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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Compare and contrast that with a true extremist like Santorum or Bachmann, who are so completely out in right field on pretty much everything.

I'm sorry but they are tame compared to segregation and witch hunts against communists.

They're not equally comparable. The McCarthyists were a spike of paranoia that quickly rose but just as easily fell. Modern far-right politicians are a more slow burning paranoia that grows without regard to logic, but instead the collective fiction that their ideas operate off of. It has longevity and a wide range of topics that McCarthyism lacks.

[mainiac]

States rights has been a dog whistle since the civil war, you can't excuse Goldwater on those grounds.  And he maintained his views long after 1964.

[RedKing]

States rights has been a dog whistle since the civil war, you can't excuse Goldwater on those grounds.  And he maintained his views long after 1964.

*throws up hands*

Fine, have it your way -- he was an extremist. I'd still rather have more Republicans like him around than say, everyone in the Republican 2012 primary who wasn't named "Jon Huntsman".

[GreatJustice]

He was an extremist in a sense, I suppose. Really, the Republican party of 1960 and the Republican party of today are completely different animals, what with the Republicans of today being very heavily steered towards religious issues that the Republicans of 1960 basically ignored.

Regardless, though, his "extremism" wasn't necessarily as important to his defeat as, say, JFK's assassination, or LBJ's superiority in advertising. Nixon and Rockefeller both would have lost in that environment more likely than not.

[RedKing]

Agreed. I think Goldwater was a fairly classic example of what happens when you allow your opponents to define you, and how a nasty party primary can fatally weaken a candidate by gift-wrapping the opposition party their angles of attack. It was Goldwater's Republican primary challengers, especially Nelson Rockefeller, that first labelled Goldwater an extremist.

Didn't help that Goldwater was not real careful with his comments, and gave LBJ's campaign plenty of ammo for campaign ads.


Hmm...unpopular in his own party, nasty primary, wound up defined by the labels his primary challengers used unsuccessfully on him, terminal foot-in-mouth disease...who does that remind you of?

[mainiac]

Goldwater lost by 20 points.  Scientific studies of political advertising find effects ranging from less then a percentage point to a few percentage point, tending towards the lower part of that range.

I know it's typical in politics to start by just ignoring everything the eggheads tell us but do we need to do the same when discussing political science?

[GreatJustice]

Goldwater lost by 20 points.  Scientific studies of political advertising find effects ranging from less then a percentage point to a few percentage point, tending towards the lower part of that range.

I know it's typical in politics to start by just ignoring everything the eggheads tell us but do we need to do the same when discussing political science?

Not very many candidates are forced to run against the VP's of well liked, recently assassinated presidents while also having a noticeably inferior advertising campaign. But then, apparently presidential elections occur in a vacuum or something.

[mainiac]

Yes because that's exactly what I said.

[GreatJustice]

Yes because that's exactly what I said.

It doesn't help with understanding your argument when you pick one or two points from a statement and run with them as far as they can go without addressing anything else.

[misko27]

When a vote for LBJ turned out to be a vote for napalming little girls, destroying ancient forests and over 58 thousand dead GIs. All for nothing.

One could make the argument any way is as such.
 
Ironically, the vietnam war was actually almost won, had the US stayed in a little longer. The Tet offensive surprised the US, but it was crushed in absolute. They lost far more the the US and South Vietnamese lost, and their infrastructure was almost crushed. The "peace-loving hippies" managed to produce the worst of all possible worlds, one with substantial losses, but with no victory. Had they suceeded earlier, fewer lives  would have been lost. Had they tried later, the war woulod have been won. Instead, failure.
 
In the words of the north vietnamese commander"In all honesty, we didn't achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans and their puppets, and this was a big gain for us. As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention—but it turned out to be a fortunate result".
 
Wikiepdia goes on to say the North seriously over-estimated their victroy to the US press, and they listened.
 
This has been a historical derail. Remember, you are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.

[Owlbread]

When a vote for LBJ turned out to be a vote for napalming little girls, destroying ancient forests and over 58 thousand dead GIs. All for nothing.

One could make the argument any way is as such.
 
Ironically, the vietnam war was actually almost won, had the US stayed in a little longer. The Tet offensive surprised the US, but it was crushed in absolute. They lost far more the the US and South Vietnamese lost, and their infrastructure was almost crushed. The "peace-loving hippies" managed to produce the worst of all possible worlds, one with substantial losses, but with no victory. Had they suceeded earlier, fewer lives  would have been lost. Had they tried later, the war woulod have been won. Instead, failure.
 
In the words of the north vietnamese commander"In all honesty, we didn't achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans and their puppets, and this was a big gain for us. As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention—but it turned out to be a fortunate result".
 
Wikiepdia goes on to say the North seriously over-estimated their victroy to the US press, and they listened.
 
This has been a historical derail. Remember, you are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.

And yet North and South Vietnam united into one country shortly after the war. If you look at the big picture - 58 thousand dead Americans, not even counting the dead Vietnamese on both sides, wasn't really worth it. But yeah, it is a historical derail. I apologise.

[GreatJustice]

When a vote for LBJ turned out to be a vote for napalming little girls, destroying ancient forests and over 58 thousand dead GIs. All for nothing.

One could make the argument any way is as such.
 
Ironically, the vietnam war was actually almost won, had the US stayed in a little longer. The Tet offensive surprised the US, but it was crushed in absolute. They lost far more the the US and South Vietnamese lost, and their infrastructure was almost crushed. The "peace-loving hippies" managed to produce the worst of all possible worlds, one with substantial losses, but with no victory. Had they suceeded earlier, fewer lives  would have been lost. Had they tried later, the war woulod have been won. Instead, failure.
 
In the words of the north vietnamese commander"In all honesty, we didn't achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans and their puppets, and this was a big gain for us. As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention—but it turned out to be a fortunate result".
 
Wikiepdia goes on to say the North seriously over-estimated their victroy to the US press, and they listened.
 
This has been a historical derail. Remember, you are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.

The NVC were never capable of winning through direct combat on their own, though. Their main advantage was in being able to wait the Americans out and hold tight as the Viet Cong kept things busy in the South.

Regardless, the end result was the North Vietnamese won, sat back for a bit, and invaded their fellow Communist neighbours, the (Chinese and American backed) Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. They mellowed out pretty fast after the war. So really, the US lost 58,000 GIs fighting an enemy that ended up not being so bad after all and tossed out one of the nastiest regimes in the world (not to excuse the various atrocities they committed immediately after victory, of course).

[FearfulJesuit]

You know, the more I read about current events...

...the more I want to go into politics. In the hope that I can try to remain, as far as I am, a good and honest man...

(Which isn't actually that much. Mostly I'm just really good at pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes and backing said Emperor into an argumentative corner. I am also fairly intellectually arrogant the only sane man in a world of fools.)

[misko27]

You know, the more I read about current events...

...the more I want to go into politics. In the hope that I can try to remain, as far as I am, a good and honest man...

(Which isn't actually that much. Mostly I'm just really good at pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes and backing said Emperor into an argumentative corner. I am also fairly intellectually arrogant the only sane man in a world of fools.)

I want to go into politics too, but more to become a insane tyrant. I've already made plans. Example, I plan to run for New York city council in, say, 15 or so years. In th emean time I need to keep doing things that'l make the climb possible, and easier. For example in a year I'm going to the bundestag as a exchange student.
 
But yes, I do plan to be the president in, say, 40,  50, 60  or so years. I shoot high, and I think really far ahead.

[Frumple]

Hey, drum up a few million bucks and you might be able to join in on the national level. Local, you just need generally more-than-everyone-else (and possibly suck off [figuratively, literally... eh.] a few of the bigger good-ol'-boys clubs in your area), and maybe a good chunk of land. That never hurts.

If you're poor, or unwilling to blow the local powers-that-be... yeah, just give up. I don't think it's strictly impossible, per se, but practically it's not going to happen. The logistics of running a campaign puts involvement from a leadership position pretty much completely outside of the realm of possibility for someone without the necessary resources and connections.

Which is frankly leaning both toward meta-politics and goddamn depressing, so enough of that from me t'night.