Freedom of Speech = Freedom from Responsibility?

[dwer.livejournal.com]

So, I know, I know. It's Glenn Beck. We expect the whacko from him. And, of course, he's got every right to speak his mind; I certainly don't think he should be censored.

But at what point does he become responsible for the actions of people who follow his advice?



Buy farmland. Move to places where everyone is like you. Buy guns. Buy ammunition. And then... what? It's not like enclaving really works long term. Eventually, one of two things will happen.

1) After Obama's term ends without the world doing the same, maybe some of these people will pull their heads out and say "why did we listen to that guy?"
2) Someone provokes an incident.

The message sent by the American people this election was quite clear. The President won a resounding electoral victory and beat his opponent by more votes than Bush beat Kerry. Every competitive senate race save for one was taken by the democrats, and these aren't blue-dogs we're talking about; these are real progressive liberals like Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin. And while the GOP retained the House, they did lose seats, and more people voted for Democratic Congresspeople than Republicans.

It was a fundamental rejection of GOP ideology. It was a rejection of the rape brigade, a rejection of the Ryan budget plan, a rejection of the concepts of the Makers and Takers, a rejection of the concept of the 47%, a rejection of conservative definitions of marriage, women, LGBTQ, race, immigration and drug law.

But the GOP doesn't seem to want to believe it. The constant refrain of "Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed" continues to sing in their ears, drowning out anything resembling the truth, which is that they lost and they lost big, and then they turn to people like Glenn Beck, and he tells them to buy farms, move to where everyone is like you, and get more guns.

Or this guy, who advocates cutting EVERY democrat in your life out of that life, to the point where he doesn't know if he'd rescue a democrat who was drowning, and thinks that he can get better brain surgery in Mexico than from a US brain surgeon who happened to vote differently than he did.

Or these people who think that losing an election is a national emergency so they, who so often rail about how burning the flag is treasonous, fly their flags upside down to indicate distress.



At their McDonalds.

And why do they do this?

Because they've been lied to, by the guy at the top of this post. By Rush. By Karl Rove. By http://www.unskewedpolls.com By every pundit who insisted that Nate Silver was cheating. Hell, GOP donors are angry because they were assured, ASSURED, I TELL YOU, that Romney was going to win based on bad data using bad algorithms, and a campaign that wasn't going to be dictated to by facts.

So what responsibility to these people have to tell the truth, I wonder? Of course, I think they should tell the truth. There are reasonable arguments to be made on policy. There are reasonable disagreements to have. I just wish we could see more of that, and less insistence that Obama is a kenyan radical christian muslim nazi communist.

Comments

[oslo.livejournal.com]

The demographic breakdown tells us a) who the Obama campaign targeted and b) who the Romney campaign failed to turn out.

No, it doesn't. The demographic breakdown just shows us how the members of certain demographics voted. That they happened to break more for Obama doesn't show that Obama targeted them - that's getting the inference backward.

If you wanted to understand who Obama targeted and whether that targeting does or doesn't point to a demographic problem for the GOP, you'd have to look at the respective percentages of eligible voters vs. actual voters of each demographic and how they actually voted - historically, and relative to one another. Do you have any relevant data to that end?

Right, because you've utterly ignored all the data presented up to this point so you can say that.

I don't think I'm ignoring anything; if I were, you'd be able to present some data that I am ignoring. I am just looking at the same data you're looking at, in this thread, and saying that an alternative explanation exists to the one you favor, which is that there is some "rightward shift" going on; my proposed explanation being that voters might have been just generally less enthusiastic about Obama in 2012 than they were in 2008. What data excludes this possibility? Particularly given that we know that they were less enthusiastic?

You keep citing Obama's legendary GOTV machine, but this remains nothing but a lazy hand-wave until you cite some evidence.

If it were truly the problem you're saying, the Republicans wouldn't hold the House right now and would be way, way outnumbered in the Senate and in the gubernatorial races. That's simply not the case.

And if there were truly a "rightward shift" going on, the Republicans would hold the White House and safe majorities in Congress. See how easy this is?

There are problems with your assertion here, but the most fundamental one is that no one is claiming that the demographics have already doomed the Republican party; this is a forecast for the future, based on current trends. Does the Republican party still have enough support among white men and seniors to keep a hold on power? Apparently so. Will that be enough in the future? What are you looking at that suggests that it will be?

The people who are saying that the Republicans have a demographic issue are just looking at how the numbers among the demographics are splitting. Your response to this is to say: "Numbers be damned, I know the truth, and the numbers wouldn't be what they are if Obama hadn't mounted a Herculean GOTV effort." No evidence at all for this, but hey. These demographics didn't break for McCain in 2008, they didn't break for Romney in 2012. Will they break for whomever the Republicans select in 2016? Your answer seems to be: "Maybe, if the Republicans adopt a more conservative position and target those demographics," despite the fact that none of the demographics that have broken against the Republican for the past two presidential elections seem to be won over or particularly inspired by the Republican's more conservative ideology. Only white men.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

You're falling into his trap. He's being deliberately vague so you have to transcribe his comments and he can just say "That's not what I said/meant" and nothing else.

I really doubt there's an actual interest for discussion.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

That they happened to break more for Obama doesn't show that Obama targeted them - that's getting the inference backward.

If you wanted to understand who Obama targeted and whether that targeting does or doesn't point to a demographic problem for the GOP, you'd have to look at the respective percentages of eligible voters vs. actual voters of each demographic and how they actually voted - historically, and relative to one another. Do you have any relevant data to that end?

We know that these groups came out more for Obama than they have historically. Whether that's the new normal, again, we can't know for a while.

You keep citing Obama's legendary GOTV machine, but this remains nothing but a lazy hand-wave until you cite some evidence.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/tech/web/obama-campaign-tech-team/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/11/07/turnout-and-organization-were-key-to-obama-victory/1688537/
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/blogs/death-race/2012/10/president-obama-appears-under-the.html
http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/

And if there were truly a "rightward shift" going on, the Republicans would hold the White House and safe majorities in Congress. See how easy this is?

Not really. Moving to the right does not mean we've moved far enough to overcome, say, a good GOTV effort! Romney failed to exploit what was achieved in 2010, failed to achieve what was achieved in Wisconsin in 2012.

The people who are saying that the Republicans have a demographic issue are just looking at how the numbers among the demographics are splitting.

Yes. It assumes they'll never come on board, that the demographics are automatically an issue, and have no data other than simply "there are X number of Y group that doesn't support Republicans growing at Z." Bush got 40% of the Latino vote in 2004. There's no demographic bomb, it's a turnout bomb.