American elections should be the laughing stock of the world. We have no credibility anymore. How in heavens name is anyone going to take any notice if we question the validity of another country's election.

The Obama campaign planned carefully all the ins and outs of law breaking in their campaign. One of the first was to put a hold on the republican FEC nominee thereby making sure the FEC had no quorum. Flooding the country with registrations a few days before the election. The FEC is broken just like so many other checks and balances. If everyone is partisan in these departments what is the use of having them at all. The Supreme Court is another one with one justice wavering back and forth at his whim sometimes ruling according to the Constitution and sometimes to international law and sometimes just because. The democrats have subverted the system. It used to be that both parties put the country's well being first but no more. The democrats have shown in this election that there is nothing they won't do to get elected.

And I'll tell you one thing. If the republican party, much as I would hate to see it, don't get down and dirty with the democrats we will never win another election except when the dems mess up so egregiously that the electorate is completely turned off them. That is a ridiculous thing to wait for. The republicans need to get out there and refute each lie the dems and the media spout. They need to call them on every stupid idea the dems come up with. I hear the dems are talking about taking away our 401Ks. How can they possibly do that? It is entirely illegal. And if they do such a thing THEY will never be elected again. Even low income people have 401Ks because their employer will chip in a certain %. Democrats are such fools and have caused this country mucho problems with their feel good, sound good ideas that blow up in everyone's faces.

The Obamatons have simply made us a more sophisticated version of Venezuela.

This should be the death of public campaign financing, and good riddance. It would be nice if rational people would re-examine the idea that funneling money down ever more convoluted pipelines will "clean up politics", but that isn't going to happen.

I, for one, have no desire to support a party that fights just as dirty as the one I oppose. Why should I support people who engage in, or wink at, fraud? Fight hard, but fight clean, otherwise we will be like Venezuela.

Having said that, I find hyperbole comparing our elections with third-world socialist crapholes to be tiring. The obvious fix to this problem is more transparency, not more regulation. If donors are known, then no matter the amounts raised, what need is there for an audit?

This won't be the death of campaign finance reform because the Democrats will attack any effort by the Republicansto emulate the corruption.

Chris,
We are now going to have incumbent party protection legislation disguised as 'campaign finance reform'.
What usurpers specialize in is breaking existing laws and then curing the problem by writing new laws to protect themselves.
If a Republican candidate had built an internet finance machine like Obama's, the DoJ would have broken it up well before the election.
And the MSM would have been screaming itself hoarse over the blatant corruption.
Just like Obama's pal, Chavez does against any remnant of freedom loving people left who dare to speak out in Vz.
If the shoe fits.....

Chris Hunt:

I, for one, have no desire to support a party that fights just as dirty as the one I oppose. Why should I support people who engage in, or wink at, fraud? Fight hard, but fight clean, otherwise we will be like Venezuela.

Alternatively, we must outplay the Democrats on their own rules... otherwise we will be like Mexico, where a single party -- the PRI, the "Institutional Revolutionary Party" (what a lovely oxymoron) -- ruled unchecked and unopposed for over seventy years.

Dafydd

Has nobody here read a comic book? "If we sink to their level, we'd be no better than they are." Every hero must fight the temptation to commit crime "for the greater good."

We MUST stick to the rules, but we MUST ALSO make it publicly clear that we are sticking to the rules. We conservatives are NOTORIOUSLY awful at marketing our message. We have ideals and we MUST convey them.

We don't follow rules just to follow rules; we follow rules because that's what makes this society a civilization. The tools, the tech we use daily is not what makes us civilized; it is the rule of law, not force.

BlueNight:

We MUST stick to the rules, but we MUST ALSO make it publicly clear that we are sticking to the rules.

But BlueNight, those are the rules. Those are the new rules.

You're suggesting we stick to old rules that are no longer operative, not even officially. You may as well suggest that we should refuse to campaign at all, because it's unseemly for a candidate to "run" for office, when he should be "standing" for office.

There is nothing in the BCRA requiring candidates to institute anti-fraud protection for credit-card donations... only to promptly return contributions that they discover are fraudulent. John McCain voluntarily chose to go the extra mile above and beyond what the law requires. And since no good deed goes unpunished, his reward was to be absolutely drowned by the tidal wave of Obamabux.

I only advocate that we obey the letter of the law and no more... just as the Obama campaign did this year. Since the FEC was deliberately set up to enforce only violations so egregious that even the candidate's own party agrees, we wouldn't be violating that part of the law, either.

Dafydd

BlueKnight,
The thing about comic books is they are...comic books.
I find it a little bit astonishing that you would find moral or ethical guidance from one.
Americans are experiencing their first taste of third world style politics.
Obama was able to rig the game so that he had unlimited funds from very dubious sources, absolute control of the public square and media, and a very unhealthy personality cult never seen in this nation's history.
Additionally, his chief of staff was on the board of directors of FNMA while fellow democrats systematically looted FNMA. His likely choice for AG is a woman who not only destroyed this nation's security but also looted FNMA

Hunter:

In defense of BlueNight, I think he has the right idea: Whatever core principles we espouse, we must be able to apply them to the real world -- while still making them as clear and understandable as comic books, or at least graphic novels.

I don't mean the morally ambiguous ones like Alan Moore's Watchmen or V for Vendetta; but it's reasonable to shift our focus -- how we understand "comic book" virtues -- from the original stuck-up, prudish, censorious schoolmarm Batman of the 1940s to Frank Miller's "Dark Knight" version of the same character. The Dark-Knight Batman is hipper, more realistic, morally adult, but nevertheless, at his ethical core, still the same Batman.

I wouldn't say that comics are actually at the level of literature, but they're sure a lot closer than they were just forty years ago, when I was reading them as a kid. It's now reasonable to cite them in political rhetoric, assuming one is careful.

Dafydd

Good points all around. The rules in play are the rules by which to play. But I do agree that we are getting a taste of "third-world" politics. We as a party are already being tricked into thinking of ourselves as the oppressed opposition of the government in power, instead of Americans with disagreements. We are being tricked into being novices in a sort of political tribalism that the other side has mastered.

BlueNight,
I am speaking words, but they do not seem to register.
Obama's campaign ran a crooked, opaque internet finance scheme. He kept the press totally tame and under his control.
He has hired crooks to run his campaign, and now his WH.
We already know, from his own words, how he wants to change the basic ideas of the Constitution from pr--individual rights and natural law to one of Court mandated obligations.
We know he wants a substantial civilian security force under DC control.
We already know how he uses well documented voter fraud groups to stuff ballot boxes. We already know he used those resources to win in Caucus states and in the election.
we already know he uses intimidation by lawyers to suppress speech he does not like.
Your own post contradicts itself when you acknowledge that the Obama side of this has mastered what they are doing.
This is not a comic book.

I'm sorry, I meant the more recent comic books. Obama doesn't have a giant typewriter to which he ties his victims. His superpower is his charisma, by which he convinces people to do things that will harm themselves and their children.

And Lex Luthor became president as an independent; and the Joker became Ambassador from Qurac; and Captain America was gunned down on the courthouse steps. And for years the Kingpin, a pillar of the community and a gangster lord, has been the major villain against whom Daredevil fights. And Gotham City has always been a place of corruption in high places.

Read "Transmetropolitan" and you'll see what happens when the good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys.

Thank you, BlueNight, for making the point I was unable to get across; when the good guys emulate the bad guys, they become indistinguishable, and that's when we descend to Third World territory. I don't want to live in the corrupt system that the left seems to want to inhabit, where the ends justify the means, and we close our eyes to all manner of unsavory and unethical methods of achieving power. Because that what it will degenerate into, a nasty and brutish squabble for power alone. That lust for power has been fueling the radical left for decades, and has been introduced into the mainstream of the Democrat party, which culminates in Obama's shenanigans. Do we, who know in our hearts that we are right, that our ideas are not only sound, but better for everyone, want to stoop to that level? Do we want to debase ourselves and our principles in order to clutch the levers of power in our sweaty little hands?

I don't believe that's really what we want.

Chris Hunt:

I don't believe that's really what we want.

All right, suppose for sake of argument that the choice were between getting lax with our own fundraising (though not doing all that other stuff you and Hunter mentioned) -- or seeing America taken over by thugs and radicals who would remake it fully in the image of Venezuela, or even Iran. Would your scruples require you to reject "emulating the bad guys," even if that meant the destruction of America as we know it?

Which is the worse harm: allowing evil to triumph in the most powerful nation on earth, the one that does the best job of standing between civilization and barbarity... or dirtying your own hands somewhat?

I believe the latter does the least harm, and I don't think this is really open to rational debate. All you gain from remaining absolutely morally pure is an intense feeling of self-righteousness; while America loses.

So the only question that remains is whether the danger we face is, in reality, that severe; whether it rises to a high-enough level to justify the particular means I offer to help stop it. This question, I argue, must be answered anew for every evil and every proposed solution; there is no universal answer:

• I suggest that the threat does rise high enough to justify the action I promote: accepting the "new rules" we evidently have now for fundraising.
• But I suggest it does not rise to the level (yet) that would justify us anti-liberals hiring our own thugs to physically intimidate liberals the way Obamatons and other liberals intimidate, harass, and assault conservatives.

Shorter form: The threat justifies some degrees of moral and ideological impurity but not others.

The argument by Absolute Moral Purity always annoys the heck out of me; it's generally made by persons who are not themselves absolutely morally pure (as who is?) -- usually libertarians and Ron Paulites -- but who like to imagine that they are. (I'm not speaking of you personally, as I don't know you well enough to judge; I'm speaking of those I personally know who make this argument.)

This is one of the reasons that, in the end, I could not remain within the libertarian movement: too many Absolute Moral Purists. Movement libertarians are essentially science-fiction fans whose fantasy of choice is decadence and libertinism, rather than idea-based SF.

Dafydd

I'm not talking about absolute moral purity, I'm talking about doing what is correct as opposed to doing what is expedient. If the threat becomes what you say, then I won't condemn such tactics, but until then, my opinion is that fighting fire with fire is a loser's game. If they cheat, and then we cheat in retaliation, then they'll just cheat harder, because that's what they do.

I'm in favor of hanging on to our principles until we're absolutely sure that ditching them is necessary. Waterboarding that piece of **** Khalid Sheik Mohammed was necessary. Taking dirty money from anyone on the planet is not, at least not yet.

[Careful with the language, Chris. -- the Mgt.]

Dayfydd,
Thank you for trying to make the comic book guys see reason.
By their logic, fighting a way is pointless.

'way' = 'war'
>shame

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