just imagine of the parties were reversed

[unblock]

and the republicans were running an intelligent, articulate, principaled, seasoned political veteran.

and the democrats were running someone who couldn't string a sentence together, misuses words and expressions, throws tantrums, insults people, lost jobs, lost allies, lied about our security, exaggerated threats to install fear, took away freedoms, ran up a record deficit, etc., etc., etc.

just imagine what the polling would be like.

oh yeah, damn liberal media!

[DeepModem Mom]

1. You are so right -- such a Dem would have been destroyed long ago --

instead we are often labeled "too smart," etc.

[salin]

2. I can't do it...

in my lifetime there has never been a national democratic candidate running for president that seemed in articulate or articulate but unintelligent (as Reagan came off being).

[Czolgosz]

3. When you say, "just imagine . . . the republicans were running an

intelligent, articulate, principled, seasoned political veteran." You are aware that they tried this in 2000, and the Republican party faithful rejected him overwhelmingly in favor of a recovering alcoholic whose main experience was as a failed insider-trader and as governor of a state where the governor is largely a ceremonial position which is most distinguished by allowing the occupant of that office preside over serial executions of minorities?

[unblock]

5. i'm aware of this part

it's the drunken cokehead inarticulate irresponsible good-for-nothing democrat part that's so hard.

[lasttrip]

4. but the polling then would at least be true, since dems

can think and decide for themselves who is the better candidate for all the people and the country as a whole.

[Philostopher]

6. Hang on --

I need to clean the Coke off my monitor!

Republicans want somebody they can control. Intellect in their candidates scares the piss out of them -- they want inarticulate, moody little boys to run for President, because they can't control the other kind.

Someone else on the thread made that point -- in 2000, they could at least have run McCain -- an ideologue as much as any other current Republican, but someone who could string two sentences together, at least and appeared to have a brain that functioned on a more or less ordinary level.

Ah, but could they trust him always to toe the line they wanted? No, they could not -- and that's why they crushed him underfoot with a smear campaign. They (the current/recent GOP leadership) fear, envy and hate anybody who's smarter than the average bear. Anybody who's smart enough to form his own opinions is dangerous to them.