The Two Percent Solution

My brother, who is an American (I was born in Canada) and is a staunch Democrat, says that the only reason that Bush won in 2004 was that John Kerry was his opponent. As much as folks hated Bush, they just couldn't see Kerry in the White House.

I don't know if you can compare an election in which two dudes getting "married" is an issue, with an election in which the economy is an issue. But I digress.

The big difference between the two is that this time around, the Republican party was in such bad shape that its party members were not as opposed to a Democrat President as the Democrats were to Bush in 2004. With 'notable' Republican commentators like Limbaugh and Coulter taking potshots at the Republican Candidate - with Coulter openly announcing that she would vote against McCain- sections of the Republican party became more willing to accept a Democrat President. Contrast this with the democrat opposition to Bush in 2004. That level of division isnt there in 2008. The Republicans are more accepting of Obama than the Democrats ever were of Bush.

I want to say its because of Democrat rigidity, but I would be foolish not to acknowledge the key role played by one George W Bush. In 2004 he united the left and the right. In 2008, his legacy united the left and divided the right.

Imagine for a second that John McCain had won the election and flubbed the Oath of Office. Would the MSM have been as forgiving and gosh darn supportive as they were with President Obama? Or would there have been remarks about his age, and signs of early senility, and what about that air-head VP we warned you about, she'll be in charge soon! We warned you!

"Imagine for a second that John McCain had won the election and flubbed the Oath of Office."

IIRC the Supreme Court Justice flubbed the oath too. Apparently he thought he could do it wihtout notes?

2 percent solution: kind of like when the Olympic world record is decimated by something like .02 of a second.

Don't know why but I always thought a divided voter base was a sign of a strong democracy. Kinda like "When everyone is thinking alike no one is really thinking at all".

I'm far more comfortable with the minuscule majorities of W than the larger majority of Owe.

Obama didn't flub the oath. The problem was all Roberts, so O was in a tough position - say the "wrong oath", or wait for Roberts to repeat it correctly. Obama handled the situation pretty well I must say.

Back to topic, what a moving picture of Bush. I wonder if that young girl lost her dad or something. Heartbreaking. All over the world we have tragedies playing out every day, yet here in Canada we complain about BS things incessantly.

Thanks to all our Armed Forces personnel - they really have an idea what freedom is, and how good we have it here!!

Good point Joe!

Still the fact that the MSMers are unrelentingly stroking their members over the wonder that is Obama and refuse to acknowledge reality is the BIG issue.

What a uniter....

"I won,I will trump you on that." -- BHO

perhaps not since '60 has the democratic platform been a popular one with a majority or near majority of americans. ever since then it has been far to the left of that point. the dems have only won the potus spot ever since when either the gop is enormously unpopular (2008) or more often the gop nominee is inept (ghb '92, ford '76, dole '96) or too radical (goldwater '64).

What the gop needs to do is not re-engineer its policies but to return to them and shed the corruption and laziness that has been plaguing it ever since Gingrich became the house leader and blew it. the dems policies are just as too far left as they have been for the last 48 years.

REorganize, REbuild and REturn to the values that will make the REpublican party america's party again.

The only reason that Obama won the election was because 2% percent of the population could not see John McCain in office. Wow, Obama is a God....keep placing him on a mountain higher than Zeus, just don't come crying when you realize (which may be today already) that Obama is not qualified to lead a hot dog stand and will fail and it will be his own Democrats that stick him hard.

The Republicans lost the election because they brought in a leader that the MSM liked. He was known for reaching across the aisle and working with the dems.
Many Republicans didn't see enough of a difference between the Republican and Democrat platforms to care enough to come out and vote.
Every time ring wing parties try to morph in order to attract leftish voters they get trounced.
Yet they never learn.

Obama interrupted Roberts four words into the oath. That's what threw everything off. Thereafter Roberts misspoke by putting the word "faithfully" at the end of the next sentence.

McCain PO'd the extreme right wing religious wackjobs because he did not carry a large enough bible

that is why he choose Palin as a religious back up

GYM @ 4:36pm

... not to mention the extreme religious wackjobs because he did not carry a big enough Koran...

nuanced context makes all the difference, you see...

I am inclined to believe that President Obama won because he had more money - a LOT more money. Where did he get that money and to whom does he now 'owe' certain favors?

I found myself praying (often) for President Bush because I liked him in my heart. He had courage and optomism; he wished the American people well. I see no such care in the new President, the new President reminds me of President Clinton.

Voting lines are as entrenched in the US as they are in Canada. The swing vote tends to be very small.

Doowleb:

"Every time right wing parties try to morph in order to attract leftish voters they get trounced.
Yet they never learn"

Good point.

It's what happened to Mulroney and it is now happening to the Harper conservatives. And they won't learn.

I think it's called "Ottawa Disease".

*sigh*

.

Just watched the movie "Harry Truman". Man that guy was vilified by most and had an approval rating of just 32% when he left office 32 years ago. What about today? Many historians agree, with the help of a dispationate eye and an objective look at the events of his time, that he was a very good President.

I don't get too excited with the vitriol of todays lefties regarding GWB. Historians of 2050 will be much better at deciding whether he was good, bad or indifferent. I am much more concerned about what the next four years are going to produce. The guy at the helm has yet to run a hot dog stand.

I continue to stand by the phrase.....

Sometimes you have to elect a Carter in order to get a Reagan.

Patience, my friends.

shaken

david koresh

jimmy swaggart

oral roberts

jimmy bakker

billy graham (his org'style of questionable behavour was the impetus behind ontario's power of attorney laws)

timmy mcveigh

I could go on, but you get the drift

"...Obama interrupted Roberts four words into the oath. That's what threw everything off. Thereafter Roberts misspoke by putting the word "faithfully" at the end of the next sentence...

---kdl,

Exactly!

That is exactly what one sees when one watches the video of the event because how you describe it is exactly how it happened,

but as we all know liberals - unfortunately - have a very twisted perception of reality and have their own facts.

You could tie a liberal to a chair and force him to watch the video of the oath 200 times and he would still be blind and deaf to Obama being the first to make a mistake by interrupting Roberts.

Liberals see Obama as a sort of perfect semi-god and when he makes a mistake - such as he did by interrupting Roberts - liberal use psychological defense mechanisms to block the reality that makes them uncomfortable.

I would be tempted to say that liberalism is a disease, but after years of observing liberals behaving the way they do ( weirdly ) I am now convinced that it works the other way around;
people with dysfunctional personalities are attracted to liberalism.

timmy mcveigh was an admitted athiest.

The rest of them might have done wrong, but they didn't cut off the heads of 900 non-combatant and innocent Jewish men and boys, as did Mohammad. Are more comparisons required?

Shaken is right. Context, my friend.

Uh GYM I hate to break it to you but Koresh & Mcviegh weren't Christian.

Swaggart and Baker weren't really political in their outlook. Graham's organization did venture into the political but no more than any other organization and with similar results. Oral Roberts has tried with very limited success to delve into the political realm but most people ignored him and voted their own conscience.

You seem to assume that a few preachers use their bully pulpits to sway massive voting blocks to vote this way or that and I can attest to the fact that these voting blocks are swayed far more by the politicians who play on people's underlying belief systems than the preachers who simply look foolish when they dive into politics.

a different bob

If you can put your hands on "Plain Speaking" by Merle Miller, I really recommend it - one of the better political books I ever read - biography of Harry S Truman.

He refused to be a "playactor" in front of cameras. He made a lot of difficult decisions, and did what he thought was right, not politically expedient. A great man.

the big "O" gives brand spanking new nuance to the haberdasher's remark that 'the buck stops here'.

Ah yes Harry Truman such a failure at everything he tried he became the President. His greatest asset was Clear Thinking. Too bad so many of our contemporary politicos are so lacking of this vital ability.

I always get a kick out of Obamba’s sell to the ignorance of the modern American public that he is in some way the idolized reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln. I find this an extremely curious oddity – Why would the first black president of the USA pick an obvious black “bigot” who was whole heartedly interested in repatriating the newly freed slaves in Africa (Liberia)? Any additional ideas other than pandering to Americas historical ignorance…………………..

Let’s hear what old Ab really had to say about blacks in America

Speech at Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 1859

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, or intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position, the negro should be denied everything.”

http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=81&subjectID=2

I admire HST but he had two of the greatest sect of state ever - George marshall and dean Acheson at possibly the most important time in history for that position. BO has HRC and at the CIA - arguably the most important Dept in the war on radical Islam - he has leon panetta rather than the likes of helms.

The 2% solution.Sounds like something a peroxide blond would use.

My thought is that Obama won due to a number of factors

1. A 2 year media love fest

2. outspending McCain by about 5 to 1

3. The American economy imploding at just the right time

4. His opponent ran an extremely poor campaign

5. An 8 year anti Bush/Anti Republican campaign carried out by the American (and world) media

6. He was Black.

Take away any two of the above, and Obama easily loses his 2% advantage.

What the story really should be is despite the abouve obama only managed to win by 2 points. Thats a bed shitting for the ages in my opinion.

I believe the numbers show that more than 90% of all blacks voted for Barry. given they are 12% of the population it could be considered almost a 10% lead out of the gates.

Barry managed to stay on message. saying Change more times than a homeless man.

Partisan Bipartasan we can believe in.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2009/01/24/mattingly.mayor.hate.cnn

Change is the Same
Four Legs Good Two Legs Better

the vote for bush was a little higher than 50.7 but it really doesn't matter. the big o had a landslide in the smallminds of small people. the only land slide in u.s. politics was reagan. he won 49 of 50 states.

My thought is that Obama won due to a number of factors

1. A 2 year media love fest

2. outspending McCain by about 5 to 1

3. The American economy imploding at just the right time

4. His opponent ran an extremely poor campaign

5. An 8 year anti Bush/Anti Republican campaign carried out by the American (and world) media

6. He was Black.

Take away any two of the above, and Obama easily loses his 2% advantage.

What the story really should be is despite the abouve obama only managed to win by 2 points. Thats a bed shitting for the ages in my opinion.
Posted by: ward

Pretty much how it seems to me, too.

It wouldn't have mattered whether it was Roberts or McCain that flubbed the oath. It would be on every late night comedy and cable news show repeatedly as a joke.

Sarah Palin got pilloried for things Tina Fey said. (I can see Russia from my house.) Pointing out that it wasn't Sarah who said them gained exactly zero traction.

I believe Nixon also won 49/50 states.

It is simply amzing what + $700,000,000.00 in donations, bulk of it foreign and an endorsemnt from Oprah coupled with registering your voters multiple times and having them vote more than once can do. The infomercial and the suspected use of conversational hypnosis really only gave him a small vitory - 2% I remember Couric being shocked when one of the "undecided" voters on a panel who watched the debates said he was going to vote for McCain - he was the only one she asked twice - he was black. I did not bother watching the inaguration - the man reminds me of a vacuum cleaner door to door salesman.