http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

i know that bigots and racists are real

i know they say and think racist and bigoted things

i also question the sanity or intent of anyone who wants to make believe they don't exist, for whatever reason

saying that accusations of racism and bigotry is just a ploy: that's the strawman

because racists and bigots are real

you act like racism and bigotry don't exist, and it's just a ploy to smear people

that's some convoluted psychological denial going on there

let's obsess over the cause of a fire that has nothing to do with the battery... and only happened once and probably has absolutely nothing to do with the car's engineering?

and let's ignore the thousands of accidents with gasoline every year that kill or maim?

you're doing exxon mobile proud, slashdot editors. thanks for featuring this "story" so prominently

WHARGARBBBL

Huntsman was a solid moderate candidate.

Therefore, in the modern Republican party, he has no chance of making it on the ballot.

Huntsman could have won.

Thank you Tea Party!

if you could keep your fiscal conservatism, but get rid of the social conservatism, yes, you have a winning strategy

but good luck to you trying to do that though

for some reason the social conservative morons always seem to crop up in your precincts and sabotage your chances

keep believing as you do, i love you

i'm not even remotely joking

you help democrats win

xoxoxoxox

i never said romney was extreme right. i said he *had to appeal to* the extreme right

he had to compete for votes from tea party loony toons with wackjobs like santorum and cain and bachmann

and romney's problem wasn't trying to be a democrat, that's called "trying to win the election by appealing to the moderate center," which, in your bias, you've called "trying to be a democrat"

which is exactly how and why the right will not win the white house in the future: they view being a moderate as some sort of RINO betrayal. this is how and why republicans lose elections, this ideological inquisition

and so, as a democrat, i say, "keep it up, tea party, thanks for destroying the republican party with your inflexible, intolerant, rigid extremism"

the point is you want politics to be something it never was and never will be

it's *politics*, not polite academic debate society

all of the ugliness in politics you dislike is the whole point of politics

all you are telling me here is you don't understand the subject matter. you can't just wave a magic wand and make people behave like robots. of course people aren't robots. but they behave like feral beasts in politics. of course people aren't feral beasts either. but in POLITICS they are

we got a conspiratard here folks

i'm sorry but the tea party is driven by people who actually believe what they say, as a genuine oppositional force, that you say does not exist

the struggle is real, the differences are real, the stakes are dramatic

and the difference in opinions results in dramatic differences in policy depending upon who wins

al gore would not have invaded iraq. john mccain would not have created obamacare. etc.

but don't worry about me. i'm a deluded fool who does not see The Real Truth (tm) like you: something something new world order. something something bilderberg group, teh j00s, etc.

i hate to break it to you, but politics was emotional, is emotional, and always will be emotional. the adults you seek never existed and never will. the only truth here is you fail to understand the ugly emotional game called politics. we're human beings, not robots

please don't shoot the messenger

they didn't ignore the data, they had bad data

the last couple of decades has seen the rise of conservative news sources. which is good for morale. you fudge the truth a little, make things look rosier than they really are, and you galvanize your base

the problem is when you start believing your own bullshit

romney was fed the fudges the conservative echo chamber feeds itself, and was kept in the dark. so they were overconfident

there's a respected solid analyst called nate silver at the new york times, who is very good at forecasting elections with his methods

he called the election early, in september, for obama

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.n...

this analysis was pilloried on the right as a propaganda. even though he was just applying cold hard analysis

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

when in fact, the right was the one creating propaganda, and silver called them out on it:

http://www.businessinsider.com...

the decision makers around romney chose to ignore cold analysis as liberal propaganda. romney had a chance to buckle down and maybe do something with his message in october and maybe eke out a win

but just look at rove on election night: he couldn't believe the news about ohio. because the right wing media echo chamber was operating on its own bullshit, and kneejerk rejecting bad news as liberal propaganda

again, conservative media is great for the morale of the average conservative voter. but when the conservative media is depended upon by the decision makers on the right, the right loses, because decisions based on lies are bad, losing decisions

The Republican primaries were a gauntlet of Tea Party idiots. So everyone had to steer to the extreme far right to win their support to get on the ballot.

Then, during the general election, they had to steer to the middle. To, you know, actually get votes.

You can't appeal to the fringe and the center at the same time. Appeal to the base of Tea Party nutbags, and middle America won't vote for you, you disgust them. Appeal to middle America, and the Tea Party nutbags won't vote for you, just as you say in your comment. A house divided, yada yada yada

If the Republicans don't fix this problem, they are going to lose again in 2016. And 2020, 2024, etc.

Personally, as a Democrat, I love the Tea Party: sabotaging the Republican Party from within.

There is no bigger friend for Democratic domination of the Presidency (and, with demographic trends, increasingly the House and Senate in the long term, even with Republican gerrymandering) than the Tea Party.