The Republican Convention Has Proved Many Things

[A Black Falcon]

Well, pandering and lying are different... sort of... :)

Republicans just lie more. Though yes, the Democrats are quite adept at pandering...

I definitely agree, Obama has gone far too far in trying to make good with the religious right. Going to a forum run by a far-right evangelical preacher, emphasizing how much his Christian religion means to him, saying that Bush's faith-based initiatives are a good idea, etc... it's been quite disappointing. Hopefully he won't do the same when in office... we'll see.

It's the sort of thing which makes even the most leftist of major American politicians fall squarely in the "middle" of places like Britain. By other nation's standards, we don't actually HAVE a left

There's absolutely no question about this, and I've said that before too. America doesn't really have a left-wing party. It has a centrist party and a far-right party, and the far-right party has succeeded in convincing people that the right is the center and the center is the radical left fringe. It's very, very sad... we desperately need to move left, to counter-act all of the horrible effects of the Bush and Reagan years, and all we can do is get candidates to just edge towards centrist policies, which won't do enough quickly enough. It took Clinton years to counter-act the effects of 12 years of the "Reagan Revolution"... it'll take at least as long to counter-act the aftereffects of Bush years.

Oh yeah, and the fact is, the economy does better under Democratic presidents than Republican. All their talk about knowing economics better doesn't end up helping much, in the long term. But really, how hard is it really to understand that cutting taxes while raising spending is an incredibly bad idea? Short-term gain, long-term pain.

And with our current debt, that's a LOT of long-term pain. How in the world we'll pay off a $10 trillion dollar debt while we also have a large budget deficit is a really good question... which is why I said that, honestly, it might be a bit irresponsible for Obama to be talking about any tax cuts. I mean, he has to, because Americans HATE taxes... but man, that debt...

I've heard some people say that if someone wants Obama to be elected, then we need to stop pointing out when he screws up. I've got higher allegiances, like to truth. Failing that, it's all only temporary victories with the same sort of deception of the masses that leads us to having Bush elected in the first place.

Agreed. The truth matters more than spinning things to make it more likely that your candidate wins.