Various Things In Brief

[poliphilo]

Ailz's mother has a cold, Ailz has a cold and I'm doing my best to avoid getting one. Echinacea is the answer. That's my belief. 

I felt fairly ropey yesterday (because I was fighting getting a cold). I suggested we had lunch in Morrisons (while we were out shopping) because I didn't feel like fixing a meal.

I keep scanning the headlines to see if Lord McAlpine is in them. 

I'm pleased about the US election. People (journalists and LJ friends) are saying the Republican Party is paying the price for signing a pact with the Christian Right. It worked for them for a while, but now demographics are against them. As someone said, America is "running out of angry white men".  That's part of the story. Also Romney was a lousy candidate. I don't think much of Obama either but at least he knows Iran has a sea coast. 

RIP Clive Dunn. A very funny man and a very decent man too by all accounts. Dad's Army wasn't particularly well written but it had the most wonderful cast. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The GOP has got itself into a terrible bind. It has formed this alliance with the Christian Right, but cannot field a candidate who embodies the values of the Christian Right without alienating everybody else. It's not clear how it's going to extract itself.

Romney was a compromise candidate- a social liberal prepared to make the right noises to get himself selected- but nobody really believed in him. He didn't appeal to the Christian Right (they knew he wasn't really one of them) and he didn't appeal to the floating voters either.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

It was really difficult for a Mormon to ally himself with the Christian Right, because the CR regards Mormonism as a CULT - in the same vein as Hare Krishna, Scientology, Spiritism, and others. They have no "live and let live". So they put the emphasis on "let us pray and then let us vote for the candidate who is most in line with godly principles" (meaning anti-abortion, etc.).
It was not easy, but WE WON!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Over here we regard Mormonism as a joke religion. We have a Mormon church just round the corner- which means we see a lot of Mormon missionaries- usually young white American men in suits straight out of the "Mad Men" era. Europeans would have a tough time taking a Mormon President seriously.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

As a political junkie, with a ringside seat these past four years, I disagree. Do you honestly believe that the Christian Right drove 100% of the African American vote into the Democratic camp? Do you honestly believe that the Christian Right caused the Willard to lose the Hispanic vote even among the traditionally Republican Cuban community? In the past, the Christianist crusade against abortion and homosexuality has been very popular among Latinos but not this year.

That loss among Hispanics alone cost Romney the swing states he needed to win. What killed him was the deadly embrace of the Tea Party, launched by a hedge-fund trader and funded by filthy-rich John Birchers like the Koch brothers. The Christian Right is at best a baleful influence on our body politic but they shouldn't be scapegoated to protect the real criminals, here.

The racism, the bigotry, the nativism, the aggressive ignorance, the anti-tax and anti-government jihad, this is what killed the Republicans and that platform came straight out of the Confederate South, the Republican parties last stronghold. Thankfully, it is no longer enough to win a national election.