Open Thread: What if the other guy wins?
Tis a slow news day and Bruce & Dan are off doing, well whatever they do when they’re not online, so I figured this would be a good time for an open thread question. Besides, I’m having a bit of a bad day anyways…
Just a wee bit of advice for the future: never, ever drive over a recently filled trench on a construction site right after a torrential rain. Not good. Car’s fine but my pride is still in trauma.
So anyways, how about it? What if the guy you don’t want to be president actually wins this year? What are you most concerned about them doing if they end up in the Oval Office come 2009? Is there anything good you think they might do that your candidate won’t do himself?
Ok, I’m off to the car wash…
– John (Average Gay Joe)
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I don’t want either one of those idiots to be president, so the question is moot.
I’m just planning on living my life and being happy the next four years. I refuse to become embittered or let some jerk politician take that away from me. And I’ll pray that we get somebody better in office in 2013.
Comment by V the K — July 15, 2008 @ 11:12 am - July 15, 2008
John, I hope after the car wash you will feel better. I am in a huge dilemna about the next Oval Office tenant….I have lots of issues with each one that has been selected. However, I was watching GMA last week, and my first and favorite pick from the beginning, Rudy G was on, and he makes sense even now. So I am going back to square one and writing in a candidate for President.
Comment by PatriotMom — July 15, 2008 @ 11:32 am - July 15, 2008
Oh boy, John, I’ve been there. had to have my Cherokee pulled out by a big-a$$ farm tractor. Wasn’t funny at the time, though I look back on it now and chuckle.
I guess I’d have to say I don’t think I care much if the other guy wins this year. I don’t like either candidate, and I think the power of the President to impact domestic issues is vastly over-rated anyway. Personally I’m more concerned about Congress.
Comment by Mike — July 15, 2008 @ 11:49 am - July 15, 2008
John, the other guy is going to win. Whether it’s McCain or Obama. For lovers of capitalism / liberty / small government / human freedom, they’re both the other guy. “Maverick” is just going to be better on a few things and in the short run, like Iraq.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — July 15, 2008 @ 12:05 pm - July 15, 2008
Hi John, hey as long as the worse you suffered was mud and a car wash….that’s a good day!! You are ok and so is your car..that’s all that counts. If McCain loses, I see Carter redux and in 2012 a primary fight on the Democratic side and hopefully the GOP back to its roots of sound fiscal conservative roots and add in a secular “compassionate conservatism”…..where government gets out of our private lives and unleashes ala Reagan the power of the people to do for themselves with a safety net. Indeed, W should have expanded on his theme of “compassionate conservatism” to appeal to the higher angels in us to help each other out but without government “Big Brother” running our lives and keep the government off of our backs. Things like entitlement reform, government reform, energy independence, solid homeland security instead of lip service to it and a strong military and foreign policy. My guess is that it would help the GOP get the cobwebs out….rebuild from the grass roots up and become more inclusive. A GOP that works to encourage people to become small business owners, innovative in the economy, etc..and ways that “smaller is better” and all politics is local is better then federal bloviation of programs and stupidity….common sense solutions (for example….the law of unintended consequences…wind power that overloads the electric energy grid and ends up killing fish in water ways (as happened in Oregon) or ethanol that is more expensive to produce then oil and causes world food shortages…..that common sense is best and encourage individualism….a combination of a return to Goldwater and Reagan roots but modernized. (Compassionate conservatism would have worked had the goals been to not line the pockets of certain evangelicals as voter bloc payoffs) by encouraging grass root community help with poverty, literacy, medical care (i.e. creating mobile health care units in the communities rather then the need for hospital buildings) to get care to the people…encourage common sense solutions such as larger deductions for health care (so we decide what want in our own health insurance rather then government mandates), simplified programs….less taxation, less government spending etc…common sense conservatism that we have lost track of because of power grab moves and staying in power more then country first attitude.
Comment by Rocket — July 15, 2008 @ 12:09 pm - July 15, 2008
What if the guy you don’t want to be president actually wins this year?
To borrow from the Latin, “Deus vult”.
What are you most concerned about them doing if they end up in the Oval Office come 2009?
Recreating the Smoot-Hawley Act and the resulting economic turmoil.
Is there anything good you think they might do that your candidate won’t do himself?
Make it obvious how ludicrous their ideas are.
Beyond that, though, my faith is in the fact that this country has been around for over two centuries and gone through far worse.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — July 15, 2008 @ 12:15 pm - July 15, 2008
On a related note, (and since the holding filter ate my response), Obama is purging his website of all his criticism of the surge. Obama is trying to erase from history the many times he said the Surge would fail. But then, airbrushing history is a specialty of Stalinist types.
Comment by V the K — July 15, 2008 @ 12:20 pm - July 15, 2008
If Obama wins, we’ll have Carter years redux. That does not make me happy, personally I’ll feel it in my pocket book. I also fear that we will have another terrorist attack here in America.
I was listening to John McWhorter on the radio today - he believes that an Obama presidency will change the race issue forever. I wish I could believe him, I can’t. We’ve become way too invested in racial politics to ever give that one up.
So I’ll pray for good health, for good things in my personal life, and hope that he doesn’t do too much damage.
Yes we are a great nation, this too shall pass - but boy am I not looking forward to it!
Comment by Leah — July 15, 2008 @ 12:38 pm - July 15, 2008
Ha! I did same thing back in 1991. My band would practice at the art dept. at Fresno State on Saturday nights. We hadn’t practiced for a few weeks due to winter break, and during that time, they had rebuilt the parking lot, adding island where none had previously been. They hadn’t finished installing the new light fixtures and it had just rained, so it was unusually dark that night. So after the first practice of the new year, with my little 79 Accord weighed down with band equipment, I started to tool around the obstacle course that gets you to the exit. Well, you know how sometimes you drive on autopilot, I was doing just that. I came to a point where I had to make a 180 degree turn to exit the parking lot, and being on auto pilot, I took the turn, tight as usual. BUMP - SCRAPE…. mud flew everywhere! I was stuck right on the curb, with the front end of the car stuck in the mud, and the rear still on the pavement. Accords are front wheel drive, and those front tires were doing nothing but flinging mud all over the place. Tow truck pulled me out. The worse thing about it was that, the week before, I had finally fixed the exhaust system on the car. It had sounded great! And I totally destroyed it that night running over the curb.
Comment by sonicfrog — July 15, 2008 @ 1:04 pm - July 15, 2008
I agree that it will be Carte II if Obama wins, especially with Pelosi and Reid in Congress. I am working hard now to get all my business loans at fixed interest rates…I remember the 17%-20% rates of the first Carter era. I am actively selling some part of my business so that I can enjoy the low capital gains rates, and I am looking at ways to reduce my taxable income.
Comment by Hunter — July 15, 2008 @ 2:40 pm - July 15, 2008
Your experience with a car stuck in the mud reminded me of an even worse experience.
When we first bought our little farm in the American heartland, where we spend our summers and actually work the farm, I wasn’t familiar with the rural areas of middle America. Right after we bought the farm one winter, my dog and I were there alone and decided one Sunday afternoon to take a drive. I had no idea what “Caution. Minimum Maintenance” signs meant until we turned down what appeared to be a gravel road. By the time I realized we’d run out of gravel, I was headed downhill on a muddy road and couldn’t back up. I saw a stop sign ahead and figured it had to be a better road, that surely there wouldn’t be two poorly maintained roads intersecting. So I tried to reach that road but barely traveled another fifty feet before the car was buried in the mud up to the doors. I had to crawl out an open window. There was a farm house back at the top of the hill but every farm has dogs and I didn’t want to risk my dog getting in a fight. So we took off on foot to that “good road” up ahead. But it wasn’t a road. The stop sign was at railroad tracks.
My dog and I started walking along the tracks in the direction of our farm, making only a mile before I decided to go back to the car to get my AAA card to call later for a tow truck. After a while I realized the tracks headed into a small town not far from the farm and I could get a ride home. Darkness soon fell and it was too dangerous to follow the tracks because of the numerous open trestles over drainage ditches and creeks. So we got on a road and hiked the long way into town — all nine miles.
My dog and I got separated and once I got into town and found someone awake at that late hour we had to go back out and find the dog. He and I then made the trip home riding in the back of a pick-up truck as the temperature dropped below freezing.
The next day I called the sheriff to see if deputies could locate the car and give me something of an address for AAA. The dispatcher who took my call was married to a farmer and offered his services to pull my car up to the top of the hill. She even picked me up and drove me to the location, where, instead of her husband, the farmer who lived at the top of the hill used his tractor to pull my car up to his farm. It took us almost three hours to remove the mud packed inside the wheel wells and for days, as I drove around, the car threw off mud from its underside. And I learned from the farmer that the minimum maintenance sign was incorrect. It should have been removed. The county had closed the road and given it to the farmer as a farm lane and there was zero maintenance.
Except for the township’s gravel roads, all of the county’s maintained roads are either asphalt or oil and chips and I’ve followed a rule of driving only on the county roads.
As to the Oval Office, I’m not sure who my “Other Guy” is. I know that there is absolutely no way I can vote for John McCain. But I do want to vote in this election and am not yet sold on Barack Obama. Warren Buffet assures me Obama is OK but I’m still not ready to go that way.
My three granddaughters, all with great Republican credentials, spent our entire week whitewater rafting trying to sell me on Obama. The two older girls are in college. As teens they worked as campaign volunteers for Jeb Bush’s re-election as Florida governor, the election of Mel Martinez to the U. S. Senate, President Bush’s re-election and Charlie Crist’s election as Florida governor. But this year, in the towns where they go to school, they were very active in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. My youngest granddaughter, who will be a senior in high school this fall, was a volunteer in Crist’s ‘06 campaign and President Bush’s ‘04 campaign. But this year she jumped on the Obama bandwagon weeks before his win in Iowa. He didn’t campaign in Florida but my granddaughter got in touch with a group of young Obama supporters who worked to get Obama supporters to the polls for the January primary.
The girls are committed to Obama and excited about his campaign and their Grandmother and I are very impressed with the case they make for his election. They’ve already convinced her. She told me the other night: hell, we’re just a few years short of being 70, we’ve had our chance, we’ve elected our presidents; the future belongs to our grandchildren and we ought to respect our granddaughters’ strong desire for a change in the direction the countrr has been going, especially the last eight years. I will think long and hard about my vote.
If my “Other Guy” ends up being McCain I have a nightmare about him being in the Oval Office. I’m convinced he’s a hot head and, if Bush doesn’t get us mired down in Iran before he leaves office, I don’t think it would take much for Iran to provoke McCain into military action against them. Those quick, surgical air strikes USAF can deliver are likely to lead to ground combat with Iranian forces (somewhere in the Middle East) and our brave kids in uniform — God bless them — are already stretched to the breaking point and we can’t handle a third war right now.
Comment by Trace Phelps — July 15, 2008 @ 3:54 pm - July 15, 2008
Right on Patriot Mom! Rudy was my guy too!
As for what I’m most afraid of “the other guy” doing? oy! Theres so much to be afraid of, its hard to pick the worst. Socialized healthcare will cost billions and cost lives, global warming policy threatens to destroy the economy, as do obamas spending and tax hikes, and democrats plans to reinstate the “fairness” doctrine coupled with election, immigration and other reforms they hope will cement their power permanently. Who could pick number one from that list of winners!
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction” ~ RR
Comment by American Elephant — July 15, 2008 @ 11:43 pm - July 15, 2008
Looks to me like you could pick up that car and put it in your pocket.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — July 16, 2008 @ 7:30 am - July 16, 2008
If Obama wins :
Socialized medicine
Retreat in Iraq and in the War on Terror in general
Higher taxes
Undoing what border security we have now
Fairness Doctrine
An attempt to nationalize oil refineries
That is just the short list.
Comment by Andrew — July 16, 2008 @ 1:52 pm - July 16, 2008
Obama would probably try all the things Andrew says. And since we believe that those policies would fail (unless you believe in Magic Negroes), it would increase our chances of getting a Republican Congress in 2011 and a conservative president in 2013.
Obama has an excellent chance of flipping Colorado, Virginia, and Ohio in the general election and holding all the blue states from 2004. But you can take comfort in that McCain would not have been much better.
Comment by V the K — July 16, 2008 @ 2:16 pm - July 16, 2008
McCain would be far better, he would stay in Iraq, and have a proactive stance on terror, oppose the fairness doctrine and appoint conservative judges. He would also cut taxes, he supports cutting the corporate tax rate to (I think) 15%.
Republicans have royally ruined a great opportunity when they had the congress and the White House but did nothing to advance conservatism, but Obama with a dem congress is 1000 times worse than McCain can possibly be.
Comment by Andrew — July 16, 2008 @ 8:23 pm - July 16, 2008
That may well be true V, but the problem is — to toss out another Ronnie quote — “The closest thing to immortality on this earth is a federal government program,” …especially an entitlement program!
Once the damage is done, its next to impossible to undo it. You think when socialized medicine fails that the people are going to listen to the party who says we’re going to have to take your “free” medical care away? Or the party that says we just need more money, we’ll just tax the super rich, they aren’t paying their fair share anyway.
Well, I know how that scenario has played out with social security, and medicare, and school choice.
The problem is, once people are dependent on the government, they don’t vote for the party that threatens to take their entitlements away.
Once millions of illegal immigrants are allowed in and encouraged to vote through amnesty and motor voter, with no fence preventing more form coming over, …well, lets just say theyre not likely to favor Republicans either, which is why Democrats want it in the first place.
Once the fairness doctrine kills free conservative talk radio, its gone, at least til it reaches the far left dominated Supreme Court.
The left held congress for 40 years, lost it for 12, and they don’t intend to lose it again this time. And unlike Republicans, they’re going to implement every policy they can think of to ensure they never do again.
Comment by American Elephant — July 17, 2008 @ 10:33 am - July 17, 2008
If Obama wins don’t worry, we can simply move out of the country for a while as there will be plenty of cheap real estate overseas where all the liberals who promised to move out of the country if Bush won will be selling to move back. Keep your eyes peeled for the incredible bargains!
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Comment by John — October 6, 2008 @ 4:05 am - October 6, 2008