Right now, could you vote for any of the current candidates and really be excited about them?

Mtn Dew wrote:

Rudy is not pro-gun.

He will be if he saddles up with the national Republicans...

Oh, thanks, but I didn’t want to know that.

The 24 hours isn’t up yet over here!

They all suck! Wimps and weasels. Nobody has a position he can articulate and stick to publicly.

Gore -- give me a break! Thank God he didn't make it.

Hillary -- spare us. Can you imagine her shrill rantings for 4 years? I would cringe at her speeches just like I do with George's.

The Republicans -- all just playing politics. Not a Reagan amongst them.

In fact, both parties seem to be happy to just pile dirt on each other instead of making this a better country.

And they all love pork!!!!!!!!!

Anyone have any good info on Fred Thompson. I heard his name pop up as a potential candidate on a news show last week and people were excited at the prospect. He had a successful political career that he left on his own terms and now an acting career. People definitely know who he is. How did he do as a Senator though?

He could shake up the GOP candidates if he throws his hat in the ring.

"Barrack: Pros - He's the most intelligent, thoughtful candidate. He also carries himself in a very presidential manner, in stark contrast to Dubya who has degraded the office with his plain speak, shoot from the hip style. Cons - He's got no experience and in case we haven't noticed, white people in the blue states don't take to kindly to black people in power"

-don't forget to add that he is muslim.

Which one's the Manchurian Candidate. I don't want to vote for that one.

Fred Thompson=John McCain(on almost every issue), he will jump in if his close friend McCain continues to fall.

check yer head wrote:

"Barrack: Pros - He's the most intelligent, thoughtful candidate. He also carries himself in a very presidential manner, in stark contrast to Dubya who has degraded the office with his plain speak, shoot from the hip style. Cons - He's got no experience and in case we haven't noticed, white people in the blue states don't take to kindly to black people in power"

-don't forget to add that he is muslim.

Or he's a Christian and you're a moron.

I have a feeling I'll be voting 3rd party (Libertarian) again in 2008.

how bout Michael Savage? He's strong on borders language and American culture, as a plus he hates Arabs, I think i'll be voting for him.

and yes i recently heard that Hillary Clinton is the devil, just with large hips

Jasper Sneakham wrote:

Oh, thanks, but I didn’t want to know that.

The 24 hours isn’t up yet over here!

Sorry about that mate! The day is still going on here on this side of the pond as well, but the incident I mentioned happened a couple of weeks ago. Guess our programming is a bit ahead of yours.

Brian, thanks for articulating these arguments. I have very similar beliefs about libertarians. One great example is the production of vaccines. They are a tremendous public good that has contributed a great deal to public health over the decades. But they are not profitable to develop or administer.

WTF has this got to do with running?

There are atheists filled with dogma too, so simply being an atheist doesn't give one an advantage to me.

A lot of people are attracted to the Libertarian party who are fiscally conservative and liberal on social issues.

Take for example, the federal goverment of bailing out sub-prime mortgage industry. That is a terrible way to use federal tax money.

I am not opposed to more restrictions on predatory lending.

But I don't think federal tax money should be used to bail out people who took on a lot of risk and then when it turned out their gamble didn't pay off want to be bailed out.

If their adjustable rate didn't go up and housing prices kept going up, a lot of the same people would be telling everyone how smart they were for taking out an adjustable instead of a fixed traditional mortgage with 20% down.

And I don't want to see the mortgage companies that took on a ton of risk be bailed out now. They were making tons of money over the past few years and pretty much everyone saw the writing on the wall that they were taking too much risk and started giving money away to anyone for a quick buck. Now that things turned sour, they shouldn't be bailed out with federal tax dollars.

Some Democrat leaders have said the sub-prime market is broken and have hinted that they would support a bail out.

On the other hand, I couldn't vote for a Republican who wants to impose intelligent design in public school.

So I am sometimes stuck in no man's land.

ZachAttack wrote:

I find that when I ask people why they don't like so-and-so, it's usually a pretty trivial reason which I suspect has been planted in thier head by listening to various pundits: 'He's too stiff', 'She's too bitchy', 'I just don't like him,' etc... It's really disgusting to me when people have such strong personal dislikes about a particular candidate when all they really know is what they've heard on the 24hr tabloid news networks.

I agree with ZachAttack's earlier post.

How about voting for presidential candidates based on:

1. Whether or not they'll do the things you want them to do -- whether your vision of the country agrees with theirs.

2. How well you think they'll do them.

Instead of, "Oh, wow, he's really boring, she's annoying, he really deserves it, this guy sucks, give me a break..." I mean, saying those things can be funny, and it's a good way to degrade a candidate, but it is a spectacularly stupid way to pick a candidate.

I mean, it's not a popularity contest or a "how much you like this person" contest, it's a presidential election, we're picking the leader of the most powerful nation in the world.

As for me, number 1 is typically solved by picking a Democrat. I think taxes can be good things, wars are bad, and I'm one of the most socially liberal people you can find.

Number 2 is the hard part. Right now I'm going with Obama, but to be honest I don't know too much about him. I feel like Hillary plays politics more than I am comfortable with, which means she might be more likely to do things I disagree with in the name of politics. Obama's vision of the country is closer to mine, and I think he's more likely to stick to his own path.

I mean, it's not a popularity contest or a "how much you like this person" contest, it's a presidential election, we're picking the leader of the most powerful nation in the world.

Right now I'm going with Obama, but to be honest I don't know too much about him.