Look, I agree. But Romney's approach was reducing government influence and investing in low risk business, such as using our natural resources; Obama and the media then hounded him on conservative issues, making him look like he would get rid of student loans, get rid of fema, help rich people get richer while the middle class gets poorer, help big business and not small business, be against gays and women, and get rid of ideas of healthcare for everyone. He didn't change so much as clarify his positions to alleviate legitimate concerns. He was put on the defensive and that's too bad because it turned people off without giving him a chance. But I understand how someone could see that as him just getting votes and not meaning what he says; but I disagree with that strongly.
I'm not sure what your point is here. This is the kind of stuff both sides do to each other, and it seems odd you're just picking on one.
Also, I'm not well-versed in all the issues mentioned, but I am definitely sure that LGBT rights would have taken a HUGE step backwards in this country considering Romney's religious beliefs and the factions he presents. Maybe you don't understand because you are not a part of that particular minority as I am, but the four years under Obama has seen some very realistic and positive changes for LGBT and especially trans-people, change that never happened under Bush and would never ever happen if the Republican conservatives were pulling strings on a religiously conservative president.
I'm not trying to focus on that one issue, it just happens to be the one I know most about; I was able to get all my legal ID corrected and made consistent because of Obama, involving my passport, and my passport is a form of national ID that allows me to change other ID and thus help me to not be discriminated against. So when you start listing all these things that Obama accused the Republicans of not wanting to do while in office... well, actually he's right at least on that issue; I'm really tired of being disenfranchised in this country because of right-wing politics. People can hold their own religious beliefs, but I should only be liable for being a criminal, and the medical community rather than religious bigotry should be making decisions about what treatments I need for my personal well-being. So to summarize: I did not vote for just this one issue in the election, I'm more comprehensive, but yeah, actually Romney and the Republicans with the loudest voices in this country ARE bad for LGBT people regarding marriage and rights. you wouldn't have seen me complaining about needing to flee to Canada if Romney would have won, but it would have been very depressing at least in regards to that issue to basically have another four years of lack of progress or even going backwards.
Maybe you'd feel differently if you were a woman living in this country before equal rights, and you'd get a sense of what that means to be treated as "less than" and have your rights restricted not because of anything you've done to break the law or in how you treat people, yet you are treated as inferior all the same in what rights you have and how you are discriminated against in work and housing and medical needs. OBama has actually been a friend, and it was pretty amazing he also adjusted his opinion on gay marriage... although I think if Biden had not thrown himself out there, Obama wouldn't have publicly come out like that. In any case, that's FAR further than any Republican candidate would have gone or has gone.
I did and I found nothing, except for Ryan using religion to suggest Obama might have flawed values. Considering myself omnireligion, someone who has respect for all the meaning that people appreciate in religion, I have no strong opinion on whether this is true or false, but I can see truth and falsity to it. For instance, I think Obama is good at dividing people amongst one another and could support the Christian argument there. But at the same time, he is also trying to help people by drawing light to issues that may go otherwise unnoticed.
But this suggests nothing to back your generalization however. You made a claim and you haven't made a case for it. All I'm asking for is how you reached that conclusion. What evidence did you use and how did you find that conclusion? And using google won't give me that.
I spent my entire life living in a conservative Christian wasteland, listening to this kind of shit being espoused at church, in my circles of friends, at Thanksgiving dinners with my family. (The last five years of my 40+ year old life, I've been trying to surround myself with less obnoxious people.) I circulated among various churches in different denominations, not just one. I'm really confused as to how you read nothing of Ryan's speech on Yahoo (for god's sake -- it wasn't even like I pulling up a specialized partisan news site), and possibly missed this kind of attitude during the Republican primaries from Santorum and others, and it's the same crap all my religious conservative friends have been spouting on FaceBook. My own mother told me unsolicited on Sunday night that this country was becoming "Sodom and Gomorrah" and that we are being judged for our sins [for endorsing gay marriage and allowing abortion and... I don't think I'm too far reading into this... by electing a black guy who isn't the type of Christian she is, because she doesn't even think he is one due to differences in beliefs.]
I'm very confused as to how you have missed Ryan's speeches and these attitudes in just the general news, even if you don't happen to be surrounded/engulfed by conservative religion and rural Republicans.
I'm also still laughing over your accusing Obama of being the divisive one. I listen to black radio and have listened to Fox, and there is no question in my mind which messaging is more divisive and more obnoxious. I suppose you would also claim that Susan B. Anthony was divisive. Obama seems far more restrained than the people he is representing, honestly; and he spent the first 30 months of his presidency trying to salvage the most divisive Congress ever, which stepped outside of normal operating procedure to stonewall and block any attempt he made to change things, since they wanted to limit him to a one-term presidency. When you're dealing with bullies, you either give up and slink away, or you fight back. If fighting back in that kind of situation is "divisive," then please... let's see more of it. Reasonableness only works with reasonable people.
Right. And Obama never changes his approach. He wastes money on high risk endeavors like green energy, Obamacare, and stimulus plans where he throws money into the economy without any plan, hoping that throwing money around will be enough to cause serious growth. That's not a plan, it's being optimistic.
If you compare Romney's plans to Obama's (which was the choice in this election), he definitely has more of a plan than Romney. So you should not equate them. If the choice is to note who seems better prepared, then that answer is obvious. It was so dominating a reality that the press can even just summarize it as the reality of the last ten days of the election:
In the final 10 days of the race, a split started to emerge in the two campaigns. The Obama team would shower you with a flurry of data--specific, measurable, and they'd show you the way they did the math. Any request for written proof was immediately filled. They knew their brief so well you could imagine Romney hiring them to work at Bain. The Romney team, by contrast, was much more gauzy, reluctant to share numbers, and relying on talking points rather than data. This could have been a difference in approach, but it suggested a lack of rigor in the Romney camp.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57548103/why-romney-never-saw-it-coming/
It also doesn't help that the candidate who claimed to be the "numbers guy" did not want to show his numbers, that he got all the polling data WRONG (AKA the numbers), and that his software meant to mobilize his organization on Election Day horribly failed, leaving them directionless that day. On the contrary, Obama's team showed that they knew how to build a long-term coalition and infrastructure in order to get out the vote; the same principles can be applied within gov. One side knew how to actually run a campaign.
If Romney had been a better candidate, he would have had a much better shot at winning, honestly. Look how close he came with his plans as thin as they were. I would have definitely considered a candidate who sounded like he actually knew what he was talking about.
And his 'plan' to deal with the debt now seems to be to tax the rich. Well, fine, but if you tax the rich, they have less money to spend and someone loses a job. That solves one problem, but creates another. Eventually, socialism collapses an economy if it's taken too far.
I think the solutions are more complex than what you're reducing them to. You can tax the rich somewhat... but you will need other sources of money to help keep things together.
Of course. So how is it then fair that the Democrats always get to blame Bush for everything?
Because Bush was a huge fuckup for this country and was never a viable candidate for the presidency, yet the Repub bigwigs handpicked him in 1998 to run as their handpuppet because he was presentable (in their minds) and could be controlled. I read descriptions of their process and meetings in the major news mags in 1998-1999 before the thought he might actually become president was a viable reality. And Bush squandered the fiscal positioning left to us by Clinton and the Republican Congress, and spent eight years literally creating his own reality and refusing to listen to what the people were actually saying, because he was beholden to his group of Republican bigwigs.
But maybe you should read articles like this one at Business Insider:
http://www.businessinsider.com/whos-responsible-for-budget-deficit-2012-8
My opinion is that the country needs more than four years to recover from the prior decade of poor money manageable + the bursting of the housing bubble and economic collapse in America. Obama couldn't fix that in four years and he was stupid if he suggested it might be possible, when running for his first term; I'm not sure whether he misspoke or whether the rabid following he gained in 2008, irate with Bush's policies and the economic collapse, just did not listen clearly. Also, faced with the option of Obama vs Romney (rather than a "perfect solution"), I picked the one that I felt was more viable and better thought-out and articulated. So it sounds odd to me that you're seeming to argue that one should have voted for Romney for a plan he never actually presented, compared to Obama's plans which you do not like. That's not what the election choice was -- it's "which guy overall would you rather have a leader during the next four years?"