That's some impressive analysis... Too bad it's wrong. First off, both parties' Congressional Delegations have moved towards the poles since 2010. (Look up what happened to the Blue Dog Democrats sometime.) And since there's more Republicans in Congress than Democrats, I'd argue that the electorate leans closer to the rigjt at the moment. Ditto for Governor's Mansions. (Obama has a personality cult thing going on. Elections with him on the ballot are an outlier. Other Democrats can't count on that.)

Secondly, I assume that nobody trusts what ANY politician says while they're running for office. Regardless of what he said while he was running, Obama has governed from the left (TO A GREATER EXTENT THAN HILLARY CLINTON WOULD HAVE, which was my original point.) McCain and Romney, on the other hand, are well known for being on the Republican Party's LEFT. Romney's healthcare plan as governor was a state level version of Obamacare. You can't really think that most of the Republicans are to the left of the guy who implemented state level Obamacare, can you?

I've never seen you make this point on Slashdot before. My apologies.

No I haven't. That's my question. Can you give me an example where you think Republicans aren't conservative enough? I think there's plenty of examples, but I'm a conservative and not a centrist, so you'll probably have less then me. (You hinted at domestic policy with "laws that restrict freedom" and "increase spending while cutting taxes," so the quick list that follows leaves out foreign policy stuff.)

I think Republicans aren't fighting hard enough to defeat Obamacare.

I think Republicans should be fighting to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

I think Republicans should be fighting harder to split the Farm Bill into a bill that funds farm insurance and a bill that funds SNAP, because as currently constituted, both are ridiculous corporate welfare. SNAP should be reformed on the financial side (the taxpayers need better protection from the bank who issues the cards), and we don't need the actual farm insurance part of the bill.

I think Republicans should force the government to drastically reduce its stake in the student loan market, and let private industry back in, like it was less than a decade ago.

Republicans are already good on gun rights, support the Keystone pipeline, and largely oppose the regulatory overreaches that characterize the executive branch during this administration.

Republicans and Democrats are both too pro-amnesty and pro-H1B. The unconstitutional Internet Sales Tax compact they're trying to pass is bipartisan. Neiter of those are differences.

These are short lists. They're incomplete because I'm running late for work. But you get the idea. Is there an issue where you agree with conservatives over Democrats?

OK, so you got nothing. You can't win them all, and your side has a bad hand on this one. Great argument. See you next time.

How was it?

The claim, "Oh yeah? I'm to the right of European socialists" is trolling every time it happens. Only American citizens can vote in American elections, so it doesn't matter what kind of crazy stuff Europeans socialists support. Relative to the American electorate, you are a leftist troll.

Can you name a position taken by the GOP that you support over the position taken by the Democratic party? Because I first noticed your signature and gun related username in a thread involving Sarah Palin somehow (I think, but can't swear to it, that it was the non-scandal where the 4channer son of a Democrat state representative hacked her e-mail) and assumed you'd be a supporter of hers because she's popular in Alaska. Then I went back and re-read your post and saw that you were criticizing her somehow. (Again, I forget the issue at hand.)

Not liking Sarah Palin is fine, I guess. But I kept noticing your signature and gun related username showing up every time there was an opportunity to attack a Republican or a conservative, and usually to defend a Democrat. Unless I'm massively missing a part of your posting history, it's not reflective of you being a centrist.

Now, I don't claim to be a centrist. I'm a conservative, and my posting history reflects that... probably better than anything else*. I'm not a huge fan of the Republican party, but that doesn't make me a liberal because I don't think the solution is more Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. I've seen you criticize the Democratic party for being insufficiently liberal, which is the other side of that coin.

The problems with the major parties aside, I'll be generous and assume you're not trolling, and really think you're a centrist. Take the Cruz-Warren test. Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren are probably the most conservative and the most liberal mainstream politicians in the country today. In order to be a centrist, there has to be at least one issue where you agree with Cruz and disagree with Warren, and one issue where you agree with Warren and disagree with Cruz. I want you to really think about what it says about you if all your tallies are in the Warren column.

It says you're a liberal. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that**. But take it from me. You'll be happier once you realize that you come down on one side of the isle and not the other.

*To save you the trouble of digging through my post history, other topics that I post on are Microsoft and how I'm usually a fan... Apple and how I'm usually not... Google often makes good Android-related decisions and bad non-Android ones... I'm quick to defend the Zune... The 360 was a great console, and I have an Xbox One, but I don't think that a great console game has come out yet this console generation. A couple of times, I've asked Sony fans if there's an exclusive on their side of the isle that's truly great.

**Except for the fact that you're wrong.

Fine, then. What possible motive would Richard Armitage have for leaking the name of Joseph Wilson's wife? Remember, Armitage and Wilson were allies.

And as far as the "might makes right" bullshit, Libby was only ever testifying because the prosecutor wanted to trap somebody in perjury charges. At the time Libby testified, Armitage had already confessed. The prosecutor already knew who committed the crime and could have sought an indictment against Armitage if he wanted to. Libby's sentence was commuted because the whole thing was a miscarriage of justice. Which is EXACTLY what pardons are for.

Fine, but you're a well known radical leftist troll. Relative to the electorate, Obama is part of the hard left. He beat Hillary Clinton in 2008 by convincing Democrats that they should go with a hard-leftist rather than a moderate-by-comparison like Hillary. And since Obama has been a disaster for everyone in the Democratic Party EXCEPT Obama, the party is going to nominate Hillary Clinton, as scandal ridden as she is, instead of another leftist in the Obama mold like Elizabeth Warren.

Leaving aside the question of why you think Team Clinton's sanitizing of the e-mails is trustworthy, we already know they're lying. Top Hillary aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin used secret ClintonEmail addresses rather than their State Department ones, which means any e-mails to Clinton's Chief of Staff or Deputy Chief of Staff weren't turned over. And Sidney Blumenthal (not a government employee, by the way) was sending secret intelligence information about the Benghazi attack to her ClintonEmail address. Also work related, and also not turned over.

Kennedy was a left-wing anti-communist, something that you don't see too much of today. He was killed by a crazy communist, partially because of the whole anti-communist thing. (You'll note that Barry Goldwater wasn't assassinated by a member of the John Birch Society.)

Kennedy didn't have the extreme faction of his side of the isle, and he didn't have any significant portion of the right wing, hence, he was polarizing.

Well, I guess there's two points, and I don't think they are worth considering about Obama specifically. Romney was talking about the contrast in media treatment of a Democrat and a Republican, so I think they only make sense in comparison.

First, there's a certain amount of "natural polarization" that President Obama (or a theoretical President Romney) would be affected by, even with a fair media. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dealt with this kind of natural polarization, but in their day, the media was known openly to be biased, and was not regarded as the kind of arbiters of truth that some people treat them as today.

Secondly, 47% sounds high, but that's because Romney is accounting for the unfair media. The corollary to THAT, the number of people that would never vote for Obama because of things they heard from an unfair media, is admittedly non-zero, although you will probably think the magnitude is higher than I will. (Similarly, you're discounting the magnitude of the unfair treatment of Romney.) I guarantee you that Obama knew what percentage of the population wouldn't vote for him, and targeted his ads toward segments of the population who would. He just didn't have a malicious reporter lie about the context.

The 47% quote, itself from a non-fair media source, was originally presented (and is usually presented) as "47% of the population will never vote for Romney because his ideas will hurt them economically or socially or whatever." The specific example Romney was talking about was people on welfare. Romney's welfare plan would have helped people get off of welfare and into jobs. That would be better for them than staying on welfare forever, but these plans are commonly portrayed as leaving people to die in the street.

You're kidding, right? It's against the law to destroy records that are the subject of a subpoena.

Counterpoint: Obama was elected in 2008 and 2012

You don't think Carter was polarizing? Or Nixon? LBJ was certainly polarizing. Somebody shot Kennedy, so he certainly qualifies. Maybe Eisenhower wasn't polarizing. But then Truman was. FDR's New Deal and court packing schemes were polarizing. (The New Deal is polarizing to this day.) Skipping back through history (over another guy who got shot, BTW) half the states tried to leave because Lincoln got elected. I'd say polarizing has been the rule, rather than the exception, since Washington left office.

Also, you're leaving out important context in the Romney quote. The reason 47% of the country wouldn't vote for him is because the full weight of the media is devoted to covering up for the Democrat and attacking the Republican. It's not because there's something inherently wrong with Romney or his ideas.

The 14th amendment doesn't overturn the Article II eligibility requirements. However, there have always been two ways to get US citizenship, by birth and through the naturalization process. Obama and Cruz are both citizens by virtue of the fact that their mothers were US citizens. (Obama is also a citizen by virtue of the fact that he was born in Hawaii.) By contrast, people like Madeline Albright (she was Bill Clinton's secretary of state), and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who became US citizens through the naturalization process, are not eligible to be President.