PN-G bamatex

  I agree that spending cuts are necessary as a matter of national life and death. The issue of whether education and public health are federal or state issues, however, is not, except where financial matters are concerned and solely where financial matters are concerned.   On the subject of the Founding Fathers' interpretations of the Constitution regarding the safeguards they implemented to protect against government gone wild, the earliest Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution interpreted the Bill of Rights as limitations only on the federal government, not the state governments, and favored very broad interpretations of federal powers such as the Commerce Clause. It wasn't until the Fourteenth Amendment that things as basic as Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion and the Right to Bear Arms were incorporated as restrictions on the state powers as well. The Founding Fathers saw popular sovereignty as the strongest defense against a federal government that is too powerful, with the codified limits on federal power setting up the framework for public debate. This means that they felt public opinion should be the deciding factor on matters such as whether the federal government has gotten too big except in the most extreme cases, and I doubt public opinion would favor doing away with the Department of Education, Medicare or the rest. Additionally, George Washington himself sided with federalists more times than not, embracing a stronger national government and in particular a stronger executive branch. Therefore, it's hard for me to accept that things like the Department of Education, Medicare and so on are outright affronts to the Founding Fathers' views. I think it's reasonable to say that they would have felt these things better handled by the states (again, in principle, I feel the same way), but I don't think they would be horrified at the thought of the federal government becoming involved in them.

  One wouldn't see Reagan or Cruz seeking out those professors or speaking to SDS simply because they have that "R" beside their name. Just like one wouldn't find Hillary Clinton speaking at a tea party rally.   Your most substantive evidence so far is the hiring of Van Jones. That's still not much.

  "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...."   See that general welfare part? I've got news for you: no modern day Supreme Court justice - not even Justice Scalia - is ever going to accept an interpretation of the US Constitution in which "general welfare" is not construed broadly enough to allow for spending on a public health or education issue. The justices provide "extreme deference" (there's a reason that's in quotation marks) to the legislature on that matter. Trust me. I've read more majority opinions than I can count.   I can agree, on principle, that public health is an issue best left to the states. That doesn't change the fact that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, for better or worse, are federal programs. They've been around for sixty years and they're not going anywhere. Whatever the principled approach may be, the practical one is to accept the reality that none of those programs will ever be broken up and handed to the states, and that conservatives will just have to do the best they can with what they've got.   Where education is concerned, the situation is similar. Obviously, it's not quite as drastic given that the federal government, even with NCLB, is nowhere near as involved in education as they are in public health, and that states have exercised much firmer control over education issues than public health issues throughout our history, but the fact of the matter is that DOE isn't going away. We might as well get something for the money.

  W. spent money like a drunken sailor?   Bush 43's average deficits were roughly half of Obama's average deficits. Most of Bush's deficits stemmed from unfunded liabilities in the form of preexisting programs that came due when the baby boom generation started hitting the right ages (i.e., Medicare, Social Security, etc.). In fact, in that regard, Bush saved us some money; I can't imagine what we'd be spending on Medicare had we not reformed Part C to force the private health care providers to get competitive. The only spending that is truly a result of the Bush administration is the spending on Homeland Security and the War on Terrorism, which was a fraction of the deficit and an absolute necessity following 9/11.   That brings us to the Patriot Act, in which case I'll say your assertion is just flat out wrong. There's plenty in that bill that's conservative. In fact, I think it's fair to say that was an extremely conservative security bill passed with overwhelming support in the hysteria and paranoia following 9/11. Are there parts of it that I don't agree with? Absolutely. There are parts of it that I think are an outright affront to our core liberty interests. I nonetheless look at it as a highly defensive bill passed by a highly defensive nation in the wake of the worst attack on American soil in US history - in essence, that it was a natural result of the circumstances. In any case, that's beside the point, which is simply this: while the Patriot Act may have gone too far, it's no secret that strong national defense is a core value for conservatives, and the Patriot Act went a long way toward shoring up that defense.

  Medicare Modernization pushed Medicare along the path to greater privatization. I don't see how that can be painted as anything other than a preexisting program taken in a conservative direction.   The only thing that NCLB really did was attach strings to preexisting federal funding. That's liberal in the sense that the federal government played an augmented role in a sphere that had traditionally been under the purview of the states. It's conservative in the sense that it made sure our tax dollars weren't going to keep funding mediocrity. Either way, education has a proven economic benefit, so at best, it's politically neutral.

  Alright, smitty, seriously, you posted a scanned in poster of Obama talking to SDS while he was running for the Illinois Senate. That's no more proof that he's a socialist than Steve Scalise's speaking to the KKK is proof that he's a bona fide racist. Unless you can produce something he's actually said or done indicating that he has, in fact, taken a socialist action, or at least that he intends to, your assertion is very poorly founded.

  I'm conflicted about whether or not to take that as a compliment.   I was looking for some kind of rebuttal to the argument presented in that article. Thus far, I have yet to hear one. For all these claims of "we need a true conservative" and "we haven't had a true conservative since Reagan" and "a true conservative would win these elections easily," I have yet to see the proof, and a lot of evidence supporting the contrary.   In the first place, we have had true conservatives since Reagan. Calling anyone in the Bush family anything less than a true conservative is a farce and an insult; the only arguably moderate things ever done in either Bush presidential administration were a tax hike done as part of a budget deal (that's called negotiation, and it used to be a necessary part of life in Washington) and TARP (which was, in my opinion, the government cleaning up a mess it spent three decades making, calling into question it's "non-conservative" nature). If you want to tally conservative actions versus non-conservative actions by either Bush while in office, the fact is the first column would vastly outweigh the second. In state politics, both Jeb and W. were conservative governors who represented their constituencies well while still managing to get bipartisan deals done.   Further, we've had plenty of "true conservatives" in the Republican presidential primaries. For the sake of argument, I'll remove Mitt and McCain from consideration. That leaves the likes of Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Michelle Bachmann, all of whom had considerable tea party support at various points during their campaigns. Now let me ask you, if they couldn't even win the Republican primaries in a primary system that strongly favors rural states during election cycles where the tea party was a much stronger force then it is now, what makes you think they could win a general election?   The bottom line is, just like I said in that article, this "true conservative" rationale is self-defeating and dangerous to both the Republican Party and the long-term interests of this country. It is irrational, and frankly mathematically stupid, to immediately dismiss someone you agree with on 70% of the issues or more because of that 30% or less you disagree about, and effectively hand an election to a candidate you agree with 10% of the time or less. That is not an effective way to run a party, to win an election or to get anything done in Washington. And that sort of uncompromising, unforgiving mentality is why this party is in the tough spot it's in when it comes to the country's only nationwide election, not some lack of "true conservatives."

The way I see it right now, Chris Christie won't run. I think Bridgegate proves he has skeletons in his closet and he's scared they'll come out in a presidential campaign. I think his best shot is to angle for a cabinet appointment, and he's positioning himself to do that pretty well.   Since he's already mentioned here, Scott Walker is my dark horse candidate.

  A lot, but not all. Our corporate, technology and pharmacy sectors are growing by leaps and bounds with all these companies moving in. And, like the article points out, oil isn't our only major natural resource. Logging has shown a lot of promise as well.

  You didn't read the article, did you?

  I definitely don't agree with that. I could go into why, but it's easier to just post this:   [Hidden Content]

  I don't agree with that either. There are rumors coming from party insiders about a much more strongly controlled primary process in 2016. We may see no more than four candidates in the primary (Bush, Romney, Huckabee and Paul are the four I'm thinking will be in it right now) and a primary season that's over early in the summer. It looks like the Republican leadership is making the same adjustments the Democrats made in 1972.

  That's not necessarily true. You're correct in stating that the Republicans can write off the black vote; that's as solidly Democrat as solidly Democrat gets. The Democrats will likely win the black vote by a less substantial margin than they did in '08 and '12 simply because the Obama nomination pushed their margin of victory to extremely high levels even by their normal standards, but they'll still win it overwhelmingly. Where the real question lies in regards to the black vote is whether it will turn out in the record-setting numbers of '08 and '12. '14 suggests it won't, but that was just a mid-term election. Only time will tell.   As for the young vote, female vote and Hispanic vote, all of them may be more heavily contested than conventional wisdom would suggest.   The Bush family is very popular with Hispanics - Bush 43 won substantially higher portions of the Hispanic vote in both his gubernatorial and presidential bids than Republican candidates normally do. This is doubly true for his brother, Jeb, who speaks Spanish fluently, studied abroad in Mexico, and is married to a woman from Mexico, with whom he's had three children. If Jeb wins the nomination, the smart pick for his VP position is Susana Martinez, an Hispanic female currently serving as New Mexico's highly popular Republican governor. That would give the Republicans substantial appeal to the Hispanic vote and a good chance of winning two swing states (New Mexico and Florida, where Jeb was probably the most popular governor in recent years).   The female vote is never as significantly locked up as Democrats like to think. The truth is, when you subdivide the female vote into other categories, Republicans carried the married female vote by a significant margin. If a Bush-Martinez ticket can pull significant portions of the Hispanic vote, they may just pull enough of the Hispanic female vote to thoroughly contest the overall female vote the Democrats will be trying to capture with Clinton, which is her biggest appeal.   The youth vote is honestly up for grabs. It never turns out as solidly for the Democrats at the end of a Democrat presidency as it does at the end of a Republican one. Not to mention that the economy has been harshest to young people. If we look at '14 (which, again, was just a mid-term election), the youth vote may be close to an even split. If we factor in the Hispanic vote again (the disparity between the old and young turnouts in the white vote is flipped when it comes to Hispanics; the Hispanic young turn out in much higher numbers than the Hispanic old), the Democrats may be in for a shock.   Of course, a lot can happen in two years. A lot of things have to go right for the Republicans for anything I just said to come true. But, the point of this post is, things aren't as assured for the Democrats as you make them out to be.

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[Hidden Content]   Interesting chart. Not sure I agree with the rationale behind the reporter rankings - that's clearly a highly subjective measure.   I would be interested in seeing the number of public officials convicted on corruption charges versus the number of public officials overall in each state. That would probably be the most objective and substantive figure, but I bet the data would be incredibly hard to assemble.

  FIFY

  While I agree that it's in the party's best interest to start courting Hispanics, I don't think this will hurt that much. It doesn't really change anything. It's not like anybody didn't expect them to do this.   Now if they were smart, they'd pair it with an immigration reform proposal of their own. That turns a bill that doesn't gain or lose them anything into a bill that gains them something. The Democrats want to run with this narrative that the Republicans are anti-immigration and implicitly anti-Hispanic, and they want to use bills like this to support it. If the Republicans had paired a bill killing the amnesty order with legislation to streamline the immigration process, Obama's left with a hard choice. He either signs the legislation and gets the Republican version of immigration reform, or he vetoes it and the Republicans get to point it out from now until 2016 - "Who was really against reform in the end?" counters the Democrat narrative pretty effectively. Either way, it's a win-win. But this is what's so unfortunately typical of the party leadership. Shoot first, think about it later.

  Same here.

    Are you serious? Alabama charges a crapload of money. I know Ole Miss does, too.

Wait, Texas doesn't charge to tailgate? I thought all the major universities charged to tailgate.

The strict constitutionalist in me says the federal government should be reducing its involvement in education, not increasing it.   The fiscal conservative in me says that we should be figuring out a way to turn this deficit around, not to spend more money.   The social conservative in me says that giving away more free stuff is just going to perpetuate entitlement ideology and make people appreciate things even less.   The economist in me says that educating the workforce is generally a good idea that yields a proven economic benefit if done correctly.   The pragmatist in me says that most of the vocational training that community colleges offer which actually benefits the economy should be offered at the high school level anyways, and agrees with the constitutionalist on how that's a state responsibility and not a federal responsibility.   That's four negatives and one toss-up. Any questions?

  If the Cowboys lose, will he shut down the Tom Landry Highway?  :D

  I think Texas A&M is embracing the first opportunity it's ever had to not be the little sister. They're the only Texas team in college football's most prominent conference, and they're enjoying the spotlight that comes with it. You can't blame them - it's worked out well for them so far. But, while that may be a superficial relationship right now, it will become deep-seated and ironclad over the years. I think the only teams that will ever leave the SEC already did, decades ago.   As far as your rivalry comment goes, one of the best A&M shirts I ever saw was a maroon shirt with band-aids over the horns on the Longhorn symbol that said something to the effect of, "For One Time Only, Hook 'em Horns." That was when UT was set to play USC in the national championship. So I'll admit that the phenomenon of a fan base supporting its rival in a big game isn't unique to the SEC. But I'd bet good money that if you could find a way to measure it somehow, it would be much more prevalent in the SEC than it is in other conferences. Whether or not that phenomenon has any bearing on a rivalry's bitterness is debatable. I don't think it does.

  I think I'll reserve judgment about which post in this thread is pathetic.   Yes, I saw the ESPN documentary. More importantly, I lived that documentary. And yes, I watched the national championship game from a sports bar next to Jackson Square in New Orleans with several other Alabama students, most of whom wanted Auburn to win for a combination of keeping the national championship in the SEC, and keeping it in the state of Alabama. I am personally rooting for every SEC team in a bowl game this season. I know several other Alabama students doing the same.   And yes, if you're smart (or perhaps not "pathetic"), you will root for Florida State. If Florida State beats Oregon and goes to the national championship in the first year of the playoff, that's a huge boost for your conference. Conference prestige, like it or not, plays a major role in rankings and thus bowl bids. Miami could have used all the conference prestige it could get the past few years. Don't let pettiness override your own interests.

Y'all just don't get it, do you?   The Deep South sticks together on everything. The Southern states have an almost hivemind mentality. There's a reason the SEC is only two states shy of reforming the Confederacy through college football: the South just sticks together.   You can go right now and find news articles about the Southern states getting ready to form a voting block in the 2016 primaries. They're trying to do a Super Tuesday of their own. Why? Because a bunch of Southern states voting together at the same time pulls all the presidential candidates into the South for those primaries. The political reality of Southern collective operation doesn't stop there - in fact, it's rooted in national history. You can go all the way back to the early nineteenth century, and you'll find the Southern delegations to Congress voting in lock-step on virtually every piece of legislation ever to pass through the two houses. Sometimes that produces ugly results - the preservation of slavery for decades leading up to the Civil War and then the preservation of segregation up until its bloody end during the demonstrations of the Civil Rights movement, for example - but the fact remains: the South functions as one bloc.   Why is it like this? Because collective identity built on common ground means collective strength carried into the accomplishment of common goals.   It's true economically, too. When you start to look at Southern states by their economy, you won't find much difference from state to state. They all have massive agricultural sectors, and have since they achieved statehood. When manufacturing kicked into high gear in the South during the early twentieth century, all the states got into the same areas of manufacturing - mostly textiles. Several of the Southern states got into the coal mining industry. In a handful of them, steel became a major industry. In another handful, it was oil.   That has created and sustained a culture with a singular, Southern identity. Yes, there are different groups within the South. Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia show their English roots, Louisiana is the heart of Cajun country, and Mississippi is defined by the Delta. Texas has strong Hispanic influence and is as much Western as Southern, and Missouri shows signs of Midwestern life. Kentucky and Tennessee are strongly Appalachian, and Arkansas embraces some of the mountain life, too. Florida is overrun by snowbirds, but is culturally as Spanish as the moss on the trees. But all of them are still Southern, and they have traditionally bought into the Southern profile.   That translates to college football. That's why you find tremendous conference pride in the SEC. The SEC's dominance is part of it, too, but that's secondary to the influence of the preexisting Southern collective identity. That's why you find even the most bitter rivals in the SEC rooting for each other during bowl season - yes, I did root for Auburn against Florida State last year, and most Auburn fans will be rooting for Alabama in a few days. It's all about the conference, just like it's all about the South.   So, yes, if Alabama wins the title, that means the SEC has won the title. And yes, every fan base in the SEC will celebrate, accordingly.