Vice Presidential Debate

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Listener said:
So now it appears that a vote for Romney/Ryan includes a vote for abortion when it is due to rape, or necessary to save the mother’s life, etc.

I heard Paul Ryan say that during last night’s debate with my own ears!

There are plenty of people here who believe that voting for any candidate who is even slightly pro-abortion is a mortal sin.

So who are you going to vote for, Donald Duck?
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Not aimed at you, OK?

This argument tires me, TBH. Look, we live in a fallen world. As such, no candidate will ever be perfect. All candidates will be sinners. Sin is an evil, so to that extent, all candidates (and all of us) will be flawed. We must therefore always (and I mean always) choose between two sinners. We need to choose the sinner whose policies are the less evil.

In this election, it isn’t even really particularly close. One candidate is for abortion in every case (and for gay so called marriage, and for a policy that is attacking the Church and persons of conscience with the HHS mandate). The other is for it in very limited cases*: rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The last is something which modern medicine says never occurs. Incest is a small number. (Yes, it is a heinous crime-I am not trying to minimize it).

If they succeed in limiting it to these cases, the number of annual abortions would drop by hundreds of thousands. Surely, that is a good thing. Also, in limiting it to these cases, we re-set the argument. The new normal changes from abortion on demand to very limited abortion. It will be thrown to the states, where abortion will be further limited in some of them, maybe even most of them.

Given all this, a Catholic (I would argue any person of good will) really only has one choice: Romney/Ryan.**

*yes, every abortion is obviously a tragedy for the child and for the mother

**but Lou, what about third parties? This is a very close election. It is entirely possible that it could come down to 1%, which is what the third parties usually get. If this is indeed the case, that 1% (or even half of it) may spell the difference between 4 years of Obama or 4 years of Romney. This country is at a turning point (religiously, economically and politically). One just can’t afford to, with all due respect, throw their vote away.
 
LisaA: I point you to a response I already made to a different poster:
IbnFiktur said:
Note that I said the BIGGEST loopholes: Capital gains and carried interest. He is on record supporting the continuation of both of these. Most other loopholes are small change conpared to these two that Romney wants to KEEP. And there aren’t enough loopholes to close to pay for a defense increase AND a balanced budget. Which makes the Romney campaign’s complaints about rising deficits utterly insane: they have no viable alternative that would significantly lower the deficit within a comparable four year period.

It’s the hypocrisy that makes me ill. Not as ill as Biden’s hypocritical response to the abortion issue. But it’s still sickening.
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Talking about “economic growth” that may or may not happen as a means of raising revenue is all well and dandy… But there is NO WAY it will generate enough revenue to cut the deficit in half before their first term is up without significant cuts. And yet they continue to rail about how “immoral” the deficit is without offering a single solution for how to get rid of it!!

Their specifics are vague because it doesn’t add up to what they’re promising. In a magical world we could have a balanced budget, a gigantic military, and no budget cuts all at once, but we live in the real world where we’re a trillion dollars per year in debt, and all I’ve seen from Romney on the subject is a lot of hot air: criticizing the president while offering nothing practical himself.
 
IbnFiktur said:
LisaA: I point you to a response I already made to a different poster:

Talking about “economic growth” that may or may not happen as a means of raising revenue is all well and dandy… But there is NO WAY it will generate enough revenue to cut the deficit in half before their first term is up without significant cuts. And yet they continue to rail about how “immoral” the deficit is without offering a single solution for how to get rid of it!!

Their specifics are vague because it doesn’t add up to what they’re promising. In a magical world we could have a balanced budget, a gigantic military, and no budget cuts all at once, but we live in the real world where we’re a trillion dollars per year in debt, and all I’ve seen from Romney on the subject is a lot of hot air: criticizing the president while offering nothing practical himself.
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The military isn’t the problem. The problem is the $220 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities in Social Security/Medicare/Obamacare
 
Scott_Lafrance said:
The military isn’t the problem. The problem is the $220 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities in Social Security/Medicare/Obamacare
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The defense budget is PART of the problem, as are the things you’ve mentioned. The military is far larger than it was the day before 9/11. It’s perfectly reasonable to roll it back.
 
IbnFiktur said:
The defense budget is PART of the problem, as are the things you’ve mentioned. The military is far larger than it was the day before 9/11. It’s perfectly reasonable to roll it back.
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The Consititution authorizes Congress to plan and fund national defense. To develop a ponzi-scheme style retirement plan, not so much.
 
Luigi_Daniele said:
Not aimed at you, OK?

This argument tires me, TBH. Look, we live in a fallen world. As such, no candidate will ever be perfect. All candidates will be sinners. Sin is an evil, so to that extent, all candidates (and all of us) will be flawed. We must therefore always (and I mean always) choose between two sinners. We need to choose the sinner whose policies are the less evil.

In this election, it isn’t even really particularly close. One candidate is for abortion in every case (and for gay so called marriage, and for a policy that is attacking the Church and persons of conscience with the HHS mandate). The other is for it in very limited cases*: rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The last is something which modern medicine says never occurs. Incest is a small number. (Yes, it is a heinous crime-I am not trying to minimize it).

If they succeed in limiting it to these cases, the number of annual abortions would drop by hundreds of thousands. Surely, that is a good thing. Also, in limiting it to these cases, we re-set the argument. The new normal changes from abortion on demand to very limited abortion. It will be thrown to the states, where abortion will be further limited in some of them, maybe even most of them.

Given all this, a Catholic (I would argue any person of good will) really only has one choice: Romney/Ryan.**

*yes, every abortion is obviously a tragedy for the child and for the mother

**but Lou, what about third parties? This is a very close election. It is entirely possible that it could come down to 1%, which is what the third parties usually get. If this is indeed the case, that 1% (or even half of it) may spell the difference between 4 years of Obama or 4 years of Romney. This country is at a turning point (religiously, economically and politically). One just can’t afford to, with all due respect, throw their vote away.
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👍 You go, Luigi! 👍
 
IbnFiktur said:
Their specifics are vague because it doesn’t add up to what they’re promising. In a magical world we could have a balanced budget, a gigantic military, and no budget cuts all at once, but we live in the real world where we’re a trillion dollars per year in debt, and all I’ve seen from Romney on the subject is a lot of hot air: criticizing the president while offering nothing practical himself.
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Whether or not Biden’s performance hurts the Dems, whether or not Romney is full of hot air, regardless of the CAF posters’ impressions of who “won,” it’ll be the next two debates that will be the more important, and Election Day that’ll tell the tale unencumbered by poll figures and projections.

Too much counting chickens here, I think. 🤷
 
Michael_Mayo said:
Opnions on who won will fall strictly according to party preference.
…

According to that Pew study that came out a few days ago 45% of Catholics say abortion should be illegal while 50% say legal.

It seem to come down to the argument Biden made last night that he is personally against abortion but sees it as a religious issue not to be imposed on others. Evidently 50% of Catholics see it that way. I do not. It is in a category where religion, ethics and law overlap just as many other issues.

How can we more clearly address this sort of argument?
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Insert the word slavery where they use abortion. As in: “I am personally oppose to slavery, and my faith is against slavery, but I do not think I should be able to stop others from owning slaves.”

If something is truly wrong–it is always wrong.
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
Whether or not Biden’s performance hurts the Dems, whether or not Romney is full of hot air, regardless of the CAF posters’ impressions of who “won,” it’ll be the next two debates that will be the more important, and Election Day that’ll tell the tale unencumbered by poll figures and projections.

Too much counting chickens here, I think. 🤷
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I agree. The VP debate probably did not mean much because neight man made any real blunder. It was more-or-less a draw, or close enough to not matter.

I do think Biden was very creepy at times. His frequent laughing was just awful.
 
Rich_Olszewski said:
Whether or not Biden’s performance hurts the Dems, whether or not Romney is full of hot air, regardless of the CAF posters’ impressions of who “won,” it’ll be the next two debates that will be the more important, and Election Day that’ll tell the tale unencumbered by poll figures and projections.

Too much counting chickens here, I think. 🤷
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Except for the fact that
  1. The first debate gets the highest number of viewers.
  2. Early voting has already begun, long before the 2nd and 3rd debates.
I agree about the VP debate. They rarely love the polls/
 
IbnFiktur said:
LisaA: I point you to a response I already made to a different poster:

Talking about “economic growth” that may or may not happen as a means of raising revenue is all well and dandy… But there is NO WAY it will generate enough revenue to cut the deficit in half before their first term is up without significant cuts. And yet they continue to rail about how “immoral” the deficit is without offering a single solution for how to get rid of it!!

Their specifics are vague because it doesn’t add up to what they’re promising. In a magical world we could have a balanced budget, a gigantic military, and no budget cuts all at once, but we live in the real world where we’re a trillion dollars per year in debt, and all I’ve seen from Romney on the subject is a lot of hot air: criticizing the president while offering nothing practical himself.
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If that is the case then you haven’t looked very hard. You sound like an Obama apologist if not a supporter since you haven’t looked at the potential cuts of non-essential programs proposed by Republicans, Paul Ryan specifically. Both have offered specific cuts, budgets, and plans for growth. Remember we need more TAXPAYERS not higher taxes. There is a lot of historical evidence that lowering rates increases tax REVENUE. From Coolidge to Kennedy to Reagan to Bush 43, lowering rates has increased tax revenue.

Further Romney’s plan has a strong domestic energy component which alone will be a three-for: more jobs, more tax revenue from both employed Americans and company profits, lower costs for energy. I feel this is one of the most important elements and is basically a no brainer. It is Obama’s ideology that prevents him from allowing us to develop our below ground energy, instead wasting billions on green energy debacles.

I admit that Obama has us SO far in debt this will be a challenge. But given that four more years of Obama means even DEEPER in debt, how can you claim that Romney’s plans will not solve the problem? As with physicians, first do no harm. Just stopping the Democrat induced bloodletting will be a move in the RIGHT direction.

Lisa
 
csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2012/1012/Joe-Biden-s-smiling-Was-there-method-to-his-madness

I agree with some of the analysis provided here and also believe that this debate was not about Biden at all. In addition to the idea in the article above that Biden was trying to allow Obama to become more animated without being perceived as overdoing it, I think he was also being used as a lab experiment. For example, the VP debate allowed Biden to try out attack strategies and to float lines that could be carefully evaluated in polling so that the President can decide the best way to come at Romney next week.

Romney had better be on his A game the next time around.
 
_Abyssinia said:
That does not mean they know what the Church teaches though. Life beginning at conception has been known by Catholicism for a long time and confirmed by science
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Yes, the Church teaches.
There may be scientific consensus that life begins at conception but acknowledgment of the rights of personhood to the child in the womb is Catholic Church teaching and a religious belief.
Personhood is legal status defined by state.
What is most disturbing is that corporations have more legal rights as “persons” than the child in the womb.
 
jwinch2 said:
csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2012/1012/Joe-Biden-s-smiling-Was-there-method-to-his-madness

I agree with some of the analysis provided here and also believe that this debate was not about Biden at all. In addition to the idea in the article above that Biden was trying to allow Obama to become more animated without being perceived as overdoing it, I think he was also being used as a lab experiment. For example, the VP debate allowed Biden to try out attack strategies and to float lines that could be carefully evaluated in polling so that the President can decide the best way to come at Romney next week.

Romney had better be on his A game the next time around.
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You honestly think Biden threw the debate to make Obama look good by context? A strategy never employed in presidential history, to anyone’s knowledge? That’s a stretch I don’t buy. Why have we had two debates where we cannot admit that the candidates made mistakes? I saw areas ryan could have done better. Why not simply admit Obama was unprepared, and Biden was bombastic and petty. That’s what everyone watching saw. The motives become irrelevant. I don’t know why Ford decided to mentally check out in his Soviet response, or why Benson decided to nail Quayle’s Jack Kennedy comparison. But it didn’t matter. People saw, and remembered what they say.

I am of the belief the debates are Romney’'s to lose. If he does like he did in the first debate, it won’t matter what Obama does. Obama can’t use his record to help him, or he would have a long time ago. Obama’s only chance to come out looking significantly better than Romney is for Romney to lay an egg like Obama.
 
Do American women want abortion illegal? Joe Biden and the Democrates seem to think so and bank on it.
 
jwinch2 said:
csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2012/1012/Joe-Biden-s-smiling-Was-there-method-to-his-madness

I agree with some of the analysis provided here and also believe that this debate was not about Biden at all. In addition to the idea in the article above that Biden was trying to allow Obama to become more animated without being perceived as overdoing it, I think he was also being used as a lab experiment. For example, the VP debate allowed Biden to try out attack strategies and to float lines that could be carefully evaluated in polling so that the President can decide the best way to come at Romney next week.

Romney had better be on his A game the next time around.
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“No one” watched last night, though. Which is the historical normal. I think that Romney would have to make a huge gaff in the remaining two to move the poll numbers.
 
Luigi_Daniele said:
“No one” watched last night, though. Which is the historical normal. I think that Romney would have to make a huge gaff in the remaining two to move the poll numbers.
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They still took polling data, tracked immediate responses, and conducted focus groups. This gives the Obama campaign solid data to base his strategy of attack in the next two debates and also shows where they themselves are vulnerable. Biden went on the attack and was overbearing which will also allow Obama to step up his rhetoric quite a bit without being perceived as doing too much.

As such, I think last night was meaningful, but perhaps not in the conventional sense.
 
Just like nearly everyone on this Forum considered Ryan the winner. 😃
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I disagree. Ryan let Biden in all over him and I don’t think anyone except maybe Martha won.

Not the first to say it either.
 
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