I had this comment on my blog a little while back when I was speaking about my distaste for Romney - pre-election, and how if I lived in the US, I don't know that I would have been able to bring myself to vote for him, because I honestly did not see how he offered to make much of a difference at all. It began a discussion about voting for someone you don't exactly like, in order to get rid of someone you really don't like. Here is the line that caught my eye. It appeared at the very end of the comment:
""I cannot for the life of me understand the thinking that voting for "the
devil you know" is the best alternative. You're still voting for the
devil!""
Okay, so that sounds like someone who agrees with me, right? Someone suggesting that voting for the 'devil you know' (Romney in my example), would still be voting for the devil.....
Wrong! This was the first part of the comment:
""Mitt Romney is not my idea of an ideal president either, but again,
America right now has only two choices, and if people really don't like
the incumbent, nad how he's been running America (into the ground), then
they should vote for a change.""
The Devil You Know comment came after a comparison to Dalton McGuinty getting re-elected in Ontario and then getting a bigger chance to run the province further into the ground. Saying basically that people didnt 'like Hudek of the Conservatives, so they voted in McGuinty again, even with his terrible record, because they were at least familiar with him. Well - what if they didn't like Hudek for good reasons? Didn't like his policies, didn't like his character, didn't trust him to do better, etc? What if they didn't want to vote at all and then didn't? I have had other comments on my blog stating that not-voting is the same as voting with the status-quo, or that not-voting would be key to helping Obama win, etc etc
Well what if ROMNEY is 'the devil you know' to many voters? not just Obama? They know of Romney, they saw what he did in his state as Governor, they heard what he had to say in debates, and how he flip flopped back and forth once he became candidate, and how he was in the candidate selection before with McCain so they already knew of him from back then - he would be the Devil You Know to many independents and republicans and they did not want to vote for him because they knew that it would be the same as voting for the devil - as highlighted above from my commenter.
I saw that the person also wrote they would vote for ANY party that had a chance at ousting the current bad guy leader... okay...... so what if the person you voted for was worse or the same? What if it was a Green Party that was strong in second place, would you vote for them? What outcome would you expect? If it was Brian Mulrooney going for a second shot at the helm and thinking up new ways to take money from the people like GST, even under the 'progressive conservative' banner, would you vote for him? Just to get rid of someone you didn't like very much? I dont see how that is effective either.
Bottom line - Romney was not a good choice. He is a rich guy that everyone knew would be attacked. You can't put a rich guy up against a socialist and expect him to come out strong. It was close, but not close enough. Romney had true conservative people shaking in their boots because the SPENDING needs to be stopped and not many of his ideas showed any hope of making that a reality, any more than Obama's ideas did. Something big time serious needs to be done and Romney was not the guy to do that. End of story. He was not able to get people behind him because he was stiff, had a fake smile, and his policies were all over the place. He chose a VP that voted FOR ALL THE STIMULUS SPENDING each and every time that I have looked up in his voting record at the .gov websites. His own VP would literally vote YES and then go out traipsing around the countryside the next day and cry that something got passed that means more spending. Ron Paul got nicknamed Dr No for the countless numbers of times he showed up to vote NO on bills but he got trashed for not being part of the mainstream republicans.
Well guess what, mainstream republicans also had a big hand in getting the country in the deep hole it''s in today. As far as i'm concerned, the whole lot of them needs to be turfed. Republicans have been at the helm more years in recent history than Democrats so don't just put the blame in the D's laps. It's most of these govt people no matter what party they belong to. I lean right so I would hope repubs can get their act together sooner rather than later, but I will not blindly follow their chosen leaders if I know that they are as full of crap as the other guy. Why is that so wrong? I will not vote for 'the devil i know' either. I think that's great advice (even though not being taken the way it was intended).
Kez,
ReplyDeleteWhen I commented... "I cannot for the life of me understand the thinking that voting for 'the devil you know' is the best alternative. You're still voting for the devil!", I am referring to the incumbent in ALL cases. Voters *know* the damage that an incumbent leader has already proven they can do with the reins of power in hand. Nobody knows what kind of president Mitt Romney would have actually turned out to be, because he has never held (or likely ever will hold) the position. He certainly didn't financially ruin Massachusetts, and certainly has an excellent record as a businessman. Obama has destroyed the US economy in the last 4 yrs, or at the very least failed miserably in resurrecting it, and has no record of ever running anything successfully. At least Romney had an economic plan that at least sounded like it made more sense than Obama's. Again, Romney was certainly not an IDEAL republican candidate in my estimation for many reasons, but between him and "the devil we know", I know where I'd have cast my vote.
And yes, I compared this to Dalton McGuinty's re-elections because, again, he was the incumbent, yet people seemed to fear trying out someone new (like they could do worse?!).
At the very least, by turning leaders over - who have PROVEN their incompetence - every 4-5 years, you're limiting the amount of damage they can do. God help the US, and what its economy and state of the union is going to look like in 2016, after eight long years of an Obama administration.
Let's continue our conversation at that point and you can tell me how voting back in an incumbent who had more than proven HIS incompetence has helped the nation.
I do get it, I understood that you meant Obama/encumbent. I for the life of me cannot understand why so many people voted for him again. It was shocking. But I took Romney as a Devil You Know as well because his voting record and record as Gov spoke for itself and he is yet another Big Govt dude who may have been 'better' than Obama, but I'm not sure by how much. So would it be worth the effort to put him in place if he was just going to screw things up and continue to spend up the wazoo and keep forces over in the Middle East, spending gobs of money there and who knows where else, and creating all these new programs? He is quoted as slamming Obama, saying that the Fed Govt does NOT create jobs, and laughing about Obama's words - and then the last months of his campaign going on and on about HE himself is going to create xxx number of jobs. I actually agreed with some of how he wanted to do it, I understood the concept, but he made himself look like an idiot repeatedly with trying to use catch phrases that he clearly did not understand, making stupid comments, being combative, and then saying many of the same things he criticized Obama for saying... it was like two versions of the same idealist. He may have different views on 'the rich' and corporations but I did not trust that he would be strong enough to get much done.
ReplyDeleteThe voters spoke down there, and they did not pick him. It was darn close and it's very confusing when you look at the voting districts on the map and see that most are red by FAR = yet Obama won... but that's the way the voting system has been set up and it's not going to change unless people fight for it. It doesnt seem to matter who is at the helm these days, they are all big spenders. That is why I called Romney a 'Devil you know' as well. I am actually ready to throw up at the number of people who have been talking these last few weeks about how Ron Paul had the right idea for the spending fixes. He is an old man and he tried one last time to be heard and was ignored and made fun of.
I have pictures of Ron Paul supporters being pushed away, Romney people blocking their faces with papers and turning off their microphones during delegate counts - and now Romney people are boo-hooing that Obama won and it's not fair and there might be voter fraud. Oh cry me a river!!! They did it to other supporters, pushed out the other candidates, and now it was done to them in return. Romney IS also the Devil You Know and people did not vote for him either apparently.
I'm not sure why you were shocked at how many people voted for Obama when your explanation of why Romney was a 'Devil you know' pretty much sums up how much of the American electorate viewed him as well. This was my point. Most voters are fearful of, and willing to write off a guy who hasn't even had a chance at the job yet, over one who has already been in charge and proven he is completely inept, AND taken the nation three giant steps closer to complete, economic ruin.
ReplyDeleteI agree on many of your points regarding some of Romney's voting patterns , and flip-flopping here and there, that's why I said he was far from the ideal candidate either. He, like the rest of them, is a politician. And you're right that they're ALL big spenders unfortunately, but some spend bigger than others.
All that aside, people have to deal with the given set of circumstances they have in front of them. In the end, there were two choices and ONLY two choices - how we got there doesn't matter at that point. And out of those two, there is only one that we have seen run the US into the ground the last four years, who has now put the US so far in debt and deficit, it's safe to say they'll never climb out or even manage to control it anymore. And a LOT of Obama's spending was on socialist schemes and green nonsense... money thrown right down the toilet - and let's not even get into what he and his team allowed to happen in Benghazi... and then telling a fairytale to American public to hide the truth.
I would NEVER vote for or support someone who has not only allowed all this happen under his watch, but seemingly took pride in his record! There is only one true "Devil we know", and his name is Obama. Romney could have possibly turned into one as well, but you can't call that BEFORE he's had a turn behind the big desk, and I'd have certainly given him a chance at least to show that he couldn't be any worse than Obama (really, could he do worse?)... and there's always that possibility that he could have done substantially better. But wiser people than me, including a complicit MSM, apparently didn't want us taking that risk. They felt we're safer with a proven disaster.
As I said, four years from now, lets see what's left of Greece... I mean America, and finish our discussion.
My personal prediction for the election was that Romney would win based on how horrible things were under Obama. But not because they really thought Romney could start changing things - but because fewer people were going to vote for Obama. That was my thought on it - that fewer Dems would vote for O since last time. Boy was I wrong lol.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend in the US who LOVES Obama. She talks about him all the time and basically said that the stuff that happened was ALL because of Bush and previous presidents, and that Obama was not at fault. Okay, whatever lol. That's her view and I can't change it.
I also saw some other US friends chatting on FB that they weren't happy with Obama but they were going to vote for him again because they hated Romney SO much (and Ryan), that they did not want him in there and were going to do everything they could to keep him out.
So basically, if the US had to vote again within the Democrat party, a lot of my US friends would NOT have picked Obama - but since of course that was not on the menu for this election, they voted for him to keep Romney OUT. One of my friends said she had to hold her nose while voting Obama again, but felt it was worth it to keep out Romney and Ryan.
That's what I did not quite predict - the amount of dislike for Romney from the other side, even from people who were very unhappy with what Obama was doing in their own party. I thought perhaps they would just not vote because they did not want to show support for Obama. But their dislike for Romney trumped that and away they went.
I would have liked to give Romney a choice over Obama, if my hands were being held to the fire, but they were NOT the only two choices. Most of the states had an independent on the books (or all of them, I can't remember if Johnson registered in them all or not), and many had up to 8 choices on the ballot. I watched debates online right up to the night before the election between 5 other party leaders that were not invited to the debates between Romney and Obama and WOW the questions were like REAL questions. Did you know that Larry King himself was a moderator at one of those debates? There are parties like the Justice Party, Green Party, etc.
So what people mean is that there were only two choices with any hope of winning - but that can change if people would stop thinking that way. They could have checked out the websites and debates with these other choices and made their voice heard by not voting for Obama or Romney, if they felt someone else deserved their vote. It is wrong to say there were only two choices, so what's a person to do. Even Ron Paul's name was on about 8 state ballots if I remember correctly. It does NOT have to be one of the two main party characters.
Obama makes me ill, but I fear that romney would have kept on spending the same way. Maybe he would have lowered tax rates, but he cannot do that alone. He has to get congress and the senate to do these bills and pass them, and then he can sign them or veto them. That's how it works. I dont know how the US and all of us are going to get out of these huge piles of debt without massive difficult changes.
Looks what happens in Greece whenever they try to pass austerity measures and cut down on social spending so they can cut down this debt - riots! That will happen in the US too and people have to be prepared mentally and physically for it. Same thing would happen here. It's scary really. But people need someone at the helm that is not afraid to explain to them why this needs to be done and Romney hasnt got a clue. All he did was talk about more spending in other sectors and that's not going to help anything.
Again, the problem is not the revenue, it's the SPENDING. Romney talked about bringing in more revenue by lowering taxes. They dont NEED that revenue increase if they curb the damned spending!! End of story~
I agree with you 100% that no president will turn off the spending anywhere close to the way it needs to be turned off, and even if they wanted to, the left-leaning public who are so used to be showered with government money would revolt and riot as you said (and I'm sure many on the right would join them as well).
ReplyDeleteSeems everyone these days is entitled to their entitlements, and look to the government to provide them with everything.
Canada will end up there soon as well, there is no doubt in my mind.
Sorry I missed this! I didnt get a notification :( Anyway I had a strange Forum polls phone call a week or so ago that included a lot of questions like would i vote for the Liberal party if Justin Trudeau won the big, etc etc but then a lot of other questions came in and one of them had me wondering what was going on and who's idea it was.... one asked if I would be in favour of having an annual Adult Income payment (gosh I can't remember the exact name now), that would be INSTEAD OF (as in, replace) EI, Canada Pension Plan, etc. Basically one lump sum given out every year for a person to do with as they pleased (spend it, save it, put it into stocks, etc) instead of receiving benefits by applying for EI when needed, pension when the time came, etc. I found that very odd and chose 'I dont know' as my answer, because Ive never heard of it. Have you? Maybe I need to pay more attention to what's going on up here lol.
ReplyDeleteAnyway yes there would be a LOT of people on the right that would want their entitlements too. Ive heard them myself talking about how they want their pensions and it's a double-edged sword because yes, they have been paying in all these years when it comes off their cheques automatically, but they would be getting back more than they put in - would they be willing to sacrifice that extra amount for the cause of reducing spending? that is highly unlikely. Most people figure that they SHOULD retire at 65 or younger (67 now?), and that it's a 'given' that they would not continue working after they hit that age... that is a problem in itself. 50 or whatever years ago, there was no such thing as a canada pension plan. I think it started in the 60s if my tired brain is remembering right. So before that, oh gosh oh my, people continued to work as long as they could. Somewhere along the way, it was decided that was unfair, even though it had gone on for thousands of years of human existance - or families said 'ok gramma its time you put your feet up to relax, come live with us and we will take care of you', or whatever the case may have been. Now though, generations are growing up thinking they only have to work until they are 65ish and that's it - no more. And they also expect other people around the country to help them be able to do that, in the form of the Canada Pension Plan.
Why? Im almost 40 and wish I could stop working sometimes LOL. Im tired faster than I used to be - but my ancestors worked their asses off for me to be where I am, so why should I fall over in a hole at 65 and depend on everyone else, if I am still capable of working. In the past, people generally had their home long paid for, so they didnt have massive bills coming in, their kids were out and about and on their own long past, and they only really had to work to pay some basics like food and general living expenses. They SAVED money too, in their own banks or in the family silver and china, and maybe they got to take some trips. All sorts of things. Or maybe they had to work til the day they died. But they did it. And now suddenly, over the span of 50 short years, people have decided that they dont have to do that. And they think it's perfectly okay for the next generation of workers to pay the rest of their pension amount because chances are, they put in FAR FAR less than they will get back. And heaven forbid their spouse dies, cos the govt will take half that pension and still tax them on the remainder each year (what happened to my mom when my dad died 6 years before his planned retirement). So... it' all crap on a stick. But the right wingers want that money just as much as the left, for sure. And that's part of why we are where we are right now.