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GOP 2012 theme: American 'decline'

PeteEU said:
Not true. Stop listening to Beck.

The debt was 10.6 trillion when Obama took over in 2009, and is now 14.1 trillion.. that is in NO WAY a tripling.

And if we go by budget years, then the debt under Obama budgets is gone from 11.8 trillion to 14.1 trillion.

Now if you are looking for a tripling.. look at Reagan

Bush took it for 5 trillion to almost 11 trillion.. that is a doubling.

Like it or not, your comment is utterly false.
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Not true. Stop listening to media matters and NPR.

When Obama took office, there was a 400 billion dollar deficit. Now there is a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit. He didn't triple the debt, he tripled the deficit. And considering the last 2 years Bush budgets were passed by a democratically controlled congress, you can't blame Bush for those.

Obama

http://redundapundit.com/blog/2009/02/in-one-month-obama-triples-debt-he-inherited-from-bush/

When the Democrats regained control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the national debt was $8.67 trillion.
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It's now over 14 trillion. So nearly doubling the debt in 4 years. Good job, dems!
 
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America has declined and who all is responsible for it is not as important as having plans in mind to cure the problems.

Using bad news for a campaign as I see it is very wrong. Obama got lucky but only because people were worked up into a frenzy of hate toward President Bush.

As I have been saying right along it's time for a Statesman to come on the scene with a very positive workable, logical set of plans and do their best not to go on the attack because Obama or who ever it is on the Left is going to start of there.

We need plans for a power source that is clean and relatively safe. It turns out that new technology is available for use in nuclear plants that eliminates the possibility of another situation as in on going in Japan. So there is that.

As Donald Trump said we rescued the people of Iraq and so they need to be paying us back for it and there is no better way than with free oil. Iraq has the third largest oil reserves or was it the second.

Next we could drop some of the Taxes that inhibit manufacturing along with stupid rules and regulations, and income taxes.

There are lots of other things that could be done but someone has to present them in the right way and be forceful it it.
 
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Councilman said:
America has declined and who all is responsible for it is not as important as having plans in mind to cure the problems.
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Yup... we need someone capable in the WH.
 
dontworrybehappy said:
Not true. Stop listening to media matters and NPR.

When Obama took office, there was a 400 billion dollar deficit. Now there is a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit. He didn't triple the debt, he tripled the deficit. And considering the last 2 years Bush budgets were passed by a democratically controlled congress, you can't blame Bush for those.

Obama
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Bush could have vetoed those budgets... that's like saying the GOP is responsible for Obama's f**k ups now :lamo
 
SheWolf said:
Bush could have vetoed those budgets... that's like saying the GOP is responsible for Obama's f**k ups now :lamo
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And then we'd hear the left whine because without a budget the gov't shuts down. So while Bush had ultimate veto power, that means nothing. Garbage in, garbage out. Sorry. The ball rests firmly in the lefts court. Either that, or Clinton can't take any of the credit for the budget so called "surplus" that passed under his administration because it was passed by a republican controlled congress.
 
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dontworrybehappy said:
And then we'd hear the left whine because without a budget the gov't shuts down. So while Bush had ultimate veto power, that means nothing. Garbage in, garbage out. Sorry. The ball rests firmly in the lefts court. Either that, or Clinton can't take any of the credit for the budget so called "surplus" that passed under his administration because it was passed by a republican controlled congress.

You libtards are hilarious.
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You're telling me that the GOP is responsible for this sh*tty economy... go head, keep repeating yourself. I am sure the Libtards will love it.
 
dontworrybehappy said:
Not true. Stop listening to media matters and NPR.

When Obama took office, there was a 400 billion dollar deficit. Now there is a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit. He didn't triple the debt, he tripled the deficit. And considering the last 2 years Bush budgets were passed by a democratically controlled congress, you can't blame Bush for those.

Obama
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Again, you do not read. The person I was quoting was foolish enough to say DEBT, not DEFICIT. They are different. And I am 1000000000% correct on the DEBT numbers, since it is your own freaking Treasury that posts the numbers.

As for DEFICIT... again you are WRONG.

CBO projects record $1.2 trillion deficit - Jan. 7, 2009

The U.S. budget deficit in 2009 is projected to spike to a record $1.2 trillion, or 8.3% of gross domestic product, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
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This is from 14 days BEFORE Obama took office, and if we go by budget years, then the deficit is even worse during the last Bush budget going from 2008 to 2009. At best you can claim Obama had something to do with the budget after he took office, but by that time the deficit was already 1.2 trillion and in reality, most of the budget was set in stone by the Bush administration for most of 2009.

So like it or not, you BOTH are wrong and have been listening to too much Fox News propaganda and dont let the facts hit you on the way out.
 
Well, I agree with much of the coming GOP message, including the decline message. However, Obama is both an embracer and a polite ignorer of American Exceptionalism viewpoints. The sad part is too many liberals and conservatives have no idea what the hell American exceptionalism is. American conservatives only see American exceptionalism as a positive force that includes being the best at everything at all times, or perhaps having a special mission in the world (however you interpret that to be executed). This is only a small fraction of the belief. It is also the embrace that for whatever massive reasons, America is qualitatively different from most of the world in a great number of subjects. For American liberals, I think the problem is that they are too eager to think that American exceptionalism is only being the best at x, y, and z, and to them that notion is idiotic, so American exceptionalism to them becomes some sort of jingoistic nonsense. I completely reject that line of thinking because it tends to give the concept no validity at all, when that is historically and sociologically bankrupt. So indeed, American liberals over the past few decades have been awfully tempted to swing too much in an European direction for my taste.
 
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roughdraft274 said:
Politico isn't liberal. A significant portion of conservatives/republicans don't think he's american. To fault them just for reporting that in an article that otherwise isn't critical of Republicans in general is silly. Simply looking for reasons to get butt-hurt.
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The tone of the article was more snarky than it needed to be.

On one hand, a small portion of conservatives or Republicans believe he is not an American citizen by means of birth. On the other hand, more believe that his beliefs and actions run contrary toward Americanism. I obviously think the former is ridiculous, but the second one has only slightly more validity, but still vastly misunderstood. The American creed in many respects is heard over and over again in his rhetoric and actions. Nevertheless, much of his policy actions could likewise be argued to run counter toward American notions of being skeptical about the vast expansion of the Welfare state and so forth. Americans view themselves as united by creed rather than explicitly shared common ancestral history like in Briton, so the slogan un-American or anti-American is truly an ideological one. Do not completely discount it, because it will be hard to suggest that American liberalism in the late 20th and early 21st century has not tried to downplay the uniquely American ideal or tried not to wager its success on becoming more like the rest of the industrialized western nations.
 
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SheWolf said:
You're telling me that the GOP is responsible for this sh*tty economy... go head, keep repeating yourself. I am sure the Libtards will love it.
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Wow it'd be like crazy if they with-held declaring the recession until after the 2008 election not to completely kill the republican candidate or something!

Naw I'm kidding. The recession started the moment the last winning vote was cast for obama then voo-doo magic took over the US and a recession magically happened the day after.

knock knock... Do you remember when they declared the recession?
 
Deuce said:
Obama responsible for American decline?

:lamo

If you think our problems are less than two years in the making, I don't know what to tell you.

edit: Generic "you," not referring to any individual.
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I don't think Americans see Obama as being responible, but rather Democrats/Liberals as a group are responsible. Obama is the leader of the Liberal Democrats and will get voted out in 2012.
 
Councilman said:
America has declined and who all is responsible for it is not as important as having plans in mind to cure the problems.

Using bad news for a campaign as I see it is very wrong. Obama got lucky but only because people were worked up into a frenzy of hate toward President Bush.

As I have been saying right along it's time for a Statesman to come on the scene with a very positive workable, logical set of plans and do their best not to go on the attack because Obama or who ever it is on the Left is going to start of there.

We need plans for a power source that is clean and relatively safe. It turns out that new technology is available for use in nuclear plants that eliminates the possibility of another situation as in on going in Japan. So there is that.

As Donald Trump said we rescued the people of Iraq and so they need to be paying us back for it and there is no better way than with free oil. Iraq has the third largest oil reserves or was it the second.
Next we could drop some of the Taxes that inhibit manufacturing along with stupid rules and regulations, and income taxes.

There are lots of other things that could be done but someone has to present them in the right way and be forceful it it.
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Brilliant but simple Idea
 
Fiddytree said:
Well, I agree with much of the coming GOP message, including the decline message. However, Obama is both an embracer and a polite ignorer of American Exceptionalism viewpoints. The sad part is too many liberals and conservatives have no idea what the hell American exceptionalism is. American conservatives only see American exceptionalism as a positive force that includes being the best at everything at all times, or perhaps having a special mission in the world (however you interpret that to be executed). This is only a small fraction of the belief. It is also the embrace that for whatever massive reasons, America is qualitatively different from most of the world in a great number of subjects. For American liberals, I think the problem is that they are too eager to think that American exceptionalism is only being the best at x, y, and z, and to them that notion is idiotic, so American exceptionalism to them becomes some sort of jingoistic nonsense. I completely reject that line of thinking because it tends to give the concept no validity at all, when that is historically and sociologically bankrupt. So indeed, American liberals over the past few decades have been awfully tempted to swing too much in an European direction for my taste.
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So what do you think American exceptionalism is
 
Moderator's Warning:
Thread moved to the appropriate forum.
 
SheWolf said:
So what do you think American exceptionalism is
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Broadly speaking it is either a grand conception of American special mission (this takes many forms and at times is said as "do or die harsher than any group in history") or also the sociological reality that American personality, economy, and government cannot easily be found similar to other western European nations or even its northern neighbor. Some issues include, the founding of the perfect nation-state with the best political philosophy, allegiance to country as ideology rather than shared ancestry, a feeling of anti-statist sentimentality, egalitarianism, universal bourgeois character, comparably high crime rate, uniquely uncommon lack of socialism and trade unionism, individualism, a highly religious nation yet hosting an incredibly diffuse collection of religions that are rather anti-hierarchy, a positive feeling regarding one's chances for social mobility through hard work, and so on. So in some sense, if one were hoping to transplant various European methods of dealing with social distress in the United States, they would likely find much lost in translation.
 
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SE102 said:
Geographic privilege?
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That is a portion of it too. "The New World", "Manifest Destiny", "Isolationism", "Growing cultural differences with Great Briton in comparison with Canada", and "relatively free from domestic violent wars" all plays a part in American Exceptionalism.
 
Fiddytree said:
Broadly speaking it is either a grand conception of American special mission (this takes many forms and at times is said as "do or die harsher than any group in history") or also the sociological reality that American personality, economy, and government cannot easily be found similar to other western European nations or even its northern neighbor. Some issues include, the founding of the perfect nation-state with the best political philosophy, allegiance to country as ideology rather than shared ancestry, a feeling of anti-statist sentimentality, egalitarianism, universal bourgeois character, comparably high crime rate, uniquely uncommon lack of socialism and trade unionism, individualism, a highly religious nation yet hosting an incredibly diffuse collection of religions that are rather anti-hierarchy, a positive feeling regarding one's chances for social mobility through hard work, and so on. So in some sense, if one were hoping to transplant various European methods of dealing with social distress in the United States, they would likely find much lost in translation.
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Then it seems like American exceptualism hasn't really ever been achieved... it sounds more like a ideal standard, something that may or may not work, who knows, but if you can never achieve something then it would seem unattainable. Our own political climate is in the way, so the American way kind of undermines itself by this definition..
 
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It has already more or less has and had been achieved. Not to completely compare it, but to give some more insight, like being a believer in God, His existence is thus real. American exceptionalism is in some small respect a matter of faith, but it is quite real to the minds of hundreds of millions of Americans, and that alone makes it rather real. Now, the sociological uniqueness of Americans and their economy or government is also fairly quite real. If it is peculiar and, for instance, impervious toward Marx and Engels' wishes for it to be the first to embrace socialism, well, that is quite the exceptional (exception to the "rule", mind you) character, is it not?
 
Erod said:
He tripled our national debt in two years.

You don't find that notable?
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Really? We're at over 30 trillion dollars?
 
Erod said:
Yep, he did. Even the CBO said so.

Obama
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A heritage foundation blog =/= CBO.
Also, natl. debt the day obama took office was 10.626 trillion.
 
American exceptualism must mean taking the world's biggest creditor nation to one of the biggest debtor nations in just 30 years flat... Moving most of the manufacting base to all corners of the earth... Adams Smith weeps.:(
 
pbrauer said:
American exceptualism must mean taking the world's biggest creditor nation to one of the biggest debtor nations in just 30 years flat... Moving most of the manufacting base to all corners of the earth... Adams Smith weeps.:(
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Adam Smith rejoices - it's all in the name of greed and big business!
 
j-mac said:
Whoa! stop right there.....Politico is most definately a liberal leaning publication.

Now.



Such as?



No, it is a tactic used to silence any dissent from the articles premise. they don't have to be any more critical after they generalize the entire group as crazy do they?



"get butt-hurt"??? What the hell does that mean?

j-mac
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I think you have to be a liberal to understand that.
 
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