I don’t ever vote along party lines, that would be against my values. I still misunderstand your statement about open mindedness. Sorry but feel free to elaborate. I thought that you meant that when JG described the actual definition of Affirmative Action, you considered it to be a cop out. Of which I did not.

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the statement wasn’t meant to be an attack on anyone’s humanity. it was meant to point out the absurdity of the line of thinking that seems to say ‘dems use minorities to provide valuable diversity while republicans just use them.’ (not to put words in anyone’s mouth, but that really is what this sounded like).

or more simply put, if you’re really convinced that your side is the good guys and the other side is evil and bumbling incompetents, you could probably stand to reconsider your impartiality/ability to objectively find truth.

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This isn’t an argument or point to bring up, it’s just a way to discredit your opponent’s argument or point by attacking their humanity.

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Steele had previously been chair of the Maryland Republicans, so when the national Republican Party committed themselves to becoming a xenophobic white mensclub they elevated Michael Steele for plausible deniability. They didn’t figure on his confident ambition – he fired the staff and remade the Committee organization in his own dysfunctional loopy style. He attacked Lord Limbaugh! The Republicans were looking for outside-the-box, and they got off-the-reservation-and-not-taking-any-calls.

Republicans worship authority, hierarchy, and obedience and tend to promote the good disciples. That’s how we got Michael Brown the horseshow lawyer running FEMA. That’s how Valley Republicans were gifted field rep. Orndorff by the RNC.

It could work out for them. The Valley is the last citadel of reliable Republican wingnuttery. Jim Gilmore proved that if you put an “R” in front of your name, join “no”, a noun and the word “tax” on a bumpersticker a majority of people will vote against the better candidate. Valley Republicans will solemnly tell you that if only Palin had headed the presidential ticket… These are people that voted down a meals tax on tourists in favor of raising their property taxes. So Orndorff may gain traction with his claim that Creigh Deeds is suspected of dressing like a West Virginian.

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Also, when he said something negative about Rush L., many Republicans seemed to pit them against one another and side with Rush, showing that there wasn’t a whole lot of party-member support for Steele in the first place, making one wonder why they chose him.

The Steele-Palin comparison is just what I was thinking. I truly believe the Republicans picked Palin because she was a woman, and they would’ve picked any seemingly-competent woman (look how little they knew about her when she was chosen, and she was in the middle of a legal battle), and they believed they could get some disappointed Hillary voters to switch sides because of how she appeared. A lot of politics has to do with initial perceptions.

When a party only half-backs the things that their chosen leader says, it makes you wonder why they put him in that position in the first place. I wouldn’t be saying these things if their chosen leader was a strong one with obvious party support, great public presence, and someone they appeared proud of selecting, and happened to be black. Because of my impression of how the GOP has treated Steele, I feel they selected him mainly because of his skin color, hoping to win over some minority supporters.

Think about it – why was Iowa’s choice of Barack Obama in the primary so surprising to the country? It sure wasn’t the African-American population that swayed the vote there!

And I don’t know any black people would’ve voted for Obama if he was incompetent, so it’s not just the color of a person’s skin that matters to minority voters. They shouldn’t confuse the pride that people in the black community have that an African-American was elected president with the notion that his skin color is the only reason minorities voted for him.

And with their selection of this young blogger Orndorff locally. Seeing what he is already using his official capacity to say, he is not going to win them over any new independent-minded young voters, and they shouldn’t think young people will immediately resonate with him since he’s young and has a strong online presence.

Someone in the R party needs to explain to whoever makes these selections that it’s the SUBSTANCE of the person, and their ability to talk to people ‘for real’ and not in political-speak that new voters are likely to form their opinion on.

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