Why Bush Won

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
121

More good analysis of the exit-poll data from a Canadian blogger:

http://andrewcoyne.com/archives/004035.php

Invasion of the theo-cons

It’s only been 24 hours, and already the media line on the US election has been set: It’s all due to George Bush’s cult-like hold on the religious right, wound up into a frenzy over gay marriage and other “values” issues and marched off to the polls in record numbers. The National was pushing this theme particularly hard tonight,

complete with scary shots of marauding gangs of evangelicals in choir formation.

This fits with an earlier media framing device, to the effect that Bush’s strategy relied on “turning out the base” rather than attracting undecided and swing voters, as in this post-election analysis from CBS News:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/03/politics/main653592.shtml
“President Bush’s campaign won re-election through the strategic gamble that there was more to gain from galvanizing conservatives and stressing moral issues than from reaching out to centrist voters.” Or, more hysterically, this piece from arch-partisan Sidney Blumenthal, in the Guardian:

The evangelical churches became instruments of political organisation. Ideology was enforced as theology, turning nonconformity into sin, and the faithful, following voter guides with biblical literalism, were shepherded to the polls as though to the rapture. White Protestants, especially in the south, especially married men, gave their souls and votes for flag and cross. The campaign was one long revival.

This, after Kerry campaigned from the pulpit in black churches on five straight Sundays.

All well in keeping with the prevailing Democratic/media view that only morons and blinkered zealots would vote for Bush. But not at all in keeping with the actual data on who voted and why, as revealed in the massive (13,660 respondents), comprehensive CNN exit poll. CNN.com Election 2004

True, it found the largest single block of voters identified “moral values” as the “most important election issue” – a much cited factoid – and that 80% of these respondents voted for Bush. But that hardly makes this election a triumph of theocracy. In the first place, “largest single block” turns out to mean 22%, meaning 78% of voters – including two-thirds of Bush voters – named some other issue. Second, the pollsters only managed to elevated “moral values” to number one by dividing up the other issues into subcategories. Thus “Iraq” and “Terrorism” are treated as separate issues, though grouped together as, say, “national security” they would have claimed the top spot, with 34% of the total. Likewise “taxes” and “economy” were named by a combined 25% of voters. Had “moral values” been split into “abortion” and “gay marriage,” the spin would have been rather different.

Let’s move on. 37% of voters identified themselves as Republicans, the same as the Democratic turnout: the first time that has happened for a long time, if ever. That fits with the “turn out the base” thesis (I’m not saying it’s not true – just that it’s not the whole truth). But crunch the numbers a little further. Bush got roughly 90% of the Republican vote, plus 10% of the Democratic vote – plus 50% of Independents. Add it up: that means fully one-third of Bush’s vote came from non-Republicans – the same proportion as the “moral values” voters.

Possibly there’s some overlap – or a lot – between the two. That’s the point. Even if it were true that Bush drew disproportionate support among moral-majority types, that’s only one of many possible ways of slicing the data, and it’s revealing that analysts would seize on it. (See Jacques Parizeau, “Money and the Ethnic Vote: A Study in Selective Interpretation.”)

For example, we might also note that Bush’s support increased significantly among women (at 48%, there was effectively no gender gap: indeed he led Kerry 55-44 among white women), among Hispanics (44%, a record for any Republican candidate), among blacks (okay, it was only 11%, up from 9% last time, but that’s a one-fifth increase!), among Jews (at 25%, a one-third expansion), and among Catholics (where he beat Kerry, a Catholic, 52-47).

When a candidate draws increased numbers of votes from groups not traditionally identified with his party, we usually call that “broadening the base.” So why the fascination with zombie hordes of theo-cons?

ADDENDA: More fascinating nuggets from the exit polls:

  • About 45% of Bush’s vote – nearly half – came from self-identified “moderates” or “liberals.” (How do I get that figure? Jump about a fifth of the way down the page, where it breaks down the vote “by ideology.” Liberals made up 21% of all voters, and Bush got 13% of their votes. Multiplying the two, that means 2.7% of voters were “liberals for Bush.” Doing the same for moderates (45% of all voters, 45% of whom voted Bush) yields 20.3%: the number of moderate Bush voters. Adding these two tells us 23% of all voters were liberal or moderate Bushies. Those 23% represented 45% of all Bush voters, given these were 51% of the total vote.)

  • Bush took 46% of first-time voters. He took 52% of college graduates. 48% of working women. 44% of those earning less than $50,000. 45% of those aged 18-29. Given these are conventionally supposed to be strongly Democratic demographic groups, it suggests the stereotype of Bush voters as middle-aged white guys is equally suspect.

  • Bush, the AWOL Texas National Guard pilot, claimed 57% of the veterans vote, versus 41% for the “decorated war hero.”

  • Bush was the choice of 46% of those who said they made up their minds in the last week. The undecided split about evenly – not 9 to 1 for the challenger, as was assumed in one pre-election poll.

  • Bush was overwhelmingly favoured by those who said the most important quality in a president was either “religious faith,” “honesty,” “strong leader” or “clear stands on the issues.” (The latter two were the most commonly cited criteria among Bush voters, religious faith the least.) Kerry enjoyed equally strong support among those who looked for “intelligence,” “cares about people” or “will bring change.”

  • 80% of Bush voters said they voted for their candidate, rather than against the other one. Barely a third of Kerry voters said the same.

  • 93% of voters said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the cost and availability of health care. Yet despite making the issue one of the centrepieces of his campaign, Kerry could do no better than to split these voters with Bush.

  • Though 52% of voters said the economy was “not good” or “poor,” fewer voters trusted Kerry to handle the economy than Bush. Neither candidate was trusted by a majority.

  • Only 56% said the Bin Laden videotape was important to their vote. Of these, the vote was split 50-50 between the candidates. The tape was not a factor.

The rest is more or less as you’d expect.

122

some of you guys get a little too exicited about some stuff that has nothing to do with what the original post talks about… And by the way you guys(christians and non) blame God for a lot of stuff he doesn’t want blame for.
But to the original post…
Im 22 and almost everyone I know my age voted. We do vote I really think a lot more of us voted this time and the numbers will hopefully continue to go up.
Besides just because a person is young it does not automatically make them vote democrate.
K said my peace fight on hippies.
DA

123

At first I wondered if any current events/news within the last few months would make people think and/or change who’d they vote for. I am impressed that people can make up their minds so early and stick with it no matter how much more crap the media covers.

Funny how much credit people gave Moore’s movie and how it would mess up the campaign. I didn’t think anyone needed a movie to inform us on current events- I figured Americans knew how to read.

Funny how both the right and left didn’t think the Moral Values issue would be the major part of the win. I was reading a weekly paper and laughed at how all the columnists, and they are totally correct, knew that it would all come down to Iraq and the way it was handled. Unfortunately, I think they watch too much TV. Funnier how environmental issues were…huh? Nevermind.

A honest view of how GwB won- He wanted to by all means possible. Kerry didn’t, Democrats didn’t, and Libbys didn’t. If the K-D-Ls really wanted to win do you think they would have chosen Kerry to be their rep? Very much not. Dumbasses.

124

greatgro,

51%-48%, ding-dong.

That extra percentage point means quite a bit with such a huge number.

By the way, wasn’t increasing turnout supposed to help Democrats?

More elitest garbabe that has found it’s way into “popular lore.” The assumption being, of course, that most people are inherently Democratic.

Wrong.

JeffR

125

Another interesting take looking at why Bush won – the reason proferred: Liberalism.

Wall Street Journal Editorial

The Moral Minority
November 4, 2004; Page A14

Watching John Kerry deliver his statesmanlike concession at Faneuil Hall in Boston yesterday – and then watching his erstwhile spinners and boosters in the Democratic commentariat blame him for Tuesday’s rout – was like one of those nature shows in which the herd gives up its dying animal to the crocs so it can safely ford the stream. It may be expedient, but it also reflects the flaws of the species.

Mr. Kerry did not run a flawless campaign – no one running for President ever does. But he ran an effective and energetic one that came about as close to scoring an electoral victory as his margin of popular defeat would allow. His handlers led him into a ditch with his Convention focus on biography and Vietnam, yet the Senator rescued himself in the first debate on foreign policy, the very one he was expected to lose.

And while President Bush sought constantly to sharpen his differences with Mr. Kerry, the Senator largely succeeded in blurring them, turning an argument about ideology into one about competence. Given the current parameters of Democratic orthodoxy and Mr. Kerry’s sincerely held reservations about the use of force, it was the only thing he could do.

As it is, Mr. Kerry was not exactly the night’s lonely Democratic loser. This is the third consecutive election in which the Democrats have lost to George Bush’s Republicans (with each loss bigger than the last) and that is no accident. In part it has to do with the global zeitgeist, which plays to traditional Republican strengths on national security; in part with demographic shifts that tilt the electoral college Mr. Bush’s way. And as we write in a related commentary, it has still more to do with Mr. Bush’s skill as a politician and boldness as a policy maker.

But let’s be candid with our Democratic friends: On Tuesday, a majority of the American electorate took a look at their party and asked, “Who are these people?” Who are George Soros, Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Susan Sontag, Teresa Heinz Kerry and all these other self-anointed spokespersons for everything good and true? And what does a party that is dominated by a loose coalition of the coastal intelligentsia, billionaires with too much spare time, the trial lawyers’ association, the Hollywood Actors’ Guild, rock stars and unionized labor have in common with what’s quaintly known as Middle America? The majority’s answers were (a) not us; and (b) not a whole lot.

Yet today, the Democratic Party not only suffers trial lawyers and other strange folk – it puts them on the ticket. For a party that still reckons itself a national force, it is astonishing that Kerry-Edwards started out by simply yielding some 200 “red” electoral votes, or more than a third of the country. It’s true that the Bush campaign similarly wrote off big and mid-sized “blue” states such as California, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts. But at least Republicans own the governorships of all those states. When do the Democrats plan to be seriously competitive again in, say, Texas, Florida and Georgia?

Before Tuesday, the answer appeared to be never. Howard Dean did make primary appeals to the Dukes of Hazzard crowd (as he imagines it), but his was a lone voice. This is a Democratic Party in which nostalgia for tradition is too often considered racism, opposition to gay marriage is bigotry, misgiving about abortion is misogyny, Christian fundamentalism is like Islamic fundamentalism, discussion about gender roles is sexism, and confidence in America’s global purpose is cultural imperialism. To put it mildly, this is not the values system to which most Americans adhere.

Now, however, Democrats have an opportunity to reassess their attitudes. With luck, the election will finally have shattered the myth that Mr. Bush is a “selected,” democratically illegitimate president. Democrats may also take the lesson that a political strategy which invites Americans to share in their contempt for the President’s intelligence, moral values and religious beliefs – basically, the Al Gore sighing technique writ large – is not a winner. That’s especially true when the President’s intelligence, values and beliefs roughly coincide with those of middle Americans.

The person on whom the task of moral normalization may fall is Hillary Rodham Clinton, now the most prominent Democrat in the Senate and arguably the party’s front-runner for President in 2008. It’s true that it was during her husband’s Administration that today’s great red-blue state cultural divide began to emerge. But she’s shown remarkable discipline as a politician, and remarkable adaptability, too, as she has slowly turned herself into a hawk on national security since September 11. That this task might now fall to her must surely have the gods smiling.

126

Chubs,

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Please explain.

If that is just sour grapes/Monday Morning Quarterbacking, just say that.

Thanks,

JeffR

127

[quote]Superman wrote:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/16/attack/main509294.shtml

oh and

And i quote

“If the FBI can spend resources investigating whether there is prostitution in New Orleans, they ought to be able to find the resources to investigate what happened in this country prior to 9/11,” Sen. Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said in a news conference last week.

Now what the fuck your talking about before you try to insult me, at least do it properly…
[/quote]

Ok, I?ll do it properly. You are a hatful bigot. It that better?

Let me quote what you said:

Oh yeah, that is a real upstanding thing to say, keeping it in the realm of ?discussion? as you said earlier.

Then you attack people on their Christian faith, which you obviously don?t even know a thing about. (No I am not a Christian.)

And this shows your ignorance. You know how much information Bush gets every day? A ton, the size of a phonebook, but he magically knew this one piece of information. I thought he was supposed to be stupid, but now has a photographic memory of all the information he receives, and can read a phonebook worth of information in a day and do everything else also.

Here is how Osama works. He leaks threat after threat, most of them false, in an attempt to keep our intelligence agency confused as to the truth. They might not have been able to verify this.

But your statement makes it seem that he knew the day, time, and place of the attack. That is ignorant, and crazy conspiracy theory.

Then you say he knew what was and wasn’t in Iraq when his intelligence didn’t know, and the British intelligence, plus Russia. How did he get more information then all of these agencies?

Also exactly why is the FBI supposed to quit doing any other police work? This is what they do, whether I believe in legalized prostitution or not, it is illegal, and they work on it. When the meter maid gives you a ticket do you complain that she isn’t stopping people from being raped? That is not her job, that is the job of other people. Maybe this was the prostitution section of the FBI.

Then again it could have been more then a prostitution ring. Maybe they had connections to bigger crime. How exactly do you know? You do realize Daschle brought this up for political reasons don’t you?

Ok, on to your link showing Bush ?knew? about the attacks. First you should read more then the headline. Sometimes the headline is wrong, is biased, (surprising from CBS) or completely twists the meaning.

From this article is this little quote:

The document did not, however, mention the possibility of planes being flown into buildings.

Wait, Bush knew they would fly planes into buildings, but the document used as proof didn’t even mention flying planes into buildings?

This is an article about how the intelligence agencies speculate, something they always do. But that does not mean they know what is going to happen.

If you were to find out that somebody said he was going to punch you in the face, would you be prepared 1 year later?

But this also was in the article:

According to Fleischer, after the information was presented to President Bush in August, the administration put domestic agencies on alert in the summer, just months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

That alert was not announced publicly but Fleischer suggested it may have prompted the hijackers to change their tactics.

“The administration, based on hijackings, notified the appropriate agencies and, I think, that’s one of the reasons that you saw that the people who committed the 9-11 attacks used box cutters and plastic knives to get around America’s system of protecting against hijackings,” he said.

So they actually took some action just in case. Wasn?t that the right thing to do, especially when they didn?t even know if it was a true threat or not?

How do you prepare for something that has never happened before? Especially when you are not even sure it is true?

If you want to debate, quit attacking others, then getting upset when it happens to you. This is childish.

Also be careful of all of these conspiracy theories. If you are making an accusation, then you need proof, otherwise you will be looked upon as a loon.

Now you could have said “I think Bush knew about it beforehand.” Which means it is your belief, not an accusation. But you didn’t. You made it a statement.

128

[quote]PtrDR wrote:
After all the seething rage, hate, mean spirited name calling,insults etc that were hurled on President Bush;…GOD got it right as usual![/quote]

That’s my new “favorite” quote of the year.

129

George Will also points out why liberalism had to do with Kerry’s defeat:

America’s Shifting Reality

By GEORGE F. WILL
November 5, 2004

“I think the Union army had something to do with it.”

–Gen. George Pickett, years afterward, on why his charge at Gettysburg failed.

WASHINGTON – John Kerry’s liberalism had something to do with his defeat. Hence so did this: By Jan. 20, 2009, all the elected presidents for 44 consecutive years will have come from three Southern states – Texas, Arkansas, Georgia – and Southern California.

Mr. Kerry ran a high-risk “biography candidacy” based on a four-month period 35 years ago. His contrasting silence about his 20 Senate years echoed. He was an anomalous kind of challenger. The most important changes he promised would be either restorations or resistances. That is, he campaigned as the candidate of complacency, albeit a curdled, backward-looking complacency.

Regarding foreign policy, he promised to turn the clock back, to the alliance-centered foreign policy prior to the intrusion of the “nuisance” of terrorism. Regarding domestic policy, he promised to stop the clock, preventing any forward movement on entitlement reform to cope with the baby boomers’ retirements.

Never in this marathon did Mr. Kerry himself do anything to change the campaign’s dynamics. He counted on events in Iraq, and on the power of his party’s unconcealed belief that Mr. Bush is an imbecile. But Democrats cannot disguise from the country their bewilderment about how to appeal to a country that is so backward, they think, that it finds Mr. Bush appealing.

Democrats, notoriously cold toward losing candidates they have improvidently nominated, resemble Dallas fans as described by quarterback Roger Staubach: “Cowboy fans love you, win or tie.” They should rethink their compressed nominating calendar – Mr. Kerry was effectively selected by the 135,000 who voted for him in Iowa and New Hampshire – and the fetish of allowing those two states, rather than, say, Michigan, to dominate the process.

As part of its penance for nominating a senator – it is 44 years since one was elected president – and one more liberal (according to the liberal Americans for Democratic Action) than Walter Mondale, the Democratic Party should purge its Michael Moore faction. Moore, the vulgarian who made the movie “Fahrenheit 9/11,” is unhinged by his loathing of Mr. Bush – and of the country that has now re-elected him. Moore and the hordes of his enthusiasts are a stain on the party – as are those Democratic senators and representatives who last June made a merry festival of the movie’s Washington premiere. Moore illustrates the fact that the Republican Party benefits – it is energized by resentment – when the entertainment industry and major journalistic institutions (e.g., The New York Times, CBS News) enlist as appendages of the Democratic Party’s advocacy apparatus.

Never have Americans felt less affinity with Europe, but never have their politics been more European, meaning organized around ideologically homogenous parties. Just 25 years ago there were many liberals and conservatives in both parties. On Tuesday, four moderate-to-conservative Texas Democratic congressmen were defeated, the result of a second redistricting since the 2000 census. A conservative Georgia Republican won a Senate seat vacated by a conservative Democrat and a conservative Louisiana Republican won a seat vacated by a moderate Democrat. This continues – and very nearly completes – the process of producing a perfect overlap of America’s ideological and party parameters.

Unlike the two most recent incumbent presidents re-elected, Mr. Bush did not run on rhetorical froth – “Morning Again in America” (1984), “A Bridge to the 21st Century” (1996). He will feel vindicated in his foreign policy and empowered for his well-advertised domestic agenda of tax cuts, tort reform, entitlement reform and conservative judicial nominees.

American politics has known many oscillations; some scholars have discerned an almost metronomic regularity in its political cycles. Now, however, there is an astonishing stasis, immune even to the winds of war.

Since 2000, the issues driving civic discourse have changed radically but the electoral map has changed negligibly. The only 2000 red state that turned blue this year – New Hampshire – made the Northeast, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Maine, monochrome. New Mexico, a 2000 blue state that turned red, completes a red swath from California’s southeastern border to the Atlantic.

The nation’s population center did not cross the Mississippi until the 1980 census. Today it is in Missouri, heading southwest, away from the Democratic Party with its apparently metabolic impulse to ignore such realities.

130

Nate Dogg wrote:
I’m sorry, but if my girlfriend became pregnant, abortion would be a viable option (and one I would support). For I am not ready to have a child (neither is she). You may counter that with something about not having sex or using multiple methods, but the reality is that it could happen (to anyone). And in this case, I feel that the woman should have all options available to make a decision that best suits her and her life, even if that means aborting the baby.

If that is not moral bankruptcy I don’t know what is.

Think about the flip side. What if abortion is illegal and women still get pregnant and don’t want the baby for whatever reason. So they give birth (or try aborting the baby themselves through various methods), and give the child up for adoption. The child goes in and out of foster homes or maybe it is adopted by a loving family. But the reality is that there are many children without a loving home, who are homeless or in and out of foster homes, and many become the children who steal, cheat and end up in jail or become career criminals.

I was given up as a child and grew up in and out of different foster homes - good and bad. I became a responsible citizen. Are you trying to tell me that for the sake of society and for my own sake I should never been born?

131

rats, I messed up the quote thingamajig

132

If you look at the Electorial votes map you see something interesting. Bush took the majority of the states. Which means most people over america believed he was the right man. I am in wisconsin and have no idea why the midwest is always democratic, I think be cause we were also so big with manufacturing and unions, and they believe in democrats. My father got the day off, and believe me they fill his head with democratic views. But what I find so interesting is where the population is very dense such as california, illinois and new york, people become liberal. Most other places stay concervative. What I think is a little unfair is how most “popular” people such as in hollywood use their power to push their views on everyone. IE Moore.

133

Here’s an argument that it was terrorism, rather than values:

http://slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2109275&

The Gay Marriage Myth
Terrorism, not values, drove Bush’s re-election.
By Paul Freedman
Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2004, at 1:16 PM PT

Did “moral values”?in particular, the anti-gay marriage measures on ballots in 11 states this week?drive President Bush’s re-election? That’s the early conventional wisdom as Democrats begin soul-searching and finger-pointing. These measures are alleged to have drawn Christian conservatives to the polls, many of whom failed to vote last time. The theory is intriguing, but the data don’t support it. Gay marriage and values didn’t decide this election. Terrorism did.

The morality theory rests on three claims. The first is that gay-marriage bans led to higher turnout, chiefly among Christian conservatives. The second is that Bush performed especially well where gay marriage was on the ballot. The third is that in general, moral issues decided the election.

The evidence that having a gay-marriage ban on the ballot increased voter turnout is spotty. Marriage-ban states did see higher turnout than states without such measures. They also saw higher increases in turnout compared with four years ago. But these differences are relatively small. Based on preliminary turnout estimates, 59.5 percent of the eligible voting population turned out in marriage-ban states, whereas 59.1 percent turned out elsewhere. This is a microscopic gap when compared to other factors. For example, turnout in battleground states was more than 7.5 points higher than it was in less-competitive states, and it increased much more over 2000 as well.

It’s true that states with bans on the ballot voted for Bush at higher rates than other states. His vote share averaged 7 points higher in gay-marriage-banning states than in other states (57.9 vs. 50.9). But four years ago, when same-sex marriage was but a twinkle in the eye of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Bush’s vote share was 7.3 points higher in these same states than in other states. In other words, by a statistically insignificant margin, putting gay marriage on the ballot actually reduced the degree to which Bush’s vote share in the affected states exceeded his vote share elsewhere.

Why did states with gay-marriage ballot measures vote so heavily for Bush? Because such measures don’t appear on state ballots randomly. Opponents of gay marriage concentrate their efforts in states that are most hospitable to a ban and are most likely to vote for Bush even without such a ballot measure. A state’s history of voting for Bush is more likely to lead to an anti-gay-marriage measure on that state’s ballot than the other way around.

Much has been made of the fact that “moral values” topped the list of voters’ concerns, mentioned by more than a fifth (22 percent) of all exit-poll respondents as the “most important issue” of the election. It’s true that by four percentage points, people in states where gay marriage was on the ballot were more likely than people elsewhere to mention moral issues as a top priority (25.0 vs. 20.9 percent). But again, the causality is unclear. Did people in these states mention moral issues because gay marriage was on the ballot? Or was it on the ballot in places where people were already more likely to be concerned about morality?

More to the point, the morality gap didn’t decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you’re trying to explain why the president’s vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don’t help.

If the morality gap doesn’t explain Bush’s re-election, what does? A good part of the answer lies in the terrorism gap. Nationally, 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush but not Kerry to handle terrorism; only 31 percent trusted Kerry but not Bush. This 18-point gap is particularly significant in that terrorism is strongly tied to vote choice: 99 percent of those who trusted only Kerry on the issue voted for him, and 97 percent of those who trusted only Bush voted for him. Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry.

These differences hold up at the state level even when each state’s past Bush vote is taken into account. When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect. Nor does putting an anti-gay-marriage measure on the ballot. So, if you want to understand why Bush was re-elected, stop obsessing about the morality gap and start looking at the terrorism gap.

Paul Freedman, associate professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, has recently completed a book on television campaign advertising.

134

As an outsider (Canadian) what i find most suprising is that after ALL that has happened in the last 4 years, 40% of the US population, didn’t bother to vote. Think about it…thats more than either party received. #2. That’s a new high in voter turnout, sad if you think about it. #3 Its more than we had in Canada this year. Apathy won another election.

My opinion is this: if you don’t vote, you lose the right to bitch about the government. if you choose not to speak on election day, sorry, but continue to be quiet for 4 more years.

On another note, I gotta agree with my fellow BC girl JPBear, no matter what the issue…but especially the abortion issue. A woman has a right to choose for herself. No matter which decision she makes! Whether I agree with it or not, its not MY choice to make or for that matter to influence. We are all adults and most of us can make our own decisions, and those that, most already have parents. They don’t need any more, especially in office. My 2 Cents…at 83 cents on the US dollar

135

[quote]BiffRadbone wrote:
On another note, I gotta agree with my fellow BC girl JPBear, no matter what the issue…but especially the abortion issue.
[/quote]

Umm, sorry Biff, I was actually trying to go the other direction with that, but I messed up the quote thing so it came across wrong. I am actually pro-life.

136

[quote]JPBear wrote:
I was given up as a child and grew up in and out of different foster homes - good and bad. I became a responsible citizen. Are you trying to tell me that for the sake of society and for my own sake I should never been born?
[/quote]

I don’t think anyone is saying that or would ever say that. However, I would love to know the statistic on those who do grow up in foster homes who do NOT become “responisble citizens”. Unless the groups who are anti-abortion are also equally providing for programs designed to help children at need financially and socially, it is extremely hypocritical. There are too many children who don’t eat well, aren’t raised well, with many not being raised at all to jump to the conclusion that all they have to do is be born and everything will be roses after that.

137

[quote]Professor X wrote:

I don’t think anyone is saying that or would ever say that. However, I would love to know the statistic on those who do grow up in foster homes who do NOT become “responisble citizens”. Unless the groups who are anti-abortion are also equally providing for programs designed to help children at need financially and socially, it is extremely hypocritical. There are too many children who don’t eat well, aren’t raised well, with many not being raised at all to jump to the conclusion that all they have to do is be born and everything will be roses after that.
[/quote]

Some minorities clearly end up in prison more. Should we make the jump that eliminating them before birth (at least until the government was willing to provide what their parents won’t) would be for the best?

138

[quote]Professor X wrote:
There are too many children who don’t eat well, aren’t raised well… [/quote]

There are also too many old people who don’t eat well, weren’t raised well, and quite a few who don’t drive well. Maybe we should just line them up and inject them with salt water and throw them in a trash can.

139

[quote]rainjack wrote:
Professor X wrote:
There are too many children who don’t eat well, aren’t raised well…

There are also too many old people who don’t eat well, weren’t raised well, and quite a few who don’t drive well. Maybe we should just line them up and inject them with salt water and throw them in a trash can.

[/quote]

The clear argument here is you are trying to make it seem as if someone who has lived a life has the same rights as a group of cells that has the potential of becoming a human being. At the start of conception, there is little that sets a human fetus apart from any other animal on the planet. No distinctly HUMAN features are present and it has no independence to live on it’s own. To settle the argument, it has to be settled at what point does it become a viable life that even has the potential of being extinguished. Since there is controversy on that issue, no one side can act as if they alone have it all figured out, whether that be by religious values or otherwise. To be completely pro-life means you don’t even believe in the morning after pill. Hell, you shouldn’t even believe in contraception because you are stopping potential life. Just because those two cells are seperated, if they have the potential to form life, logically every pro-lifer should also be against holding that life back in a condom. If not, then pro-lifers need to decide at what point it is life to kill and at what point it stops being a group of cells. Otherwise this argument never ends and pro-lifers keep making direct correlations between a fetus and an 80 year old man on wellfare. The two are not the same.

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[quote]doogie wrote:

Some minorities clearly end up in prison more. Should we make the jump that eliminating them before birth (at least until the government was willing to provide what their parents won’t) would be for the best?

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You avoided the point I made. If you are pro-life, are you also this passionate about the children already living? Are you protesting child abuse and neglect just as much as you are the pro-life issue? If not, you are a hypocrite in my opinion.