Actually, Christie’s pretty healthy, but he also had a gastric operation a few months ago and has supposedly lost 40 pounds or so. My guess is that he’ll be even thinner by the time the 2016 campaign rolls around.

To the contrary, I’ve learned well. The American people do not wish to be free. They want free stuff.

Your prognostication that Christi, without my vote, will lose to generic Democrat in the worst defeat in presidential election history is an accurate measure of Christi’s appeal and worth. Well said.

Most Presidential elections are Saruman v. Sauron.

Beyond having to step into Orthanc and bow down to Sauron

Where I live bowing is required. Doctors refuse to treat patients without several government-issued IDs. Union membership is legally required for many jobs. Refusal to attend diversity seminars is reprimandable offense.

Robert A. Heinlein famously proposed in one of his novels that only those who had performed military service could be considered fully citizens with full rights, and that somewhat recalls ancient Greece.

But I think it should be easy to agree that anybody receiving welfare, Section 8 housing, Medicaid, or food stamps should not be allowed to vote. You want to vote? Then stand on your own two feet and don’t leech off your fellow citizens. The very idea that people who are living off others’ tax money should be able to vote for politicians who promise to give them even more is absurd on its face.

If we want to win elections, we have to have candidates that will appeal to the fools

You just put your finger on the problem. In a republic, fools would not be allowed to vote.

The Founders knew that democracy was not a stable form of government, and went to great lengths to prevent it. They created a republic instead, and sought to ensure that only the most educated and responsible people would be permitted to vote.

In the 18th Century, their solution was to give the franchise only to property-owning white men. That made perfect sense at the time. Women generally did not pursue higher education, and in many places it was illegal to educate black slaves. White men who owned property were regarded as more likely to be responsible citizens than those who did not.

The Founders also crafted an intricate system of checks and balances to keep any one faction from gaining too much power. The House of Representatives was popularly elected, while the Senate was intended to represent the states’ interests, and its members were appointed by state legislatures.

The voting franchise was steadily expanded, first to non-property owning whites, then to freed black slaves, then to women. Today we have a universal franchise, and we speak of the “right” to vote. Even a requirement of showing proof of identity at the polls is considered an outrageous violation of rights to some.

Meanwhile, the 17th Amendment changed the Senate from being advocates of their state’s interests into a popularity contest, with campaign money flowing in from outside their state.

Today, we are no longer a republic, but nearly a pure democracy. People can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, and enthusiastically do. I don’t believe the Founders would be at all surprised to see our problems today. They tried very hard to prevent them.

I don’t see how it is possible to go from a democracy to a republic via the ballot box. It would require voters to cut off their own benefits, and even in some cases deny themselves the franchise. You can’t get there from here.

It will burn, because it must.

Whether we should cut spending is not an area open to compromise because it is a factual, economic principle that one cannot indefinitely live beyond one’s means and, that no society has the moral right to impoverish its children out of selfish self-interest. Both reason and morality support and demand that we cut spending.

Well stated, and I agree. The problem with most Republicans, whether you call them “the Establishment”, “RINOs”, or “moderates” is that they have no intention of cutting spending. They have proven it time and time again by their actions.

I’ve often made an analogy with European “conservative” parties. They never challenge the legitimacy of the Leviathan state; they merely argue that they can administer it better than their opponents. That is where we are now.

These statist Republicans also have their own set of cronies to enrich when they are in power, just like the Democrats.

I’m not supporting this crap any more.

“How many more H.W. Bush’s must we support before it is acknowledged that America’s path to the gallows is merely delayed under such men?”

Indeed.

Clearly there is no point in further discussion with you. And we’ve already been shellacked in 2008 and 2012. In politics, a defeat by one vote is, for that term, as final as by 20 million. When the ‘reasonable men’ whom you support pass Comprehensive Amnesty for 11-33 million “undocumented democrats” and permanent one-party rule results, remember this discussion.