I think there are lots of insults in the comments. I don't know how anybody here can complain about fox news, with such assholism as displayed by many of your comments. Decency is not exactly the strength of the internet. But I start to understand actually, why so many republicans seem to lack empathy - the democrats killed it.
Cause generally happens before effect. If you read up a bit on the last half-century of US political history, you'll find that the repugs were consistently quite a bit nastier than the dems quite a bit earlier.
By one admittedly very crude metric, consider the number of political murders targeting progressives vs. the number targeting wingnuts. On the progressive side, we have MLK, JFK, a few of JFK's family, Malcom X and a couple of other people I've forgotten. Against the repugs and wingnuts, we have one (failed) assassination of Reagan. So tell me again who dragged US politics into the gutter.
Now, "he started it" is not a particularly good excuse and I'm not a big fan of exitus acta probat, but there is a class war going on here and the democrats are slightly less traitorous than the repugs. As such, I find it really, really hard to muster any sympathy for a republican operative. Whether Palin Jr. is in that category is something I do not have enough information about her to decide, but the mother sure as Hell is.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Why do the Republicans still have a base? Or better, why is the Republican base still producing politicians who favour Bush-like policy, when Bush's policies are a 99% failure? I don't see an answer, other than the polarisation fortified by this tit for tat, which wouldn't be deeply anti-american. I had already, unfortunately inconclusive, discussion about possible reasons, but everything I supposed, was dismissed, which leaves it unexplained, why nearly 60 million Americans voted for Bush in 2004, or why Obama (who has reacted very good so far to anything related with Palin) is leading with only 8-10% in the polls - and not 30-40%. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
This 'cause and effect' is in this case an explaination, not a justification.
It's neither, it's a counterpoint. You claimed, in the block I quoted, that repug nastiness is caused by dem nastiness. Which would put the effect - repug nastiness - before the cause - dem nastiness. Being a physicist by training, I'm sure you appreciate that effect coming before cause is a rather serious problem for a model that attempts to describe reality :-P
As for Bush's base, recall that Bush's handlers own the press and that there is no effective opposition to the Bush regime's policies. It's like asking why people would still vote for Tory Bliar the second time around, despite his administration being a miserable failure, and then blaming it on the tone of his critics on the left. It's a non sequitour.
Also, recall that the people of Rome never rebelled, as long as the bread and circus scheme kept working. For that matter, I wouldn't have as big a problem with bread and circus if everyone could have it (I would still have a problem with it because it's paternalistic, but that's another issue). But the bread and circus provided to Europeans and Americans is bought by a continued rape of the rest of the world (or at least of the parts of it that don't have nukes...). Just as Rome's bread and circus was financed by raping the provinces.
I had more a mean field theory (reference is the one dimensional Ising model) in mind. You have your magnetic dipoles, and of course due to their thermal energy from time to time they flip, but due to the net magnetic field, caused by all the other magnetic dipoles, they stay much longer in the direction of the B field - and cause thereby on average a contribution to this B field keeping the other dipoles aligned. For sue this, lets say piece of iron, was somewhere in the past magnetised externally. But the cause, that the iron remains magnetised is the reaction to all the other dipoles.
For explaining Tony Blair, I have actually another model, this time from economics. The situation is different, because Blair was already in the party, which was assumed to be better at those things you name a failure. Essentially people hadn't a real alternative at the ballot box - and turnout as well as labour's share of the vote were miserable, only order 15% of all possible voters did cast a vote for Blair, on this level Ahmadineshad of Iran can claim the same democratic legitimicy as Blair. In the US, there was a realistic alternative, which could be expected to be better, however little good this better might be assessed.
However, the model I wanted to lay out: You have a beach, homogeniously populated, with two ice sellers, the rightwinger C and the leftwinger S. Where do they place themselves. To get about half of all people who do want to get an ice, both are somewhat close to the center, but there is some space between them, as they want to distinguish from each other.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-S-+-+-+-+-+-+-C-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
The elections are essentially decided by the people living between the two ice sellers. So now comes Blair, and declares NewLabour (and Schroeder, declaring "Die Neue Mitte"). And they move the S somewhat to the right. So they will get all the vote left of them, which is more than before. If they are lucky, the rightwingers are going to keep some distance between themselves and the leftwingers, and move a bit right, too.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-S-+-+-+-C-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
That election is a save win, if not too many people on the left of the beach now say, if the ice seller is so far away, then they are not at all going to buy an ice. Sometimes of course unforeseen things happen, e.g. that a 3rd ice seller says, OK, now I have enough people there on the left side of the beach to open another shop.
-+-L-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-S-+-+-+-C-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
This is of course what happend to Schroeder and the SPD in Germany. But with a proportional representation election system and a party, which was already a major party in eastern Germany, it is much easier to that, than in a majority voting system, with no such party in place (assessing greens and liberals for several reasons standing at a different beach)
And yes, we in Europe might get bread and circus, but in the US I'm not sure, if they haven't somehow managed, to make only circus, but no bread. Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den MenschenVolker Pispers
I think the ice cream stand is a good analogy, though.
Unseating a sitting President is the hardest political task in the US
10 million more Evangelicals voted in '04 versus '00
Kerry ran a lousy campaign
Lingering nationalism from 9/11
Voter fraud and repression in Ohio
Bush received the highest percentage of Latino vote in GOP history (45%)
Kerry was a lousy campaigner
The GOP constructed a superb GOTV organization and ran it skillfully
The GOP constructed a superb anti-Kerry propaganda campaign and ran it skillfully
The full affect of Bush's policies hadn't become so stark
The Iraq War still had (bare) majority support
The GOP managed to cobble their Center-Right to Right coalition together one more time -- hopefully the last time
Also it is worth pointing-out Kerry received the highest number of votes for a losing presidential bid ever. He would have swamped Bush '00 by 9 million votes.
