Author Topic: What steps can a citizen take to save America?  (Read 3749 times)

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Offline txted

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What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« on: December 23, 2009, 10:14:17 AM »
Most seem to agree that the obamacare bill will be the most destructive legislation ever produced in OUR congress. It was written and may be passed by people we elected to congress. I keep reading and hearing people say "call or write your congressman and express your outrage". I think Senator Ben Nelson is the best example of how futile it is to contact your congressman or senator.

Many people believe the 2010 elections are the answer to the problem. We forget that the people who are doing this to us at some point ran as honorable, honest, caring, concerned Americans. They agreed that government was to big and growth must be restrained. They all agreed that taxation was to high and government programs must be made more efficient. They all agreed that "transparency" in legislation was the key to insuring that American citizens could monitor the process and effect the outcome. Many agreed that term limits was the best way to ensure no congressman would become a professional politician instead of an elected representative of the people.

I guess they have some trash cans next to the doors of congress labeled trash, recyclables, and promises. It seems all are disposable once someone enters the halls of congress for the first time.

As a voting citizen, what can you or we do to insure the criminals of both parties are removed from congress? What can we do to insure a fresh, clean bunch of criminals and liars or not sent to congress in 2010?

txted

Offline DumbAss Tanker

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2009, 10:39:06 AM »
Many of us look at the 2010 and 2012 elections as more of the very last chance to apply a tourniquet above a severed artery.  Even if the patient lives, the damage will be massive.

If the tourniquet doesn't work, God help us.
Go and tell the Spartans, O traveler passing by
That here, obedient to their law, we lie.

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Offline txted

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2009, 10:47:13 AM »
Many of us look at the 2010 and 2012 elections as more of the very last chance to apply a tourniquet above a severed artery.  Even if the patient lives, the damage will be massive.

If the tourniquet doesn't work, God help us.

How are you going to decide the best tourniquet to send to Washington? The tourniquets we sent in the past were not the answer and need to be removed quickly before the loss of blood flow kills the patient

txted

Offline Oceander

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #3 on: December 23, 2009, 10:52:12 AM »
You can't really, but what you can do is realize that most politicians are basically just like people with personality disorders - they need a lot of "love" and attention, and if they don't get it from you, they're going to get despondent and start wandering around looking for someone else to feed their need, and they will eventually run into the other side.

The best response, then, is to simply make sure that they never forget that you're paying attention to them, and that you continually tell them what you want them to do (i.e., what they have to do to keep the "love" and attention coming) - I am as guilty as anyone else, so I'm not simply moralizing here - it would probably be a good idea to get into the habit of writing a letter a week to each of your Congress-bitches, sort of like the "newsletters" that some families send out at Christmas time.  Also, whenever you get the urge to write a letter to the editor, at least follow through on that urge by writing a letter to your Congress-bitches.  Also, when they get something right, send a letter congratulating them on it (the carrot) and, conversely, when they do something wrong, send a letter excoriating them for it (the stick) - sort of like what you'd do if you were housebreaking a puppy (which, in a very real sense, you are).

Offline bkg

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #4 on: December 23, 2009, 10:52:37 AM »
How are you going to decide the best tourniquet to send to Washington? The tourniquets we sent in the past were not the answer and need to be removed quickly before the loss of blood flow kills the patient

txted

Easy...

1 - they're not in the DNC
2 - they're not in the GOP
3 - they are not politicians
4 - they are small business owners
5 - they have a lot to lose, personally, by even

tha'ts a good start.

Offline txted

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #5 on: December 23, 2009, 11:21:57 AM »
Should we exclude any special interest professions from accepting that free trip to Washington? Do we continue to send Lawyers, Labor leaders, ect? Do we send only firemen, farmers, pastors, housewives? Who should we send and who should be barred from the free trip?

Offline txted

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #6 on: December 23, 2009, 11:25:25 AM »
Easy...

1 - they're not in the DNC
2 - they're not in the GOP
3 - they are not politicians
4 - they are small business owners
5 - they have a lot to lose, personally, by even

tha'ts a good start.

If we eliminate any GOP members, won't we guarantee another victory for the DNC? Can we realistically believe a tea party or independent candidate won't split the conservative vote guaranteeing another victory for the democrats?

txted

Offline txted

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2009, 11:34:50 AM »
You can't really, but what you can do is realize that most politicians are basically just like people with personality disorders - they need a lot of "love" and attention, and if they don't get it from you, they're going to get despondent and start wandering around looking for someone else to feed their need, and they will eventually run into the other side.

The best response, then, is to simply make sure that they never forget that you're paying attention to them, and that you continually tell them what you want them to do (i.e., what they have to do to keep the "love" and attention coming) - I am as guilty as anyone else, so I'm not simply moralizing here - it would probably be a good idea to get into the habit of writing a letter a week to each of your Congress-bitches, sort of like the "newsletters" that some families send out at Christmas time.  Also, whenever you get the urge to write a letter to the editor, at least follow through on that urge by writing a letter to your Congress-bitches.  Also, when they get something right, send a letter congratulating them on it (the carrot) and, conversely, when they do something wrong, send a letter excoriating them for it (the stick) - sort of like what you'd do if you were housebreaking a puppy (which, in a very real sense, you are).

After they have tossed their "promises" in the trash can as they entered the building, why do you think they will care how many times you call, send an email, or write a letter?

Offline bkg

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #8 on: December 23, 2009, 11:38:18 AM »
If we eliminate any GOP members, won't we guarantee another victory for the DNC? Can we realistically believe a tea party or independent candidate won't split the conservative vote guaranteeing another victory for the democrats?

txted

I will never vote GOP/DNC again. Fawk them. They've destroyed the country. If voting for a TRUE patriot causes other havoc, I'll live with it knowing I stood up for the country. I'm done voting on who will fawk us less.

And if everyone voted that way, we'd be in a much better position overall.

Offline txted

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #9 on: December 23, 2009, 11:50:38 AM »
I will never vote GOP/DNC again. Fawk them. They've destroyed the country. If voting for a TRUE patriot causes other havoc, I'll live with it knowing I stood up for the country. I'm done voting on who will fawk us less.

And if everyone voted that way, we'd be in a much better position overall.

Okay, it's to late to save America. There is nothing we can do. Only true patriots should be elected. (how will you recognize that "true patriot"? Am I right so far?

txted

Offline Oceander

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #10 on: December 23, 2009, 11:59:06 AM »
If we eliminate any GOP members, won't we guarantee another victory for the DNC? Can we realistically believe a tea party or independent candidate won't split the conservative vote guaranteeing another victory for the democrats?

txted

Yes.  Now is not the time to start holding discussions about how many angels (or GOP members) can dance on the head of a pin.  Now is the time to find those who, tho' they may have wandered, have responded sufficiently to the pressure put on them by the Tea Party people and the other demonstrations and the townhalls that we can keep them in line by continuing to apply the same sort of consistent pressure.

The simple fact of the matter is, politics is not a spectator sport and anyone who thinks that there are ideologically pure saviours out there who, if only we can get them elected, will run on auto-pilot and allow us to go back to basically ignoring politics and politicians is simply not facing reality.  We did not get where we are today, on the brink of having socialism/communism made a reality in the US, by accident.  We got here because the liberals and the hard left have been pushing politicians constantly, for decades - at least since Ronald Reagan kicked Carter's ass so hard his liberal intestines popped out of his mouth - and they have learned what works and what doesn't work from each one of their losses; Rahm Emanuel didn't just cry in his pansy-ass white wine when Hilarycare got the boot, he sat down with other crypto-communists, figured out where their weaknesses had been, and set about changing tactics in order to work around the worst of the weak spots.  That sort of consistent work will almost always pay off, particularly if there is no pushback from the other side.  And, quite frankly, there has been very little pushback from conservatives - by that I mean us, the average conservative in the street - since 1994 and the Newt Gingrich remake of Congress.

Basically, we conservatives have been resting on our laurels since 1994 - fat and complacent in the belief that Gingrich defeated the liberals and the left for us once and for all back in 1994 - and we have, through our own negligence and inattention, allowed the liberal worm to burrow so deeply into the American psyche and grow to epidemic proportions.  By contrast, the liberals/left have been working furiously for decades to rot America from the inside out.  Why do you think that Bill Ayers, whose favorite tool of political persuasion was a terrorist bomb up until the late 70s, turned himself into a "teacher" and started burrowing into the warm, welcoming flesh of American academia the way a tick burrows into a hiker's unprotected groin?  It wasn't because he had realized the error of his ways and had decided to forswear the marxist goals he had been attempting to achieve through his prior bombing campaigns, let me tell you.

Bill Ayers is a good whipping boy for this point, because the same negligence and inattention from conservatives has been going on in American academia since at least the 1950s, when Buckley wrote about it in his book God and Man at Yale.

But all is not lost, seemingly.  What is most startling to me is the degree to which we conservatives were actually able to get a response out of so many Congress-bitches with the Tea Party demonstrations and the townhall demonstrations this past Summer and Fall.  That is really encouraging.  Also encouraging is the fact that, notwithstanding their pro-liberal biases, RINOs such as Snowe and Collins stood with us and not against us when the cards finally started getting laid on the table for the final tally.

I think one of the reasons the Democrats continue to push so hard forward to enact their America-destroying socialist/communist agenda is this:  they believe - not without some justification given what happened after 1994 to conservative political pressure - that if they just wait it out, the conservative protests will prove to have been nothing more than a tempest in a teapot, and not a latter-day Boston Teaparty, and that Americans will inevitably resign themselves to having Obamacare become part of the accepted political landscape, as unquestioned as social security and medicare now are.

And they will be correct, unless we follow through with what we started and do the really, really, really hard work of slogging through the political mud and keeping up a consistent level of pressure on our politicians to do what we want them to do.  The fact of the matter is, too, that this should not be as hard for us as it was for the liberals/left, because poll after poll continues to show that Americans, in general, are consistently more conservative - in a real little "c" sense - than they are liberal and as such American politicians should in general be more likely to respond positively to a consistent level of "love" and attention from conservatives than they would to an equal amount of "love" and attention from the left - we conservatives are the natural constituency in American politics, not the left.

Toward this end, we should take a great deal of solace from the fact that Rep. Griffith was willing to buck the god-awful pressure coming from the hard-core leftist Antsy-Pantsy Pelosi and publicly throw in with us in what appears to be the darkest hour traditional American values have ever faced since the War of 1812.  Mr. Griffith's public change of heart should bouy us up and give us hope that if we continue to apply our own consistent political pressure to even the Democratic politicians who come from right-of-center districts, we may start to see the hard-left Democrat facade begin to buckle faster than we could ever have imagined, and ultimately encourage enough similarly-minded conservative/moderate Democrats to come back to their natural constituency that the hard-left Democrats' apparent majority will dissipate like so much pea-soup fog in the bright sunlight of a new day.

Offline Oceander

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #11 on: December 23, 2009, 12:10:41 PM »
I will never vote GOP/DNC again. Fawk them. They've destroyed the country. If voting for a TRUE patriot causes other havoc, I'll live with it knowing I stood up for the country. I'm done voting on who will fawk us less.

And if everyone voted that way, we'd be in a much better position overall.
Okay, it's to late to save America. There is nothing we can do. Only true patriots should be elected. (how will you recognize that "true patriot"? Am I right so far?

txted

There is only one really simple rejoinder:

Rush, Freewill:


Lyrics:

Quote
There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance take,
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance.

A planet of playthings,
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
"The stars aren't aligned,
Or the gods are malign..."
Blame is better to give than receive.

Chorus:
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.

There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand,
The cards were stacked against them; they weren't born in Lotusland.

All preordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate.
Kicked in the face,
You can't pray for a place
In heaven's unearthly estate.

Chorus:
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.


Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete.
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet.

Chorus:
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.



I CHOOSE FREEWILL
« Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 12:13:23 PM by Oceander »

Offline bkg

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2009, 01:51:25 PM »
Okay, it's to late to save America. There is nothing we can do. Only true patriots should be elected. (how will you recognize that "true patriot"? Am I right so far?

txted

Too late? Not sure. But highlighted, to me, is common sense. As for recognizing, see my previous list.

insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I.E. voting for either DNC or GOP.

Offline Oceander

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #13 on: December 23, 2009, 02:18:41 PM »
Too late? Not sure. But highlighted, to me, is common sense. As for recognizing, see my previous list.

insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I.E. voting for either DNC or GOP.

No, insanity is sitting around on our collective asses again and expecting that we can just let politics and politicians fly on auto-pilot without the least bit of routine input from us, and still count on them to take care of our interests as if they were our personal trustees.  That is where the stupidity lies.

Offline DefiantSix

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2009, 02:29:29 PM »
No, insanity is sitting around on our collective asses again and expecting that we can just let politics and politicians fly on auto-pilot without the least bit of routine input from us, and still count on them to take care of our interests as if they were our personal trustees.  That is where the stupidity lies.

Until we can clean out the Progressives from both the Dims and Reps, the two parties are to be considered to halves of the same, entrenched power structure, resisting the will of us people for it's continued survival, if not profit.  Neither party can be trusted to listen to the voices of it's constituents now - one would think that the three major elections last month would have made that painfully clear.

As I've posted here before, we are at the agonizing point in our country's history where it is too late to work within the system - from either party - to repair the damage inflicted upon her, and too soon to just shoot the ~600-odd bastards that did this to her.
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Offline Oceander

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #15 on: December 23, 2009, 02:31:12 PM »
Until we can clean out the Progressives from both the Dims and Reps, the two parties are to be considered to halves of the same, entrenched power structure, resisting the will of us people for it's continued survival, if not profit.  Neither party can be trusted to listen to the voices of it's constituents now - one would think that the three major elections last month would have made that painfully clear.

As I've posted here before, we are at the agonizing point in our country's history where it is too late to work within the system - from either party - to repair the damage inflicted upon her, and too soon to just shoot the ~600-odd bastards that did this to her.

At a certain point one simply has to agree to disagree.  My views are on record on this thread, so I see no point in swaggering around trying to measure up who's got the bigger opinion.  Merry Christmas, and all that jazz.

Offline Carl

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #16 on: December 23, 2009, 02:37:30 PM »
Not to be a rain on the parade but like it or not the two party system is going to be what is for the forseeable future..to think otherwise may be fun to talk about but is more idealism then reality.

My opinion..where we can elect true conservatives make damn sure that is what is running.
Means getting out and attending meetings,townhalls etc.

Areas where you take the best you can get short of a dem well then so be it,the world isn`t perfect.

Offline Oceander

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #17 on: December 23, 2009, 02:38:33 PM »
Not to be a rain on the parade but like it or not the two party system is going to be what is for the forseeable future..to think otherwise may be fun to talk about but is more idealism then reality.

My opinion..where we can elect true conservatives make damn sure that is what is running.
Means getting out and attending meetings,townhalls etc.

Areas where you take the best you can get short of a dem well then so be it,the world isn`t perfect.

Exactly.  Now is triage time.

Offline thundley4

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #18 on: December 23, 2009, 02:47:09 PM »
Not to be a rain on the parade but like it or not the two party system is going to be what is for the forseeable future..to think otherwise may be fun to talk about but is more idealism then reality.

My opinion..where we can elect true conservatives make damn sure that is what is running.
Means getting out and attending meetings,townhalls etc.

Areas where you take the best you can get short of a dem well then so be it,the world isn`t perfect.

The problem is the GOP keeps backing centrists over conservatives, or worse backing liberal republicans over conservatives.  Scuzzyfava against Hoffman was a perfect example. Crist over Rubio is another one.

Offline Carl

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #19 on: December 23, 2009, 02:53:37 PM »
The problem is the GOP keeps backing centrists over conservatives, or worse backing liberal republicans over conservatives.  Scuzzyfava against Hoffman was a perfect example. Crist over Rubio is another one.

I know and that is where people have to get active and try.
My point was I can`t complain about who the NY Republican party tries to run if I never try to get them to do otherwise.
That is here and I suspect the same elsewhere.

Offline DefiantSix

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #20 on: December 23, 2009, 02:59:39 PM »
At a certain point one simply has to agree to disagree.  My views are on record on this thread, so I see no point in swaggering around trying to measure up who's got the bigger opinion.  Merry Christmas, and all that jazz.

 :cheers1:
"Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
-- Capt. John Parker

"I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission"
-- Capt. Steve Rogers

"In this present crisis, government in not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem."
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Offline DumbAss Tanker

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #21 on: December 23, 2009, 03:06:54 PM »
Carl is totally right, once you have things shaken down to a national two-party system, it's impossible to change it due to the institutional power of each party drawing on its national level to defeat local challenges.  The only way to change it involves the destructive break-up and re-coalescing of the party closest to your own goals, which incidentially means your side takes it completely up the Hershey Highway for at least one and possibly two national election cycles, for instance the last time it worked was the break-up of the Whigs (Joined by certain regional Democrat factions at odds with the main party) to form the Republican party in the 1850s.  Considering the pace of approaching doom, we don't have one or two general election cycles to screw around with.

Parenthetically, things turning out tolerable in the course of normal politics is fine for a Plan A, but since there is also an all-too-real chance they won't turn out so tolerable, you need to have a Plans B, C, and probably D for your personal welfare and that of your family, and I don't mean some chest-thumping talk about armed insurrection or any other illegal crap, either. 
Go and tell the Spartans, O traveler passing by
That here, obedient to their law, we lie.

Anything worth shooting once is worth shooting at least twice.

Offline bkg

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #22 on: December 23, 2009, 04:04:50 PM »
Not to be a rain on the parade but like it or not the two party system is going to be what is for the forseeable future..to think otherwise may be fun to talk about but is more idealism then reality.

My opinion..where we can elect true conservatives make damn sure that is what is running.
Means getting out and attending meetings,townhalls etc.

Areas where you take the best you can get short of a dem well then so be it,the world isn`t perfect.

As long as people believe they hvae only two choices, and are afraid of voting for the best candidate for fear of letting "the other guy win," then you are 100% correct...

How are you going to elect a true conservative in the GOP? Hell, the GOP won't even nominate them (district-23)...


It seems I hear the same people say "it's impossible to change" that I heard say "xxxxxx will never happen in the USA!" 

Offline txted

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #23 on: December 23, 2009, 04:45:27 PM »
At this time, I believe the DNC & GOP are equally full of self righteous, self serving, corrupt bastards. I do not believe the DNC or GOP brand makes them what they are. They simply chose to become what they are. I would like to elect an independent or tea party candidate to represent me in Washington in the future. Unfortunately those brands don't guarantee honesty either. Greed and corruption will be present under those brands if we elect the wrong people. It is also a fact that we can stick to our guns and principles and vote for a new brand and then simply accept the fact that our vote will not mean anything except to us.

I think I prefer to vote for the best people I can find who have a hope of actually being elected to the office. I have to vote for the GOP for that reason. In my mind, it isn't the brand that is bad, it is the people in it. Even if you do stick to your guns and say the heck with the GOP and DNC, how are you going to decide who is a good, honorable candidate since the brand can't guarantee it?

txted


Offline bkg

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Re: What steps can a citizen take to save America?
« Reply #24 on: December 23, 2009, 04:50:42 PM »
At this time, I believe the DNC & GOP are equally full of self righteous, self serving, corrupt bastards. I do not believe the DNC or GOP brand makes them what they are. They simply chose to become what they are. I would like to elect an independent or tea party candidate to represent me in Washington in the future. Unfortunately those brands don't guarantee honesty either. Greed and corruption will be present under those brands if we elect the wrong people. It is also a fact that we can stick to our guns and principles and vote for a new brand and then simply accept the fact that our vote will not mean anything except to us.

I think I prefer to vote for the best people I can find who have a hope of actually being elected to the office. I have to vote for the GOP for that reason. In my mind, it isn't the brand that is bad, it is the people in it. Even if you do stick to your guns and say the heck with the GOP and DNC, how are you going to decide who is a good, honorable candidate since the brand can't guarantee it?

txted



While you make good points, I completely disagree with the highlighted.  Maybe, in the end, you will be proven correct. But as long as we continue to "go along" with the status quo, we can never expect to change it. I've grown comfortable wtih the idea of "throwing away" my vote on someone i determine to be "the best candidate" regardless of affiliation, though like you, I believe both the GOP and DNC are corrupt, so that will be a mark against a candidate.