John McCain - American dumbass (sorry, couldn't resist)

[King of Snake]

god the republicans are getting desperate aren't they?
I can't even understand how anyone would vote for someone who is openly announcing that the only way they can win your vote is by launching a smear campaign against the other guy.
What McCain gonna do when he's in the white house? Launch smear campaigns against Al Qaida and global warming?

[kagenaki koe]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

I can't even understand how anyone would vote for someone who is openly announcing that the only way they can win your vote is by launching a smear campaign against the other guy.

he's banking on getting the votes of people who view any kind of news as the evil liberal media elite.

[cacophony]

the modern republican campaign cashes in on the portion of the population that views itself as perpetually victimized. the people who still believe, "if they're not nice to me it's just because they're jealous." the internet trolls of the population, who believe that if they don't get their way anything is fair game. it's a deliberate positioning that appeals to your sense of entitlement and the defensiveness that resents anyone who might think they're better than you.

it's why you see the kind of campaign tactics that they've used for the last 3 or 4 elections. it's why a network like fox news can exist, when there's no liberal counterpart. it's why insane conservative radio and TV pundits get mad ratings but air america can't keep itself financially solvent. the republicans have tapped this particular segment of the population and they own it so wholly that they can confidently launch attack ads based on total fallacies and still maintain a voting base.

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by kagenaki koe

he's banking on getting the votes of people who view any kind of news as the evil liberal media elite.

Yes. In a lot of the columns trolled by hard-core repubs, it took me a while to work out what this MSM was they were cursing about all the time - I couldn't understand why they had such an issue with internet messaging until I realised that it was the Main Stream Media, which they indeed accuse of being evil and liberal. For these guys, they will pay no attention to, for example, the way Palin performed in her interviews, or any negative information about McCain because the "MSM" are all part of a fiendish conspiracy to ensure that the Dems get in.

Go figure.

[cacophony]

republicans also get off on the idea that they see the truth that everyone else is too stupid to see.

i remember after GWB took us into iraq and it became clear there were no WMDs i spoke to a handful of republicans who admitted that they knew there was no terrorism link to iraq but they thought GWB was brilliant for managing to convince the unwashed masses that there was. it's as though they convinced themselves that the lies were okay, as long as they identified the lies and felt like they were part of a minority of people that was smart enough to know the truth.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by King of Snake

god the republicans are getting desperate aren't they?
I can't even understand how anyone would vote for someone who is openly announcing that the only way they can win your vote is by launching a smear campaign against the other guy.
What McCain gonna do when he's in the white house? Launch smear campaigns against Al Qaida and global warming?

The wife and I were out for dinner last night with a few people, one of whom is a Republican that supports McCain. She says she'll be voting for him because she thinks Democrats will be bad for the economy and won't keep us as safe as Republicans will. I'm not sure how she concludes these things based on our current situation, especially considering that she's a very intelligent person.

And even more surprising to me, she defends Palin by saying she's been unfairly targetted by the media. She says nothing about Palin being unable to answer extremely basic questions in interviews though. Go figure.

But luckily, it doesn't matter. We live in California where her vote is basically meaningless in the face of an overwhelmingly Democratic population.

[Deckard]

Originally Posted by cacophony

the modern republican campaign cashes in on the portion of the population that views itself as perpetually victimized. the people who still believe, "if they're not nice to me it's just because they're jealous." the internet trolls of the population, who believe that if they don't get their way anything is fair game. it's a deliberate positioning that appeals to your sense of entitlement and the defensiveness that resents anyone who might think they're better than you.

it's why you see the kind of campaign tactics that they've used for the last 3 or 4 elections. it's why a network like fox news can exist, when there's no liberal counterpart. it's why insane conservative radio and TV pundits get mad ratings but air america can't keep itself financially solvent. the republicans have tapped this particular segment of the population and they own it so wholly that they can confidently launch attack ads based on total fallacies and still maintain a voting base.

So true. And the ironic thing is, it's the same people who are so quick to denounce and sneer at the victim mentality of women, Muslims, African-Americans, etc and put it all down to the great liberal conspiracy. It's more than a little telling that, so often, these are people who are curiously more infuriated by silly but well-meant examples of political correctness than by the longstanding and deep-seated discrimination that political correctness (however clumsily) seeks to address. I can't help it, I just feel a deep loathing for anyone who prioritizes in that way, who is more bothered by and motivated to harp on about "pandering to these minorities" and "PC-gone-mad" than by actual discrimination, by violence against women, by continued salary inequality, by racism in all its forms...

I'm going to stop there or I could fill the thread up with this particular rant!

[Deckard]

On McCain, I was thinking to myself earlier, I wonder how different his tactics would be now if his presidential campaign was following 8 years of failed Democratic rule instead of GOP rule, and if the Dems didn't have a particularly strong candidate running against him? If he was scoring substantially better than the opposition. Would he have stooped so low? Would he still be so widely respected? I suspect no and yes in that order.

And does that mean that, in that hypothetical situation, we simply wouldn't have known the real McCain?

[cacophony]

Originally Posted by Deckard

So true. And the ironic thing is, it's the same people who are so quick to denounce and sneer at the victim mentality of women, Muslims, African-Americans, etc and put it all down to the great liberal conspiracy. It's more than a little telling that, so often, these are people who are curiously more infuriated by silly but well-meant examples of political correctness than by the longstanding and deep-seated discrimination that political correctness (however clumsily) seeks to address. I can't help it, I just feel a deep loathing for anyone who prioritizes in that way, who is more bothered by and motivated to harp on about "pandering to these minorities" and "PC-gone-mad" than by actual discrimination, by violence against women, by continued salary inequality, by racism in all its forms...

I'm going to stop there or I could fill the thread up with this particular rant!

i had to laugh because you described it to a T. it's a group of people populated by white men who vehemently oppose anything that smacks of affirmative action, citing the "unfairness" of the "reverse racism" of these systems. nevermind the entrenched racial disparity that prevents equality from spontaneously manifesting *poof*. middle class white men who never had to doubt that they would be able to go to college and find a white collar job to support their 2.5 kids, bitching about the idea that maybe we could give others a leg up because "it's not fair."

i, too, could fill this thread with my rant.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

Originally Posted by cacophony

*poof*.

I think you spelled it wrong. Smartass.