Oh No, The New Awesome Primary Thread

Of course, one should note that Nixon was on the ticket five times and won four times, while different G. Bushes were on the ticket six times with five wins by my counting from memory. What kind of stat is this?

"The only thing"? That's a bit of hyperbole. Enough to render the bit of truth in the statement a mere shadow of the what you intend.Yes, the formula for the electoral college does give the small states a little extra 'political kick' by giving them a disproportionate number of electoral votes. But in practice the boost scarcely matters and we get the same president we would get with a direct popular vote.Of course I can think of one very notable exception that does not make your case very well.And with regards to the "only" part, we should note that the senate is completely state-egalitarian with respect to its election. And there is the important distinction that each state actually does get its two senators, while with the president, if you back a loser you get nothing.Finally, there is the tenth and eleventh amendments and federalism. Those things also ameliorate the domination of the states by the federal government. Every state has its own state government and its own legislature. Many people both left and right find that state tyranny is every bit as real and in their face as federal tyranny. Historically, it has been often been the states that trod all over individual rights and the federal government that cleans up their evil.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Smaller districts are even easier to gerrymander than large districts

I want to speak to the lack of quantification in the statement below. Emphasis added by me What does plenty here mean. Does it mean enough people to usurp (using only constitutional and plausible means) a power assigned in the federal constitution to the individual state legislatures, which are uniformly bodies completely invested in the two party system?Does plenty even mean "something close to the number of people who are okay with things as they are"?And what does "seem popular mean"? Is there any possibility of quantifying that phrase in a way that has some political meaning? Stats please?

A challenge to putting Cruz on a state's presidential ballot based on eligibility, if raised by an opponent would be enough to make a controversy. There is no real need to wait until he is elected.That said, there would need to be a credible legal dispute, and I'm not convinced that simply being a blooming idiot disqualifies you from an office that Bush recently held.It seems that people have forgotten the dozens of law suits that were filed when Obama was campaigning. Of the relatively large number of filed actions, only one was filed by an actual candidate. While none of the suits resulted in any useful relief, a few of them did overcome standing hurdles. Doesn't mean that the suits were not insipid even when they were not blatantly racist.Here is one of the worst:

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In February 2012, he [Gordon Warren Epperly] filed a nominating petition challenge against the Alaska Division of Elections claiming that Barack Obama did not deserve to be on the ballot because he's a mulatto.

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Based upon his interpretation of Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, only a natural-born citizen can be President. Furthermore, according to his interpretation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, only Whites can be considered natural-born citizens; Negroes and Mulattoes are merely statutory citizens.

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No, the code does not define natural-born citizens. At least that is a possible interpretation.Section g just tells us how you can be a 'citizen at birth' despite being born outside of the country. There is no definition of 'natural-born citizen' outside of the constitution and whatever few court decisions we have on the matter. I agree that there is no good reason for those terms not to be synonyms. Which means that a birther won't hold them to be synonyms.In fact, section h casts some doubt on whether Cruz is a 'natural born citizen' if we agree at least that 'natural born citizen' is at least a sub set of 'citizens at birth'.

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(h) a person born before noon (Eastern Standard Time) May 24, 1934, outside the limits and jurisdiction of the United States of an alien father and a mother who is a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, had resided in the United States.

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A special rule for people born prior to May 24, 1934? Said rule applying only to alien father/citizen mother but not alien mother/citizen fathers? So what is the status of someone born later than May 24, 1934? Like Cruz, born in 1970 in Canada of an alien father and a citizen mother?No, I am not an idiot birther. Actually, Cruz is covered by item e at least.

Surely there is a special place for these two. Maybe just inside the Ninth circle? round 1 or 2?

What you said was that a 'compelling argument' could be made that the case was not constitutionally unripe. But if we want to allow that courts would not necessarily buy it, we can say that the argument that Barrack Obama and Ted Cruz are both constitutionally ineligible is compelling given that the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue.In fact your compelling argument is not based on any case precedent whatsoever. It is instead based on the idea that there is such a thing as an unripe case (and of course there is) and an unsupported assertion that such a thing exists up until an actual election.Absent some discussion of precedent, not compelling IMO.

What does the law say about this Cat Sci? Ted Cruz father became a naturalized citizen 35 years after Ted's birth. Surely this casts no light on whether Ted is a natural born citizen. And your first description does not quite fit Obama either.Nice try, birther.

Then you should have no problems pointing to a provision of law under which the marital status of the parents effects whether someone is a citizen at birth.Put up time.

Nobody, including Cat Sci, is making a claim that Obama's mom was not a US citizen. Accordingly, her marital status does not raise any issues with respect to the law. However, if you are a birther, compliance with the law may not be enough. Perhaps Cat Sci just yanking chains. The provision for out of wedlock citizen dads is surely designed to limit such a thing. For out of wedlock citizen moms the provisions are relatively lax.

Ben Carson is a tin-foil hat level paranoid. It's only a matter of time before someone scoops up a collection of the goofy stuff this guy says and puts him out of our political misery.

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In his keynote speech at the National Organization for Marriage’s March for Marriage gala last week, Dr. Ben Carson explained how Marxists are using LGBT rights to destroy American unity and impose the "New World Order."

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Carson said he knows about this plot from reading right-wing conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen’s book The Naked Communist.

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One has to admire the ''objectivity" of a black man who cites the politics of Cleon Skousen as inspiration.

Have you ever read the Constitution? Regardless of whether or not you think any particular Supreme Court ruling is right or wrong, the issue you are pressing here has been settled ever since Marbury vs. Madison. Surely this basic stuff is covered even in wingnut high schools.Ben Carson is nowhere close to being right, but of course you are welcome to point to the provision in the Constitution which makes the president or the legislature exempt from Supreme Court rulings on the constitutionality of laws.

Good. Feel free to cite any of that reading in making your case that Carson is correct.

Fortunately Huckabee is irrelevant. It's impossible to be as far right as that guy is and still present an electable face after the primary is over.I'm sure Huckabee wasn't really talking about Native Americans. He probably meant to refer to those simplistic shows with cowboys with black hats who rustled cattle, hit women and set ambushes vs those cowboys with white hats who shot to wound and defended women's honor with their fists. In other words stupid crap instead of offensive crap.