Why conservatives must not vote for Bush

Status
Not open for further replies.
I am tired of typing. Somebody else can finish the list.
Click to expand...

Kerry has a superior environmental record. I for one value my RKBA and also value the right of my family to breathe clean air, drink pure water, and hike/camp/hunt in unspoiled lands.
 
Kerry has a superior environmental record.
Click to expand...

No, that's just not so.

For example:

Kerry supported the EPA in it's rule making ability to force the potent carcinogen MTBE in to nation's gasoline supply, and then it's groundwater. This was forced through in the Cean Air Act of 1990 which Kerry was a solid backer of.

Don't like carcinogens in your drinking water? Too damn bad, It's an EPA mandate and these arrogant bureaucrats have decided that you and your children will just have to take this risk.

http://www.discerningtoday.org/members/Digest/2000Digest/March/EPA Knew.htm

And Kerry's record is replete with support for similar short-sighted, environmentally disasterous policies,

Kerry supports the Kyoto accords, which limits industrial production in the generally clean US manufacturing sector in favor of production in the filthy industrial sectors of India, PR China, etc.

Kerry is a solid opponent of clean, renewable, and economically viable energy production via nuclear power and even hydroelectric. Recall kerry's pandering to the Greens & Native-American (& Native Canadian) groups when he opposed Hydro-Quebec's expansion of it's hydroelectric capacity.

Imagine what would happen to the organization that has done more to conserve wetlands in the US than any other: Ducks Unlimited, if Kerry's anti-hunting friends and gun control friends were successfull in using him to severely limit the waterfowl hunting sports. A lot of valuable wetlands would be lost.

No, Kerry is no freind of the environment. Very few Liberal Democrats are.

Recall Clinton's putting huge swaths of very clean burning low sulfur coal off limits to useage by his creation of the Grand-Staircase, Escalante National Monument out in Utah. Did a whole lot for the environment didn't it? Sure, you might think that, until you take a drive through W. Virginia and see all of the strip-mining that the Utah mines could have replaced.

You can expect a lot more of that kind of environmental idiocy in any Kerry Administration.
 
Last edited:
5) Kerry does not operate on the premise that "I am right and anybody who disagrees is a terror lover who must be destroyed".
Click to expand...
I'm not going to bother trying to give this a reasoned response, but I did want to call attention to it so I could offer it as an example of an unhelpful addition to a rational discussion.

6) Kerry appears to be able to grasp reality or at least recognize it when it knocks on the front door.... Bush and Cheney still believe Hussein was in bed with Bin laden and the WMD's all got smuggled out on camel back.
Click to expand...
The UN (of all groups!) has actually said almost exactly that: Various materials useful to the production of nuclear devices disappeared shortly before the invasion. As for the claim Saddam never had WMDs, and wasn't trying to make more, this is the guy who used chemical weapons on his own subjects, the Kurds.

Well there you go. I guess it shoudn't hurt the government too badly if those little to no taxes the lower income brackets pay are reduced even further.
Click to expand...
How do you reduce taxes on someone who's not paying any? Give them (more) of my money? Create some negative tax brackets?

Cool, I fall in the -25% bracket this year! The government will give me a 25% matching contribution toward my gross income!

On second thought, that's kind of how welfare works. The less you make, the more the government takes my money to pay you. I acknowledge the necessity for some personal taxation for the maintenance of our society (there are some people I respect who do not, but we agree to disagree.) But what right does the government have to say that, (for example) those who make x dollars pay nothing, those who make y dollars pay 15% taxes, and those who make z dollars pay 30%? There should be no penalty for earning more. H. T. Gunner is right: "IT BELONGS TO THEM, NOT YOU, and they have every right to keep it."


George Bush is a bit centrist for my taste, and I wish he'd spend less on pretty much everything except national defense. That said, he clearly understands the worldwide threat that unchecked terror presents, and is willing to make bold moves to suppress it. You don't negotiate with, or try to ignore, terrorists intent on doing you harm. You kill them, eliminating the immediate threat, and thus sending a message to anyone else interested in doing the same that the full wrath of the U.S. military will come down upon them like the wrath of Allah if they try to do the same.

Kerry wants terrorism to be thought of as a "nuisance", like a fly to be idly swatted away. We've tried to just ignore terrorism, hoping that it will go away, for a long time. I think the nuisances of 9/11, and the bombings of the USS Cole, various US Embassies, and the first attack on the World Trade Center give the lie to the idea that terrorism is a "nuisance" "law enforcement" issue that we should tolerate at some level, and occasionally react to when more serious manifestations occur.

-twency
______________

W in '04!

(edited for clarity)
 
Tyme, I think the math is more like...

In a population of 100 people (and the voting population, at least in most areas, is fixed), if you get

45 supporting Bush
45 supporting Kerry
10 supporting Nader and other independents

then if you move votes to "anyone but Bush"

Voting against bush by voting independent
-------------------------------------------------------
44 supporting Bush
45 supporting Kerry
11 supporting Nader and other independents

--resultant one vote lead by Kerry--

or

Voting against Bush by voting for Kerry
-------------------------------------------------
44 supporting Bush
46 supporting Kerry
10 supporting Nader and other independents

--resultant two vote lead for Kerry--


or people just don't vote...

44 supporting Bush
45 supporting Kerry
10 supporting Nader and other independents

--resultant one vote lead for Kerry--

In all cases, abstention or diversion of votes results in a benefit to the Kerry campaign. Democrats have been hitting forums and chat boards HARD to convince folks to vote "Anyone but Bush." And it appears to be working.

It's important that we vote, and vote for the person who can make sure that Kerry doesn't make it into office. Sure, we can "make a statement," but I fear that those "statements" will lead to some serious erosion upon our rights, 2nd amendment and otherwise, by folks who truly believe that they are "helping" us.

Vote for an independent if you must in your local races, but for POTUS, vote against Kerry. If we don't, I fear that Schumer, Kennedy, Feinstein, et al, will be at us with a vengeance - they won't just be banning "Uzis, AKs, and ARs," but instead will be banning "semiautomatic rifles," "magazine-fed rifles," "repeating rifles," etc - the last AWB was specific in its nomenclature - the next one will be vague, general, and will seriously hurt us.
 
In all cases, abstention or diversion of votes results in a benefit to the Kerry campaign. Democrats have been hitting forums and chat boards HARD to convince folks to vote "Anyone but Bush." And it appears to be working.
Click to expand...
I never said that voting 3rd party has no relative effect on Bush vs Kerry. What I said is that it has half the impact of a vote for Kerry, and that it's not a vote against Bush.

A vote for choice A is a vote against choice B only when choice A is a viable candidate. If the top choices are Bush and Kerry, voting for Badnarik is not a vote for Kerry, so it is not a vote against Bush. If the top choices change to Kerry vs Badnarik because so many people are fed up with Bush, Bush becomes the spoiler candidate, and Bush voters are the ones giving Kerry the advantage.
Vote for an independent if you must in your local races, but for POTUS, vote against Kerry. If we don't, I fear that Schumer, Kennedy, Feinstein, et al, will be at us with a vengeance
Click to expand...
Here we go again. If you think that without your ballot the Bush vs Kerry tallies will be within one vote, you're viewing the voting system as a mathematical computation rather than the complicated, error-prone mess that it is. Not voting for Bush does have an effect on vote totals. However, there has never been a congressional or presidential race decided by 1 or 2 votes, so yours is a rhetorical, rather than a practical, argument. If votes are ever that close, it's a matter of which party can rig or otherwise influence the inevitable recounts, not who actually won.

Even if you think that your vote can make a difference, the presidential election has different dynamics in each State. If your State's presidential election is not going to be close, it makes perfect sense to vote for a third party. It is not futile or useless. Political scientists and campaigns for the two major parties look at third party vote counts, and if they're significant, future campaigns will focus on ways to win over those voting blocks. That means compromising on at least some small issues, which can only benefit us.
 
1) Tyme, where's your sig line from?

2) I think that individual votes do mean something, even with the electoral college... It's the whole "we got 51% of the vote, but still lost, but we should have won by popular mandate!" bit.

Remember that this forum is nationwide, and if some folks in the "battleground" states decide to "send a message," then that _could_ determine the election. It doesn't take many.

Since the voting population is a fixed population (except in Chicago, St. Louis, Florida, etc...), the removal or alteration of a vote from one candidate to another does affect the candidate which "loses" it.

Every vote "against" Bush, every abstention, every out and out defection means a Kerry advantage.

The third parties have a chance locally, but nationally - it's just a way to "send a message," which, while it is noticed, is seldom heeded.
 
 
And we are tired of reading (and replying) to your erroneous and downright wrong statements.

Thank you.
Click to expand...

You're welcome.

And yet, all you can muster to refute my "erroneous statements" is a personal attack against myself.


That pretty much says it all right there.
 
I just changed my signature to try to address all these misconceptions about a third-party vote. :)
The old one was from Michael Mann's latest movie, Collateral.

the removal or alteration of a vote from one candidate to another does affect the candidate which "loses" it.
Click to expand...
Yes, every abstention or third-party vote affects the candidate who "loses" it.

Holding a voting precinct administrator at gunpoint and forcing everyone at that polling place to vote for Badnarik "means a Kerry advantage." Does that mean that it's equivalent to voting against Bush? No. Election fraud is not the equivalent of voting against Bush, nor is a vote for Badnarik a vote against Bush. Refusing to vote is not a vote against Bush, either. Only a vote for Bush's closest (by votes) competitor is a vote against Bush.

Your one vote will have much more significance to those political scientists/pollsters/spinsters/campaigners if you cast it for a third party. One vote added to 1 million Libertarian Party votes is more significant than one vote subtracted from 65 million. Campaigns look at significant blocks of voters they can change. Those blocks include young people and swing voters; third party voterss are usually considered swing voters. Campaigns will compromise on some issues to get third-party votes. They may be minor issues, but saying the message "is seldom heeded" is misleading. The reason it's not being heeded is because hardly anyone is voting for a third party. When a third party has good numbers two elections in a row, things will improve significantly.

Of course, a better and faster solution is to push for voting reform so that single-winner elections use one of the Pairwise voting systems rather than Plurality voting. Even Plurality with runoff would be a significant improvement, the difference being mainly that runoffs require a whole new election and new ballots, both of which waste time and money.

Condorcet or any of the other pairwise election methods (which differ only in how they handle a case where A is preferred to B, B to C, and C to A, each by a majority) is the best alternative because it essentially looks at runoffs between each pair of candidates, which is the only sane way to determine the winner if no candidate gets a majority.

Sadly, because there are no national elections with ranked ballots in the U.S., it's impossible to say what might happen if the voting system were changed.
 
"And yet, all you can muster to refute my "erroneous statements" is a personal attack against myself."

Nice try but you still miss the point. Your errors have been refuted time and time again yet you persist.

As far as a personal attack against you, virtually all you have done is make personal attacks against Bush, so it's a wash. Remember trying to drag your hatred of Bush into thefitzvah's thread about his Mom and her dislike of his guns?

The fact that you don't like Bush is one thing. Trying to repeat the same old lies about him is another, very boring thing.
 
I've seen some people who are so busy running from Kerry that they aren't watching what they're running towards. - MP5
Click to expand...

Hey, voting against Kerry is a no brainer. Not voting for Bush is like giving Kerry a pass. Don't imply that I am not concerned about who to support for 2008. Anyone who thinks all will be set right in one election is dreaming.

Picture this. Feinstein/Schumer/Kennedy introduce AWB II with Kerry backing from the White House. Yikes! Imagine the amendments hung on that baby. One of them will be to ban ammo for millions of existing rifles.

Forget about repeal of DC gun bans. Kerry won't sign it.

Not only that, but you'll see all sorts of bills from hell, and you'll hear "for the children" so many times you'll want to scream. You'll need a vomit bag every time you watch CSPAN. All that bipartisan baloney will go out the window as the Republicans try to hold the socialist agenda at bay by playing hardball.

With Kerry in the box, forget about any need to "fix" the Supreme Court.

With Kerry, nothing works. With Bush, many things do work, and we live to fight another day. Think 2008. I already have a few names on my short list for President in 2008. I think Senator Bill Frist, MD is a natural.

Kerry would be a one termer anyway. What a waste. There is no way he would be reelected, when it becomes well known how liberal he really is. The guy's a socialist with an insatiable appetite for taxes and intrusion on citizens and certainly on businesses. Right off the bat, Wall Street would tank. Kiss your investments good bye, as if not hard hit already.

Lastly, I am with the poster who pointed out that "conservative" is an increasingly murky term. The press uses it as a code word for religious people, politically active Baptists specifically, but conservatism has a number of wings, one of which is to keep religion out of government. So I don't hold with using the term conservative without qualifying it extensively. By itself, the term is meaningless except as a code word for "not Democrat".
 
Don't imply that I am not concerned about who to support for 2008. Anyone who thinks all will be set right in one election is dreaming.
Click to expand...

My comments weren't aimed at you in particular.

Lastly, I am with the poster who pointed out that "conservative" is an increasingly murky term.
Click to expand...

True, and it's just as murky as "liberal." The writer of the article at the beginning of this thread offers a fine definition of "conservative":

"a commitment to individual liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint and fiscal responsibility."

If the Republicans would ditch strange moderate-statist hybrids like Bush and all those Moral Majority-style fundamentalist Christians and adopt the above-quoted commitments, America could benefit greatly.
 
MP5:

The links you provided are all from groups with little or no credibility to speak about environmental issues objectively. Any opinion they express regarding the Bush Administration is very suspect.

Disturbingly, some of the groups are supporters of the domestic terrorist groups such as ELF and Earth First.

Tom Knudson wrote an excellent series of articles in The Sacramento Bee newspaper that exposes these groups as money grubbing frauds driven by a far-left political agenda.

I highly reccommend the articles to anyone interested in environmental issues:

http://www.sacbee.com/static/archive/news/projects/environment/index02.html
 
The links you provided are all from groups with little or no credibility to speak about environmental issues objectively.
Click to expand...

Of course, those links/articles should be read critically, as all should. However, to say a group like the NRDC, however imperfect, has no credibility to talk about the environment objectively doesn't pass muster, imo. It'd be like saying that we shouldn't listen to the recommendations of the GOA or NRA regarding candidates' stances on the RKBA because they're obviously biased. Of course, one should take their pronouncements with the necessary grains of salt, but also bear in mind that they're "biased" towards the RKBA for a darn good reason and also have a pretty good idea what they're talking about on that particular issue.

Anyway, thanks very much for the link. I can definitely relate to a lot of what the author is saying. I've let my memberships in a number of environmental groups lapse over the years precisely because of the tactics the articles expose. (Though they're hardly unique to environmental groups--tons of advocacy/interest groups pull the same annoying shenangigans. I imagine you can think of some gun groups that love scare tactics or massive barrages of mail.) I prefer to get out there and do cleanup/recycling/etc. work myself, trying to put my money where my mouth is while enjoying nature in the process. I can see what my efforts are doing, as opposed to sending off a check and wondering precisely what it's financing.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

R
  • Locked
Is Bob Barr voting for Badnarik?
Replies
19
Views
674
Tamara
T
F
  • Locked
New conservative movement?
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
142
Views
4K
Byron Quick
B
B
  • Locked
Like rats from a sinking ship
2
Replies
29
Views
2K
Airboss
A
P
  • Locked
Was Clinton More Conservative Than Bush?
2
Replies
29
Views
1K
corncob
C
H
  • Locked
Pat Buchanan even endorses Dubya
Replies
5
Views
410
Mulliga
M
Back
Top