Red, Blue, separation of church and state, who did you vote for and why?

[nicolakirwan]

And both, by nutty policies of their own, made their respective downturns last much longer than they should have, and otherwise would have.

Well, the Great Depression was fact and in existence, being experienced by Americans. The housing crisis in 2008 and ensuring “recession” were the same–concrete and devastating. Whether or not FDR and Obama’s policies made the situations last longer than they “should have” is speculative rather than concrete. Even if it is educated speculation, it subtly shifts the focus from the policies that caused the actual crises to the policies that may not have been effective enough in fixing the havoc that the policies of other administrations wreaked.

It’s like having a driver that runs you into a ditch and then complaining that the tow truck took too long to get you out. Maybe it did take too long, but the more important thing is figuring out why it is we got there in the first place.

 

[Eric_Hilbert]

One slight note, folks, nobody in trouble.
The discussion of politics is generally relegated to the WN forum.
I’ve overlooked it because…well, I’m just a teddy bear at heart.
So, keep it civil, if someone complains I will be forced to lock it.
Even I have to follow the rules.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Well, the Great Depression was fact and in existence, being experienced by Americans. The housing crisis in 2008 and ensuring “recession” were the same–concrete and devastating. Whether or not FDR and Obama’s policies made the situations last longer than they “should have” is speculative rather than concrete. Even if it is educated speculation, it subtly shifts the focus from the policies that caused the actual crises to the policies that may not have been effective enough in fixing the havoc that the policies of other administrations wreaked.

It’s like having a driver that runs you into a ditch and then complaining that the tow truck took too long to get you out. Maybe it did take too long, but the more important thing is figuring out why it is we got there in the first place.

Speculative bubbles on top of the normal business cycle caused both. I don’t think anybody disputes that. This country has weathered many of the same. In fact, in many ways, the early 19880s recession was worse than this one.

Many of Roosevelt’s policies were attempts to manipulate the economy back to a better state by government fiat; “Swimming against the tide” to prevent the business cycle from clearing. Obama’s are the same sort of thing.

I don’t think anybody particularly questions that the current recession was exacerbated by the “housing bubble”, which, itself, was created by abnormally low-interest Fed policies (just like now) and total irresponsibility on the part of Fannie and Freddie. One can blame Bush for re-appointing Greenspan if one wishes, and one can also blame him for not making a much bigger public issue of it when Schumer, Frank, Dodd and Obama thwarted Bush’s attempts to reform Fan and Fred. Personally, I lay fault at his feet for both failures.

One question I find fascinating is whether the indisputable “stock market bubble” we’re presently in will tumble in the intermediate term when inflation gets going, or whether the very inflation we’re going to see from the overspending and over-accommodation will keep the market more stable than it truly deserves to be. For example, if some aluminum manufactory is overpriced, will inflation ultimately make its resources more valuable and its debt less significant? Good question, but at some point over-accommodation has to end and interest rates on competing investments have to rise. So it’s hard to be optimistic about the outcomes of flawed policies.

 

[Tampa_Rays]

I disagree with you for simply being a Tampa Ray fan. VOTE FOR THE RED SOX lol…

Being serious now…you bring up a good point on the third party. Isn’t the Tea Party kind of a “third party” though?

Hows the AL East basement, haven’t been there in a while

In its current form the tea party is a wing of the republican party because even when a moderate wins the primary, most tea party members end up supporting the moderate. However, I can definitely see them forming their own party in the near future and I admit I would be tempted to join when I am old enough to vote.

 

[JonNC]

And what Obama and FDR have in common is that both were given the task of addressing serious economic problems in the country that weren’t caused by their policies. So…

To a degree true. The issue for me with both is that they chose to ignore the constitutional limits on the general government, in both the enumerated powers and 10th amendment, to deal with problems.

Jon

 

[codefro]

Let’s put it this way. I believe the HHS mandate is unconstitutional under the 1st amendment. I believe the ACA is unconstitutional under Article 1, Section 8, and the 10th Amendment.
I favor the constitutional representative republic that America once was, but is slowly disappearing into the tyranny of democracy.

Jon

:yup:

 

[Kal2012]

Being serious now…you bring up a good point on the third party. Isn’t the Tea Party kind of a “third party” though?

Because it doesn’t have the characteristics of a third party, I wouldn’t call it one. There is no over-arching authority at the national/state level. There are no by-laws for this over-arching authority and they don’t hold national conventions or elect delegates or put their own candidates on the ballot.

They are more of a confederation than an ‘official’ party.

There are organizations that try to claim that they speak for all the Tea Parties and the Tea Party movement; however, that’s the ‘red flag’ that they are promoting their own agenda. So when you hear that the “Tea Party is having a convention” to decide who they are going to endorse…:tsktsk: Don’t buy what they are trying to sell…

One of the major problems w/the Tea Party is how the establishment Republicans have tried to run and control the movement. If there wasn’t a Tea Party club in the area, then sometimes a known Republican activist would start one. That’s not a bad thing, but it makes it a lot harder to claim that the Tea Party is truly independent from the Republican party. The lines are really blurry.

They are really a movement w/in the Republican party of disaffected conservatives/Libertarians who gave up on the Republican party structure a long time ago.

I was ‘Tea Party’ before it was cool or a name for it, but in a lot of ways, the Tea Party movement has ‘jumped the shark’ for me.

If your organization is going to claim to be about fiscal responsibility and smaller government, then why support a ‘big government’ conservative like Rick Santorum? Isn’t that kind of hypocritical? Given that the whole idea is limited government and fiscal prudence…

I get wanting to beat Romney in the primary, but what about your principles that you tell me are uncompromising?

 

[Bill1940]

I voted Republican because I think the country is heading in the direction of a neo-communist dictatorship of the proletariat. Allow me to segue into a more religious expression of my concern. I hope the moderator will be pleased.
Rather than reword anything in this regard, I’ll simply quote Pius XI’s Encyclical Quadragesimo anno which was issued “In the Fortieth Year” after Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum of 1891.
The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co- ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.”
“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them”
The principle of subsidiarity is most germane to the issue at hand. It’s also interesting that most everything the current President is doing flies in the face of this very principle.