I exchanged a few posts with this person and thought we had a good chat. Nothing triggered my bs detector and the tone was cordial. Could it be we've gotten so used to confrontation and insults that normal discussion 'triggers' doubt?

Just askin cause it seems caps, attacks and rants, mine included, have become easier and easier to write instead of thoughtful exchanges of ideas and polite disagreement. I agree the number of posts is high, but hey, look at me.....blabber mouth, lol. Something to say on everything. I'll watch but so far I'm not seeing this poster as a troll.

Ryan's plan, at least the economic part has been out for over a year. Here's Romney's.

ROMNEY'S DAY ONE PLAN: Bills and Executive Orders Romney will issue on his first day in office:

The American Competitiveness Act
• Reduces the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent

The Open Markets Act
• Implements the Colombia, Panama, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements

The Domestic Energy Act
• Directs the Department of the Interior to undertake a comprehensive survey of American energy reserves in partnership with exploration companies

*initiates leasing in all areas currently approved for exploration

The Retraining Reform Act
• Consolidates the sprawl of federal retraining programs and returns funding and responsibility for these programs to the states

The Down Payment on Fiscal Sanity Act
• Immediately cuts non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent, reducing the annual federal budget by $20 billion

EXECUTIVE ORDERS

* An Order to Pave the Way to End Obamacare

• An Order directing the Sec of HHS and all relevant fed officials to return the maximum possible authority to the states to innovate and design health care solutions that work best for them

• An order that directs all agencies to immediately initiate the elimination of Obama-era regulations that unduly burden the economy or job creation and then caps annual increases in regulatory costs at zero dollars

*An Order to Boost Domestic Energy Production

• An order that directs the Dept of Interior to implement a process for rapid issuance of drilling permits to developers with established safety records seeking to use pre-approved techniques in pre-approved areas

*An Order to sanction China for Unfair Trade Practices

•Directs the Dept of Treasury to list China as a currency manipulator in its biannual report

*Directs the Dept of Commerce to assess countervailing duties on Chinese imports if China does not quickly move to float its currency

*An Order to Empower American Businesses and Workers

• An Order to reverses executive orders issued by President Obama that tilt the playing field in favor of organized labor, including the mandate to use only union labor on government construction projects.

"So the wise goal is to skip the establishment talk and focus on whether a certain group of influential players are heading us in the right direction or the wrong direction."

I agree. But why hold primaries if those with the most influence are going to pick who they want? Primaries are expensive. Just go straight to a convention, pick the candidate the people with influence want and be done with it.

Take your example of the zoo......play it out.

You are the "leader" and of course want to influence how things go. Two exhibits are in bad shape, animals are suffering simply because the design outdated and cramped. The Board wants to fix them so they hold a vote and the majority says both exhibits should be fixed.

In one comparison to a primary you, as leader, might say, "We don't have the money to do both but we can one." Nothing wrong with that. That's being a leader, being influential to the benefit of the zoo and responsive to your board. That's a primary. We like this guy, others like that guy, as Chairman you say, "Guy with the most votes wins."

What if you say "No. I want an aquarium and that's it." That's influential but it's like being a dictator. That's a brokered convention. Mitch Daniels could end up being the aquarium. We didn't ask for him and he didn't run, but we aren't influential enough to stop him from becoming the candidate.

And btw.....totally on board with your take on the long term. This will be a decades long process of weeding out people at every level who lie to get elected. Nobody's gonna drain that swamp but us. And it's a big swamp. :-O

Ok kiddo....I got horses that need to be jumped and they ain't gonna do it on their own, lol. Gotta set up a "double espresso" IV and git crackin. Have a great day and keep on using your influence for good.

We The People seem to be the only ones who think this country has a crisis of leadership as well as being ded broke. And we are the only ones who have connected these two dots.

Not a problem, Frank.

Both the PA and NDAA are abominations that our idiot congress and gutless leader should be keel hauled for passing. They read like a communist manifesto. They all need to be removed from office for supporting them.

We have GOT to get control back into the hands of voters and tax payers.

Frank,

What would possess you make an illogical assumption that because I oppose this, I most not oppose that specious and dangerous bill?

Ready, fire, aim?

Click on my icon and read what I've said in multiple posts across multiple threads about West and every other pos member of congress who voted for that abomination and the Patriot Act since those bills passed.

Hi Addison,

I enjoy your posts too. And I'm not sure we're really at odds on the facts.

My assumptions about party leaders are not false. I've been a delegate multiple times starting in the 90's. Rove and others' power hasn't diminished at all. An obvious example is at McCain. Huck and Thompson came into that convention with a lion's share of the primary votes, so how'd we end up with McCain?

Convention delegates are only obligated to support their state's primary winner on the first round of voting. If that produces no clear 60+% winner, the bartering begins. Who is selling? Delegates? Who's buying? Party leaders. People like Rove. They ask each group..."What's it gonna take to get you to support "our pick"

Delegates come up with what they want and it's a done deal. Delegates don't play nice can be and have been blocked from voting. This is rare...but it has happened.....In both parties on more than one occasion. And this process not only nullifies a candidate who won state primaries all over the country but the votes of people all over the country who picked them.

Not one party meeting I've attended this year has mentioned Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, or Rick Santorum... if we go to a brokered convention. Mitch Daniels name comes up alot though I'm starting to hear Paul Ryan's as well.

And I don't see either of them in a single primary.

So while it's not "evil" it is arrogant and a perversion of the primary process when the party picks someone who didn't even run, not to mention we have no idea who will support them. I think that was how a junior Senator nobody ever heard of won last time. The GOP took out the most popular candidates and put in someone they knew would play ball with their agenda, not the voters'. That's what I was trying to say re the party.

Hey...it's Sunday....and I haven't had enough coffee to be coherent, lol. :-))))))))))))

Yup.

But it isn't benign. Whenever voters buck the "party powers" they threaten this. Hook or crook, Addison, Rove will name the candidate. Can't have voters having any power. While it's tempting to buck these jerks we always seem to be over a barrel, damned if we do or don't.

America can't survive 4 more years of obama....so the party tells us....so we have no choice but to hold our nose and vote for the guy "who's turn it is." Don't think they realize what thin ice they're on. If they keep ignoring conservatives, I see a third party emerging.

This GOP "bidness as usual" dog and pony show's gittin old.

We have to find a way to set our pet issues aside and rally around the candidate with the best chance of wining or we will fragment, forcing a brokered convention where party hoo hahs will pick our candidate for us, like they did McCain.

Our goal is not perfection. Our goal is to defeat the worst president in US history. From that perspective, it's a total no brainer.

We may end up with a brokered convention if this back and forth keeps up and no clear, viable candidate emerges. I urge you to start now lobbying your state party and electoral candidates. They will decide who will run against obama and your input and ideas can influence them. They will get hit with tremendous party pressure once they are at the convention. If they go to that convention with a firm understanding of what the people they speak for want, they can and may hold out against the party and who knows.....we might just get ta decent candidate to run against the dirtiest, least qualified, and most anti-American, anti-Constitutional president to ever hold that office.

Worth a shot. It's not like we have a whole lot of options. But even if we fail, the simple fact is any one of them will be better than obama. Pray for someone good, but come Nov. vote against obama. It really is our only shot. If he wins, we may not get another chance to turn things around. That one's a total no brainer.

Tx,

I know it's frustrating but I've been at this game a long time. No change, no matter how seemingly small or simple, ever takes place quickly. Political and social change are measured in geologic time not calendar time. It's the nature of the beast. And I don't use the term beast lightly.

When we send anyone to DC we send them into a wonderland where money grows on trees, where power is for the plucking, and where any lie becomes truth if instead of telling the right story, you "tell the right story instead."

Profound, meaningful change has to happen from the roots up. Even the job of dog catcher can't be underestimated. 2010, 2012....are the faintest stirrings of change. 2014 maybe we will some change in the GOP or the stirrings of a third, more viable party. I don't know how it will go, but I do know it will never go as quickly as you want it to, or even the direction you think it should.

The alternative, quitting out of frustration or impatience is no longer an option. We've seen what quitting does....it causes millions of voters to stay home allowing a man who hates this nation and it's people to be elected president.

Painfully slow, agonizingly frustrating, and often, as in the case of promising candidates like West, bitterly disappointing as it will be, we keep on keepin on, every election, at every level, for as long as it takes. We do our best and hope that over time, a decade, perhaps longer, the cumulative efforts of patriots all over the country will slowly swing the pendulum back toward sanity.

Hate to depress you on a weekend, lol, but this is politics..... it is what it is.