Who's your money on?Follow

If they want to give me what I want and destroy the Republican party themselves, I say go for it.

It should just happen. After all those aren't real Republicans voting for him anyway so there's no need to worry about the Republicans being hurt by a split vote in the general election.

It's not something they created just to mess with Trump but they've (unwisely, probably) made it clear that they are angling for it this time explicitly to stop Trump. And, regardless, it's pretty straight up the party establishment booting Trump (and Cruz... no one is picking Cruz on a third ballot) in a cycle where the two front runners are on expressly antiestablishment platforms.

Having the people who make the rules say "Hey, don't blame us, it's in the rules!" probably won't be super convincing to people.

He can compete with the real conservative that keeps getting threatened to be injected into the race to counter Trump's ascent.

Edited, Apr 5th 2016 9:55am by lolgaxe

"The only reason we don't have a real America loving President is because all three choices were actually liberals in disguise!" - circa January 2017

"Might" ?

...he is quite Liberal compared to Rafael, The Zodiac, Cruz.

Uh... That's a distinction without a difference.



And yet, semantic distinctions aside, that's exactly what will be claimed if it recommends indictment. Not necessarily that the FBI itself engaged in dirty tricks, but that the very choice to sic the FBI on Clinton for this, when <insert folks like Rice and Powell here> didn't get the same treatment, will be seen as political at the very least. Differences between those cases will largely be ignored in this context (as it appears to consistently be just among forum posters having the same conversation now).



Well. That's not exactly what was said. What was said was that you could measure the success of the hearings by looking at her polling numbers. You could certainly interpret that to mean that the entire purpose of the hearings was to hurt her poll numbers, or you could interpret it to mean that the information obtained and exposed during the hearings are important and do have meaning because her poll numbers are being affected. Let's not forget that the context of that comment was made in response to a question suggesting that there was no point to holding the hearings because it was just a rehash of old news and no one cared. If no one cared then her poll numbers should not have dropped and might even have gone up if the public perception was that she was being unfairly singled out.



And if you'd take the time to actually read the article, it quite clearly states that information that was already classified and would have been obtained via a SCIF, was found on her server. Meaning that someone took information out of a SCIF and transferred it in electronic form onto her server. Which is a felony.

And again, you're ignoring the fact that at the level she was operating, many things are not yet classified. And I'm not just talking about later FOIA classifications here.



Um... Wow. So some unnamed "Washington Lawyers" and an unnamed "former top government lawyer" (quite probably one of the same set mentioned earlier as "Washington Lawyers", so really just a meaningless bit of wordplay to make this look like a multi-sourced article) say she didn't do anything wrong. Well, I guess that settles it! The article repeats the same ridiculous idea that since the top secret information she had on her server wasn't yet classified as such when she handled it, she's free and clear. Except that's not true. It's true for people who aren't part of the process of information handling prior to classification. You, for example. Everything you handle has already been through multiple layers of processing, so you know exactly how to handle it. That's by design, since you aren't qualified nor in a position to handle anything prior to classification. Clinton, perhaps not by qualification, but certainly by job title, was. And she received training on how to manage such information (more or less "assume *everything* is top secret unless it's determined otherwise"). She knew this. She knew (or should have known unless the argument is that she's completely incompetent) that some portion of the information she was handling would be classified top secret and should not be handled outside of official government methods. She literally handled *everything* this way. All communications with her staff where through this server. Did she really think that nothing she'd do or say over a 4 year period working as Secretary of State would be sensitive and classified?

She may be dumb as a rock, but that's not an excuse for a violation of this magnitude. And it certainly should disqualify her for the office of President.

Oh. And you're also missing (and the article brushes this off), the question of "intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location”. What does anyone think she was doing here? The entire reason for operating this was was to keep those documents out of easy government oversight. The fact that initial FOIA inquiries turned up no documents is evidence of this fact. It was the scope of what wasn't available via FOIA that first tipped people off that she must have been using some outside source for communication, which lead to her private email server. It's hard to argue, especially with the history of the Clinton's and documents (anyone recall the documents "found" in the WH residence 5 years after they were initially sought?), that this was an accident. She clearly intended to keep those documents outside of official government locations, presumably to make it harder for future FOIA requests to obtain accurate information about her (so she could write her own history basically). Does anything think that if this investigation hadn't uncovered the server, that she would ever have at some future time handed the documents over? What do you think "intent to retain" means here? Cause it sure looks like that's exactly what she did.

Edited, Apr 5th 2016 2:08pm by gbaji

All candidates propose government solutions. Because, you know, they're going to be the head of the government so that's pretty much where their area of influence is at. They use government "as a tool" because government is, literally, the tool by which they enact their policies.

Cruz, for example, is proposing government solutions to immigration, to guaranteeing "religious protections", to abortion, to same-sex marriage, to the tax system, to health care, to commerce, etc. What a Big Government Liberal!

Government actions is not the same as government solutions. If, for example, your action is to eliminate a government program that is seen as wasteful and/or infringes on the rights of the citizens, that's not a "big government solution". It's viewing government as the problem, and eliminating that problem. Which is perfectly in line with conservative ideology.



All of which, with the exception of immigration (which, you know, is one of the few things that the federal government actually must be involved in), are about limiting the role government plays, or rolling back past bad interactions by federal government into something otherwise left to the states, or to private citizens.

Your problem is that at a fundamental level, you don't actually understand what we mean when we talk about small government. Either that, or you pretend not to, because it's easier to argue against that misinterpretation than the real thing (ie: strawman).

Defending a state parental notification law against a lawsuit brought to the US supreme court *is* though. Again, "small government" is primarily about restricting government action to the level it should rest. Most often it's in opposition to Federal actions that ought to be done at the state.



I'm not sure what you're referring to. But, again, "small government" has to do with the footprint the federal government directly has on the citizens. The belief of conservatives is that the Federal government exists primarily to manage interactions between the states, and between the states collectively and other nations. Using one branch of the federal government to strengthen checks against another branch, is unlikely to be a violation of "small government". And if the check is designed to make it harder for the executive branch of the federal government to unilateraly act in ways that directly affect the citizens of the US, then it's directly in keeping with small government ideology.



I'd need to know what you're referring to. Cause that's not something we conservatives normally do.



Given you didn't provide a single specific example? Not really.



Except, based on your post above, it does not appear as though you do, much less "everyone". In fact, I've found that most liberals consistently fail to understand at all what we mean by "small government", even after we've clearly explained it to them multiple times.



I'd feel much more confident with that, if I actually thought that on any level, much less a fundamental level, you actually understood the ideological concept involved. And until you write something in a post that shows that you do actually understand this, you kinda can't blame me for proceeding as though you don't.



On who's part though? You keep saying "everyone knows what that means", but then you use examples (or at least implied examples from what I could glean) that show that you actually have no clue at all. Every single time a liberal argued that conservatives were hypocritical because they opposed Obamacare, despite Romney passing the same/similar law in Mass, they show that they don't actually understand the principle of small government.

There are things that the states can and should do, which the federal government should *not* do. That's the part you guys keep missing. It's not about using government power, but how you use it, and at what level you use it, and what you use it for. It really does matter if a law is passed at the state versus federal level. It really does matter to us whether a law affects a state broadly, or individuals within a state directly. These things matter to us. They don't matter to you. Which is why you have a hard time seeing, much less understanding, the distinction.

So no specific examples to illustrate Republicans violating their own principle of small government, then? Can I just take that as you admitting you were wrong? Or do we tap dance around this for a dozen more posts?

That's on odd thing for you to say after so many posts claiming that the conservative right isn't driven by social issues. Waffle waffle waffle.

That must be some great mescaline you scored, dude!

Hey everyone!! The hard core conservative Christian right in America are all liberals!! It's true because I read it on the internet and can cite gbaji as proof!!