"Considering the GOP lost this last election by a relatively small margin"

332-206.

John Kerry lost to George W. Bush 286-252. Gore lost to Bush 271-266. If you think 332-206 is a "relatively small margin" then you've forgotten the torment that this country forced themselves into with two terms of that drunkard.

I don't know how that is anything remotely close in your mind. It's closer than 2008 when there was a competent Republican nominee - maybe that says something; I'd concede there - but that's a huge win, not a "relatively small margin."

@ Bosox - you've conveniently massaged the numbers by using the electoral college. An alternative would be that the Republicans threw up a total turd of a candidate who only lost to an incumbent president by 2 percentage points - with a two point swing in a couple of states we could have had a president named "Mitt".

As I always do in these "the GOP is dead" threads, I'll remind you all that in 2004 Bush and many pundits were talking about a "permanent Republican majority". How'd that work out? Hmm. Maybe there's a lesson about arrogance there. Let's all take note.

*an alternative spin would be....

@bo - Electoral college votes don't mean much when you consider that losing by one vote in most states gets your opponent *all* that state's votes, a very close popular election could be a landslide in the electoral college.

The GOP lost the White House. The GOP maintained leadership of the House, which was 100% up for election. The purposeful dismissal of this fact is disingenuous.

I can make the argument that that American people overwhelmingly decided that the GOP should manage the purse string, because Congress sets the budget.

Unfortunately (yes, that's my bias coming out), the political system of today works that way, so yeah, the electoral votes actually mean the whole election. Hate to say it's that simple because Gore would have been sooo much better than Bush, but it actually is that simple.

I could have handled Kerry, but Gore was scary crazy (still is). Of course, having Palin possibly sitting just a heartattack away from the PResidency was even more scary. I'd rather have Biden than here. She is what killed McCain's chances at winning.

@ ulytau My point is that our gross domestic product isn't even enough to cover our deficit. The left has to at least acknowledge that spending is a problem, and the wars/military is a minority of that spending.

@ Draugnar Yeah Palin represents the worst of the GOP. Why McCain picked her is a mystery to me.

@ FlemGem

These people talking about the death of the GOP don't know anything. Big government policies (the heart and soul of the Democratic Party) are still very unpopular among the American people. If the GOP can get its shit together, find a good leader to unify the party, and stay the hell away from social issues it will be dominant in the foreseeable future.

Remember, Obama (with most of the media supporting him) beat a second-rate former governor and shady upper-class businessman. Obama would have been *blown out of the water* by Ron Paul or some other libertarian-conservative.

Colin Powell 2016!

Bush is just as scary crazy. Palin was definitely more scary, no doubt.

@Gun .. my guess is that he picked her to combat the potential of Hillary winning the primary on the other side and take every single female vote away from him. She and Condoleezza Rice are the only two high standing women at that time that I can think of...

"@ ulytau My point is that our gross domestic product isn't even enough to cover our deficit."

Yes, I have read what you have written. Repeating it again doesn't make it any less wrong though.

I would've voted for Ron Paul over Obama, no question.

@Bo - How old are you again? 17? You were 5 when Bush was elected the first time around. I really don't think you have any room to say whether he was sacry crazy at 5 or even at 9. Come one, dude. Someof us have been voting since Reagan. We saw Nixon and Ford and Carter and George H.W. Bush and Clinton before G.W. Bush and Obama.

You understand that Bush didn't just magically die off after the election of 2004, right? You think I don't remember his speeches? Like I haven't heard things from other people? Like I couldn't give you an opinion on Reagan too? Hell, I can give you an opinion on Teddy Roosevelt. Who are we to idolize Thomas Jefferson? He was one of the most morally unstable men in America. None of us were alive, we can't say. No, that's not how it is. I wasn't politically sensitive in 2000, but I sure as hell know I relate to Gore much better than Bush and I can look back at Bush and say with certainty that he didn't work out.

I would vote for Bush over Gore all day, any day.

And that's why you have your individual vote.

Hindsight is 20/20 moron. Yes, Bush had issues. We wouldn't know about them if he hadn't been elected because they happened in office. Gore had issues *during the election* which does not bode well for what it would have been like during his time in office.

Let's take arguably the worst president of the last 40 years, Jimmy Carter (a man I actually respect now that he is out of office). When he ran, there were no problems. No issues that came up. He and Ford had a very cordial relationship and the two camps really did focus on issues and differences, not mud slinging and personal situations. But he was a horrible President in no small part due to the decisions he made in the people with whom he chose to surround himself.

So who knows just how bad Palin would have been. Thank God we never found out. And who knows just how bad Gore's environmental policies (Chicken Little and the Sky is Falling anyone?) would have been for our economy. Thnk God we never found out. Went GW Bush was elected, 9/11 hadn't happened. Things started out just fine. Then 9/11 struck and we went to war, first with Afghanistan (a just war) then with Iraq (which we *later* discovered was under false pretexts). Had we never gone to war in Afghanistan, it is quite possible that GWB would never have gotten all warmongery and either let his people deceive him or outright lied to Congress and the American public. And while we are at it, let's talk about that Congress...

In the vote to go to war against Afghanistan, there was only 1 Nay vote between both the House and the Senate. Pretty bipartisan that one.

In the vote to go to war with Iraq, a full 1/3 of the Democrats in the House and more than half the Democrats in the senate voted to go to war. And in fact, the Senate was controlled by the Democrats at the time and enough Republicans voted against it that had the Democrats not cplit, the House wouldn't have passed it either. So another clear bipartisan effort.

Was Budh flawed and a warmongerer? In hindsite, yes (that or blindingly and willfully ignorant of the truth at least when it came to Iraq). Did we know that when we elected him the first time? Not at all. Did we know that when we elected him for a second term? Some maybe, but most believed in staying the course as well as possible seeing as we were making progress and our own losses were small compared to wars like Korea and Vietnam thanks to modern technology.

Lol.. 9/11 got Bush reelected. No, I'm not a conspirator, but he certainly used the aftermath and the spirit to fuel his second campaign. Etc etc to the rest of the post - I pretty much agree on the bipartisanship.

Sorry, hindsight is 20/20, so we should *completely* ignore it. Not a philosophy I follow. Human civilization is trial and error, for better or for worse, and if we never look at the error, the second trial is no better than the first. In USA terms, we haven't looked at the previous trials since the fight between Burr and Hamilton and the fight put up by Marshall and Jefferson for their respective views. Since then, we've ignored the past and we've done the same things in the same situations - and shockingly, that cycle is just so comforting to us that we stick right to it even when we see things like this every 20 years.

I didn't say ignore it. I said you can't blame the American people for electing him then because we didn't know. You were 5 for fucks sake. What did you know? Me? I voted in that election. I was 34. And believe it or not, I vote my conscience. I voted for Obama the first term as the alternative of Palin possibly getting the top office scared the fuck out of me and neither candidates "healthcare reform" was feasible to me (that's for another thread). I went independent this time around because I didn't like Romney's business history of carving up companies and Obama's domestic policies were turning out to be more of the liberal bullshit, especially when Obama care which was not passed as a tax and is not legally a tax according to the Constitution (the Senate cannot initiate a tax bill legally) was suddenly presented to the Supreme Court as a tax instead of the original "Interstate Commerce Clause" which the administration suddenly realized wouldn't fly with SCOTUS.

And yes, a great number of people elected Bush because of the wars and patriotism and all that bullshit. There can be no doubt that the "stay the course" message got through.

Draug, I'm glad my first election is going to have nothing to do with Obama because I probably wouldn't have supported him if not for Romney running against him. If there were a genuine moderate (not a radical's moderate) running, I'd have probably swayed that way. Like you with Palin, the alternative is more scary than the primary option, and that's why I'd vote against Romney.

I don't blame the American people for electing Bush. As a matter of fact, the American people didn't elect Bush, they elected Gore - by that much. The Electoral College elected Bush, and we - the American people - elected the Electoral College. That's the system and that's its biggest flaw... in that way, yeah, hindsight is 20/20.

I am going to use hindsight when I vote. Not my hindsight, but my history books' hindsight, my teachers' hindsight, my parents' hindsight. Why? Because I don't like Jefferson's policy, nor do I like Coolidge's policy, nor do I like either Bush's policy. I like Teddy Roosevelt's policy, I like Wilson's policy (to a point... he was kind of a raging naive idealist in his foreign policy, but that's beside the point), and I like Lincoln's policy. They were all regulators and if they know what they are doing (which the first and last undeniably did, Wilson the debatable one), they worked out great.

Obviously that can go the other way just as easily, and that's where the risk is at in all of politics, but I don't trust the system enough to go with laissez-faire either.

People don't give Bush enough credit and way too much blame. He just happened to be the guy in the Oval Office when the 21st century shit hit the fan. Unlike Obama, Bush didn't pour gasoline on any problems. American interventionism has been a geopolitical reality since the Spanish-American War. Anyone remember Panama in 1989? Grenada in 1983? The numerous other "Banana" Wars throughout most of the 20th century? The US military's global presence truly began at the end of WWII but can be traced back to Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet. Bush invades *one* country for dubious reasons based on manipulated intelligence and suddenly the GOP is a bunch of neoconservative warmongering war-profiteering douchebags. Also, no one knew that the invasion would turn into nine years of costly occupation. Personally I assumed that it would be a mere repeat of the First Gulf War. 100 hours of balls-to-the-wall shock-and-awe asskicking just to make a point and a clean withdrawal afterwards.

Sick of Presidents taking us to war on their own anyway.

@Bo - Both wars int he war on terror were passed by Congress. What president took us to war on their own within my lifetime? (that's 47 years going all the way back to Johnson).

I'm talking literal war, not just Congress directing the potential blame to the President to keep their names clean. The last declaration of war - formalized war - was World War II. I'm not saying Vietnam wasn't a war, it sure as hell was. It just was never declared as such.

Oh, and as you admire Lincoln so much, he is generally considered *the* founder of the Republican Party after he left the Whigs and brought together many unhappy members of the Democratic, Free Soil, and Liberty Parties.

Democratic and Republican parties flipped quite awhile ago... just look at the election demographics. It's quite clear when and why.

Again, what President took us to war? If we are at war, but there isn't the formal declaration and yet Congress approved it, then the PResident didn't take us there. Congress can say no. They have before. And surely you don't disagree with getting those sond of bitches who flew civilian jetliners into civilian targets in Afghanistan, who was hiding them. The PResident doesn't take us to war on his own. He needs Congress to do it, even if there is no formal declaration.

Geez. Arguing with you is like arguing with your liberal history teacher. It isn't worth it cause you will just regurgitate what he says.