[tomder55]

I think the standard bearer is already Chris Christie.

He was interviewed this week and did the obligatory "no way" when asked if he would run.

Christie was another one of those candidates of whom we were told "he has no chance to win".

I figured out the problem the Republican professional political class is having. To them it doesn't matter if people who undermine their policies get elected as Republicans . Their primary concern was the power of the committee chair.
To me it doesn't really matter. On a best case scenario they would not have a veto or a filibuster proof majority... and I don't see the President triangulating like Bubba did working with Newt to get something done. This election cycle is the preliminaries to the 2012 election.

[tomder55]

The unelectable Marco Rubio is up 14 points in the Fla. Senate race.

[speechlesstx]

Of course Rubio is up. So when are the Latino groups going to get on fire about one of their own, about the same time the feminists cheer Angle, Palin, Nikki Haley and O'Donnell?

The Crists and Castles are the problem, their values - if they have any - are entirely too flexible. Crist is running as in independent on the cash of donors expectation their money to be supporting a Republican. Castle hasn't even got the courtesy to offer O'Donnell congratulations on her win, but he has time to talk to the White House.

[excon]

So when are the Latino groups going to get on fire about one of their own, about the same time the feminists cheer Angle, Palin, Nikki Haley and O'Donnell?

I can't explain Angle and I know little about O'Donnell

Hello again, Steve:

YOU'RE in the dark, but, you think feminists should jump on board... Dude! If MEN are supposed to support MEN, and Christians are supposed to support Christians, why don't you support Obama?

excon

[NeedKarma]

OMG, why would a feminist cheer Palin??

[speechlesstx]

OMG, why would a feminist cheer Palin????

Why would they not is the correct question. If feminist groups were really about "equality for all women," eliminating discrimination, harassment and sexism they would have defended here against all the discrimination, harassment and sexism she faces. But they aren't about those things, they're only about those things for women that think like them. They are lying, hypocritical posers.

[tomder55]

Of course Rubio is up. So when are the Latino groups going to get on fire about one of their own, about the same time the feminists cheer Angle, Palin, Nikki Haley and O'Donnell?

The Crists and Castles are the problem, their values - if they have any - are entirely too flexible. Crist is running as in independent on the cash of donors expectation their money to be supporting a Republican. Castle hasn't even got the courtesy to offer O'Donnell congratulations on her win, but he has time to talk to the White House.

Castle is for Cap and Tax, he voted for TARP, against the surge, for the auto bailout and cash for clunkers. It is baffling that the Republican establishment lined up for him . Of course he took a call from the President. No doubt they were about future employment possibilities.

[excon]

If feminist groups were really about "equality for all women," eliminating discrimination, harassment and sexism they would have defended here against all the discrimination, harassment and sexism she faces.

Hello again, Steve:

You know that puzzled look you get on your face when WE accuse you of racism?? Well, I've got one of those looks on MY face... I paid a LOT of attention to the campaigns... I didn't see ANY sexism. None at all. Nobody said that she should be home having baby's. That's sexism.

Personally, I don't like her because she's rather dumb. But, I'm proud of what she's accomplished as a woman - dumb or not.

excon

[NeedKarma]

They are lying, hypocritical posers.

Why come to the defense of someone who is against you and your platform whether it's a man or woman? Like ex said why don't you support all christians whether they be democrat or republicans. C'mon, your argument here is so weak.

[speechlesstx]

YOU'RE in the dark, but, you think feminists should jump on board.... Dude! If MEN are supposed to support MEN, and Christians are supposed to support Christians, why don't you support Obama?

I'm not group, I'm an individual and I support my causes. I'm not a feminist group claiming to represent ALL women. Until NOW and others like them remove from their credos the claim to support ALL women they're lying hypocrites.

I'm not a mens groups posing as a representative of ALL men, and as far as I know there are none. As a Christian I'm called to support GOD's causes. Abortion is NOT one of God's causes. A government nanny state is NOT one of God's causes. I am under no obligation to support the personal agenda of everyone who calls themselves a Christian. but if a feminist group DOES make the claim to support all women they ARE obligated to do so.

[speechlesstx]

Hello again, Steve:

You know that puzzled look you get on your face when WE accuse you of racism??? Well, I've got one of those looks on MY face... I paid a LOT of attention to the campaigns... I didn't see ANY sexism. None at all. Nobody said that she should be home having baby's. That's sexism.

You need to both broaden your definition of sexism and pay closer attention. It was not only said of Palin that she should stay home and be the little lady of the house, she was accused of faking a pregnancy and other things far more vile than anything Obama has endured.

Clinton aides: Palin treatment sexist

Bill Clinton Decries Sexism Against Palin, Hillary

I think you remember those things, don't you?

[excon]

but if a feminist group DOES make the claim to support all women they ARE obligated to do so.

Hello again, Steve:

And, I betcha THEY, like me, are PROUD of what these women have accomplished. The fact that women can RUN, and WIN is a testament to feminism. There is NO DOUBT that they're proud of that...

But, that's different than a feminist group supporting the policies of a person simply because of their plumbing. There's no more onus on the woman's groups to support ALL women, any more than there is in the groups you belong to. You're making that part up.

excon

[speechlesstx]

Why come to the defense of someone who is against you and your platform whether it's a man or woman? Like ex said why don;t you support all christians whether they be democrat or republicans. C'mon, your argument here is so weak.

What does the word ALL mean NK? It either means ALL or it doesn't, which is it? Or are you telling me that Palin isn't an 'authentic' woman, like Condoleezza Rice isn't an 'authentic' black.

[tomder55]

OMG, why would a feminist cheer Palin????

Of course you mean... why would a leftist feminist who's single issue is abortion rights cheer Palin ?

I happen to think she carries the feminist mantle well. She's a women who both raises a family and excels and has gone to the top levels of her profession. She stepped out the 'Stepford wife' stereotypes pinned on Conservative women.
The feminist movement would have you believe that women are the victims in every area of our society. Palin's success proves that premise wrong. The feminists would have you believe there is an artificial glass ceiling they have to break through . Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman disprove that. They earned their success through hard work, not by playing the victim card. That is why they threaten the so called feminist movement . Their success disproves the premise that the modern feminist movement lives on.

[excon]

You need to both broaden your definition of sexism and pay closer attention. I think you remember those things, don't you?

Hello again, Steve:

Actually, I think you need to reign in your definitions.. Yes, you can always find some interloper to quote to make your argument... You tend to do that... But one or two rouge's DON'T make a movement, or even SPEAK for a movement. Plus, you'll have to quote somebody with more credibility than Bill Clinton. I sure don't know why you went there.

I'll buy your argument when you quote somebody representing the WOMAN'S movement saying that stuff..

excon

[Wondergirl]

It was not only said of Palin that she should stay home and be the little lady of the house

That was murmured by a few only when she had a Down's child and also had small children at home plus a husband who worked far away in the oil fields.

she was accused of faking a pregnancy and other things far more vile than anything Obama has endured.

That wasn't due to sexism, or I would have stood up and screamed the loudest.

[excon]

I happen to think she carries the feminist mantle well.

Hello again,

I don't know how I could be clearer. I'm a feminist. I absolutely agree with you.

But, you cannot think, because I'm PROUD of what she's accomplished, that I also must support her policies?? Are you not PROUD of what Obama has accomplished - not as an individual, but as a black man in this country? Do you not see, that what he has accomplished is a testament to the greatness of our nation? To recognize THAT, does not mean you are required to support Obamacare...

excon

[tomder55]

I'll buy your argument when you quote somebody representing the WOMAN'S movement saying that stuff..

I'll take that challenge. Camille Paglia has been one of the leading feminists for decades and a lifetime Democrat.

During the 2008 campaign she was a solid Obama supporter and also wrote that Palin was the fulfillment of the feminists dream.
She wrote this in Salon :

I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S. the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation -- a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me -- and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).

Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America's pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War -- long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did -- which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.. .


Now that's the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism -- a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership...

It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism -- one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.


But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

Salon.com | Fresh blood for the vampire

[excon]

I'll take that challenge. Camille Paglia has been one of the leading feminists for decades and a lifetime Democrat.

During the 2008 campaign she was a solid Obama supporter and also wrote that Palin was the fulfillment of the feminists dream.

Hello again, tom:

I'm not sure what you were pointing at in the article. I agree with Camille Paglia too. I didn't read ANYTHING that suggested Palin should have stayed home and took care of her baby's. The only thing I read that Paglia didn't like was Palins choice of study. But, that wasn't an attack on feminism BY a feminist. It was a diss on Sarah Palins choice of study, IF it was a diss at all.

I'M a feminist, and I diss Palin ALL the time.

excon

[speechlesstx]

Actually, I think you need to reign in your definitions.. Yes, you can always find some interloper to quote to make your argument... You tend to do that... But one or two rouge's DON'T make a movement, or even SPEAK for a movement.

That's just one more fact you tend to ignore, the fact that I back up my facts. Here's another example for you:

HARRY SMITH: Coming up, the mommy wars. Should a woman with five children run for the nation's second highest office? We'll hear from all sides of that debate...

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: Governor Sarah Palin is a hot topic for many women. The question, can a mother of five, including an infant with Downs Syndrome, be an effective vice president? We're joined by 'Washington Post' columnist Sally Quinn, who's in Washington this morning, and here with me, I have Congresswoman Kathy McMorris Rogers from Washington State and Sarah Huckabee, who worked on the presidential campaign of her father, Mike Huckabee. Good morning to the three of you...

RODRIGUEZ: Let me start with the ladies I have here and pose a question that Rudy Giuliani posed to me this morning. Is it fair to even have this discussion about whether a woman can juggle five kids and be vice president? What do you think, Sarah?

SARAH HUCKABEE: I think it's a disgrace that the question's even being asked. I think as -- not only as a woman, but as somebody who's grown up in politics, I think that Sarah Palin – Governor Palin has proven herself time and again that she has the capacity to lead. And I want to know why no one's asking you know, Barack Obama's got two kids. No body's asking him is he a good parent because he's running for president. That question hasn't come up and simply because of the fact that she's a woman, I think that, you know, the media should take the step that the rest of America has on both sides of the political aisle. We've seen Republicans and Democrats unite behind two fantastic women over this political season. And I think it's time that the media stops asking the question and follow America's lead and get behind the rest of the country in moving forward and seeing that women are capable to lead this country.

RODRIGUEZ: She has five children. One has Downs Syndrome. You have a child with Downs Syndrome, right Congresswoman?

ROGERS: Yes, yes.

RODRIGUEZ: That -- special needs requires more attention. Does that factor into this at all?

KATHY MCMORRIS ROGERS: She's proven that it can be done. She's currently the governor of a very important state in this country and at the time that we've been celebrating the fact that we have more women serving in Congress than ever. We have the first woman Speaker of the House, we had Senator Clinton running for president. I am excited about the candidacy of Sarah Palin for vice president. And I think she brings a valuable perspective as a wife, as a mother of five. As someone that does have a special needs child. I'm excited to think that she could be in this position and really be a champion for millions of women and families across this country that face the everyday challenges of trying to balance work and be a mom and provide for her family.

RODRIGUEZ: Sally, do you agree with these ladies?

SALLY QUINN: Well, you know, I think the whole issue of whether working mothers is a good idea is so long past for all of us. Everybody I know is a working mother, I've been a working mother for 26 years. That's not the issue. But I do think that every single woman knows in her heart, a mother, that mothers and fathers are different and mother's roles and father's roles are different. And I -- it's interesting that here I am, supposedly part of you know, the -- what one would call the liberal elite media. That's what we've been all -- the critics of Sarah Palin have been called. And yet, taking the position that a woman with five children, including one with special needs, and a daughter who is a 17-year-old child who is pregnant and about to have a baby, probably has got to rethink her priorities. It seems to me that there is a tipping point, and I think that she's crossed the tipping point. I believe that it's going to be very difficult for her. And let me say that she is not unlikely -- it is not unlikely that she could be President of the United States. With these, in effect, six children to deal with, one with special needs, I have a learning disabled child, one son. And that's taken an enormous amount of time and effort on my part. My husband was editor of 'The Washington Post.' I had to leave my job because he was in and out of the hospital. I worked part time. But I know the pressures, and I know the problems that just caring for one special needs child takes out of you. And it seems to me that-

RODRIGUEZ: Sally, let me interrupt you-

QUINN: -for someone who's President of the United States, which she could well be, that there are going to be enormous conflicts. Which we all have conflicts and guilt. But I think this is -- this is too much.

I guess you forgot that, too.

Plus, you'll have to quote somebody with more credibility than Bill Clinton. I sure don't know why you went there.

So now the Clintons aren't to be trusted? When he lied under oath it was no big deal, he's just banging some woman and who cares about that. When he speaks the truth he's not to be trusted. I see how that works.

I'll buy your argument when you quote somebody representing the WOMAN'S movement saying that stuff..

I didn't anyone representing the women's movement was attacking, I said they aren't supporting and defending her which is their reason for existence and stated purpose. But I'm sure I can find feminists attacking Palin when they should be holding her up as example of success. I think you should just give it up though, you've lost this argument. No need to let me embarrass you further on this, and trust me, I will.