Truth is stranger than fiction - The Sarah Palin Chronicles

[CGM]

They'll definitely give her the opportunity though. One in three voters near enough will definitely vote for her. If they can graft a bit of substance, a bit of gravitas onto the you betcha she could change people's perceptions of her, win a few independents and centrist voters. They did the same thing with Nixon when he originally quit in the sixties and he managed to win. She's actually very similar to Nixon but without the smarts, they both use resentment as their main issue. And the guy who masterminded Nixon's return from obscurity currently runs Fox News.

meh, irrelevant. One in three voters would vote for anybody over a Democrat, another one in three would vote for anybody over a Republican. But the middle one in three would never vote for her. So I have to agree with Spicoli. They won't give her another chance at VP, let alone president.

[Kirkland Laing]

They'll definitely give her the opportunity though. One in three voters near enough will definitely vote for her. If they can graft a bit of substance, a bit of gravitas onto the you betcha she could change people's perceptions of her, win a few independents and centrist voters. They did the same thing with Nixon when he originally quit in the sixties and he managed to win. She's actually very similar to Nixon but without the smarts, they both use resentment as their main issue. And the guy who masterminded Nixon's return from obscurity currently runs Fox News.

meh, irrelevant. One in three voters would vote for anybody over a Democrat, another one in three would vote for anybody over a Republican. But the middle one in three would never vote for her. So I have to agree with Spicoli. They won't give her another chance at VP, let alone president.

One in three voters would run through a brick wall for her. The people who win elections are the volunteers, the people who do phone banking, door-to-door canvassing, driving old/incapacitated people to the polling stations on election day. The GOP depends on getting social conservatives to do these jobs for them. the GOP is a very right wing party dedicated to serve the interests of corporations and plutocrats (although the Democrats are fairly indistinguishable these days) and its policies historically are worse for the majority of people than those of the Democrats, the average American doing much better financially under Democratic presidents than Republicans. For the GOP to get enough people to vote against their economic interests to win elections they need to appeal to certain cultural groups, especially social conservatives and Christians. Somebody like John McCain isn't acceptable to the conservative base, the people who volunteer and phone bank for the GOP at elections, who potentially can turn out in enormous numbers but don't because they never get what they're promised. They see Sarah Palin as one of them and guarantee her a fanatical truly formidable election machine should she run. If the GOP chiefs can graft a bit of substance onto her, change peoples' perceptions of her, they make her an almost unbeatable opponent for any Democrat. They can easily do that by 2016 if she's capable of slowly changing. They'll definitely give her every opportunity.

[CGM]

Well, I guess we'll see then. I don't mind if she runs, it'll be entertaining, but there's no way in hell she'll win. Gawd, I hope not.

[Kirkland Laing]

Well, I guess we'll see then. I don't mind if she runs, it'll be entertaining, but there's no way in hell she'll win. Gawd, I hope not.

It's the energy she'd create among the base. People tell pollsters they'll vote for such and such but the question is can they be arsed to spend hours of their life actually voting on election day. Potential GOP voters look at somebody like Mccain and think he'll cave in to the liberals on abortion, religious issues, gay rights etc. just like every other Republican I voted for did. But Palin is one of them, the first one of them that's had even a sniff of the White House. Harnessing the energy among liberals created by eight years of Bush gave Obama a huge election machine and put him in the White House. If Obama wins in 2012 imagine the energy in the GOP base waiting to be harnessed in 2016, a more refined version of Palin would be a shoo in.

[VictorCharlie]

Kirk I think this one might be some what more legit

http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/

I have relegated myself that outside of strict libertarians no one is going to drastically reduce the size of federal gov't. I'll take the guy that at least wants a not as big government. The scary part is that with President Obama and a democratically controlled congress/senate on course for some unprecedented federal growth; there is no going back. It almost never gets smaller. Strangely enough, and I can't source this, I am pretty sure I've read the last time our Federal Gov't actually got smaller was under Clinton.

[Kirkland Laing]

That was the 2000 Texas GOP platform. When it started getting unwelcome media attention via the new-fangled internet they changed it to a much more palatable version, something that wouldn't make headlines, but you can guarantee that's what they really want and was publicly till 2000ish.

The problem is people want the government to manage certain things like health and education. They just want it done much more efficiently and here both parties and the current system fail miserably.

[OumaFan]

I'm really not scared of Palin, they can find somebody that appeals to the base that freaks people out a little less. Bobby Jindal appeals to the base and....yeah ok bad example.

A candidate that would be scary is somebody that the base believes is one of them but yet is still able to project an image that doesn't scare off independents, centrists, etc. An image of sanity, stability, maybe some intelligence. I guess you might say that they could try to turn Palin into that but I don't see it.

[VictorCharlie]

I definitely don't want the government (federal that is) in education or healthcare.

[Kirkland Laing]

I definitely don't want the government (federal that is) in education or healthcare.

It works out much better if they are. Every first world country has a national healthcare and education system, it's something we've learnt is necessary over decades of experience with various systems. America has no choice but to have a national healthcare system like other countries or the current system will bankrupt the country.

[VictorCharlie]

I definitely don't want the government (federal that is) in education or healthcare.

It works out much better if they are. Every first world country has a national healthcare and education system, it's something we've learnt is necessary over decades of experience with various systems. America has no choice but to have a national healthcare system like other countries or the current system will bankrupt the country.

We definitely need some dramatic changes in health care and I agree that to obtain affordable coverage for all Americans some measure of Federal control is necessary. I just don't trust the US Government to run an affordable, timely and high quality health care program for its 300 million citizens. What kills me with the President/Democrats is their effort to create this program w/o an overall raise in taxes. They are scrambling to pinch a penny here and find a dime there. I understand a National Health Care Plan will provide some big savings but how in hell can you look me in the face and say we can afford it w/o a large increase in revenue? I'd like to take some smaller steps first and see where we are at that point.

1. Find a mechanism to create competition between doctors/hospitals price wise. Most doctors can't tell you their actual prices b/c w/ insurance companies it is irrelevant and static regionally. I don't really know how one would go about doing this or even if its possible within our current system

2. All though I am typically against federal databases and I will hate to see GE make a ton a money on this, a creation of a national medical data base and singular nationalized means of insurance filing regardless of company would greatly reduce the bureaucracy/paper work/paperwork load

3. Cap or change in malpractice suits to reduce the large amount of money Doctors pay for malpractice insurance

4. Provide more state/federal money to help Doctors with the staggering amounts of student loans they incur while spending near or more than a decade in school

These four things would in theory lower overhead for medical practitioners, increase efficiency and reduce the price for the customer. If in fact these things happened and the overall price of insurance didn't drop remarkably then we would have to take another look.

p.s. Pretty sure Switzerland doesn't have a nationalized health care plan. Maybe they are a model to look at.

[Kirkland Laing]

What kills me with the President/Democrats is their effort to create this program w/o an overall raise in taxes. They are scrambling to pinch a penny here and find a dime there. I understand a National Health Care Plan will provide some big savings but how in hell can you look me in the face and say we can afford it w/o a large increase in revenue? I'd like to take some smaller steps first and see where we are at that point.

1. Find a mechanism to create competition between doctors/hospitals price wise. Most doctors can't tell you their actual prices b/c w/ insurance companies it is irrelevant and static regionally. I don't really know how one would go about doing this or even if its possible within our current system

2. All though I am typically against federal databases and I will hate to see GE make a ton a money on this, a creation of a national medical data base and singular nationalized means of insurance filing regardless of company would greatly reduce the bureaucracy/paper work/paperwork load

3. Cap or change in malpractice suits to reduce the large amount of money Doctors pay for malpractice insurance

4. Provide more state/federal money to help Doctors with the staggering amounts of student loans they incur while spending near or more than a decade in school

These four things would in theory lower overhead for medical practitioners, increase efficiency and reduce the price for the customer. If in fact these things happened and the overall price of insurance didn't drop remarkably then we would have to take another look.

p.s. Pretty sure Switzerland doesn't have a nationalized health care plan. Maybe they are a model to look at.

You're not going to get competition between anybody with the current system. Half a dozen huge health insurance companies have their own regional monopolies and spend hundreds of millions on lobbyists to restrict competition and preserve their monopolies. The way the Democrats (some of them) want to create competition is by creating a public insurance option which will allow the government to offer a competing insurance scheme with the big health insurance companies. But the insurance companies are terrified of the competition and are lobbying to block a public plan. All the GOP and some Democrats are now dead against it and it looks like nothing is going to change.

Malpractice suits total costs are less than half of one percent total spending.

The medical malpractice myth. - By Ezra Klein - Slate Magazine

Blaming the cost of healthcare on malpractice is just something the GOP do to press peoples' buttons, blame it on lawyers instead of on health insurance companies who've increased premiums 80+% in six years and increased their profits 400%.

A great way to cut healthcare costs is to stop healthcare companies authorising super expensive treatments that are ten or more times more expensive than similar treatments. It's hard to believe that a private business would take advantage of sick, scared people to sell them expensive stuff they don't need but maybe there's a first time for everything. Some studies say the insurance companies inflate bills by up to 30% by pushing various types of treatment. Obama recently got a billion dollars in funds to carry out comparative effectiveness programmes that would find out which types of treatments were expensive rubbish and which could be done at a fraction of the cost by other treatments. The GOP fought the billion dollars all the way and have now introduced a bill which if passed will ban anybody from using the findings of the studies to try and get the insurers to stop pushing expensive bill-inflating treatments.