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You don't get to say they are "Outliers" when Santorum wins 11 (I think that was the number?) Republican presidential primaries. When audiences at those primari

by dlitwak 14y ago

You don't get to say they are "Outliers" when Santorum wins 11 (I think that was the number?) Republican presidential primaries. When audiences at those primaries boo gay soldiers. When their candidate wants to get rid of planned parenthood. A major party's senate candidate is an "outlier" ???/ You'd be hard pressed to find anyone this nuts on the left. Half of the Repubs members of the congressional committee on science don't believe in evolution. The moderates who you refer to have left: Richard Lugar, Arlen Spector etc., haven't you noticed they've been cast out of the party/defeated in primaries. Frankly, the media is too "fair." Not all opinions deserve to be treated equally. If media is sympathetic to the Democratic party it's because ours is a party based on reason, evidence and logic, not 2,000 year old myths.

deleted 14y ago
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gojomo 14y ago
Winning only 11 primaries, compared to 42 won by the nominee, is evidence of a regional/minority-factional 'outlier' candidacy. (And even for those wins, Santorum needed the 'anybody but Romney' dynamic: it was far from broad GOP love for Santorum. Though if you're suffering from the out-group bias I mentioned, it might look that way.) And yes, a major party's Senate candidate can be an 'outlier'. In the US, the parties don't pick the candidates, voters do through primaries. Only 36% of Missouri Republican primary voters gave Akin a slim plurality in a no-runoff 3-way primary. Two other candidates in that primary, each with a broader base of national Republican support, got a combined 59% of the GOP vote. So Akin is even somewhat of an outlier in his home, conservative Missouri GOP. An bigger outlier was the 'major party' Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Mark Clayton: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-worst-candidate-with-mark-clayton-tennessee-democrats-hit-bottom/2012/10/22/77da926e-1b8a-11e2-a146-ccabc9c85c53_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-wo... Still, Clayton won the primary and got to run as the Democrat, over the protests of the state party, because that's how the system works. A plurality of voters who show up in low-turnout, often unrepresentative primaries pick the candidates, not the parties. Yes, the GOP has lost a bunch of its moderate candidates, and that's a problem for the GOP and the country. The causes are both internal GOP malfunctions, and the portrayal-biases I've been mentioning from the media and casual poltical observers. (The moderates rarely get their due respect/coverage as equal Republicans, the Republicans don't get due recognition of their internal diversity. So the breadth of the party has decayed compared to the past, before year-round cable-news/internet politi-tainment narrowed and hardened the party identities.)
- dlitwak 14y ago
  bullshit. I don't care how many primaries Romney won, 11 is a lot. And the fact that the one logical candidate in the race (as much as I dislike him), who was the least bit moderate, even evoked that "anyone but Romney" feeling only proves my point. The fact that people thought that crazy was better than Romney only proves my point. And the fact that Romney had to tack so far to the right to even win the nomination proves my point yet again. Look at polls: way too many Republicans believe stupid things like Obama is Muslim, he wasn't born in this country etc.. It's funny, I was going to bring up Mark Clayton as an example of a real outlier: the party completely ignored him (not this Akin stuff, Huckabee supported him, then the SuperPacs poured money in at the last minute when it had cooled down), it was in a state that Democrats have low turnout in since they have no chance of winning anyway, so an idiot managed to make himself the nominee. Every once in a while these things happen, yes, but over the past few years you guys have elected as your candidates Christine O'Donnell ('I'm not a witch'), the legion of legitimate rape morons, and a bunch of other memorable idiots like Bachmann who accused a Clinton staffer of being a highly placed Muslim Brotherhood operative. You purge your party of anyone who says anything remotely conciliatory or logical/moderate. If you were talking about one state rep, or even one senator, you would have a point. But the numerous crazies and the fact that you considered people like Bachmann and Santorum legitimate contenders for the presidency does not give you the right to call the crazies the "outliers" in your party: the inmates are now running the asylum.
  - gojomo 14y ago
    Interjections like 'bullshit' are not convincing. Your fondness for derogatory labels ('idiots', 'morons', 'crazies') and personalizing hyperbolic allegations (like "you purge your party of anyone who says anything remotely conciliatory or logical/moderate") suggest you have strong, fixed, partisan, emotional feelings about this which make further discussion unproductive.

by dlitwak 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

gojomo 14y ago

Winning only 11 primaries, compared to 42 won by the nominee, is evidence of a regional/minority-factional 'outlier' candidacy. (And even for those wins, Santorum needed the 'anybody but Romney' dynamic: it was far from broad GOP love for Santorum. Though if you're suffering from the out-group bias I mentioned, it might look that way.) And yes, a major party's Senate candidate can be an 'outlier'. In the US, the parties don't pick the candidates, voters do through primaries. Only 36% of Missouri Republican primary voters gave Akin a slim plurality in a no-runoff 3-way primary. Two other candidates in that primary, each with a broader base of national Republican support, got a combined 59% of the GOP vote. So Akin is even somewhat of an outlier in his home, conservative Missouri GOP. An bigger outlier was the 'major party' Democratic Senate candidate in Tennessee, Mark Clayton: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-worst-candidate-with-mark-clayton-tennessee-democrats-hit-bottom/2012/10/22/77da926e-1b8a-11e2-a146-ccabc9c85c53_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/2012s-wo... Still, Clayton won the primary and got to run as the Democrat, over the protests of the state party, because that's how the system works. A plurality of voters who show up in low-turnout, often unrepresentative primaries pick the candidates, not the parties. Yes, the GOP has lost a bunch of its moderate candidates, and that's a problem for the GOP and the country. The causes are both internal GOP malfunctions, and the portrayal-biases I've been mentioning from the media and casual poltical observers. (The moderates rarely get their due respect/coverage as equal Republicans, the Republicans don't get due recognition of their internal diversity. So the breadth of the party has decayed compared to the past, before year-round cable-news/internet politi-tainment narrowed and hardened the party identities.)

dlitwak 14y ago
bullshit. I don't care how many primaries Romney won, 11 is a lot. And the fact that the one logical candidate in the race (as much as I dislike him), who was the least bit moderate, even evoked that "anyone but Romney" feeling only proves my point. The fact that people thought that crazy was better than Romney only proves my point. And the fact that Romney had to tack so far to the right to even win the nomination proves my point yet again. Look at polls: way too many Republicans believe stupid things like Obama is Muslim, he wasn't born in this country etc.. It's funny, I was going to bring up Mark Clayton as an example of a real outlier: the party completely ignored him (not this Akin stuff, Huckabee supported him, then the SuperPacs poured money in at the last minute when it had cooled down), it was in a state that Democrats have low turnout in since they have no chance of winning anyway, so an idiot managed to make himself the nominee. Every once in a while these things happen, yes, but over the past few years you guys have elected as your candidates Christine O'Donnell ('I'm not a witch'), the legion of legitimate rape morons, and a bunch of other memorable idiots like Bachmann who accused a Clinton staffer of being a highly placed Muslim Brotherhood operative. You purge your party of anyone who says anything remotely conciliatory or logical/moderate. If you were talking about one state rep, or even one senator, you would have a point. But the numerous crazies and the fact that you considered people like Bachmann and Santorum legitimate contenders for the presidency does not give you the right to call the crazies the "outliers" in your party: the inmates are now running the asylum.
- gojomo 14y ago
  Interjections like 'bullshit' are not convincing. Your fondness for derogatory labels ('idiots', 'morons', 'crazies') and personalizing hyperbolic allegations (like "you purge your party of anyone who says anything remotely conciliatory or logical/moderate") suggest you have strong, fixed, partisan, emotional feelings about this which make further discussion unproductive.