They think they can get Brown to capitulate. They might be right. Scott Brown already stabbed us in the back on reciprocity:
An aide to the Massachusetts Republican said Brown believes that states are the appropriate venue for weapons bans. Brown said he supports Massachusetts’ assault weapons ban.
As much as people might be angry, and as much as I might disagree with Brown’s position here, because the Second Amendment is not a state to state kind of deal, you have to admit this guy has some room to be “not as bad as the other guy”, or woman, as the case may be. What do you think? Is it a victory to replace staunch anti-gun Senator and gun control leader Ted Kennedy with a Republican who’s wishy washy on gun rights at best? I don’t think Senator Brown should carry any further NRA endorsements, but I have to admit I’m having a hard time figuring out, if my alternative is another Ted Kennedy, why keeping Brown in that seat isn’t better for us overall.
As William F Buckley stated, “Nominate the most conservative candidate who is electable”. Now, while Brown is the incumbent the fact remains, he’s probably as far right as Massachusetts is going to allow. And if he is going to hold a wishy washy line on keeping bans in Massachusetts and not make it federal (though i agree with you that its not a state to state thing) I think that it is good enough outcome.
He is probably as good as the nation is going to get out of Massachusetts and we know we could get a whole lot worse. Sometimes RINO’s aren’t so bad, if they only graze in lands that would kill an Elephant.
Ah, but this is not a choice between RINO Scott Brown and “another Ted Kennedy“. Instead, the alternative is the walking, talking gaffe machine known as Elizabeth Warren. Having her represent the other side would have its own value.
Not that I would support her, rather, “it’s a shame both can’t lose”, and I suspect I’m not going to be too exercised in the unlikely event she wins.
Valid point on Warren being prone to embarrassing the Dems if elected but I think that is outweighed by the Judicial value of having a republican in that seat.
At the end of the day brown might not vote for a conservative pro gun justice to the supreme court, but I strongly doubt he would join a filabuster to stop it.
Of course, that takes into consideration Romney first winning in Nov. and then nominating an actual conservative pro gun judge…but hell…im feeling lucky!
Come to think of it, the very thing that would make her fantastic in office, is likely the thing that will keep her out–and perhaps make it less likely that even Obama could keep his. :-)
Wait. So Massachusetts politicians are bad on guns? I hope none of them ever run for president!
I can stomach a State gun banner who believes the 2A prohibits all federal bans. I don’t have to live in his State; I do have to live in the union. I’ll cheer for Brown.
Exactly what I was thinking. State by state prohibition is still bad, but at least it’s a bad you can escape by voting with your feet…
To quote Rush (on a somewhat related topic of conversation):
“It’s Massachusetts.”
Please don’t quote Limbaugh, it lowers the tone…
This is going to be one of those times when you’ll be
happy with the Commerce Clause.
Right. Like the Gun-Free School Zone Act?
Why does quoting Limbaugh “lower the tone”, especially if he’s right?
As for being “happy” for the Commerce Clause–this is most emphatically not a Commerce Clause issue. It’s a “Second Amendment forbids the Federal Government but the Tenth grants States certain Powers although the Forteenth Amendment, properly interpreted, takes the powers of violating rights away from States…although the Courts have mangled the meaning of that issue, so it can be argued that the ball ought to be in the States’ Courts and Legislatures” issue.
Brown should tell them to go pound dirt. I don’t believe they have any ability to affect the outcome of the election. He doesn’t have to be a champion on the issue, but there is no reason for him to kiss up to them either.
I’ll tell you the problem.
When you elect RINO anti-gun statist guys and then try to rely on the number of Republicans you will be disappointed.
Because when the chips are down, they vote with the other side.
Worse, a vote by Scott Brown in favor of gun control is WORSE than a vote by a Democrat in favor of gun control.
Can you see why? It lets the other side paint their victory as “bipartisan” — its a real problem.
A “majority” (or minority large enough to theoretically make a filibuster stick) is completely illusory when it relies on RINOs. Never forget it.
Agreed in all points, although it’s yet to be seen if Scott Brown is as bad as the current Maine Senators (“Snowe has become widely known for her ability to influence the outcome of close votes, including whether to end filibusters.“, although she at least will be spending more time with her family after January).
And there’s still the undetermined question of how he’ll vote for Supreme Court justices when it counts. He did vote against Kagan, while Richard Lugar (primaried), Olympia Snowe (retiring), Susan Collins and Judd Gregg voted for her (all northeastern RINOs except Lugar), so I would say he’s either politically calculating that was the best thing to do (strikes me as unlikely given Massachusetts, unless it’s playing to a town vs. gown thing) or because he thought it was the right thing to do (other possibilities are of course welcome).
What he’ll do when Romney nominates a Nazi (no matter who he or she is, that’s the way they’ll be portrayed), especially if it’s to replace Kennedy or one of the liberals, remains to be seen. But based on the outstanding evidence predictions today that he’ll stab us in the back about are unwarranted. (Romney, on the other hand….)
Arrgh, I really miss the old post-posting editing feature. The proper link for the above quote about Snowe is here (the second sentence of her Wikipedia page, which I cite as “conventional wisdom” about her).
RINO is such a useless term. It assumes that there is a ‘standard’ republican.
If there is such a thing as a ‘standard’ Republican, please let me know, and append the specifications.
I think we need more moderate Republicans.
“RINO is such a useless term. It assumes that there is a ‘standard’ republican.”
Disagree; while you’re right there’s no such thing as a ‘standard’ Republican, you can using a variety of methodologies plot out where Republicans are and find both a center of that and outliers.
While I haven’t been that formal, and the center of the party at the national level is rather to the left of where I’d prefer, I have no great difficultly defining RINOs. And noticing that they come from political cultures significantly to the left of the rest of the country, like the Northeast.
“I think we need more moderate Republicans.”
For what purpose?
If as I believe a defining characteristic of them is being more anti-gun than average, not for the RKBA….
With “trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see”, all ‘moderate’ solutions have proven futile (now that raising taxes is off the table, as it should be, since greater revenues are just used for more leverage).
What are ‘moderate’ Republican solutions to health care?
Yeah, to pull the party to the right..
…Gosh, who was the other nationally-known MA Republican pol who supports that state’s AWB?
Given a choice between the 2A being beaten to death (Dems) and just getting beat up (RINO-GOP), I’ll keep on voting LP — because otherwise, I would not vote at all.
I can’t remember the Libertarian’s name, but there’s a certain Libertarian who concluded that voting is meaningless, and it’s more useful to change the hearts and minds of the people. He had gone through several happy decades of not voting, confident that had he voted, the outcome would have been no different.
I can’t say I don’t sympathise with that person, either. I, myself, have concluded that politics is a game, and that voting–and politics in general–is a hobby that doesn’t really mean anything, but fun to participate in if you’re so inclined. And this is why I vote.
Will I vote for Romney? I don’t know. In Utah, it certainly doesn’t matter! But I will say that I won’t have to hold my nose as tightly for Romney, if I vote for him, than I did when I voted for McCain. So far, Romney has been doing things, and making ads, that make me want to vote for him, but I have yet to see an ad from him that encourages me to change my mind. (He *does* have the occasional thing here and there, like a sign that says “Repeal and Replace” when he talked about repealing ObamanableCare.)
This is the reason why people don’t take libertarians seriously and why their candidates don’t receive endorsements from gun groups.
Because one Libertarian said he thought voting was meaningless?
Interesting.
It’s not just one and everybody knows that.
Clearly everybody does not know that. If you’re implying that part of the Libertarian platform says that voting is meaningless, then hopefully it shouldn’t be too difficult to articulate where that belief comes from. If you’re not saying that, then it’s unclear what you’re saying. Except that one Libertarian supposedly thought voting was meaningless, and therefore more than one Libertarian supposedly thinks voting is meaningless.
That comes directly out of the mouths of LP committee members and was said to me personally and in public. Those same committee members publicly stated they are not interested in getting people elected to office.
What committee? Where? And their names are? It’s not clear that you’re not just making things up now.
NYLP committee member Blay Tarnof (sp) publicly stated on their mailing list he was not interested in getting people elected. NYLP committeeman Jim L. (can’t spell his last name) said they run candidates not to win, but to just talk about issues. Time period dates to early 00s. I believe their mailing list has an archive.
So two people allegedly stated something on a mailing list over a decade ago (but take my word for it because the messages are in the ether), and therefore not only does the Libertarian Party’s platform state that voting is meaningless, but also everyone should be aware of it.
Interesting.
I didn’t say the LP platform said voting was meaningless. I said LP committeemen and the candidates they’ve nominated to carry their flag said that. The LP platform says lots of things. The problem is the people who represent the LP have no interesting in actually figuring out ways to implement what the platform says. You just don’t like me saying that.
So if I’m to believe you, everybody knows that Libertarians think voting is meaningless, because as many as two (2) people may have said something on mailing lists 10 years ago (but we’ll have to take your objective word on that). Sounds perfectly reasonable.
I have no problem with what you say, even if you’re telling what are likely fictionalized stories about as many as two (2) people on 10 year old mailing lists. To then use that as the basis for painting the entire Libertarian Party with such broad strokes seems awfully similar to what others are doing by painting all gun owners with the mass-killer brush because of two (2) actual recent shootings.
If you’ve got some bias, fine. So do I. But c’mon, trying to legitimize it by pointing to as many as two (2) comments that may or may not be on 10-year old mailing lists? Give me a break.
You can stop with the act as I’ve seen it before (as I’m sure many others have as well), every election cycle when LP members and supporters come around looking for help. Until you accept that the problem with the LP is the people running it, don’t be surprised or upset when gun rights groups ignore you come election time.
I don’t disagree that the Libertarian Party has issues, just like the Republican Party and Democrat Party and Green Party and so on. But if you or anyone else ever catches me mischaracterizing those parties’ positions based on the possibly fictional decade-old actions of as many as two (2) members, then by all means I want you to call me on it. Checks and balances keep us all honest.
I’d rather have a Senator who won’t push -for- anti-gun legislation than one who will, if that’s the best option available.
Brown is being wishy-washy to keep his seat, which means he has to say the right things for the Dems, and do enough of the right things for the Repubs, in his district. So by saying “it’s a state thing” he does both while remaining effectively innocuous at the Federal level. Better that than a junior Dem, from a mostly anti-gun district, who will be beholden to the Dem leadership and forced to vote how they direct on anti-gun bills. Particularly after retaking the seat and thus becoming a public “standard bearer” for the Democratic Party.
Heck, my Dem Senator, Begich, just sent me an email reply back saying if a bill to loosen suppressor purchase requirements is entered he’ll support it. Not a form email either. He already introduced the Dem. counterpart bill on concealed carry reciprocity. In his case the Dem leadership know that if they want to keep the Alaskan seat they have to give him his head on energy and gun issues. They aren’t going to give a MA Dem that kind of freedom.
Pity my Repub Senator takes gun rights supporters for granted.
There aren’t too many pols of either party who are going to come out for more gun control laws. They aren’t stupid, and they know how the wind blows. And there is a lot more to spend time on.
So with a few exceptions, a pol who rants on either side of the argument is pandering to some group.
What I’m looking for is a pol who will admit we need less spending, more taxes, and a balanced budget. And do it without screwing up the environment any more than it already is.
That could be a moderate Republican, or a Dem. I don’t care, I just want a good result.
What the heck? MORE taxes?!? Aren’t we taxed far too much already? We need a politician willing to make deep, bleeding, spending cuts, and certainly not those “oh, we slowed the growth so let’s call it a cut”s we’ve been getting these last few decades.
As for “not screwing up the environment”, that’s properly a State issue, thank you very much. The EPA is a tyrannical organization that ought to be dissolved. Doing that ought to be among the first of the cuts the Federal Government should do! (I’d say the very first should be Education and/or Agriculture…)
But I agree on one thing, we need good politicians to do these things, and it doesn’t matter whether they be Repub or Dem. But the fact is, whoever does these things won’t be moderate, because cutting spending to the bone isn’t going to be a moderate undertaking. Indeed, most conservative Republicans won’t be doing this cutting, because it’s going to be politically unpopular. And *that* is why we’re going to be doomed, as a nation: it’s seen as political suicide to do what needs to be done to survive. :-(
I apologize for the rant, it’s just that I find the suggestion of raising taxes, or even just keeping them where they are, deeply offensive. Government has shown that, whether they raise or lower taxes, they’ll spend more than they have, when properly, taxes should be as low as possible, and Government should never go into debt, period.
Alpheus, I can sympathize, but taxes are not inherently evil.
It’s some very bad governance that leads you to believe that.
We have overspent and undertaxed, and now the tab is due. I don’t like it any more than you or a Greek, or an Italian.
Saying the environmental protection is a state responsibiloity is to ignore the fact that pollution crosses any political boundary. If all regulation were left to states, the downwind border of every state would end up as a free pollution zone.
And of course the oceans would be a free dumping ground.
Rivers would still burn. Children would be poisoned.
The politicians who fix the fiscal mess, if it gets fixed, won’t be left or moderate or right or conservative or liberal, they will be pragmatists.
They will raise your taxes, reduce your benefits, and take fifteen years or so to balance the budget.
Simpson-Bowles was an example of pragmatism.
Sorry.
A conservative case against Mitt Romney-
[Please don’t steal whole content from other sites. Provide an excerpt and a link. -Sebastian]
Actually, I tried to edit it for clarity and length.
But I’ll post the whole thing.
Barack Obama is not the reason the nation has lost its way, and Mitt Romney isn’t the answer.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-third-party-20120807,0,3680407.story