Republicans are confused. Because they will not acknowledge the quality and character of Barack Obama; that they view him as an unfit, flash in the pan, Republicans figure they can lower the bar of their expectations to that level.I will grant you that sometimes Republicans are confused. So, to help me keep it straight, I have made a simple table of attributes of the two candidates:
| CRITERIA | POINTS | |
| OBAMA | BACHMANN | |
| Native Born American | +100 | +100 |
| SUBTOTAL | 100 | 100 |
| Law School Grad | -10 | -10 |
| SUBTOTAL | 90 | 90 |
| Law Prof (Con Law) | +5 | — |
| Tax Lawyer (Gov't) | — | -10 |
| SUBTOTAL | 95 | 80 |
| Elected Legislator | +10 | +10 |
| Voted Present | -10 | — |
| SUBTOTAL | 95 | 90 |
| Political Friends (Bill Ayers) | -15 | — |
| Political Friends (Tea Party) | — | +5 |
| FINAL TOTAL | 80 | 95 |
In the end, I give President Obama a grade of "B". It is a low "B", but it is still a "B". As for Representative Bachmann, since she is a woman and therefore has to work harder just to stay even, she gets a high "B", although if she had been a man it would have been a solid "A".
Yes, I have NOT looked at their current terms in office. If pressed, I will.
Regards — Cliff
PS: This post has taken forever, due to some saying it should be "td colspan = "2"". I just now found a tutorial that dropped the quotes. On my browser it worked like a champ. I hope the same for you.
Thank you for the special consideration of my point. I'd like to suggest a tweak of some of your scores. Obama was elected to the Senate, Bachmann to the House.
ReplyDeleteIn 2010, Bachmann garnered 159,479 votes. In 2004, Obama was elected to the Senate with 3,597,456 votes. That is just over 22 times as many votes. Should we consider the relative homogeneous demographics of Bachmann's district?
The woman factor gets some traction. Though there are many more ladies in the House than the Senate. I do remember, as a kid, Illinios did have a rather vibrant collection of neo-nazis and other white power groups. But that was easily 20 years before Obama showed up. That stuff dissipates quickly, right? Though Alan Keyes did his best to pander to the residue.
There will, for all eternity, be two parties...the right one and the wrong one....and each one will have its candidates....and emotional people will make their choices based on how they feel (not what they think) at the moment they punch the chad, make the mark, or pull the handle. Some will try to do all three in the same election.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is.....nobody is all bad...or all good. Nobody is all right...or all wrong.....most just float around in the netherworld between the extremes and occasionally get lucky by doing something positive...and even then can be undone by others who are of a contrary mind.
And...as Sonny and Cher used to croon..."and the beat goes on...."
I would strongly suggest however that Americans pay attention to London. The natives are restless.