False party lines

I've always been confused about something.

Why do people think that the republican party is about freedoms of any type?

The last 8 years saw a greater loss to citizens rights and freedoms then any other period of the US. Yet I still see people saying the republicans are about freedoms...

Dont get me wrong and think I am saying democrats are more for freedom then republicans. As far as I'm concerned, they are all concerned with the same thing, getting into power.

So where does this idea come from, and just how can it be justified after the previous administration?

 

I don't think even Republicans think that. The past 8 years the republicans were about nothing but saving us from ourselves and the big boogeyman (terrorism), while allowing big monied interests to game the system.

But they made a huge mistake when they stood back and let the average citizens of the gulf deal with Katrina on their own. If they were the administration of security then that natural threat should have been used to demonstrate just how well they were prepared to protect us. What it demonstrated was just exactly what was important to them and it wasn't ordinary citizens or citizens of color.

And they haven't wised up. Now when their focus should be fixing the financial meltdown what are they doing, trying to protect their wealthy backers, and promoting Jindal and Palin at a time when the ordinary citizen just wants some job and financial security. The ordinary person isn't focussed on the next election, and if Jindal and Palin are the best the Republicans can offer then they are wasting their time and energies.

 

Well, its not so much that the republican party says they are about that, as is is about the people who claim to be for individual rights and freedoms (or at least the more vocal ones), support republican candidates.

There seems to be a disconnect in that because the republican candidates support these peoples own chosen lifestyle, ie straight marriages, everybody has 200 guns and paying as little taxes as possible, that they are somehow FOR freedom and liberty.

The fact that anyone who doesn't agree with their policies and ideas are not considered to be important slams that idea right in the face.

I view the conservative party in canada to be the equivalent to the republicans, and the same thing happens here. The most vocal of their supporters, say they support individual rights and freedoms, but only as long as they agree with theirs.

It's almost like people really think that the political party of their choice (the same does apply to the other side of the aisle), is set to pursue some other goal then the acquisition of power, while thats all the opposite side wants.

 

Obama is doing everything that Bush did, so how are the Democrats any better? They're both the same, except one is called Republican and the other is called Democrat. Both have done their best to get rid of our freedoms. We saw this increase under Bush, and now Obama.

Very few people are falling for this left/right blame game anymore. People are beginning to realize that both parties are controlled by the same corporate and banking interests, and that the only thing that really differs is the rhetoric.

 

the reason i am a libertarian

 

I think with only two months in office it's unfair to say Obama has done much of anything except try to deal with this financial mess.

 

OK, he voted to re-authorize the Patriot Act and openly supports every piece of tyrannical legislation put forward by Bush, which he has done nothing to overturn.

He is also every bit the warmonger that Bush was, perhaps even more so.

Deal with the financial crisis? Please, everything he is doing is designed to make the financial crisis worse and lead us into a full-blown depression. You don't have to be an economist to see that. You just have to not be drinking the koolaid.

 

On your first point:

http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/01/05/fact_check_obamas_consistent_p_1.php

Far from open support of Bush's bill.

Your second point: We'll have to wait and see, so far he's only done what he said he would during the campaign as far as Afghanastan.

Your third point: Anyone have a better plan? I certainly haven't seen any broached. A total meltdown of the market seems to have been deflected.

 

*spits water out of nose and mouth*

LOL!!!

Oh man, that is a perfect example of Orwellian newspeak... the notion that the Patriot Act will "strengthen" civil liberties. Oh man, you cannot make this stuff up.

Thanks for the laugh.

Hitler couldn't have come up with better propaganda.

 

PR, I don't know if I completely agree with your idea that all politicians are basically the same with just different names, but I do basically agree that they are all power mad. Just the way they go about obtaining the power is different. The best thing Obama can do to help the economy is to quit all this TARP bullshit and just go fishing. Barack, just go home, stop meddling with the economy, follow the advice of our founding fathers and just go back to Illinois for a while while we fix the economy.

In response to Chronic, the OP, I gotta say that more and more I am leaning towards the sentiment of Phunkyphreshmama, and thinking libertarian (See above comment.) but in general I think Reps are less evil than Dems.

 

I tend to think of the republican agenda more as one of brainwashing us into trading our freedom for security, the irony being we have much less security as a result.

Look at the religious right who they appeal to, people who can justify anything as long as they can make it to church on Sunday. The most repressed, yet the ones with the highest rate of divorce and teenage pregnancy.

And I dunno that I'd make a big distinction between democrats and republicans as politicians other than the demographics they try to appeal to, the reality of it is a majority of the politicians, the defense contractors, and the corporate elite form one group who are on the receiving end, then there's the rest of us who are getting screwed.

 

They're the same in that they all take their marching orders from on high. A president does not get elected to office believing that they can do this or that. They don't have their own agendas or their own vision for the country. They get elected because they have been selected and groomed for the job in advance, proving that they can follow orders and do what their handlers tell them. You have to look at the people who are behind the president and where their campaign money comes from. Corporations don't donate huge sums of money to a particular candidate because they believe that person is best suited to run the country. They donate huge sums of money because they pull the president's puppet strings and know that person will be serving them once in office.

Presidents may be power mad, and you have to be power mad to be the representative of a country's destruction and exploitation of its people. Presidents like the power, sure, but their power is really only figurative at best, since to maintain that power they have to play by somebody else's rules and not their own. The biggest misconception is that presidents make their own rules and play by their own agenda, which simply is not true.

 

LOL! Rat, the free thinker? Not while you can only repeat what you have been indoctrinated to think.

You only tell us what the conspiracy websites tell you to say. Asking for your opinion is like pressing play on a CD player, pre-recorded thoughts are simply regurgitated from memory.

As for the Republican party, people have different interpretations of what conservative values mean. They try to steer the part in the direction they want it, to the extent that they can. "Republican" views are not some fixed, unchanging written in stone set of values. They change.

A lot of people hope that the Republican party will be forced to change after its recent election disasters. I do, I hope that the "small government" wing will get the upper hand.

 

The same argument could be applied to anyone who repeats what they hear on CNN or FOX, who only knows to say what they heard on TV the night before.

 

Too bad I don't do that, otherwise you'd have a point. Guess that just leaves you.

 

But I never said you did. I guess you just have a guilty conscience.

 

No. But I'm glad you don't deny being Alex Jones pre-recorded messenger boy.

 

If that's the case, then why am I attacked by so many people for criticising Jones? Alex Jones is a fraud.

 

'Gotta love the latest republican propaganda machine, this business of having tea parties to protest the bank bailouts, blaming the bailouts on the Obama administration. Excuse me, but as I recall it was the bush administration that handed out the bailouts in the first place, but hypocrisy is nothing new to republicans.

Not to mention that the rich will be the ones effected by tax increases to pay for this nonsense- y'know, the ones that got us into this mess. So it's obvious this smear was fabricated by republican "leaders", and has been somehow foolishly bought by the republican middle class, who, like the rest of us, get screwed every time a republican gets in office.

But to be fair to the republican party, I should mention that I've spoken at length with a number of republicans, and the core of their ideology is attractive, namely that of small government, which has huge implications for the economy. Unfortunately in practice it means the rich get to do whatever the fuck they want at the expense of the poor.

Most republicans I know are pissed at the bush administration, and a few of them voted for Obama.

 

But it was people now in Obama's cabinet (ie. Timothy Geithner) who worked with Paulson to draft the TARP legislation. So once again this shows just how stupid the partisan blame game is, because the entire system is to blame.

Everything Obama is doing, which, yes, began with Bush, will only destroy the economy by hyperinflating the currency and sending us into another depression, which will be fifty times worse than the first one.

I am sure that many of the people attending these so-called tea parties are not going because of their disliking of Obama, but because of what he is doing. Many of these people were also disgusted by Bush's bailouts as well. As far as I can see, Obama is doing exactly what Bush did. Is Obama any more to blame than Bush? No, because, like Bush, he is just a frontman/puppet for the same establishment elite. He does what he's told.