Who's the Dummy Now?

[kchoya]

Kerry's college grades no better than Bush's:

www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student?mode=PF

"In 1999, The New Yorker published a transcript indicating that Bush had received a cumulative score of 77 for his first three years at Yale and a roughly similar average under a non-numerical rating system during his senior year.

Kerry, who graduated two years before Bush, got a cumulative 76 for his four years, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy when he was applying for officer training school. He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years."

Not particularly noteworthy, just interesting. Of course, if they both went to Harvard, then they would have graduated with honors, like 90% of their classmates.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

kchoya said:

Not particularly noteworthy, just interesting. Of course, if they both went to Harvard, then they would have graduated with honors, like 90% of their classmates.

Ofcourse if they went to Yale now it would be the same case as well.

[jerseyhoya34]

Good fodder here, STPH. Kerry never claimed to be more intelligent than Bush, but nonetheless, this keeps my fellow liberals honest to some extent.

At the same time, I also think that this is a definite non-issue when it comes to qualifications, unless, of course, a specific candidate simply bombed out in college. If you look at McCain, he is as qualified as anyone on the right, but he finished second from the bottom in his class at the Naval Academy.

[kchoya]

jerseyhoya34 said:

Good fodder here, STPH. Kerry never claimed to be more intelligent than Bush, but nonetheless, this keeps my fellow liberals honest to some extent.

I agree with that point. Reading the article, I tried to think back to the campaign and I don't remember any explicit claims of Kerry being smarter than Bush. Rather, I think it was the subtle undertone of campaign coverage, personified by SNL, the Daily Show, etc. Plus, the candidates respective personalities and public personas fed that perception.

[CTHoya08]

jerseyhoya34 said:

Good fodder here, STPH. Kerry never claimed to be more intelligent than Bush, but nonetheless, this keeps my fellow liberals honest to some extent.

At the same time, I also think that this is a definite non-issue when it comes to qualifications, unless, of course, a specific candidate simply bombed out in college. If you look at McCain, he is as qualified as anyone on the right, but he finished second from the bottom in his class at the Naval Academy.

I agree with you, but I'm glad to see this, after being subjected to 4+ years of the same Bush jokes. I don't mind it when people make fun of politicians, but after the first few months of the 2000 campaign, "Bush is dumb" just wasn't very original anymore. As for McCain, I watched the TV movie, and it looks like all McCains are required to finish near the bottom at Navy He must have still been pretty smart though, if they were willing to let him be a pilot.

[Z]

alternate post title: "who's the liar now?" answer: the swift boaters

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

cthoya08 said:

He must have still been pretty smart though, if they were willing to let him be a pilot.

Hey Bush was a pilot too ... he bombed all the Vietcong between Odessa and Shrevport. But I'm not sure if they'd let him be a pilot these days.

[TigerHoya]

cthoya08 said:

jerseyhoya34 said:

Good fodder here, STPH. Kerry never claimed to be more intelligent than Bush, but nonetheless, this keeps my fellow liberals honest to some extent.

At the same time, I also think that this is a definite non-issue when it comes to qualifications, unless, of course, a specific candidate simply bombed out in college. If you look at McCain, he is as qualified as anyone on the right, but he finished second from the bottom in his class at the Naval Academy.

I agree with you, but I'm glad to see this, after being subjected to 4+ years of the same Bush jokes. I don't mind it when people make fun of politicians, but after the first few months of the 2000 campaign, "Bush is dumb" just wasn't very original anymore. As for McCain, I watched the TV movie, and it looks like all McCains are required to finish near the bottom at Navy He must have still been pretty smart though, if they were willing to let him be a pilot.

I'm honestly no big fan of McCain's but U.S. Grant was near the bottom of his class at West Point and look at his war record (and then look at how corrupt he was as President as well.)

[jerseyhoya34]

tigerhoya said:

cthoya08 said:

I agree with you, but I'm glad to see this, after being subjected to 4+ years of the same Bush jokes. I don't mind it when people make fun of politicians, but after the first few months of the 2000 campaign, "Bush is dumb" just wasn't very original anymore. As for McCain, I watched the TV movie, and it looks like all McCains are required to finish near the bottom at Navy He must have still been pretty smart though, if they were willing to let him be a pilot.

I'm honestly no big fan of McCain's but U.S. Grant was near the bottom of his class at West Point and look at his war record (and then look at how corrupt he was as President as well.)

Out of curiosity, do you oppose him from the right or the left? If we assume for a second that Giuliani turns out to be the other frontrunner for the nomination, this race will turn into a clothespin vote for the Christian right element of the party. I don't see a true spokesman for them just yet in this 2008 race.

[the_way]

No matter how you slice it, Bush is a moron whether he is a Republican, Democrat, or alien. And if you cannot admit the fact of his incompetence, then you are seriously blinded by your devotion to your party-alliance. There are a lot of idiots who graduated from Yale and Harvard. There are a lot of intelligent and smart people who dropped out of those schools. In fact, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

If there is a religious-right candidate then the race for the RNC nomination could get interesting because if the majority of those votes flow to one candidate it could take votes that would otherwise go to Guliani or McCain - leaving Guliani to campaign as a security republican and McCain to appeal to the moderate elements and other first time voters like his 2000 campaign. This would be an interesting split of the GOP: religious right, security right, and moderates/youth - the winner of this vote might not necessarily be the candidate that many GOP members would want in a perfect world and could leave a lot of bad blood as I see the security right and the religious right as having developed very different issue sets under the GOP.

[TigerHoya]

theway said:

No matter how you slice it, Bush is a moron whether he is a Republican, Democrat, or alien. And if you cannot admit the fact of his incompetence, then you are seriously blinded by your devotion to your party-alliance. There are a lot of idiots who graduated from Yale and Harvard. There are a lot of intelligent and smart people who dropped out of those schools. In fact, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.

I'd say that sums up most politicians or people who get all worked up about party allegiances all the way down to the grassroots level.

Idiocy and scumminess cross all ideological lines pretty evenly; lying even moreso.

[TigerHoya]

jerseyhoya34 said:

tigerhoya said:

I'm honestly no big fan of McCain's but U.S. Grant was near the bottom of his class at West Point and look at his war record (and then look at how corrupt he was as President as well.)

Out of curiosity, do you oppose him from the right or the left? If we assume for a second that Giuliani turns out to be the other frontrunner for the nomination, this race will turn into a clothespin vote for the Christian right element of the party. I don't see a true spokesman for them just yet in this 2008 race.

I've never voted straight ticket for any party - it is often still impossible for me to do so even if I was daft enough to want to.

I am conservative but not on the fringe. I am a cynic about the whole process and I have a small-L libertarian streak.

[TigerHoya]

stpetersburghoya said:

If there is a religious-right candidate then the race for the RNC nomination could get interesting because if the majority of those votes flow to one candidate it could take votes that would otherwise go to Guliani or McCain - leaving Guliani to campaign as a security republican and McCain to appeal to the moderate elements and other first time voters like his 2000 campaign. This would be an interesting split of the GOP: religious right, security right, and moderates/youth - the winner of this vote might not necessarily be the candidate that many GOP members would want in a perfect world and could leave a lot of bad blood as I see the security right and the religious right as having developed very different issue sets under the GOP.

I think Robertson already said Giuliani was acceptable. Frist was all over SC this weekend, ostensibly for some energy-related visits, but it had testing the waters out written all over it. Hillary won a party straw poll (albeit with low turnout) in the biggest Democratic county in the state of SC last week.

The front-loading of the primaries may be an even bigger deal this time. Otherwise, if there's another nasty fight like Bush-McCain in SC in 2000 (again involving McCain) then the Republicans in this state are going to be divided yet again. It always happens to either party in this state when they hold on to all of the legislative and executive power too long. Lindsey Graham is already getting threats of primary opposition next time over his role in the filibuster compromise.

I think Giuliani is more acceptable now to conservative and Southern Republicans than he was pre-9/11.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

The front-loading of primaries will matter IMO but only to the extent that it makes each campaign see the first few weeks of primaries as make or break and makes everything: rhetoric, rumors, campaign tactics hit the lowest commond denomenator quicker (remember the who's more anti-Catholic battle between Bush and McCain in 2000 and the rumor that McCain has a a black baby when he really adopted an Asian child ... wow ...). I think that, with all due respect to Mr. Robertson, the Christian right is not controlled by one man - you need to win over a large swath of evangelicals, southern baptists, methodists, and other traditional republican voters and not just Pat Robertson - he does control the 700 Club but his power as a king maker has greatly diminished IMO due to the coalition that the Bush administration brought together on gay marriage which reached out to a great deal of groups beyond those directly controlled by Robertson. In order to win in the same way as Bush (i.e. not as an out-right christian conservative who the party might see as ultimately un-electable) you need to come up with a set of issues that speak to these voters but don't really amount to much (if we take Bush for example):

Abortion - he rescinded US funding to some UN programs that promoted abortions overseas, but hasn't directly moved against Roe v. Wade in anyway other than judicial nominees - kind of tepid if you're looking at it from a christian right standpoint

Stem Cells - he hasn't really brought it up since his speech in his first term other than to mention that he would veto a bill on it - which IMO was in hopes to quash a bill coming out of committee that would force him to go against Nancy Reagan and Orrin Hatch (who would be very symbolically powerful advocates for the issue).

Faith Based Initiatives - Remember those? Yeah to my knowledge nothing has been done about those that even comes close to match the rhetorical emphasis he gave those in his 2000 campaign.

Gay Marriage - Hasn't touched it. While he said he opposed it during the campaign and certainly his election strategy focused on turning out the vote on Gay Marriage ammendments in order to get conservative cross-over voting for his presidential ticket he has done nothing at the federal level to reward these voters.

So, IMO the christian right has seen a lot of rhetoric thrown at it in 2 presidential election cycles and it hasn't really had much delivered on it. Guliani is clearly going to have a heavy security focus in his campaign because that is his percieved specialty (I actually think he is probably in policy tougher on crime than terrorism - but crime probably won't be an issue in the 08 elections) and he has been used as a symbol of the war on terrorism and security policy by the Bush administration. Hence, the christian right is supporting Guliani right now tepidly due to lack of a candidate that is forcefully advocating its positions - if such a candidate would emerge in the primaries I see no reason that there could not be a shift of alliances and a show down between security republicans and religious republicans in a nasty do or die run up to the primaries themselves.