Keith Olberman Suspended Indefinitly by NBC

Discussion in 'Politics' started by countezero, Nov 5, 2010.

  1. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Only if you define "centrist" in terms of the two parties to begin with. Which is a circular argument, in this context. That being the core objection here - in a context of a right-wing party that drifts ever further towards extreme right-wing politics, that ends up giving perverse results (like the ridiculous idea that the Democrats are a leftist party).

    If you define "centrist" in terms of some space on the objective left/right axis of political leanings, you end up with something strongly resembling the current Democratic party.

    Again, that litmus test is rigged in that it requires "centrists" to support at least some far-right positions.

    And while I don't watch Keith Olbermann's show, I have been unable to find any reference to him promoting actual Leftist ideas (as opposed to centrist ones). The reason for him being called a liberal blowhard is apparently that he spends a lot of time castigating far-right politicians and legislation - which, again, is stilted, since such is exactly what one would expect a centrist to do.

    What issues, and what definition of "center?" Opposing the far right doesn't necessarily put one left of center.

    No, that's entirely accurate, and hardly a viewpoint contained to iceaura. It's a completely commonplace, uncontroversial viewpoint amongst everyone except those invested in the far-right and its campaign to misrepresent itself as moderate. The Democratic Party is a centrist party that leans a bit to the right, by any reasonable definition of such, so anyone to the right of them is necessarily right-wing, if not far-right.

    I think that we can trace the current disconnect to the Clinton administration - the guy was (and is) reviled by the Left as a center-right politician. Meanwhile, the GOP was investing itself in tarring him as a "Liberal" as part of their rebranding campaign. And so we end up with the bizarre spectacle of a centrist President pushing healthcare measures that were developed by conservatives in opposition to Clinton, and being tarred as a communist for it. That's how far right the GOP has gone - its very own ideas of barely 20 years ago are now held to be treasonously far-Left.
     
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  3. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    I haven't seen anything "extreme" come out of the Democratic party since... actually I can't think of anything at all, offhand.

    ? What Party is that?

    Surely you aren't referring to the Tea Party? They're part of the GOP.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 16, 2010
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  5. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    I never said the Dems are Left. Only that they represent the Left in this country. Or at least, the version of the Left that is acceptable anywhere in public and that can be elected. But certainly, they are Left-leaning and openly admit as much.

    Conservative ideas aren't "far-right" by definition -- and the inability to find one member of a party palatable is surely indicative of something, beyond some ridiculous claim that an entire party is devoid of merit?

    You're operating under a flawed premise. Even Olbermann calls himself a liberal. Rachal Maddow called him one as well.

    I agree. I oppose the far right on all kinds of issues and I don't think those positions are Left of Center, by definition.

    Okay. Join the kooks. Claim everyone else is "invested" in something if they don't agree. I don't care. A political spectrum is not fixed, immovable object. It changes over time, shifts. Nailing yourself to one position and then shouting that everyone else is "Right-Wing," because the spectrum slid under your feet and left you, quite literally, out in Left field does not reveal much of anything, beyond the ideologue's immovable position, his disconnect with the shifting reality and his inability to recognize reality.

    Again, I'm not dealing in this academic, completely inapplicable nonsense. There is an American political spectrum that most people can figure out and understand. Within that rubric, the Democrats are on the Left. The fact they are not Left enough for your or Ice is irrelevant.

    Ugh. That's a BS line from the Democrats. I mean, to be sure, some of them are of GOP ilk, but plenty are not. And the surge in independents this past election cycle and the general discontent out there and tacit agreement with some TP positions is indicative of more than disgruntled GOPers.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Some of them are left, in fact.

    Public roads and citizen control of the military, for example.
    He is a liberal. So?

    The entire Republican Party is devoid of merit these days, and has been since Reagan and Gingrich cleansed it of the meritorious and other elitists.

    They're a lunatic fringe with a dingbat agenda that has managed to seize power by the means of and in the interests of their corporate backing. We wish it were ridiculous, only.

    This is classic:
    A bit of reality in need of recognition: all the Tea Partiers in Congress and in national political life are Republicans. Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Rand Paul, the lot of them. The ones that got beat in the last election cycle ran in the Republican primaries, and on the Republican ticket. When John Boehner has a problem with the Tea Partiers, it's an internal Party problem.

    There are a whole lot of people calling themselves "independent" and "Tea Party" and so forth these days who voted for W twice, and want to forget that ever happened, and have a new name for their allegiances. One can sympathize - but they are voting for Republicans, once again, and that is the name of their Party of choice.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 16, 2010
  8. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    So, nothing. The point was made by another poster that he is not liberal, that he is Centrist. He's not, nor does he himself or his colleagues define him in those terms.

    And you're on record essentially trashing the entire Republican Party for the past century, so forgive me if I completely ignore your appreciation of them. You're nothing like reasonable or objective.

    Shrinking government, reducing taxes and reigning in spending are dingbat ideas? I mean, granted the Republicans have to actually do this (and I have doubts they really want to or can), and in the past they've spent like drunken sailors let ashore, but your alleging kookery for ideas that attracted the majority of the electorate that voted.

    Well, tend your secret flame, Ice. I really don't give a fuck. Just don't think me or anybody else has to subscribe to your own dementia. And if you actually looked around and read some non-Socialist media once in awhile, you'd see just how far gone you are.

    As for the Tea Party, that's accurate.

    I've talked to Tea Party supporters and I read the in-depth piece in the Hill (I think that's where it was pusblished), in which the group was broken down demographically and ideologically. Most are disgruntled GOP, but it's not the GOP itself, and there is a health dose of libertarians and what I would call classic liberals.

    I am no big fan of the group itself, but the image of the party that gets painted on this site by the card-carrying Dems and in the Media by the card-carrying Dems is not the whole picture. Rather, it's a crude and ugly caricature put out there intentionally to dismiss and defame. And that irritates me.
     
  9. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    A Note for Conservatives: This is sarcasm (you know, in case you're confused)

    All I can say is that it's always striking to me how many people claim to be "independent" or "nonpartisan", but spit their venom in only one direction.

    You know, like: No, I'm not a Republican. They lost. They're losers. That's why I'm a nonpartisan independent who only recites FOX News talking points, votes Republican, and hates Democrats because even though they're farther to the right than I was ten years ago, they're too extremely liberal.

    Remember that anti-liberals like to play semantic games with various words. When Keith Olbermann is a "liberal", it means he's the conservative kind of liberal. Real liberals? Well, we're all extremists, haven't you heard? And the Tea Party? It's just conservatives getting their due attention. Don't you remember when the evil liberals recovered from the Red Scare and became revolutionary media darlings that the whole country was supposed to just love?

    Really, don't you remember back when corporate America and entire political parties were at the beck and call of the communists? It's just the Tea Party's turn. All's fair and equal in conservative love and war. I mean, if you don't remember American businesses lining up to secretly fund the communists, you haven't been paying attention.

    And yet we dare complain about the Red Scare. Comparatively, liberals ain't seen nothin' yet. My God, just look at the persecution conservatives face. Never mind the Congressional hearings; we extremists won't gladly pass whatever tax cuts the conservatives tell us will cure all our ills. And, hey, let's not forget that just because those tax cuts haven't worked in the past, or that the whole theory is screwed, doesn't mean they won't work in the future and prove that they always did work under any circumstances whatsoever.

    Ice, you have to realize that you're dealing with fanatical conservatives. Remember that one of the key differences between a liberal and a conservative is the route their greed follows. If other people deserve the same benefits you get, you are a liberal; if those benefits should be restricted to as few people as possible while justifying your own inclusion in them, you're a conservative.

    Remember the old capitalist/communist argument? Remember, these are the capitalists from that old fight. They're the ones who will say and do anything for profit. Junk bonds? Milken? Hell, those people didn't even know they were breaking the law. I mean, how could floating fraudulent securities be against the law?

    Yeah. We were supposed to believe that. And when that didn't work, they argued that insider trading was legal in Japan, so it should be here, too. In other words, if we didn't allow our corporations the same corruption we saw abroad, we were being communists.

    Republicans: These are the people who argue that unless the law regards them as morally and legally superior, they're being discriminated against, and there is no equality.

    Remember who you're dealing with, Ice. We've had a number of GOP shills here for years, and anyone who thinks they're suddenly going to get honest is just lying to themselves.
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Your confusion of self-described liberal and actual leftist is not universal.

    The discussion was about leftist and centrist and rightist. He's centrist.
    Those aren't ideas at all. They are phrases of campaign rhetoric.

    Thinking you are going to shrink government by cutting rich people's tax rates is a dingbat idea. Thinking you are going to reign in spending by kicking the lazy black people off of welfare and making teachers work harder is a dingbat idea. Reducing taxes mostly on the super rich is a dingbat approach to whatever the idea was.
    Pointing out that the Tea Party is a faction of the Republican Party, an obvious fact (they are all serving as Republicans, running as Republicans, etc) defames the Tea Party?

    Calling the Tea Party folks "Republican" is a crude and ugly caricature?

    Cool. I never thought I'd see the day.

    So I would be praising and honoring the Republican Party by pointing out the equally obvious flip side of this - it's pretty much been taken over by the Tea Party faction. The Tea Partiers are not only Republican, they're the core Republican base. The Party without them would have a hard time electing county sheriffs.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 16, 2010
  11. Buffalo Roam Registered Senior Member

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    You have never saw the day, or much else, what is being pointed out to you is the fact that the Liberal News Media who is carrying the water for the Liberal Neo Democrats, who have created a slanderous, crude, and ugly caricature, that it claims the Tea Party is.

    Much can be seen by of your political bias, bigotry, and stupidity in the use of such terms as, (Tea Baggers) one of the talking points from the Neo Democrat faithful in creating the meme.

    Yes, there is a difference between the Neo Liberal and the Classic Liberal, and you are not a Liberal in any classical sense.

    But far be it from me to intrude into your close minded little world.
     
  12. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    5,590
    It's nothing like confusion.

    It's acceptance, of the American political spectrum as it is, not as you imagine and yearn for it to be...

    That's laughable, unworthy of response.

    I support none of those things, not sure the Republicans do, either. Reducing spending means reducing spending. Will their be ideological fights over where the cuts come? Sure, that's government. Nothing new there.

    You can be as smug as you like, but there are plenty of tea party supporters who vote for both parties, plenty who vote for neither. And the fact some of the so-called big-wig tea party folks are people like Palin et al is not completely accepted by the rank and file, such as it is. All I am asserting is that the movement, if it can even be described that way, is far more complicated than you and your ilk make out when you label, name-call and engage in all your usual tricks of derision.

    This all reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who is a huge Dem and works on the Hill. After the Beck rally he ranted and raved to me about the Tea Party, using the sort of terms you and your bearded chum Tiassa would use. You know, the whole "They're all racists" kind of stuff. So I pointed out to him his best friend went to the rally and that friend took their parents. He paused for a second. Then I pointed out another friend who went to Tea Party functions and so on and so forth. At the end, he bashfully admitted they weren't "all" racists, but continued to rant and rave and stereotype them. Now, I admit, stereotypes tend to exist for a reason, but the blanket dismissal and the childish labeling that's going on here is happening for political reasons and it's PR stunt. What's sad is smart people, like my friend on the hill, actually are beginning to actually believe the marching orders being handed down. It's a bit like soldiers in a war who de-humanize the enemy by giving them a nickname: Krauts, Japs, Gooks, etc. It's ugly and stupid and pretty indefensible.

    That's an ignorant statement.

    Most of the Republican Party types deride the Tea Party (you can see this in statements made by Rove, Shultz and others) and getting a few candidates elected nominally associated with the Tea Party hardly ranks as being taken over. Indeed, much of the chatter is how the run of the mill Republicans will deal with their wilder colleagues arriving in January on issues like raising the debt ceiling.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2010
  13. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I suppose that is why Republicans on the Hill have been so staunch in their position to keep tax cuts for the wealthy.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Yet another is a long series of defenses for the Tea Partiers. Show me just one Tea Partier who voted for a Democrat. Show me a Tea Partier who does not support Palin.
    This is meaningless nonsense. It proves nothing, it demonstrates nothing. It is another in a long series of attempts to put lipstick on the Tea Party movement....getting back the to notion that Tea Partiers are good people because of association.

    As for dehumanization, have you ever listened to Palin speak? How about limbaugh? The masters of dehumanization are those whose leadership you so readily accept and whos faults you so readily ignore.

    More ad hominem from you...more illogical thinking.
    I suppose that is why Rove and those that you mentioned supported Tea Partiers in this last election. Rove did make a critical comment of Tea Party candidate O'Donnell....a comment which he quickly retracted due to unwanted attention from Tea Partiers.

    The Tea Party does present a problem for Republican leadership because of the irrational and contradictory positions advocated by Tea Partiers. Let's see how well Republican leadership is able to manage the Tea Partiers. But one thing for certian, there is not one in the Republcian leadership brave enough or with enough moral fortitude to take on the Tea Partiers.
     
  14. superstring01 Moderator

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    12,110
    This entire thread is full of ad hominem statements, including from you. Don't pretend to be above it when you've been part of the screaming chorus the entire time.

    ~String
     
  15. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    I would say thread closed at this point, the mans back, all is forgotten, no one cares, and the thread discussion as clearly fallen away from its topic.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    These are nothing new - these irrational and contradictory positions have been central to Republican political tactics and campaigns for thirty years and more.

    It's not the positions, but the character of some of the newly elected, that presents the difficulties.
    You can find derisive and accurate evaluations of almost any national Republican politician among the Rove crowd and the corporate strategists.

    Do you actually think those people respect W? Vitter? Palin will get all the respect Reagan got, if she proves to have Reagan's touch with the "regular American", be good at turning campaign contributions into votes for herself.
     
  17. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    You have said exactly that so many times that I've long-since lost count. You go on to say exactly that multiple times in the very post being quoted here:

    Exactly what is the hair that you're splitting here? The Dem's aren't Left, but "represent the Left?"

    Can't see what "conservative ideas" have to do with this discussion. The GOP is a radical rightist party, not a conservative party. They make such a point of calling themselves "conservative" exactly to disguise this inconvenient fact. Which pattern is actually quite typical of far-right reactionary movements throughout modern history.

    The entire GOP is devoid of merit and has been for many years. It's a black hole of cynical greed and short-sighted selfishness that near-instantly consumes any principle or worth anyone is fool enough to devote to it.

    So?

    It's that, or they're just plain idiots. I'm trying to be charitable.

    Sure it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

    The political composition of a given polity drifts around over time. And the space that it drifts on is the fixed, underlying political spectrum. You're slipping into a nowhere land of circular definitions by confusing the two.

    When the polity shifts systematically to the right, then it is perfectly accurate to state that nearly-everyone has become right wing. That's just a simple, plain observation - the very definition of a "spectrum" "sliding." You're the one tied in a pretzel here - as evidenced by your ability to phrase the quoted sentence as if it contained some kind of worrying contradiction.

    And I'm hardly much of a leftist in the first place. I'm just a fan of accurate labels, since inaccurate labels tend to result in perverse discourses. Like your rabbit-hole relativist positions here.

    It's all bog-standard, simple stuff. Community organization and social justice are on the left, corporate power and monied interests on the right. Why avoid it so? No reason seems apparent, except a desire to disguise and normalize far-right politics (which is the primary, obvious effect of this nonsense, regardless of what you say you think you intend).

    Didn't you just say that the Democrats aren't Left?

    Are you starting to see what a hash you get when you throw out any objective basis for labelling political positions? And why political movements with nefarious goals might prefer such dishonest labelling?

    The relevant point is that they are not Left enough to merit the term "Left" in any meaningful sense (i.e., other than "to the left of the GOP," which is vacuous).

    That's horseshit and you're a fool to advance such an argument in the present day. The TP systematically caucused inside the GOP. There were no TP candidates running in Dem primaries, or as third party. They are part and parcel of the GOP apparatus, openly and permanently.

    If you like, but it's still nothing close to a third party. Those were Republican congressmen that won those elections, not some third party.
     
  18. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    You are the only one in this thread who refuses to recognize the American political composition for what it is. Instead you keep insisting that there's some kind of Left element to speak of operating in it.
     
  19. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    I don't even see why "objective" journalists should be forbidden from making political donations. Really then, why not just prohibit them from voting?

    You can support certain ideas or candidates in your personal life and still be unbiased in your professional life.
     
  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    What About Bob?

    An obvious question occurred to me yesterday, and I probably should kick myself that it took so damn long:

    • One editor interviewed for On the Media—I believe a former managing editor for the Washington Post—said he stopped voting when he got that job.

    • Our neighbor Countezero affirms this practice among some journalists; or, at least, himself.​

    Meanwhile, Rachel Maddow criticized FOX News and Sean Hannity for failing to disclose that the latter had donated to various candidates he was interviewing; FOX News, in addressing the controversy when it first arose, said there was no conflict of interest, in part because Hannity would notify the audience when interviewing a candidate he has supported.

    Keith Olbermann apologized to his viewers for failing to disclose that he had donated to certain candidates.

    So, then ... What about a journalist's investment portfolio?

    A reporter? A columnist? A television presenter? What about the editors, directors, producers, and publishers?

    Jessica Yellin, now of CNN, said in 2008 that her MSNBC bosses pressured her to support the Bush administration during the early years of the war in Iraq. And mostly we make hay about the political questions.

    But who has sought any coincidence or correlation between news coverage and personal financial interests?

    To take an old story: In 2003, as Americans were losing their minds about the terror threat, Halliburton lost a significant amount of radiological material, specifically Americium. Enough material disappeared to go into a dirty bomb estimated powerful enough to contaminate sixty square blocks of a major city.

    There was some press coverage, but very little editorial comment, and the incident certainly didn't evolve into the scandal some were expecting it to. After all, Halliburton was a major beneficiary of the Bush administration's wartime no-bid contracts, and they couldn't even keep track of their radiological material.

    One need not invoke a specific conspiracy theory. Personal financial interest can look like a conspiracy theory, minus any real conspirators. All it takes is one editor or publisher or producer naturally inclined toward sympathy, perhaps not even realizing the influence that a current or past investment in a corporation might have over a decision.

    Michael Moore serves an instructional role here: He once announced that he was going to buy defense stocks in order to get invitations to shareholder meetings, and use that platform to criticize the war. Some time later, naturally, his right-wing political opponents criticized him for profiteering from the war he protested.

    The lesson here is that one need not wonder too hard why journalists and their bosses would not be anxious to have their portfolios scrutinized.

    Still, though, even looking past the donations, if voting itself is a questionable practice for journalists, what about investment?
     
  21. countezero Registered Senior Member

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    Not in the slightest.

    Look, I don't know why this is such a hard concept to grasp.

    I am acknowledging there is not much of a traditional "Left" in this country (certain kooks on sciforums being the obvious exceptions).

    Leftist politics, as they are defined in Europe and elsewhere, just would not go down with the American voter -- especially, during and after the Cold War. So the Left, as someone in someplace like France would understand it, really does not have a seat at the table in American politics, outside of fringe lobbying groups or think tanks.

    But make no mistake, there is a "Left" here. Call it a relative Left if you like, but it's still Left -- and that Left is the Democratic Party, who openly call themselves liberal or progressive or whatever other phrase is popular and Lefty-sounding. So the Left in this country is the Democrats, something voters, politicians, journalist and pundits all seem to understand without the sort of outrage this provokes on this site. See the following:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/opinion/16brooks.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

    I fully understand the political spectrum, in objective terms, but I find it useless in practice, in large part because most political parties embrace ideas up and down the spectrum over time, making it next to impossible to rank them idefinitely (Consider, the Democrats used to be anti-abolitionist, a position that is hardly progressive). I also think each country's politics are different, and pretending a progressive idea in France looks the same in the US purely hypothetical nonsense, because it will never happen.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2010
  22. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Mythologizing (and Demonizing) Liberalism and the Left

    I think part of the problem people have with this assertion of the Left is tied to the absolute value argument I've offered recently, in which |-2| = |8|.

    We've discussed—argued, flamed, whatever—the idea of rightward drift in American politics. Today's "liberals" are farther to the right on domestic surveillance than the conservatives of thirty years ago. Today's "liberals" are farther to the right on financial and economic issues than they were twenty-five years ago.

    Many liberals feel quite alienated. As the conservatives continue to move the goalposts, it is sometimes suggested that the field moves with it. As a result, passing a law that benefits private industry—e.g., the health care industry—first and foremost equals a "socialist" takeover of the private sector.

    It happens over and over again. Right now, what was extremist thirty years ago is acceptable, mainstream political dialogue, if it comes from the right wing. And what was laudable right-wing policy only fifteen years ago is now inexcusably and unacceptably leftist.

    The institutions recognize a Left because it is vital to keeping the system recognizable that there are two opposed forces in the structure. That dualistic demand results in a product in which red is blue, right is left, and what was right for the Right is wrong for the Left.

    Attributing Democratic policies to liberalism or the Left is a rhetorical convenience that is only tenuously viable.

    And when I consider statements like "whatever other phrase is popular and Lefty-sounding", I pause to consider the idea that "progressive" is a term invented to avoid the pejorative "liberal"; that is, it is a word intended to satisfy conservatives. And if I bother to think about your assertion beyond that, I can only wonder at what distant valence you orbit reality.

    Conservatives such as yourself need this liberal demon. No matter how far to the right the political arena drifts, there will always be horrible, evil leftists. This is because the ultimate goal of conservatism is tyranny, the reinstitution of bonded subservience, the recreation of lords and vassals and serfs. If this wasn't the case, then what was good enough for the right wing fifteen years ago wouldn't be so enthusiastically assailed as despicable leftism today.

    You can certainly lead a horse to water ... but sometimes it requires careful, short steps. You can't always gallop off the cliff and into the sea.
     
  23. Cowboy My Aim Is True Valued Senior Member

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    I think you're right in many ways, but you have to remember that Libertarian-leaning righties like myself say the same about conservatives. Greater support for government expansion, socialism, etc.

    I don't see it as so much as the left moving right or the right moving left, but both sides moving towards big government.
     

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