dljen Loc: Central PA

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/billionaire-mogul-sheldon-adelson-looks-for-mainstream-republican-who-can-win-in-2016/2014/03/25/e2f47bb0-b3c2-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html

“He doesn’t want a crazy extremist to be the nominee,” Chaltiel said. “He wants someone who has the chance to win the election, who is reasonable in his positions, who has convictions but is not totally crazy.”

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

I wish there was a common sense party. So many younger Americans gravitated towards Ron Paul because he pointed out a lot of obvious truths - we are broke, we need to balance the budget, we have to quit intervening everywhere and having military bases all over the world, etc. But the GOP is its own worst enemy because while Americans want a fiscally conservative government (and our current crop of Republican leaders are not fiscally conservative - they would just redirect our spending), they also want a TRULY conservative government - meaning one that doesn't interject itself into our personal lives. Americans are not nearly as socially conservative as the OWM (old white men) who run the GOP, and don't want these OWM telling them how to live. Americans are also more "conservative" in the sense of environmental protection than the legislators who are mostly bought off by big business.

I have an interesting perspective on this dichotomy. I currently live in Maine - in Maine the Republican legislature approved medical marijuana because it seemed to work and these Republicans felt that it wasn't the government's role to tell people they couldn't use marijuana for medicine. The health department, in their implementation of this law, required users to register - the legislature went back and changed the law saying that the government should not be involved in this way and specifically stopped that requirement. In Florida, the Republican legislature continues to try to tell Floridians how to live in many aspects of their life. They have rejected the idea of medical marijuana, and now that there is a referendum process moving forward, they are trying to undercut it by passing legislation saying that if medical marijuana is approved by referendum it will only legalize strains of marijuana with essentially no THC in them! (some of these strains are showing use in children with uncontrollable seizures, but they are not as useful for pain or PTSD).

dljen Loc: Central PA

I'm for that party too - a common sense party. I used to always believe that if something sounded too outrageous, it couldn't be true. You can't say that now, you have to google which crazy said it.

Florida may as well not have medical marijuana if that's what they're going to do.

Things are becoming nuttier and nuttier out there. Thank you for your post.

Screamin Scott Loc: Marshfield Wi, Baltimore Md, now Dallas Ga

Hey, I voted for Ross Perot back when he ran....All of the current Congressional wonks are corrupt, some more so than others... I'd be for term limits in a heartbeat

dljen Loc: Central PA

I'd be for term limits too but wonder who will set them, I know it should rest with the people but so much doesn't.

ole sarg Loc: south florida

I tend to agree but don't like false assumptions. We are not broke and are far from it. We owe most of the money to ourselves and only we can call in the debt.

We are unwilling to pay for what we bought. Raise taxes. We have some 138 million tax payers in the US. Say we went back to the Clinton tax rates and we had a surcharge of say just $100 per year and that was set aside to pay down the debt. I think the debt would disappear pretty fast.

To think just some short time ago before Bush was first elected the problem was with the enormous surplus we would have! Squandered that pretty fast under voodoo economics!

Hanoverfarms Loc: Littleton , Colorado

Common sense! You know what Mark Twain said about common sense. " the funny thing about common sense is, it's not very common".

pigpen

AWESOME!!! Raise taxes & add a surcharge!!

The libs answer to everything. ".....just $100 a year." You are awfully free with my money.

Let's not forget our government's track record with "temporary" fees and taxes.