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How Kellyanne Conway spins questions

No matter what happens in the next month, year, or 4 years, Trump will be an anchor around the Republican party for a very long time. Republicans realize this and they're trying to rally around him.
 
PhDeac said:
No matter what happens in the next month, year, or 4 years, Trump will be an the figurehead of the new America Party. It will be a, uh, terrific party - the best party - no kidding ! There will be no other parties allowed.
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fify
 
Deacfreak07 said:
Just pay close attention to the partisan responses to today's press conference. It was a complete disaster. The man was reckless, unprepared, and practically unhinged. The good soldiers on the right will focus on who unfair the reporters were. In #REALAmerica they will see their hero being martyred and bullied by the meanies in the intelligentsia for trying to do the right thing for the people. They will love him more for this press conference - more, not less, not indifference, but they will find it endearing.
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if i'm being honest, i have to say you absolutely have a solid argument in that how the narrative reaches and is then interpreted by relatively poorly educated citizens could absolutely allow trump to escape accountability. it is happening right now, and that is indeed the entire historiography of history.

I'll try to find the time to look at that press conference later today. we're in agreement that the situation in this country will get worse, not better, but disagree on the who, how, what, when, why, and where of who takes the fall and the time frame. Pretty pathetic that I have to acknowledge the validity of your argument, but of course if you're right at the end of the day there may well not be an internet message board for me to concede on.

to me that's how high the stakes are.
 
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PhDeac said:
No matter what happens in the next month, year, or 4 years, Trump will be an anchor around the Republican party for a very long time. Republicans realize this and they're trying to rally around him.
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indeed, this is why we're so fucked no matter how this plays. Best case is some sort of "neat" impeachment, worst case is DJT gets assassinated tomorrow--before the full extent of his idiocy becomes undeniable--and becomes a martyr.
 
Trump has been in the public eye for the last 35 or so years. Ex-President Trump ain't going nowhere.
 
truth of the matter is the fucking electors didn't do their god damn jobs. the founders put in place this backwards ass EC for at least three reasons. One of those three was to prevent exactly this from happening.

democracy is an ideal (like socialism), not a political system. Our country has always been a federal republic, despite what english written history texts might assert. The idea of direct democracy has always been considered insanely radical by existing power.

Everyone thinks of athens as the model, not realizing that the athenian "democracy" was very exclusive and very short lived and frequently interrupted against the city's thousand plus year classical history, which saw many forms of government.

edit: sorry for the ot rant.
 
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i'm not sure of the specifics but I think they EC was amended to preclude electors in most states from going rogue
 
dmcheatw said:
if i'm being honest, i have to say you absolutely have a solid argument in that how the narrative reaches and is then interpreted by relatively poorly educated citizens could absolutely allow trump to escape accountability. it is happening right now, and that is indeed the entire historiography of history.

I'll try to find the time to look at that press conference later today. we're in agreement that the situation in this country will get worse, not better, but disagree on the who, how, what, when, why, and where of who takes the fall and the time frame. Pretty pathetic that I have to acknowledge the validity of your argument, but of course if you're right at the end of the day there may well not be an internet message board for me to concede on.

to me that's how high the stakes are.
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It's naive to assume just poorly educated folks are getting this narrative without accountability. Fox News has a YUGE viewer base. It skews older, but these are still educated folks.
 
Deacfreak07 said:
It's naive to assume just poorly educated folks are getting this narrative without accountability. Fox News has a YUGE viewer base. It skews older, but these are still educated folks.
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Yes. The narrative that the Republican base is "poor" is just a strategy to help sell their platform to actual poor people, to prevent class warfare. Same reason that non-land owning whites were first given the right to vote.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
i'm not sure of the specifics but I think they EC was amended to preclude electors in most states from going rogue
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i've forgotten more real U.S. history than ten people combined actually know, but i'm in truth very weak on details and always have been. If that's your understanding, i'd say it's probably correct. doesn't mean they did their jobs as originally intended.
 
dmcheatw said:
i've forgotten more real U.S. history than ten people combined actually know, but i'm in truth very weak on details and always have been. If that's your understanding, i'd say it's probably correct. doesn't mean they did their jobs as originally intended.
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yeah, seems like the EC is extra pointless if they can't make their own decision

Can Electors Really Vote for Whomever They Want?

Many of them can. Only 29 states and the District of Columbia have state laws on the books that try to force electors to vote for their party’s presidential candidate, according to the National Council of State Legislatures.

Some laws set civil fines for electors who break their pledge while others appoint new electors to replace electors who go rogue. These laws have remained largely unchallenged in American courts and experts debate whether they are constitutional.

The rest are free agents. However, most electors are chosen because they are loyalists to the state party, so most are very unlikely to stray from their party’s candidate.
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Deacfreak07 said:
It's naive to assume just poorly educated folks are getting this narrative without accountability. Fox News has a YUGE viewer base. It skews older, but these are still educated folks.
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are we talking real education or what passed for an education among some select cohorts/demographics in the 50s (or today)? these people are not even close to educated. and the interrelated aspects of wisdom and intelligence (as classically defined) are therefore of necessity similarly lacking.
 
I feel like we go round and round and round in this conversation but the primary purpose of the Electoral College was to ensure that slave states were overrepresented in picking the President (via the 3/5 compromise).
 
MysteryMen said:
I feel like we go round and round and round in this conversation but the primary purpose of the Electoral College was to ensure that slave states were overrepresented in picking the President (via the 3/5 compromise).
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there were several reasons. that is primary, but the reason i mentioned was not at all far behind. i'd take some effort to look this up if you're unwilling to take my word for it, but i'm not bothering on my own accord because i already know this as fact.
 
dmcheatw said:
there were several reasons. that is primary, but the reason i mentioned was not at all far behind. i'd take some effort to look this up if you're unwilling to take my word for it, but i'm not bothering on my own accord because i already know this as fact.
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You're correct that that was a reason. But my understanding is that there was considerable doubt that the Founders ever actually expected the EC members to serve as an independent check on the desires of the citizens of their state.
 
well, I always pay close attn. to your posts, MM. You're a smart fellow and if that's your understanding then i've little doubt that some % of them probably knew or assumed other factors would box in electors.

The other incredibly important thing to keep in mind is that the founders were more or less just as diverse and divided in their positions as our politicians in the 20th century were--possibly more so. I suspect you and the people we've been talking to on this thread already know or assumed this but just as you wanted us/me to keep in mind the most fundamental reason for the EC, i'd point out that we tend to say "founders" as though they were all of one mind when nothing could be further from the truth.

There are always more than one version of history and infinite grey in the middle. That said, some other percent absolutely felt direct democracy to be too radical. They didn't trust your average joe OR the individual states.

here are a couple relevant excerpt from the wikipedia article which i barely skimmed. It's very long because apparently there has been much evolution in the system since its inception (which means I'm sure there is support for your position as well):

Some states reasoned that the favorite presidential candidate among the people in their state would have a much better chance if all of the electors selected by their state were sure to vote the same way – a "general ticket" of electors pledged to a party candidate.[31] So the slate of electors chosen by the state were no longer free agents, independent thinkers, or deliberative representatives. They became "voluntary party lackeys and intellectual non-entities."[32] Once one state took that strategy, the others felt compelled to follow suit in order to compete for the strongest influence on the election.[31]

When James Madison and Hamilton, two of the most important architects of the Electoral College, saw this strategy being taken by some states, they protested strongly. Madison and Hamilton both made it clear this approach violated the spirit of the Constitution. According to Hamilton, the selection of the president should be "made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station [of president]."[29] According to Hamilton, the electors were to analyze the list of potential presidents and select the best one. He also used the term "deliberate." Hamilton considered a pre-pledged elector to violate the spirit of Article II of the Constitution insofar as such electors could make no "analysis" or "deliberate" concerning the candidates. Madison agreed entirely, saying that when the Constitution was written, all of its authors assumed individual electors would be elected in their districts and it was inconceivable a "general ticket" of electors dictated by a state would supplant the concept. Madison wrote to George Hay,

The district mode was mostly, if not exclusively in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted; & was exchanged for the general ticket [many years later].[33]

The founders assumed that electors would be elected by the citizens of their district and that elector was to be free to analyze and deliberate regarding who is best suited to be president.

Madison and Hamilton were so upset by what they saw as a distortion of the framers’ original intent that they advocated for a constitutional amendment to prevent anything other than the district plan: "the election of Presidential Electors by districts, is an amendment very proper to be brought forward", Madison told George Hay in 1823.[33] Hamilton went further. He actually drafted an amendment to the Constitution mandating the district plan for selecting electors
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Isolation of election problems[edit]

Some supporters of the Electoral College note that it isolates the impact of any election fraud, or other such problems, to the state where it occurs. It prevents instances where a party dominant in one state may dishonestly inflate the votes for a candidate and thereby affect the election outcome. For instance, recounts occur only on a state-by-state basis, not nationwide.
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sorry to bump the thread with a wordy off topic post, but my last post in this thread came off like a bit like an asshole and i didn't want to degrade the discourse as that's destroying the tunnels just as it is our nation, and this is where i get my news and commentaries.
 
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