Ernie : Call it the "echo chamber effect." The Left only listens to the Left and the Right only listens to the Right. Needless to say the result in each case is confirmation bias writ large in the form of policies adopted by Left and Right. No wonder that the % of Independent voters keeps growing and the % of party members for both Dems and Reps keeps falling. Each side is selling bromides. Most people aren't interested in liberal snake oil OR conservative snake oil. For now, with all the primary attention focused on the GOP, that is also where the problem is most severe. Come November the pendulum will swing the other way. Billy -------------------------------- 3/25/2012 6:32:38 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Hi David, Sent from my iPhone On Mar 25, 2012, at 16:34, "David R. Block" <[email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) > wrote: We have EPA overreach and Globull Warming fraud all around and complaining about it is the distraction??? So we let the EPA strangle the energy supply and kill jobs because government is so saintly??? I cannot believe that I'm reading this. Yes. There are LOTS of valid reasons and positions to criticize the government and excessive regulation. The problem is that the GOP messaging around that has been hijacked by the simplistic: - market = good - government = bad mantra of libertarians Thus, any legitimate critique of the government is interpreted by the Left as a call for Social Darwinism. Giving them a perfect excuse to defend their failed experiment in social engineering. In a wiser GOP, somebody (Huntsman?) would argue coherently for a lean, smaller, modest, yet effective government that also appealed to moderate voters. But the Tea Party/Liberaltarian rhetoric appears to have scared off such candidates, and appears on track to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Which means we will get four more years of exactly the stuff you complain about. I call that a costly distraction. E David _ "Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection."—Neal Boortz On 3/25/2012 12:21 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: Hi DRB, Sent from my iPhone On Mar 24, 2012, at 21:46, "David R. Block" <[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: I thought that we were in MORE opposition to the current Presidential office holder. This seems to be a distraction. While Billy's crusade may be overblown, he has a legitimate point. The idolization of the free market and demonization of the government is largely what is making the GOP lose the masses. Yes, we can't blame all that on Rand and the libertarians, but they are the ideological core of those messages. In short: they are the distraction. E -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
