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By Mark D, November 13, 2012 8:58 pm

After being totally routed by Obama, despite spending the last 4 years doing nothing but stopping anything Obama tried to do, you’d think Republicans would try to change course. Millions upon millions of dollars spent by Republicans and they didn’t get their way. 9 of the 10 senate elections in which the Crossroads PAC (Karl Rove’s pac) spent over 10 million dollars the Democrat won. Maybe, just maybe people saw through what the Republicans were up to and decided to punish them.

Now in a sane world, maybe the Repubs would move more to the center, open up their party to minorities and women. Maybe it’s time for a Republican party that doesn’t just kowtow the line of the super wealthy while taking advantage of some of the most ignorant voters in the country. But of course we don’t live in a sane world, so that’s not going to happen.

As you might have noticed, despite losing the Presidential election and losing seats in the Senate, Republicans continue to control the House. Since they had control of the house following the 2010 Census they were able to redraw Congressional districts. Pretty much they shoved as many democrats into as few districts as possible, basically assuring themselves control of the house.

Now why might this matter? Because the new thing that the GOP is looking for is to base electoral votes not on winner take all state wide, but instead on congressional districts. If for example a state has 30 districts and 30 Electoral Votes, each district would be worth 1 electoral vote. Now look at some of the states that Obama won, such as Pennsylvania. Most of the Congressional Seats that were up for grabs went Republican, except for Pittsburgh, Philly and a few burbs. It’s not a wild guess that the rest of the districts went Romney (Obama supposedly won Philly with nearly 4-1 ratio).

This means instead of getting all of the electoral votes for PA, he would have likely gotten votes for 7 of the 19 districts. This is almost worse then actively trying to keep people from voting. It marginalizes people’s votes, especially as some of the districts aren’t exactly proportional in population. It’s bad enough that your vote is a lot more important depending on what state your voting in (I find it funny that neither candidate campaigned in New Jersey) but this is outright marginalizing people’s votes.

Winner take all when it comes to electoral vote in states has been fine for years. There’s no reason to change it now. Instead of looking for ways to marginalize the vote, maybe just maybe it’s time to start changing with the times. When your starting to lose major chunks of the Solid South, it should be a sign. It isn’t the voters to blame for your failures.

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By Mark D, August 11, 2012 4:39 pm

“Don’t worry that he isn’t smart, he’ll have a lot of good advisers to run things, and really the President doesn’t have all that much power anyway”
- Republicans on GW Bush in 2000

“OMG He’s an Evil Communist Facist Muslim whose secretly destroying America from the inside”
- Republicans anytime about Obama

“What does Obama have to hide by not releasing his birth certificate?”
- Republicans on the Birth Certificate

“Doesn’t a candidate deserve some privacy?”
- Republicans on Romney’s tax returns

“What a flip flopper waffling candidate”
- Republicans on Kerry in 2004

“All that matters is his position now”
- Republicans on Romney’s many changing positions

“Allowing a tax break to expire is like raising taxes”
- Republicans on the expiring tax breaks for the wealthy

“Allowing a tax break to expire is not the same as raising taxes”
- Republicans on the expiring tax breaks for the poor

“How dare you question the President, that’s being un-American!”
- Republicans especially as anti-war protests started picking up during the GW Bush years

“Obama is Satan”
- Republicans during Obama’s White house years

“One of Obama’s closest confidants is Jeremiah Wright, who is an Anti-American catholic pastor”
- Wait for the next line

“Obama is a Muslim”
- Yep

“The struggles of the Economy at this time is due to Clinton’s policies, its far too early to tell how Bush will effect the economy”
- Republicans 2007/2008 era or so

“Obama has ruined the economy”
- Republicans since 2010

Comments (2)

By Mark D, February 10, 2011 9:41 am

Google Trends can give you a pretty good idea when someone is being searched and what for. Now it is somewhat early for the 2012 Presidential election, but I think google trends does a pretty good job of showing why Palin probably won’t be elected President. Quite simply I’ll be surprised if she somehow wins the Republican nomination. She is hardly searched that much even in heavy Republican states. In some states her searches dip down to almost nothing.

Like Ann Coulter (remember her?) before her, people are only interested in Palin when she says or does something crazy. Day to day she just does not attract national attention, or even enough attention in single states to be considered a realistic candidate.

First up two examples (All the charts are based on the last twelve months) comparing Palin to her former running mate McCain:

McCain gets a fifth of the searches that Palin does, but that is mostly due to Palin’s “Stupidity Spikes” She begins the year on a spike from her acceptance by the Tea Party, fades in and out during the primary season, spikes following the Republican victory (an incoming tide rises all ships) and spikes again for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. The Flag for B for example is a spike due to Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston getting engaged, as Palin was obviously helped somewhat by her reality show and her daughter being on dancing with the stars.

Now no one would consider McCain a candidate for 2012, so maybe it’s not a good comparison. But what about Palin as compared to Glenn Beck?

Beck and Palin spend the year going nose to nose, but no one would consider Beck a possible future candidate for President. Surprisingly the C Flag is for Glenn Beck’s rally, which while giving Beck a large spike failed to make much of a dent over the B Flag which once again is Bristol Palin’s engagement. D and E Flags are post election searches for Palin, while the F Flag is once again for the Giffords shooting.

So now how does Palin compare with Obama? Nationwide not well at all:

Overall people are three times more likely to be searching for Obama then Palin, with Obama having a much steadier pattern. His three major spikes are A Flag which is the signing of the Health Care Bill, E Flag which is the election (which outspikes Palin’s post election spike) and the F Flag for his speech on the Giffords shooting.

Now you might say “Well how does Palin do state by state” since the election is won via state and not popular vote. Really it’s not that much better. Alaska is the only place that she runs head to head with Obama via searches:

Alaska

Of course one might mention that not all Palin press coming out of Alaska is positive considering the corruption trials going on currently. But what about possible Swing States like Florida and Pennsylvania?

Florida

Pennsylvania

Well what about Republican Strongholds like Alabama and Texas?

Alabama

Texas

In Alabama she Flatlines during the spring, and in both Alabama and Texas her news stories are almost non-existent. She actually probably fairs better in liberal states over the long term due to her daughter being on Dancing With The Stars. Let’s take a look at California:

California

It’s quite evident that people don’t take Sarah Palin seriously. People don’t think “What is Sarah Palin’s opinion on …?” and go searching for it. Instead she says something or does something insane and people go looking for her. I haven’t even gotten into the news reference volume which tends to be almost non-existent. People don’t write about her and don’t talk about her unless she’s fumbled the ball badly somewhere. In the end she probably doesn’t want to be President anyway, it pays better to keep going on speaking tours, releasing books and working for Fox. If she was President she would have to be held responsible for once.

Comments (1)

By Mark D, November 1, 2010 9:40 pm

Well this is probably a bit late in writing, but tomorrow YOU need to go out and vote. I’m not a Democrat (okay, I’m registered as one, but don’t consider them MY party) or a Republican, but as I’m living in America like many of you this election will effect me. As it stands just about EVERYTHING Obama has done has seen the Republicans saying No. The filibuster is killing the Dems, as Republicans are unwilling to vote against their party in almost every issue. Meanwhile since the Dems include a decent amount of Moderates, some Dem votes have been defeated by Dems crossing the aisle.

The idea that voting in more Republicans (or voting out Dems, same difference) is going to fix anything is crazy. Republicans are also not about to fix anything. As it stands for the Republicans to get rid of the deficit AND keep the programs their in favor for, you’d have to cut every other faucet of government spending. That includes actually shutting down the government and congress. So those looking to get spending “under control” might be a little surprised when that doesn’t happen.

The idea that Obama has done nothing in two years seems rather silly. Obviously there’s the big issue of health care (and spoiler alert, it’s not going to get overturned no matter how many Republicans get elected) but do people realize that this is something that five different Presidents have tried to implement? Yes, it’s not perfect, but once again the Dems had to compromise with Moderates in the Senate and enough Republicans to get it approved. If you really are upset about it, then send more Dems to the Senate and they can actually get stuff done without compromising.

Just to keep people up to date,the non partisan PolitiFact.com Currently lists Obama campaign promises as following

122 Kept, 41 Compromised, 22 Broken, 82 Stalled and 236 in the works.

This is not a President who is spending more time at Camp David and his Crawford Ranch then at the actual White House. If your complaining that he is out on the Campaign trail so much, how do you expect him to get his legislation passed if he has to work with a Congress full of Republicans?

The Republicans only care about power and their own self interest. If they actually cared about people they wouldn’t have spent the last two years in lockstep trying to stop all Democrat legislation from passing. The threats from the Tea Party also mean that this is a Republican party that more then ever before is unwilling to do ANYTHING which might be viewed at all as being “Liberal”.

Two years ago you had high hopes for change in America. If you really want anything to get done out of DC, putting more Republicans in power is only asking for less to be done. Babysteps have been made, but the bigger steps have been blocked time and time again. The early days of Dubya’s term is picture perfect for what you can expect for Republicans. Not only did Dubya repeal the Corporation tax (a tax enacted by Reagen) but he paid back 20 years of the tax WITH INTEREST! The Republicans will be sure to reward the rich and the corporations for helping them, and the average person will be hurting worse then ever.

Comments (1)

By Mark D, October 15, 2010 1:30 am

I vote. No matter what, I vote. Primaries, Special Elections, School Board elections, I go out and I vote. So when I was living in Jersey, I had just finished moving and registered to vote. I get a letter in the mail saying that I registered in time to vote in the primary but had to bring the letter to show to the people at the voting booths. No big deal, and plus without that letter I wouldn’t have even known there was local primaries going on for the township.

The day before the election I get two letters in the mail. Both of them from Democratic candidates who wanted my vote. It ends up that the township was so Republican leaning that the Democrats didn’t want to bother running someone against the local Mayor. So they never even bothered to go around and get petitions signed to put someone on the ballot for them. Well this independent candidate decided to run as a write in to become the Democratic challenger for Mayor. So immediately I liked the independent guy. There’s nothing I hate more then when a Political Party is unwilling to even bother fighting. When the Dems got wind of it they started their own write in campaign. So the day before the election I had dueling letters from the official Dems and the independent guy.

Well when I got to the voting place (and shocked the 90 year old geezers that someone young was voting) I cast my write in vote for Mr. Independent and go on my day. Well the next day I go into work and grab the morning paper from one of my co-workers. Scanning through it for the local election results, I found what I had been looking for. The primary results from Beachwood, and to my shock the guy I voted for had won by a single vote. There was a note that a provisional ballot was going to be opened in a few days. But I was so giddy I was jumping for joy and my vote actually made a difference somewhere.

That provisional ballot though came back to change things. A few days later I read that due to the provisional ballot the election was now tied. So the two candidates went to court to decide who should be on the ballot. In a shocking decision the Judge sided with the candidate who was already endorsed by the Democratic party.

In the course of two weeks I went from jubilation to rejection. It’s amazing how many times it seems like your vote isn’t important. The times you vote in an election and it seems like one way or the other it’s always a landslide. But you still solider on because you don’t want to be that person that didn’t vote. I can’t tell you the amount of people upset with me that I not only vote in every election, but vote for 3rd party candidates at all times. I swear, if all the people I have ever talked to and said “Both sides are corrupt” actually went out and voted for a 3rd party candidate, then there would truly be a 3rd party in America. But instead people say “It’s throwing my vote away” despite the fact that they weren’t going to vote anyway.