to be Romney. This has been kind of a show-process with a foregone conclusion.

Amen.

 

[Tsuwano]

That is my understanding as well. But then again, Lincoln wasn’t on the side of States’ Rights.

Lincoln certainly did not support the right of the southern states to separate themselves from the Union, but one shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that the leaders of the South or that most southerners were libertarians. They weren’t.

 

[havana1]

And that is a problem because? The point of the debates, primaries, etc is so that we get to KNOW the candidates better. A great debate performance, a win in a straw poll, an effective ad can profile a candidate that voters may not have considered. Similarly a poor prime time interview (does anyone doubt Katy Couric’s interview damaged Sarah Palin?) a stumbling debate (can we say Rick Perry), a purported scandal can take that rising star out of the sky.

I think it’s a GOOD THING that early on, various candidates take the front runner spot where they receive the scrutiny needed to determine if they can make the long journey to the White House. One of the biggest problems with Obama is that many voters DIDNT get to know him and what he was about. I’m very happy to see the group of Republicans duke it out this far from the election giving us time to hopefully make the right decision.

Lisa A

It’s a problem because…um, if you get a different Flavor of the Week every few days, that makes building momentum difficult - not to mention fundraising. Who - and, by who, that includes corporations (who are people) - wants to donate their money to a candidate who’ll be out of the race soon? That, in turn, makes voters skeptical of voting for a candidate because the person they thought was most qualified was last week’s Flavor of the Week. Frankly, I’m truly surprised at how quickly Michelle Bachmann has been abandoned - and by the very same people who would have supported Palin, too. It doesn’t get any more ironic than that.

 

[Tsuwano]

Have you seen the Occupy Wall Street protests? The 26 states suing the federal government because of Obamacare. The country is on a precipice. If Obama is reelected it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if half a dozen or more states break away or begin the nullification process of most of the federal laws. Our “solid union” is an illusion.

:ehh: Really? Sounds a bit over the top to me.

 

[bbarrick8383]

:ehh: Really? Sounds a bit over the top to me.

These discussions have been taken place increadingly over the past 5 years and even more so since Obamacare. More and more so by elected state officials and state AGs.

But, never fear old honest Abe wasn’t the one to set the precedent of killing off those who might stand in the way of such modern day conveniences like abortion on demand.

 

[ringil]

These discussions have been taken place increadingly over the past 5 years and even more so since Obamacare. More and more so by elected state officials and state AGs.

But, never fear old honest Abe wasn’t the one to set the precedent of killing off those who might stand in the way of such modern day conveniences like abortion on demand.

I only hear discussions of the Civil War occurring in the South. People in the North don’t seem to think about it so much.

Certainly, this re-invention of hisory and the glorification of the South only occurs in the South. My MIL who is quite racist talks about this stuff all the time and calls President Lincoln “Mr. Lincoln”.

 

[bbarrick8383]

I only hear discussions of the Civil War occurring in the South. People in the North don’t seem to think about it so much.

I wasn’t talking about discussions of the civil war, I was talking about discussions of states rights.

Certainly, this re-invention of hisory and the glorification of the South only occurs in the South. My MIL who is quite racist talks about this stuff all the time and calls President Lincoln “Mr. Lincoln”.

I’m not going to make excuses for the south and it’s role in slavery, it is a shame and a scar on the south that the north bears as well. It is you who glorifys the north as if killing so many people was a justification to ending slavery.

I’m not anti-American. I’m proud of many of the accomplishments this country had made. I just have a hard time justifying the road we took to get here. Was the iPhone worth the trail of tears? It’s not as if we’ve stopped the killing either. We simply justify it each and every time. Abortion is the modern day trail of tears/slavery.

Just because I don’t glorify the north like others do does not make me a racist, at least no more than it would make you a killer for being an advocate of the civil war.