BirchPoint, since the switch to Houzz, there have been a few threads on controversial topics here on Home Decor. I don't know if you've seen them as I think you're mainly a kitchen forum poster? They have been very civil and informative and you learn a lot about the topic from several perspectives, rather than the opinions the participants hold for each other, which drives the conversation in HT. I doubt anyone walks away from this forum not liking each other. So I feel if anyone has a problem with talking about these topics here, trust that we're adults. I enjoy them...well, maybe not when they veer so far off topic into cakes and things. ;)

Lesbian couple behind Cakegate just gave their first and only interview to a local paper.

http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-25119-bittersweet_cake.html

I didn't mean to imply it was only conservatives. I agree that it is conservatives and liberals alike that exhibit the behavior. You may have thought I was singling out conservatives because I mentioned Ann Coulter, but my belief about her is that we don't really have any idea what she really thinks because much of what she says is purely intended as bait. And this is what I see in the Hot Topics forum: argument for the sake of arguing, indignation for the sake of anger, and statements made to instigate and inflame. It all seems a kind of "fabricated anger".

Well I will agree that Ann Coulter makes it very easy for the left to lump all conservatives into the 10% far right pile. There are just so many misconceptions. I'm sure many on the left do not know that 73% of Republicans believe in a women's right of choice. Or, that even 61% of those who do not personally believe in abortion still think that other women should have the right of choice. Because of those unknowns the next election cycle will as usual squander incredible amounts of time on assuming every one in the republican party wants to do away with women's rights. It happens every time. If anyone were to run on the republican ticket and publicly state that they would work to do away with women's rights there would be but an echo left in the party to vote. However, the stats above are several years old .

"And this is what I see in the Hot Topics forum: argument for the sake of
arguing, indignation for the sake of anger, and statements made to
instigate and inflame. It all seems a kind of "fabricated anger"."

A current thread bears that out with this comment: "Gee where are the queens of outrage? Must be a boycott!"

justterrilynn, where did you get the "...73% of Republicans believe in a women's right of choice." info from? I tried searching, but it spit out a poll from over a decade ago.

73% of Republicans believe in a women's right of choice

Merely an observation, not an argument and not starting one, but that percentage seems high.

graywings123

73% of Republicans believe in a women's right of choice

If this is accurate the Republicans need to work a lot harder getting this information out there. which candidates should I pay more attention to?

I'm on my cell but look at The Religious Consultation . Org . I believe the study was done in 2004. My thinking is that there are so many silent supporters that it would be difficult to get an accurate number. And of course many would not believe it anyway because they have been trained to think the whole party is in bed with the 10% far rights. And others are just not willing to give up the hate and realize all people have some things in common.

A Gallup poll did not find that at all. I have tried to link their graph, but am having trouble. Anyway, in 2015, 31% were pro-choice and the highest percentage ever during the period of the graph was 39% in 2003. That is a far cry from 73%.

Hmmm, wonder what the real percentage is. Will we ever know? The strange thing for me is that my catholic friends who are Democrats are strongly against a women's choice. So, I guess we are all a bit mixy .

Cyn, you beat me to it.

Gallup poll

Your 2004 poll is what came up in my search. Cyn's graph looks more in line with the results I would expect for a results breakdown.

Maybe we can all find some more and come up with our own average. There is a pretty big Republican Majority for Choice movement listed under political action committee's which includes 500 elected and appointed Republican officials from all states. There is also a Republicans for Planned Parenthood. Huff post has a brief 2014 article on how the GOP seems to be getting more pro choice. There is a lot out there to read but I'm not seeing any stats yet. Will keep looking. Oh, the WISH LIST Republican women for pro choice is joining forces with the Republicans Majority for choice movement to become a super power. All kinds of things shaking!!!

Justterrilynn, do you have the link to your info? When I googled the Religious Consultation, I couldn't find that statistic, but I did see this: "The Religious Consultation (TRC) is an international, multi-faith network of progressive feminist religious scholars and leaders."

Maybe the percentage was based on their own membership or readership. That would make sense.

GOP used to be pro-choice. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_policy_history/v023/23.4.williams.pdf

Very scary: That Donald Trump continues to outpoll the other Republican candidates.

Hey Cyn, here you go...I think those stats were probably high for 2004. Maybe not now . Wish we could get some more. http://religiousconsultation.org/News_Tracker/73_percent_GOP_supports_choice.htm

Thanks!

Donald Trump ... That's another topic all in itself. I've wondered how others here feel about him. Personally, he invokes my gag reflex.

Ditto Jen. My TV automatically mutes when he comes on :-)

What scares me about his being at the top of the R polls are two things:

1) The man has a very severe personality disorder, namely Narcissistic personality disorder; I think he's mentally ill (literally); he clearly has very poor character (so his leading is ironic, since it's the right wing always yammering about the importance of character;

2) what has made him popular and has put him at the top are his vicious, hateful, raging comments about other people (McCain, Mexican immigrants, etc.)

He is a hateful, ugly, man of low character…and that THAT is what makes so many Americans on the right actually really like him, enough to want him to be president, I think is so scary. How can that many people be such poor judges of character AND find his kind of hate and ugliness so appealing?

Be careful, Tib. He may call you a loser. That seems to be his response to most who dare to criticize him.

Okay. I have new goal. To get the Donald to call me a loser. I will print tee-shirts. Tib - He will fade. It's early in the game. Not that there are many good alternatives. Middle of the road Republicans like George Pataki don't seem to be in vogue right now.

roses, I'm sure he will, and I even want him to be the GOP nominee because I don't think he has a prayer. Of course, I didn't think that doofus Dubya did either.

Donald Trump doesn't scare me. What scares me is that so many Americans like him, have him at the top of polls to be the US President…when he's clearly a very screwed up person, and I think mentally ill but definitely has a severe personality disorder. It is so scary to me that so many Americans not only can't see that but seem to LIKE the very traits that MAKE him so disturbed - the narcissism, the hate, the ignorance, the Us v. Them, the meanness, the cad, the cheap shots, the cheesiness…all of it. THAT is what frightens me.

Well, GOP created this Frankenstein. They have no one to blame but themselves.

I heard someone at work say that they like that he says what he thinks instead of the guarded talk you typically hear from politicians. People think politicians are sketchy. And they are. The bombastic, like Donald, do well early and then fade. I live among the population that would vote for a candidate like him. They are people who shoot off their guns just because they can (and don't tell them they can't) and would vote for anyone Fox news (or their uncle Fred) told them to vote for. They are ill-informed, ignorant, and, fortunately, unlikely to vote.

Even though he's leading in the polls, less than half of the Republicans in Iowa and NH would vote for him in the primaries. I think he has only 34% of the vote, and in every poll, there's always that hard-core 30% that polls very conservative.

I don't know what's going to happen. The Republican party is so divided in so many ways. We have the pro choice groups I mentioned above with a moderate group and the extremist group on the far right that's making a lot of noise with their anti abortion screams and I guess up to a dozen more tapes on planned parenthood with thoughts of releasing one a week for the next several months. The pro choice Republicans plan to start screaming louder according to the write up in Cosmopolitan magazine and a few other write-ups. Whomever the nominee is...is going to have an impossible task of appealing to the moderate group and somehow appeasing the louder far right group. So far there are a bunch of weanies who all read the same script and talk about viewing their child's ultra sound but pretty much dodge the issue. I don't know who is going to break in and steal those tapes first, the Democrats or the pro choice Republicans group lol.

As far as Trump goes I'm not sure who he really is yet. His donating history shows him to have a left lean. Out of 31 donations 21 went to liberal democrats, only 7 to republicans and 2 to Charlie Crist an independent. Yet, he also has a history of flip flopping on women's choice and gay marriage. For all his seemingly strong straight talk even the Donald knows to tread light till after the primaries. The radical far right (traditionaly anyway) are the ones showing up in droves to vote in the primaries.

On a side note: moderate republicans and moderate democrats have a lot in common. Is it wise to be rude to one another?

Mayflowers check this out. What can we believe? http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/27/what-awaits-trump-closer-scrutiny.html cnbc has him gaining momentum.

I hope he wins the primary. I hope Hilary loses because I don't want to see another Democratic president vilified by Fox News and the likes of Sarah Palin, which is what will happen with Hilary. They turned Obama into the bogeyman in his first election and scared the daylights out of low-information voters, who never got over it even when their fears went unfounded.

It's funny that people want Trump because they think he'll get things done. He said he'll be a good president because the other candidates can't make a deal (The Art of the Deal). Who is Trump going to make deals with in Congress?

One good thing has come out of his candidacy. I'll enjoy Celebrity Apprentice much more without him.

Well it's way to early for me to decide on anything. I'm looking forward to the debates. I think one thing we can all agree on is that they won't be dull. An interesting fact in Trumps (maybe favor?) is that he had a brief register as a Democrat. At least that is what I read but who knows. I'm also not sure if demonizing him will have any effect at all compared to past candidates, it will be interesting to see. With him there aren't at lot of surprises in that his aggressive self has already been out there for so long. He just smashes criticisms with a bat like they are little hornets.

Yeah those debates could easily be the final nail in his coffin.

Trump shows why his campaign is doomed

Hmmm, do you think everything he said was included in that article? For example: on the illegal alien question I have
heard him time and time again answer the question exactly the same and partly
the same as the article except the last bit was left off. He says he wants the
bad guys out and wants to find a solution for those that have been here for
years as good citizens. He mentions a sort of merit system.

Maybe that was done because Rob Garver is a journalist who strongly supports Burnie Sanders a 75yr old ...what some call either progressive or socialist.

Re abortion and party lines, I found this quite interesting...there are differing opinions within parties as well as between parties.

Hi Annie, I think that is probably pretty close but as always I question. From what I read Pew has a right lean. Whether or not this is true I have no real facts. I'm questioning the (R) illegal all/most at 57. Everything I have read in recent trends has that figure at or around 50, with some studies a tic less and others just a tic more.

When you factor in a margin of error (not sure what it was for the Pew poll), there may not be any statistically relevant difference. My graph above is pretty much in sync with the Pew figures of Republicans who support all/most abortions being legal, although Pew is slightly higher. From that, one might reasonably infer that the antis are around the same as the Pew one.

Always good to ask questions and then do research!

It matters little what a portion of a political party feels personally, if they are unwilling, or not powerful enough, to change the party's platform, actions and support to align more with their feelings. Look at what happened to Neel Kashkari in the CA governor's race last year. When the more (social) moderate Kashkari beat a favored conservative Republican in the primates, the Republican Party would not even support him. Granted, he had little chance of winning against Brown. But what does it say when your own party works to help take you down?

“We have not endorsed him (because) on a number of the social issues he does not share our values,” said California Republican Assembly President John W. Briscoe, whose grass-roots group stakes out the GOP’s right wing. “I’m not sure what his nomination portends. We would prefer to see candidates who are more in line with our principles.” “I’m also a big-tent Republican,” Briscoe said. “I just want our conservative tent to be bigger than the moderate tent.”

It's a mess that's for sure. All I want is a place I can be fiscally conservative but open on social issues when money allows and to be mindful of our horrifying national dept. I don't want to be owned by another country and want SOMEBODY to really mean it when they say they want to bring back jobs to America. Is that too much to ask?

Edited to add: wow am I seeing planned parenthood in a new light since the most resent videos. My views of a women's choice have not changed but Planned Parent hood seems to think they can get away with anything.

Is that too much to ask?

Probably. I've been registered NPP (No Party Preference, formerly Decline to State) for a very long time. Partly because I don't align with any single party for the issues that are most important, and partly because they all disgust me regularly. My votes by party could run 60/40 either way in the past. That does not happen any more, and it isn't because I have had a drastic change in my political views.

Random thoughts:

Hasn't Sarah Palin become pretty much irrelevant?

Depending upon the question and the pollster, I don't think people always tell the truth. I had a cousin who was a pollster in North Carolina and she said Jesse Helms often lost in the polls she was involved in. She thinks lots of people who voted for him were embarrassed to admit it to strangers.

Moderates of any party, I think, are less vocal and less politically active.

The group that most utilizes abortion as a method of birth control, is, for the most part, nearly apolitical, I'd think.

I'm surprised anyone believes what any politician of any party says and that any keep promises and do what they say. And the media presents truth....call me a cynic.

There is also a large segment of the population that won't do surveys or answer poll questions. So the results get skewed even more towards the results in line with the types of personalities that will answer the questions.

-------------------

I doubt many are in the dark about the honesty and integrity level of politicians.

Saw this on FB today.

“Do you have any idea what year it is? Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s? Or the 1890s?" ... Elizabeth Warren

Her speech in defense of Planned Parenthood

I don't think Trump really wants to be in the Presidential election. He's just in it at the moment to get things stirred up. Make people talk/think. His goal is not to end up living in the White House.

I don't think Trump is about making people think at all. I think he's about making them feel. He appeals to the most base emotions…and a whole lot of stupidity.

I don't need Trump to make me think. Strike that... He does make me think about how reality TV mentality has taken over common sense.

Idiocracy. I tell you the truth - we're living it.

I had a teacher who was able to leave Iran with her mother but her father and brother could not. She told me beautiful stories about Iran and it's people. I also met a lady who approached me about my pomegranate tree. The fruit is popular at festivals and many varieties are grown. She called her home Persia instead. When I gave her a large bag full of poms, she teared up and said it reminded her of good times with her family and especially her mother and grandmother. I wish we could have some peace and understanding with our two countries. I'm sick of weapons and hate. More festivals and travel and love. Bless you pomegranate lady, wherever you are.

I wish we could start by having peace and understanding in our own country. So much name calling and ugliness in the name of politics! I enjoyed what you wrote Kitty.