I recently went to the Students for Liberty regional conference. It was pretty awesome.
One of the sessions I attended was led by a very smart lady (can't remember name!!) who studied under Bryan Caplan. She gave a presentation on why voting doesn't matter.
At one point she challenged us to tell her what would have been different had Romney won.
Besides things like less regulation (which were shot down by her very well), someone said "less likelihood of war". She smiled and drew this on the boards:
She then said. What do Democrats love? Obama. What do Republicans love? War (of course, a small simplification, but valid nonetheless).
What will happen if Obama is elected and he wants to go to war? Well, the liberals love him and will not oppose him (as we have seen in the last 4 years). The Republicans like war so they will not oppose him. Result: we will be at war.
What if Romney wins and he bangs the war drums? The Republicans like war, so they will not oppose him. The liberals dislike him, so they will OPPOSE him. Result: less likelihood of war.
I thought this was a brilliant analysis.
Glenn Greenwald made a similar analysis before, which I agreed with and is why I thought Obama was a shoe-in for this election ceteris paribus.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Thank you, Wheylous. That was really bothering me and I kept trying to figure out -- if there are controllers -- what election outcome would benefit them most, and I kept coming up with Romney. But when O won I tried to go back and reverse engineer and I didn't consider it like this.
It's a simple and very satisfying answer.
Danny Sanchez reached a different conclusion...
Voting: The Seen and the Unseen
as did Justin Raimondo...
Race for the White House, 2012: Whom to Root For?
Same could be said for Romney winning and spending increasing. Republicans heart (not necessarily Romney, but) when a Republican is in the White House, and Democrats love spending.
This is silly, there has been a better chance for war with every president since Kennedy and that was because the Commies backed off in the Cuban Missile Crisis as they most likely thought he was nuts and the Commies really wanted fewer missiles pointed at them in Turkey and Western Europe and did not care that they had missiles in Cuba.
I think we've seen the Democrats' true colors, they love war now.
Romney also wanted to increase military spending, so I'm not sure I agree. There's always ways for Romney to get that agenda through congress if he compromises on welfare.
Bogart:This is silly, there has been a better chance for war with every president since Kennedy and that was because the Commies backed off in the Cuban Missile Crisis as they most likely thought he was nuts and the Commies really wanted fewer missiles pointed at them in Turkey and Western Europe and did not care that they had missiles in Cuba.
That's not true. The Soviet Union backed off along with the United States due to negotiations between Kennedy and Khrushchev. So clearly the Soviets didn't think Kennedy was nuts. (Source: Kennedy-Khrushchev Correspondence)
I agree that, in a way, the nation is more vulnerable to war now. More than under a President Romney and possibly even George Bush. Pretty much the whole country rightly slammed Bush for his foreign policy. But now we have Obama basically continuing Bush's policies and even expanding on them in some cases (assassinations, airstrikes and troops to an increasing number of other countries). Yet the criticism has basically fallen silent because now we have a cool celebrity president who looks and sounds good on TV. At least under Bush and other Republicans, people didn't turn a blind eye to the crimes being committed.
While it's true that fewer people in the mainstream are giving Obama the grilling he deserves, I think more and more people are beginning to catch on to the fact that his charming exterior hides a detestable foreign policy.
I do think it's funny; a guy I know who worked on Obama's staff had never even heard that Obama attempted to extend the troops' stay in Iraq or increased troop presence in Afghanistan. And forget about drones... It's amazing, these people.
I don't even get why the Democratic Party is considered anti-war. WWI, WWII, Cold War? All started by Democrats.
@idol
I think the common belief is that at some point in the 60s or 70s the two parties "switched sides" - that the racist, warmongering people went to the Republicans. It is true that the Republicans have lost their non-interventionist cred, though, with the neo-con takeover. So both are now interventionist. It's just that one side is a bit more sly about it. If I remember correctly, it was the same under Clinton when we continued bombing Iraq and intervened in the Balkans among other things. I don't remember much protest about it. He was the hip, cool Democrat, so we trusted him!
True, but Wilson and FDR are definitely considered "progressive" and modern liberals claim that those two, Truman, and Kennedy were all on their side. If that's the case, they can't say their ideology is at all anti-war. Clinton and Obama are also belligerents. It's ok though because these guys all went to war in order to save the world.