Not to be overly snarky, but... it always shows. Why are you wasting time calling it out yet again? He's either too stupid to see it or disingenuous. I have no idea which.
None of the above, but thanks for playing your normal little games. Don't you have some children somewhere to tell they should be happy their father died?
So Brett, about the fact that the Democrats have nowhere near the instances of rule abuse as Republicans...
No. I'll wait until they grow up and can be held responsible for their moral decisions. You know... kinda like I already said in that other thread?
A fair point. What's happening with the Republicans is not what the PUMAs were doing. They just loved their candidate so much that it inspired them to lash out at other candidates defensively.
FYI, in retrospect I'm pretty sure a substantial amount of the PUMA stuff was polite racism. The tells are that there was little policy distance between the two candidates, the primary was not particularly venemous compared to even the 1992 primary, much less in the long run, and that none of the other 1992 candidates had a breakaway movement. In fact it's pretty hard to find a breakaway movement analogous without pointing at, uh, the civil rights era Democratic splitup.
Starting to look like a turnaround in the polls for Romney/Santorum. Wonder if Rick will give up or keep on fighting if he doesn't pull in some big wins on Tuesday.
Oh, he'll keep on fighting. Are you kidding? God wants him to maximize his agony so his whining will be all the more amusing.
That's not him making excuses, it's him casting himself as David to Romney's Goliath to make the fact that he's doing so well despite having such a (relatively) cash-poor campaign look more impressive. It also happens to probably be true; "running away with the race" might be an exaggeration, but if it's a close game now, he probably would be the solid favorite if they were spending equally.
Aw hell yeah, Nate has Romney taking Ohio. God, I hope so. This Santorum mess has gotten quite large enough. Democracy isn't to produce the best answer. It's to produce the best answer that dumb people can live with. Because if you do not keep the dumb people happy, they will kill the fuck out of you. Also, I view Gingrich as a hideous mashup of Santorum and Paul. I think some fraction of Gingrich's following likes his brainpower more than his God-balls, and would switch to Paul instead of Santorum if Gingrich dropped out. So Santorum would be doing better, but not 100%-of-Gingrich's-vote better. Edit: WOOHOO! My state kicked him in the balls at the perfect time! GO TEAM GO TEAM RAH RAH RAH DITCH SANTORUM WOO HAH HAH
Or, at the very least, a dull beige paste that covers evenly and doesn't go too far in any direction.
Oh, God. Now I feel even worse for his kids. Still, he'll probably get a good book deal or two out of it, which will probably make back the loss fairly fast.
Aristotle covered this theory in his blog 2300 years ago. If only he had been more active trying to get other bloggers to link to him, this information might have become common knowledge long ago.
Oh, please. Like they wouldn't get a full-ride from Liberty University for being such valiant defenders of the faith. Shed no tears, please.
Yeah, but he has the cause and effect mixed up. In order to be on equal money terms with Romney, he'd need to be a more attractive to voters. Having money doesn't make you a more compelling candidate; being a more compelling candidate gets you money.
I haven't seen any data that really proves that, though. I've seen studies that show a correlation between having more money and winning elections, but none of them AFAIK have demonstrated that people are more likely* to win elections because of money. I know that's the conventional wisdom, but it is also likely that people have more money because they are the more popular candidate, and then also win elections for that reason. *(Or at least significantly more likely. I think we can assume that having more money probably has some effect. But enough effect that Santorum would be running away with the primaries if only he had as much money as Romney? I'm very skeptical.)
It happened in Florida this primary season. Romney was well behind Gingrich, he spent a fortune, he ended up winning. That sequence of events is fairly common. The correlation between money spent and elections won is very high. Keep in mind that "money spent" is a different variable from "money gained from fund raising". Presidential candidates have a single war chest that they have to dole out in varying amounts to the different states. From what I've read, it seems pretty clear that their poll numbers go up wherever they choose to spend their money. Or, to come at it from another angle, what reason do you have for disbelieving the conventional wisdom?
Yeah, what Ben Sones is saying only makes sense to me if we're only talking about money raised from individual supporters. But private funds and huge corporate donations are also in the mix, and they also correlate with success. I think it's a positive feedback loop whereby money leads to success which brings in more money which fuels more success, but I think it's pretty hard to make the case that spending money doesn't win elections.
But it doesn't take JUST money. Hilary Clinton overspent Obama by 6 million by the time she bowed out. Christ Steve Forbes AND John McCain outspent Bush in 2000. I guess you can be a broke ass or not a good hair but not both.
You were running a good point until you decided to hedge your bets at the end and undermine your entire point about studies, proof etc. by throwing in an assumption to make the hedge.
Because there's no proof that it's true, it's the popular one of two readings for a correlation. Equally, you could say people could see he had a brighter future and so poured money into him to win future favours.
Actually, there is proof, although it's not definitive. It's what I was getting at with my comment with presidential candidates, although I may not have been clear. And that's where the presidential candidate example comes in. Presidential candidates raise funds nationwide, but they spend money on a state-by-state basis, at their discretion. It's a fairly clear divorce between money raised and money spent. And history pretty consistently shows that wherever candidates spend the money, that's where they tend to do well.. unless, of course, their opponent outspends them. To take another example, our national parties sometimes pour money into local elections to help win strategically important elections. The candidates have done little to attract that money, other than to be running in an important election. And yet, that unearned money seems to sway elections quite a bit.
The only point that I was arguing was that we don't really know whether campaign money is the tail wagging the dog, or vice-versa. The assumption that money probably has some effect seems reasonable to me, though. Call it a hypothesis rather than an assumption, if you prefer.
