Santorum Suspends Presidential Campaign 577
bobwrit writes with this excerpt from CNN:
"Conservative challenger Rick Santorum announced Tuesday that he is suspending his Republican presidential campaign after a weekend of 'prayer and thought,' effectively ceding the GOP nomination to front-runner Mitt Romney. Santorum made his announcement after the weekend hospitalization of his 3-year-old daughter Isabella, and in the face of tightening poll numbers in Pennsylvania — the state he represented as a U.S. senator — ahead of the April 24 primary. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we made the decision to get into this race around our kitchen table, against all the odds,' Santorum told a news conference, flanked by emotional family members. 'We made a decision over the weekend that while the presidential race for us is over, and I will suspend my campaign effective today, we are not done fighting.'"
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing so see here, move one. This is on every media outlet.
Because nerds are somehow immune to the outcome of a national election such as a presidential race.....
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, let's take a quiz - Which kind of Libertarian are you?
(multiple choice)
A) Pot-smoking College Republican who isn't quite down with Santorum
B) John Bircher concerned about the impending UN/NWO takeover
C) Mad Max-wannabe survivalist
D) Ex-Southern Democrat who wishes Negros were a 'local issue'
E) Believes Ayn Rand was a serious philosopher
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ron Paul is the best candidate America had in over 50 years.
GOP lineup -- same prob as 2004 Dem ticket (Score:5, Insightful)
The GOP lineup has the same problem as the 2004 lineup that failed to defeat GWB. I took one look at that ticket and said: A Massachusetts old money man + a slick trial lawyer. That was everything the moderate GOP voter hates about the Dems, and wouldn't make anybody switch. They finally realized they needed something different and went with Obama.
The GOP is making the same mistake. The fact that the front runner is from MA is pure coincidence. It's wealthy businessmen, religious fanatics, and a guy who was fresh in the 90s.
The only "something different" candidate is Ron Paul; but he's too different. The GOP needs something fresh. I'm not sure where it'll come from, but these guys are not fresh. Really, for someone like myself with weak party affiliation the GOP is dead after GWB. The organization itself is defective. Not to say that the Dems are much better. It's the slightly less evil party.
I think we need just a bit more time for things to get so bad that sane people with the capability to lead will want to run on a 3rd party ticket. The two main parties are rapidly on their way to ruining their respective reputations. Not this time though. Not. Ready. Yet.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you're an idiot or insane. For normal functional human beings who are not either semi-retarded or sociopaths, he's what you might call a very dangerous, foolish, ignorant man.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing so see here, move one. This is on every media outlet.
Because nerds are somehow immune to the outcome of a national election such as a presidential race.....
Certainly the ones outside the States (or at least, mostly immune).
Prayer and thought (Score:3, Insightful)
There's your problem. How about more thinking and less appealing to a non-existent sky-fairy? I truly look forward to the day when politicians can safely declare some sort of rationalist-based intellect instead of this, but I expect it's a long way off.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GOP lineup -- same prob as 2004 Dem ticket (Score:5, Insightful)
Look. Anyone with any sense knew that the Tea Party was going to hamstring the Republicans in the 2012 race. The Democrats knew it, which is why Obama isn't sweating, and hasn't been since he saw how the Republican True Believers all fell in love with a moron (namely Sarah Palin). For the core Republican leadership and strategists, it was equally clear. The Tea Party wasn't some general movement, no matter how much its advocates stated, it was a Libertarian populist movement that was sucking the blood out of the Republican party.
The only thing that was going to cure that was to let the lunatics run the asylum for a while. Everyone knew Romney was going to get the nod, but would be badly damaged in the process. By having the likes of Santorum and Gingrich, men who never ever ever ever ever ever had even the slightest chance of becoming President, cut him to pieces, all that happened was the Tea Party movement managed to hamstring the whole party. But by November of this year, the Tea Party and a goodly chunk of the retrograde social conservatives will be utterly discredited. Romney will limp through to a loss, but the message will be clear; "America does not want extremists, or even people who play extremists on TV."
After this year, the sane candidates will come out of hiding, they're careers and reputations not utterly savaged like Romney's. The next GOP candidate won't have an incumbent to deal with and won't have the Tea Party cancer eating away at the party's strength. I think this whole race has been nothing more than a tactical day at the nut house, and the Republicans will have learned their lesson.
I mean, the Republicans came back from Goldwater. Of course, it was with Nixon, so maybe they don't want to have it map that closely to elections past.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
Ron Paul's strength is that he accurately identifies a lot of problems.
Ron Paul's weakness is that his "solutions" to those problems are dangerously naive, based on long-discredited theories, or are just downright crazy (or all of the above).
Any enthusiasm about RP has to be tempered with the realization that even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly the ones outside the States (or at least, mostly immune).
Not for as long as ICANN is in U.S. jurisdiction, you're not.
Re:"Nerds don't care about politics" -- tomhath (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, I never see "No-Bama" bumper stickers, or this charming one http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/dont-re-nig-in-2012-maker-of-racist-anti-obama-sticker-shuts-down-site/ [go.com]
Get off your high horse.
Herp, ah, derp. (Score:2, Insightful)
Fighting for what? Against the ideals of your own Church that basically came out and said that universal health care is a right? That evolution is just fine? That women don't have to be barefoot and in the kitchen? That the world is older than 6000 years? That social justice is a good idea?
Keep fuckin' that chicken, Rick.
--
BMO
Re:"Nerds don't care about politics" -- tomhath (Score:3, Insightful)
In case of Santorum, people can't stand the bigotry of the man himself, not his ideology per se. I mean, we are talking about a politician here who is basically saying that gays are some kind of spawn of Satan that should be banned from doing icky things now and forever. There's no room for rational argument here.
Do the republicans even stand a chance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has even casually been following the republican primaries can see how incredibly twisted and corrupt the party is. How could anyone still think voting republican is a good idea? Not saying democrat is a great way to vote either, but there are other parties and it's about time for some fresh parties and directions. The old has not served us well for the past 20+ years.
Re:"Nerds don't care about politics" -- tomhath (Score:5, Insightful)
and it wasn't the entire "left" making the Santorum comment was it?
Re:"Nerds don't care about politics" -- tomhath (Score:5, Insightful)
Left? Where? Certainly not anyone who supports Obama. His policies are center, at most.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that you mention it... why doesn't Neil DeGrasse Tyson run for President? I mean, he can explain the tides; a phenomenon previously only describable by gods!
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're an idiot or insane. For normal functional human beings who are not either semi-retarded or sociopaths, he's what you might call a very dangerous, foolish, ignorant man.
This has been a case study in ad-hominem attacks. Thank you for reading.
Message from God (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, God told him to quit.
Maybe God should be Romney's running mate.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because if 'News for nerds' is 'News every nerd might be interested in, it becomes meaningless.
Might as well just read CNN.
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ron Paul wants to take away their play pretties and pay the bills instead of pissing Trillions away. The left wants to piss it away on people who are "disadvantaged" and the right wants to piss it away on wars. I saw Ron Paul in one debate get booed because he said we couldn't afford to continue being the world's policeman even though it should be obvious to anyone that can do arithmetic. I'm thoroughly convinced that both the democrats and republicans are seriously math challenged.
Re:GOP lineup -- same prob as 2004 Dem ticket (Score:5, Insightful)
The Tea Party wasn't some general movement, no matter how much its advocates stated, it was a Libertarian populist movement that was sucking the blood out of the Republican party.
No, it was (mostly) a bunch of middle- and working-class retirees, unwittingly carrying water for billionaires.
And after the first few weeks, only "populist" if being funded by the usual Republican operatives counts as being populist.
I think this whole race has been nothing more than a tactical day at the nut house, and the Republicans will have learned their lesson.
It will be interesting to see if they learn the appropriate lesson, but I don't expect it.
They had a good scam that served them well for half a century: pretend to be conservative rather than plutocratic, and lure people to vote against their own self-interest by playing on their fears, intolerance, and bigotry.
But they've had to keep narrowing that "base" (as the media insists on calling them) by ever more radical rhetoric against everyone else, and now it's getting so narrow that the coalition of plutocrats + bed wetters + social conservatives + bigots doesn't add up to enough people to reliably win elections anymore.
Plus, the plutocrats been appealing to those groups so long that the nutters are starting to run the nuthouse.
But where can they turn? The plutocrats (the real Republican base) certainly aren't going to give up their desire to enrich themselves at public expense, and the nutters aren't going to give up their nuttery.
I suspect the actual lessons to be learned are:
a) the plutocrats will realize they need to divorce the others, and will start looking for a new scam to replace the old one
b) the nutters will conclude that they weren't nutty enough, and crank it up two notches next time around.
The party's civil war will continue, because there's no exit strategy for when the nuts start taking over the nuthouse. Some chance the party will fall apart and be replaced by a new one, as has happened before in the USA, but I expect that to take years, if it happens at all.
To my dearest genius (Score:5, Insightful)
Its only when the US goes fucking up in other countries (which seems to be quite often lately) do we notice, mostly because we have to go in and help clean up your mess.
Contradicts the first part of the point that you thought you were making:
I know many Americans are too arrogant to grasp this, but most of the world's population don't actually know let alone care about most things that happen in the USA.
Given the above,
Regardless of your personal view of how important US politics may be, even on a global scale, Slashdot is meant to be a Tech. news site. Lets keep it that way please.
Regardless of your clear genius, the political direction of the US Congress, Presidency (and judiciary that they put into power) directs the crafting and execution of legislation that applies to geeks. If your head wasn't preoccupied with spelunking the deeper regions of your colon, you'd be aware of such geek-centric topics as net neutrality, copyright, and piracy, and how US policy is deeply intertwined with global policy.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
No. We need the fed. We need the FCC. we need the FAA. We need the FDA and FTC.
We need competent people running them.
We don't need smaller government. We need smarter government. Going on a witch hunt because somehow the fed is offensive is the LAST thing we need.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Santorum never had a change because mainstream conservative thought really has moved on from the religious-crazy ideas that Santorum brought to the table - those might have worked 20 years ago, but thankfully times change.
Santorum was an embarassment to the GOP. He was the right-wing of our grandfathers, when what we desparately need now is a fiscal conservative, not a social conservative. Of course, finding a fiscal conservative with enough political savvy to avoid making an idiot of himself on camera is proving difficult - I guess once you've been in the game long enough, a less powerful government doesn't seem so appealing any more.
Re:"Nerds don't care about politics" -- tomhath (Score:5, Insightful)
+1. This.
The best Republican prez since Clinton.
Not really immune (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly the ones outside the States (or at least, mostly immune).
Do you really think that? A dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist Christian that thinks the Apocalypse is a good thing because he gets to meet his BFF Jesus that day, in charge of the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world?
Still think you're immune?
Re:Ron Paul (Score:0, Insightful)
I see you found the part where he isn't going to provide you with a job, iProducts, healthcare, or anything else and expects you to earn them for yourself. Guess you are 80% freeloader.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you can't really compare Ronulus Prime with the real candidates.
You underestimate the passion on the right for "anyone but Romney". The general feeling was that Romney (aka Dole 2.0) will lose to Obama, and so every possible alternative candidate was explored - plus Romney is just kinda creepy. But it's clear now that the majority on the right can't stomache Santorum. The primaries he won were just a matter of timing - the "not Romney wave" has slowly drifted form candidate to candidate over the past 6 months, and whichever non-Romney it was at the time might win some primaries (Cain and Perry peaked before Iowa, though).
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:2, Insightful)
Dangerous: He's a gold standard nut. He wants to move US currency back to it. Frankly I don't know a great deal about it, but it seems to me that either way you go you have a faith based economy. In one case it's faith in the economy, the other is faith that the fed has the gold it says it has and will actually exchange it for money, plus faith that gold is valuable.
Foolish: The gold standard thing again?
Ignorant: He doesn't realize that some of his ideologies, totally unchecked, hurt very real people. He seems to think that the market will fix bigotry. Some have gone so far as to claim he's racist, I really doubt it though. He's not considerate of the issues at all, but I don't think it makes him racist.
All that said, I like him. There's zero chance of him getting the gold standard thing through. But some of his other ideas are very healthy: Like his anti-war anti-military positions. We need that, especially from a Republican.
Anyway, he has no chance. He has no appeal for the moralistic nutjobs. He has as much chance as a pro-life democrat.
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ron Paul is the best candidate America had in over 50 years.
While I admire him for many of his views (anti-war, personal privacy, consistent, etc), Ron Paul is not a viable candidate. He is not realistic in many of his plans - and he can get away with it because he doesn't really expect to win. For example, he's the guy who plans to eliminate IRS and (at least earlier) public schools. How realistic is that?
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
So I'm among those who like about 60% of what Ron Paul stands for and am seriously worried about the other 40%. (For the record, I like about 30% of what Obama stands for and am seriously worried about 70%, and for Romney the split is closer to 5%/95% with the 5% varying from hour to hour.)
The parts I'm all for: drug legalization, bringing the troops home, restoring civil liberties, and cutting back on big military spending.
The parts I'm seriously concerned about: Returning to a gold standard, eliminating all social welfare programs, pretty much complete deregulation of economic transactions, and eliminating any restrictions on what the states can do within their borders. The reasons:
A) Returning to any sort of metallic standard is basically decreeing 0% inflation. This sounds like a good thing for those with wealth trying to hang onto it, but most economists think somewhere around 2% inflation is actually closer to the ideal, and some argue that 4% is better. Current mainstream macroeconomics thinks that lower inflation generally yields higher unemployment, which was part of the argument of William Jennings Bryan's bimetalism campaign back in the 1890's.
B) Eliminating social welfare programs is just plain stupid, because those without jobs and without welfare will do what they need to do to eat. Private charities can't handle the case load (they're already overbooked), so that means that people will be turning to crime in increasing numbers with the goal of keeping a roof overhead and food on the table. Many of those people will get caught and thrown in prison, costing the government even more than welfare does.
C) Deregulation of business makes for unlevel economic transactions with all the advantage invariably going to the side with the largest supply of capital, legal advice, and market share. In other words, if you think software EULAs and cell phone contracts are one-sided now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
D) The basic problem I tend to have with "state's rights" arguments is that the rights in question have almost always been the right to oppress black people (southern politicians were using that exact phrase in 1860 and 1960 to mean precisely that). Which seems to be activity that Ron Paul at least in the past was a supporter of.
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. I think we need a new category of political thought. State-atarian, perhaps. How else can one say it is libertarian to simply move a decision from Federal to State control. Control, regardless of granularity (or bureaucratic burdens of 50x as many regulatory agencies), is still control. Further, state-level control loses economies of scale: everyone gets screwed by the lack of regulatory uniformity and the cost of learning how to comply with 50 disparate regulatory agencies per regulatory category (god help you if your work involves half a dozen different compliance mechanisms like environmental, consumer product safety, banking/finance, etc). As for state control, the near-century between the end of the civil war and federal enforcement of minority civil rights in the south is a damned solid counterargument to ceding such power to states. The only certainty (and in my impression the **GOAL**) of dropping regs to the state level is arbitrage: someone will let megacorps screw them more easily than if federal regs held the entire nation to one standard.
As for Paul's stance, I don't get the charm: his libertarianism is just as naive and flawed as pure-play communism or unregulated capitalism. Hell, every hacker knows that stuff built on ideals are like will-o-wisps, and easily hacked.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not anti-Libertarian. I like it. But I also like socialized things like cops, freeways, and social security. The best ideas come out of the tug of war between libertarianism and socialism and capitalism. Keep all three ideals in your hip pocket as reference and guidance, but keep a copy of Machiavelli and the Art of War, too. Balance their ideals and mechanisms to reach your goals.
Regulations are akin to infosec 'defense in depth' -- they're countermeasures to combat rogues who simply seek to game any simplistic, idealized system. When they get crufty, don't be afraid to refactor (this is what the US **SUCKS** at, IMHO). But please don't pretend that the flaw isn't the cruft itself, but the presence of an ideal you loathe. YOUR idealizations won't survive alone. None do. They'll either be gamed (and that makes them unfair) or they'll need enforcement and balance mechanisms. In other words, they'll need regulations. But (to repeat myself) be vigilant to keep regulations simple and sane. A good regulation mechanism would be a well-designed no-deductions progressive tax simple enough to be autocomputed off paystubs, property records, or whatever. A crappy regulation mechanism is the current US tax code. Or state/local/county sales taxes -- due to the very complexity that the AnonCoward parent advocates by pushing policy down from federal to state levels.
TL/DR: fed vs. state regulation isn't a libertarian issue. Ideals never actually work ideally. And most of our (US's) problems aren't ideological: they're cruft and an unwillingness to refactor crufty legal code. And don't ever implicitly trust an idealist -- always look behind the curtain and try to understand what can go wrong.
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:4, Insightful)
One other thought:
The latest CBS polling shows that Romney will lose to Obama by 4 percent, whereas Ron Paul would defeat the current president by 5. Maybe YOU hate him but Paul has crossover appeal to independents and Democrats that Romney lacks.
- So if you like Obama and want 4 more years, hope Romney is the republican candidate.
- If you dislike Obama and want him out, then Paul is who you should be backing. The D's and I's like him more than they like Obama, and will put him into the white house.
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:4, Insightful)
How would he manage that? Public schools are run at the State and local level, not by the Federal government.
And the President really doesn't have the power to shut down State and local programs.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not really immune (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you privy to some quirk of Santorum's eschatology that makes him more dangerous than previous theologically-conservative presidents, none of whom has yet provoked a nuclear holocaust?
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
Returning to any sort of metallic standard is basically decreeing 0% inflation.
Surprisingly, this is not true. You can still have periods of inflation, even with a gold standard, and you can have periods of deflation as well. In part because of money velocity, and in part because of changing amounts of gold in circulation.
The problem with the gold standard is you have absolutely no control of when the inflation or deflation happens. And by Murphy's law it will happen whenever you don't want it to.
Besides, the world is a better place when gold is used to make things pretty, not stored in vaults.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. (Score:5, Insightful)
RP is right about our military spending. It is just wacko that we spend more now than we did when we had an actual hostile superpower (the USSR) to contend with. He is also right that the government should just butt out of people's private lives (but curiously, he doesn't think women should be able to choose to have abortions). On most other topics, he is a nutter, pure and simple.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hospitalized daughter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hospital? What do you mean? Aren't you against science, progress and think that god and prayer can do everything for you? Well, stay the fuck out of our hospitals and just leave your daughter at home and pray until she dies, then say it was god's will.
Really, that's what we should do to the anti-science bigots. You are "pro-life"? You want creationism in schools? Great, go live with the Amish. If you enjoy living in the 21th century, embrace science and dump your imaginary god.
Re:Color me surprised. Or not. (Score:3, Insightful)
State boards are doing a good enough job? What his definition of a bad job be, then?
He's from Texas, too. Wow.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:4, Insightful)
While some federal government based co-ordination is required for national level standards... i don't think he is against this... he sounds like the kind of person that would say to the states/people "right, you want this to be a federal matter, please pass a constitutional amendment saying so..." and you would get the XXth amendment stating something to the effect of the federal government has the power to regulate radiofrequency spectrum across all states in the USA (for the FCC) or the federal government has the power to regulate all air traffic, civilian and military, inside USA airspace. (for the FAA and nationally coordinated ATC), and so on.
Quite sensible when you think about it... and a lot harder to just keep expanding on with bullshit 'interstate commerce' type nonsense. He seems to just want to make people really think about what the federal government does, and get back to the principle of 'enumerated powers', if the federal government is going to control something, he would probably be fine with whatever it is if it was a constitutional amendment passed by the majority of the states, thus expressing the will of the people.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:5, Insightful)
Something to notice about your two lists: Look at which items on the lists a president can actually do and which ones he can't.
Your "all for it" list:
Your "seriously concerned" list:
Also, in the areas where a president went too far in exercising his executive powers, Congress could pull him up short by passing legislation that limits his freedom of action in those areas. They probably couldn't limit his power as Commander-in-Chief, because that's not an authority they gave him, but all of the social programs, business regulation, etc., are powers created by legislation, not the Constitution. The authority given by Congress can be taken away, or limited, by Congress. They'd have to do it with veto-proof majorities, but if the president tried to do anything too extreme, that could be done.
Bottom line: Most of the things you'd like RP to do would be within his power as president, while the things you wouldn't like would not. To achieve any of those things, he'd have to convince Congress.
Re:Ron Paul (Score:3, Insightful)
By your post, you have identified yourself as a technocrat, someone who believes that small-scale "experts", devoid of an overall philosophy, are all that are needed to run a government.
The Fed is a ruse to make people believe that the monetary policy disasters of the government aren't the government's fault. There was no need for the Fed when it was created, and things have gotten worse since then.
The FCC's proper function is to register frequency allocations and correct violations thereof. It is presently acting as a censor, a court, and an agent of political pressure for whomever is in power. Not good.
The FAA's functions should be entirely private.
The FDA is competing with Obamacare as the most hideous danger to health in this country. It's only possible valid function is to regulate the purity of foods and drugs and the accuracy of labels. It is acting as an armed police force, a medicine Czar, a scourge to the food supplement industry, and a protector of defective medicines, among other abuses.
There is absolutely no valid reason for the existence of the FTC.
A smarter, more competent, more efficient Stasi is not what we need, but that is what you are advocating.