QUOTE: You guys like cowboys, and the cowboy creed is Republican gold.

You're absolutely right about this, but I count myself as one American who decidedly does not like cowboys.  I'd much rather intellectuals and academics as nation leaders (I'm sure there are intellectual cowboys, of course :-)

Scott Richards wrote: Being sick of it doesn't make it untrue.

And it also doesn't mean that Obama would have lost had there been no crisis.  You may think it's true.  I think it's incredibly dismissive.  No surprise, however, since I know who you supported. 

In any event, I'm glad we got a chance to see how both nominees reacted under real world pressure.  I think Obama acquitted himself like a leader whereas McCain came across as confused and staunchly towing the party line that our economic "fundamentals are sound" at a time when banks and other financial institutions were failing at a remarkable rate.  One looked presidential.  One did not.

500 pages, aw it seems lke it was just yesterday it was 140 . Oh Presidential Thread you are growing up way to fast. :0)

Wish I could say I was surprised...

Bush Rush To Deregulate

to... deregu...late... but...

This campaign has me all con-foo-sed.  Like, historically, the Republicans were all about small government and deregulation.  But then, somehow, the financial mess became the Democrats fault because the Democrats... wait... deregulated the... housing... but..  wait, wait... and then McCain and Palin said they would be the REGULATORS!  They would bring back regulation!  And...

Man, it's like they'll say anything to win an election, eh?

And Marc, Joe - no, there is nothing good or decent about Sarah Palin.  She is a horrible dark and evil thing.   She is the living breathing personification of everything that was wrong with the Republican party of the last 30 years.  As noted over the course of this thread, I didn't think McCain was such a bad guy - and had this not been a crisis year, and had he not been running against Barack Obama - if this were Hillary or something - I might have considered voting for him. 

He's a decent Republican - someone who really does put country first.

Sarah Palin is more of George W Bush, but somehow?  Less intellegent, and more vile and evil.  I know.  We thought we had hit the nadir of the fundementalist and neo-con barrell and then Karl Rove delivered this shocker to us: Sarah Palin.

The Republican party has some choices right now - they can look at everything that happened and say "Hey - we need to be actual Republicans again - let's stop pandering to religious fundementalists and the signators to the PNAC and get back to doing what's best for America, not what's best for the Church and Halliburton!"

orrrr... as some pundits (I'm looking at you, Malkin, you mouth-breathing disgrace) suggest, they could get even further in bed with those sorts - run the Republican ticket like it's a Old-Timey Revival Church sponsored by Exxon/Mobil.  Every campaign stop will feature an execution of an abortion doctor and a gay.  And when the crowd is worked into a musky lather, they'll execute the Mexican who performed the executions (at a below-Minimum Wage!)  Free candy for the kids.  Jesus says so!

Like.. sure, Palin should be interesting in the sense that it's good to see McCain's people wash their hands of the "Wasillia Hillbillies" but don't give her the kind of attention that will bring her back to any sort of position of power.

Is America a "center right" or a "center left" country? Hm, tricky. From our perspective most of American two-party politics are firmly on the right. So it's like you take a left/right scale, drop the entire left half, then divide what's left into "left" and "right" and argue about whether you're left  or right of centre of that.

People keep going on about how Obama is "leftist", "socialist", "the most liberal democrat" etc, but from our perspective he's firmly "conservative" or "right" with some modestly liberal social views.

You might make a case for the US being "center left" according to its own historical definitions of the political "center", but in terms of european politics, you've never even set foot on the left side of the centerline (on a national scale, that is) .