This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Most Definitely Not A Strawman: From YKTTW
Silent Hunter: Harriet Hayes didn't do the FHM-style shoot in the end. The RL person she was partially based on, Kristin Chenoweth, did. Sounds like a Take That! to me.
Gattsuru: Lieberman pretty much voted the Dem party line on domestic issues, and he's not exactly rated well by the American Conservative Union. He's not a typical Democrat on the War in Iraq, which cost him the primary, but now he's agreed to literally vote as directed by Howard Dean on every domestic issue to keep his committee seats. I'm not sure he's a good example here. Miller, though, is a good one.
Bobfrank: Removed the following:
- Orson Scott Card does this in his latest polemic, Empire (where liberal terrorists assassinate the president and the red states and blue states go to war). The tough conservative commander has a liberal wife, but she's a "classical" liberal, meaning her values were last considered to sit on the liberal side of the spectrum around the 1850s.
Nornagest: I haven't read the book, but it seems to me that there's a tendency to assign the "mainstream" label to one's own political positions, no matter where they might stand. To many Republicans, Republicans are middle-of-the-road and Democrats are far left. To many Democrats, Democrats are centrist and Republicans are far-right. Orson Scott Card seems to be an unusual Democrat, but it's more than possible that he's falling into the same trap; the political writing of his that I have read may not have conformed exactly to a party line, but it's anything but unbiased.
Empyrean: Removed the line that Real Life disregards the idea that demand creates supply. This economist troper will argue that point to the death against all comers.
Also removed the following:
"If you work in a menial job like a security guard, you're lazy and deserve to be shot. At least according to Rand's Dagney Taggart in Atlas Shrugged . . . So if one got all of their objectivist Dogma soley from the work of Ayn Rand, you really would have a society with nobody at the bottom . . . "
Considering that Rand's Mary Suetopia of supermen were doing things like raising pigs, I'd say that the dirty jobs would still get done, just by supermen. Who would be awesome at them, like everything else.
Fast Eddie, moving in some natter...
- I beg to differ. Conservative doctrine as practiced in the past thirty years has consistently been that of increasing the size of the state and turning the nation into a police state. In that respect, the Evil Plan was a pretty good analogue to conservative philosophy as consistently practiced these past thirty-five years- and Reagan's philosophy as he actually practiced it is a far better indicator of what that philosophy was than the things he claimed for it. About the only thing you can't accuse them of is raising taxes. However, arguably letting deregulated businesses fail and then swooping in and nationalizing them is even worse.
Silkenray: Since Lieberman didn't get the nomination, should we change the wording in the example "...and is short-listed for the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 2008, after having run as the Democratic VP candidate in 2000."?
- Silkenray: Seeing no objections, I have changed it to read "...and was short-listed but ultimately not selected..."
Insanity Prelude, moving some more discussion...
Well, yes, those sound like the issues she thinks they are "too far to the right" about.
- Er, yes... but the movie makes it pretty clear her character feels the Republican party 'left [her] behind' when none of her apparent views would have been remotely popular in the GOP within her political lifetime (she came to office in the era of Bill Clinton).
- See the discussion of RINO (Republican In Name Only) politicians below for the Truth In Television of such a person possibly existing in the Republican party — but if any of them tried to go Democrat and then speechify about how the Republican party "left them behind" the eyerolling would extend from sea to shining sea. RIN Os are small but well-known phenomenon on the Washington scene, it would be kinda hard for one to convincingly fake outrage at this late a date.
- Would Hanson's very vocal atheism still be an issue? She was not simply a quiet, 'don't mention the faith' secularist but had some pretty strongly anti-religious opinions.
- To answer your question. . . Yes. Yes it would. Being even non-Christian reduces your electability in America to next-to-nil. Those who do make it tend to still be within the Abrahamic branch.
- Perhaps the next-to-nil electability comes from the fact that she is an outspoken and anti-religious atheist, not merely being atheist? You know, vocally railing against things protected in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights? One which most people feel strongly in favor of compared to, oh, say, the second amendment?
Pulled this from the Orson Card section :
- Which is extremely ironic, considering he's written books that condemn killing purely on the basis of race/species.
- Thanks for cutting that. I'm liberal and I had no idea what the hell that troper was going for with that comment.
slb: I'm thinking of cutting the entire Orson Scott Card section from this trope, because it doesn't have to do with the trope. The trope itself is about semi-believable strawmen that are used to suggest balance or a fair opposition to the main direction of the movement. The person who added that section believes that Card is a liberal in conservative clothing, whereas he's simply a moderate (unless all moderates are X in Y clothing, which would skew this trope over a lot), and he's not representing a group, to boot. Unless someone can explain why that section is justified? It just sounds like someone has a fight to pick with Card (who has no shortage of Hatedom), or saying that he should just stick to party lines(??).
slb: OK, I've done it. Just seems like hatedom and begging for flames. Removed:
- Orson Scott Card, despite being registered as a Democrat and voting (for Obama) in their primaries in 2008, has argued vociferously in favor of the War on Terror and banning same-sex marriage, (eventually) supported John McCain in the general election, and generally considers the Democratic party of today to be a hive of scum and villainy. He does not switch sides because he rejects the notion that the planks on the party platforms have to be a package deal (he favors gun control, distrusts free market capitalism, and paints conservatives who oppose opening the Mexican border as racists, for instance). Notable for being the only person this troper has ever heard call George W. Bush a moderate, and the only conservative who thinks Bush a better president than Ronald Reagan.
Silverfish: In response to the cutlist comment ("complaining about networks you don't like"), I don't think it applies. The title might be an attack on Fox News, but to the trope description for the most part isn't, and the examples are more general than that. There seems to be a genuine trope here.
Freezair For A Limited Time: Whoever cutlisted this seems to have read nothing beyond the title. While it perhaps is a bit inflammatory, the trope here actually seems to be handled pretty fairly from where I stand. It needs a little clean-up, maybe, but all articles that even remotely reference politics in some way do...
Deuxhero:Half the examples are real life and questionable ones at that. Colmes is apparently the trope namer, but not an example. Rename, and cut all real life examples.
manyquestions: I second Deuxhero's suggestion. This is tropeable, but the way it's being handled is embarrassing.
Shrikesnest: We need to rename this damn thing. I understand that all tropers are twenty-year-old liberal atheist college students, but even you strawmen out there must realize why this thing attracts negative attention. Or else I'm putting up a crowner to rename Documentary of Lies to Michael Moore Is Fat And Also Bad At His Job.
Coolnut: Seconded. (Renaming FNL, not the Documentary of Lies one!) I was thinking something like "What Do You Mean, It's (Still) Partisan?"
Slatz Grobnik: I don't think a rename will really do the trick. If anything will, it's removing or strictly limiting the Real Life section.
gaijinguy: Cut the following lines:
- Except that the Republicans of 1865 were the liberals, and the democrats were the conservatives, by our standards. Sort of. So it's stretching, even there.
- Even liberals by 1865 standards would be pretty conservative today.
- Avoiding a threadjacking, but it's worth pointing out that the above is an extreme generalization and very problematic. For example, the Republicans were the pro-tariff party while the Democrats were free-traders. The Republicans were even at the time seen as the party of business interests, while the Democrats were the party of the ruling class in the South and the immigrants in the North. It's a lot more confusing than what was stated above, though it is true that the Republicans were a lot better on race relations in the 1800s.
- Except that the Republicans of 1865 were the liberals, and the democrats were the conservatives, by our standards. Sort of. So it's stretching, even there.
Frankly, when you need to start with "Avoiding a threadjacking," it's just asking for trouble.
