Tragedy in Oklahoma....
 

For the past few elections the Republicans here have always managed to put something on the ballot that would answer a 'State Question'. These things always get tossed out in court, but the reason the items are on the ballot is never to get laws passed. It is only to drive Conservatives to the polls where they hopefully will vote Republican while they are voting to make English the official state language or to allow guns in schools or to ban Islamic Law from overtaking the US Constitution.

All of those items have been on the ballot during the past few elections and so far all have been tossed out by Federal Courts. And after they are tossed the state makes no effort to appeal since the measures were never about passing laws but about getting votes.

This year it has all come to ruin. A State Question on 'Personhood', which polled great and was THE issue to suck voters into the the booths, has just been ruled Unconstitutional before it was even voted on. The question has been run through the Ledge where great sums of money and large amounts of time were spent crafting it and jumping through the hoops to get it on the ballot. And now it is all for nothing.

And the real problem? It is too late to get another State Question on the ballot, so there is no way to herd Republican voters to the polls.

I was talking to one of our Republican Ledge members and they were quite upset with this because they have no record to run on. Every change in State law they promised to pass was shot down by people in the state that wrote them by the tens of thousands telling them just what a waste of human life they were. That, by the way, was a quote from several letters he received from several long standing Republican donors.

Without a phony baloney issue on the ballot to scare the ignorant with (Oklahoma is rated at 48th in the US in education) and usually reliable voters still upset that the Republican Ledge wanted to start taxing Social Security and Veterans Retirement..... Things look bleak.

Can anyone suggest a way to make people vote for the Party that controls the state when they have spent the last two years accomplishing nothing?

I have already suggested begging for votes since that's what they did in 2010, but besides that what can the Party that praises hard work do when they have done no hard work?

By the way, the Ledge did vote to reduce the State Income Tax by 1/2 of a percent. To deal with the expected shortfall they just cut the Education budget again, so it is all good.

love it.

One suggestion is to identify and attack all wasted and redundant spending in the state. Work it as a budgetary concern, which the state is experiencing.

As stated before on another thread, many of the school districts can be combined and spending cut, saving the state millions of dollars in taxpayer monies. The state could then lower some of the taxes on businesses, allowing them to bring jobs into the state, increasing the amount of money they can tax as income tax...larger base means more tax money.

Don't take offense, as I'm only quoting Carville in days past, but..."It's the economy, stupid"

The economy and the future is what will bring voters out.

I suppose they could start pointing out that off all the possible things a government can do, doing nothing is among the better ones.

If they did nothing the state would be better off. But they have done nothing to further the quality of life in the state and they still are cashing their paychecks.

Showing up, spending money on them and telling everyone else to get by with less is not governing.

They did do one thing: The state is now about $50,000,000 in the hole, so they know how to run up debt.

The Republican Party is no longer the Conservative Party of old...

What a bunch of idiots
 

If those morons want all their schools to be turned into the OK Corral where their kids will shoot guns at each other all day long, rather than learn anything , I hope that they :


1: Will NOT VOTE


and


2: Will NOT BREED.


That's all.


kthxbi

I have no looked (a bit scared of the answer) but can we at least assume that they just want the adults to have guns and not the kids?

They can keep bringing more ammunition in and remove the bodies, I guess.

That makes me feel so much better.

And people wonder why I'm going to vote anything other than D or R again this year.

Both parties have become such an effed-up, corrupt, special interest controlled, money and power grubbing mess. I've always been an independent, and voted based on the individual rather than the party - but it's gotten to the point that NEITHER side will present a reasonable alternative - just more of the SOS.

In passing, I'm actually hearing quite a few people expressing their disgust with both parties these days, especially the two "choices" we have for POTUS, and their intention to vote for any remotely viable third party.

So, here we have a thread that points out the worthlessness of the Oklahoma GOP and you cite it as evidence in favor of not voting for Democrats. This is just as Karl Rove intended it. The GOP exploits the popular notion that Rs and Ds are all the same, which is demonstrably false. The parties are not the same. Not even close.

I am OK with people rejecting both parties, but to suggest that they are the same is to ignore reality.

IMHO.

WTF do you think I just did? WTH in that post did I say that "both parties are the same", other than the level of corruption and stupidity?

Probably THIS part set him off:

\The way you wrote it made it read like the DEGREE of malice in each party is identical in BOTH political parties.

And that is simply not true.

The Republicans by ANY reasonble measure in degree are FAR MORE awash in blatant and secret greed corruption and bribery than the Democrats, when you count their sheer numbers and the amount of money they take and how totally they are controlled by big business through their lobbyists.

that is the flaw in your analysis (which is essentially true) that was being pointed out to you.

I didn't mean to twist your words, but I don't think I missed your meaning by much. What got me going was that you responded to a thread about the GOP with, "And people wonder why I'm going to vote anything other than D or R again this year." The response suggested that you think the thread somehow reflected poorly on the Democrats. The only way that would be true is if "both parties are the same."That's a big "other than", IMHO.