US Presidential Race 2016

[Deleted]

With Jeb Bush and Joe Biden already expressing an interest is the campaign underway already.

[john07]

Mar 6, 2013 22:52:20 GMT @jimboo said:

With Jeb Bush and Joe Biden already expressing an interest is the campaign underway already.

I bet that Biden is scouring Ed Miliband's speeches for material right now.

[greatkingrat]

If this thread is going to be around for the next 3 years, can we at least have the title spelt correctly

[Deleted]

My prediction: Republican gain from Democrat.

[The Bishop]

Do we really really REALLY have to start this thread already??

[erlend]

Biden would be 74 just after polling day. I doubt he is viable. Hilary is 5 years younger and that feels about the limit.

[Deleted]

Susanna Martinez, Republican New Mexico, a Latino Woman to take on the Hilary Bandwagon.

[carlton43]

Mar 7, 2013 18:44:34 GMT erlend said:

Biden would be 74 just after polling day. I doubt he is viable. Hilary is 5 years younger and that feels about the limit.

At least they are conspiring to give the Republicans a sporting chance. Hilary gives them the best chance so I hope she wins through.

[carlton43]

Feb 22, 2014 9:42:00 GMT @jimboo said:

Susanna Martinez, Republican New Mexico, a Latino Woman to take on the Hilary Bandwagon.

What an awful choice!

[Richard Allen]

For the GOP Jeb Bush is the elephant in the room. If, and it is a big if, he were to enter the race he would immediately be the front runner and most of the GOP establishment would fall in line behind him. He can turn the fund raising taps on at a moments notice and as the nominee he would immediately put Florida (the biggest swing state) in the likely, if not certain, GOP column and he would almost certainly make the GOP more competitive with Latino voters.

[Devonian]

Feb 22, 2014 14:29:57 GMT Richard Allen said:

For the GOP Jeb Bush is the elephant in the room. If, and it is a big if, he were to enter the race he would immediately be the front runner and most of the GOP establishment would fall in line behind him. He can turn the fund raising taps on at a moments notice and as the nominee he would immediately put Florida (the biggest swing state) in the likely, if not certain, GOP column and he would almost certainly make the GOP more competitive with Latino voters.

The last time that there was a successful Republican presidential campaign that didn't have either Richard Nixon or a member of the Bush family on the ticket was 1928. It looks like this may be set to continue which tells you a great deal about the Republican Party establishment. There's a great article hear that I think sums up the GOP very well

mises.org/daily/5009/

During his eight years in office, Ronald Reagan increased federal spending by 53 percent, added a quarter of a million new civilian government employees, escalated the War on Drugs, created the "drug czar's office," and lowered the value of your 1980 dollar to 73 cents. His Republican successor, George Herbert Walker Bush, further increased taxes, further increased federal spending, and "managed to knock thirteen cents off the value of your dollar in just four years."

It will be objected that Democratic presidents like Johnson and Carter also grew the federal government, that they too increased taxes and spending and regulations, that they too made government steadily more intrusive and the individual steadily less free. It will be objected that the Republican Party is here being singled out for undeserved abuse. But in fact, the situation is far otherwise. As James Ostrowski noted in 2002, "Over the last one hundred years, of the five presidents who presided over the largest domestic spending increases, four were Republicans. Include regulations and foreign policy, as well as budgets approved by a Republican Congress, and a picture begins to emerge of the Republican Party as a reliable engine of government growth."

In fact, despite the liberal apostasy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and virtually all Democratic politicians since his time, despite their choice to try to beat the Republicans at their own game, promoting mercantilism, welfare statism, and war, and calling it "liberalism" — despite all this, the conservative party, the GOP, remains the more devoted to mercantilism, welfare statism, and war of the two major parties. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Republicans depicted the philosophy of their Democratic opponents as "tax and spend, tax and spend." But in fact, it is the Republicans, the conservatives, who are the biggest taxers and the biggest spenders of all.

The years since George Herbert Walker Bush have seen nothing that might make one wish to revise or soften this statement — for George H.W. Bush's son, former Texas governor George W. Bush, who won the presidency in a hotly contested election in the year 2000 and was reelected in 2004, had spent more federal money by the end of his third year in office than Bill Clinton, the "tax-and-spend" Democrat who preceded him, managed to spend in a full eight years.

Nor should this seem surprising. Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz noted late in 2005 that "many of contemporary conservatism's central ideas and slogans renovate old Whig appeals," and that "the [George W.] Bush administration's political and ideological recipe was invented … by a nearly forgotten American institution: the Whig Party of the 1830's and 40's."

[...]It is clear that Greenhut considers himself a man of the Right. It is also clear that he considers himself an advocate of smaller government, a "humbler foreign policy," and the sort of environmentalism that acknowledges the human animal's rightful place in nature. Yet these values and goals are liberal values and goals. They are the historic values and goals of the Left, not the Right.

This is why any libertarians who read Greenhut's preelection arguments for Bush would almost certainly have rejected them as unsound. If they were libertarians — i.e., classical liberals — and if their historical understanding of American politics went back any more than half a century, they knew that it was scarcely possible for a libertarian to support a Republican. The Republicans are and have always been the party of big, mercantilist government and an aggressive, meddlesome foreign policy — exactly what liberals (libertarians) have historically opposed. It is "by focusing on the history of the nineteenth century," Murray Rothbard wrote, that "we learn of the true origins of the various 'isms' of our day, as well as the illogical and mythical nature of the attempted 'conservative-libertarian' fusion."

How, Rothbard wondered, could a libertarian consider himself a man or woman of the Right, when "everywhere on the Right the 'open society' is condemned, and a coerced morality affirmed. God is supposed to be put back into government. Free speech is treated with suspicion and distrust, and the military are hailed as the greatest patriots, and conscription strongly upheld. Western imperialism is trumpeted as the proper way to deal with backward peoples."

It is striking how contemporary this sounds for a passage that was written more than 40 years ago. It is striking how well the words of conservative leader William F. Buckley, Jr., quoted by Rothbard, still serve to capture the essence of the American right wing in our own time: "Where reconciliation of an individual's and the government's interests cannot be achieved, the interests of the government shall be given exclusive consideration."

The GOP is the conservative party in American politics, the party that since Lincoln (and Henry Clay and Alexander Hamilton before him) has stood for mercantilism, welfare statism, and war. Libertarians are not conservatives; they are not on the Right. They are on the Left, the last remnant of the original liberals. Though some true liberals remain in the Democratic Party of today, almost all of them have made the error of pursuing liberal goals by conservative means. And the majority in the party has been New Deal liberal — false liberal, conservative in liberal's clothing — since the 1930s. In effect, the United States is now governed by one or the other of two conservative parties.

[Devonian]

Some speculation here about the Republican race

Damon Linker is convinced that Jeb Bush will be the nominee

theweek.com/article/index/255974/its-over-jeb-bush-will-be-the-gop-nominee-in-2016

whilst Peter Beinart thinks it might be Rand Paul

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/rand-paul-is-the-2016-republican-frontrunner/283258/

[Devonian]

Mar 7, 2013 17:45:09 GMT The Bishop said:

Do we really really REALLY have to start this thread already??

Actually I'm surprised that it wasn't started earlier. Here's a couple of articles about the election in the US media from January of last year

www.policymic.com/articles/22248/chris-christie-will-run-for-president-in-2016

townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2013/01/06/rand-paul-yeah-i-might-run-for-president-n1480996

[erlend]

Given the deadlines for getting your names on the earliest Primary (etc) ballots are this year I assume the committes to draft Hilary/Jeb etc must be going full speed.

[Devonian]

A bill introduced in the Kentucky legislature is aimed at ensuring U.S. Sen. Rand Paul can appear twice on Kentucky's ballot.

The measure is precautionary should Paul opt to run for president and another Senate term in 2016.

The bill was offered by Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, a Republican. Thayer says the measure would clarify that current Kentucky law, which prevents someone running for multiple offices, does not apply to federal elections.

Thayer says Paul is the impetus for the bill but that it could affect anyone in the state's federal delegation.

wuky.org/post/bill-would-let-rand-paul-run-two-offices-simultaneously

[Deleted]

MMMMM, Hilary could probably be the worst choice, Elizabeth Warren becomes a better bet.

[Richard Allen]

Aug 3, 2014 0:48:52 GMT @jimboo said:

MMMMM, Hilary could probably be the worst choice, Elizabeth Warren becomes a better bet.

Warren would certainly fire up the Democratic base but I don't think she can win. Many of Obama's problems stem from, or at very least are perceived to stem from, a lack of experience and political conviction. The most credible alternative to Hilary is Maryland Gov Martin 0'Malley who combines relative youth (he is 51) with plenty of experience (8 years as Governor of Maryland and 7 years as Mayor of Baltimore) and a strong record of executive achievement.

[mrhell]

I continue to state my opposition to Hillary Clinton on the grounds she's too old. I thought that in 2008 and so think it even more clearly now. The Democrats have never nominated anyone for their first presidential bid as old as Hillary Clinton will be in 2016. In fact, John Kerry is the only 60+ first time Democratic nominee since Tilden in 1876 (the others are Greeley, Buchanan and Cass).

[Deleted]

Aug 3, 2014 22:22:14 GMT mrhell said:

I continue to state my opposition to Hillary Clinton on the grounds she's too old. I thought that in 2008 and so think it even more clearly now. The Democrats have never nominated anyone for their first presidential bid as old as Hillary Clinton will be in 2016. In fact, John Kerry is the only 60+ first time Democratic nominee since Tilden in 1876 (the others are Greeley, Buchanan and Cass).

You'r right about age, me I just am totally unsure about her, the Democrats will probably surprise us with
someone we haven't noticed yet.

[johnloony]

My thoughts about Hilllary Cllinton are:

(a) She "should" have been selected as the candidate when she was the obvious choice in 2008, but was somehow overpowered and outmanoeuvred by a young upstart from Illinois that nobody had heard of before. Thus, it is more likely to happen again.

(b) She is likely to be seen as too old, even *if* she is selected.

(c) There are likely to be concerns about her health, even *if* she is not too old.

(d) There will be concerns about the legacy or influence of Bill Clinton, who may be seen by some in the USA as "toxic" in the same way that Blair is eeen by some as toxic in the UK.

Therefore: I think that
she is unlikely to run for the nomination;
if she does run, she is unlikely to be selected;
and if she is selected, she is unlikely to be elected.