Is HUNTING "Important" For a Presidential Candidate?
By anniepa
@anniepa (27955)
United States
January 2, 2012 11:12pm CST
I'm not joking; Wolf Blitzer said "Hunting is important" the other day on CNN. Below is an excerpt from the transcript of the show:
BLITZER: Is there an element though -- is there an element of sexism under way in Iowa right now? Because --
BORGER: No.
BLITZER: -- you know Iowa, as I pointed out in the interview with her, they've never elected --
BORGER: No.
BLITZER: -- a senator or a congressman who's a woman or a governor for that matter.
BORGER: You know what, it's easy to play that card. But I wouldn't play that card in this particular case. Because I think Michele Bachmann has not run a terrific campaign. I think she peaked very early. After the Iowa straw poll, she did very well in CNN's first debate that John moderated. And then it seemed to me that she really wasn't ready for the kind of scrutiny she got.
She misspoke many times on the HPV virus issue. She said the vaccine, she heard, could cause mental retardation. Nothing to back that up, remember. And so I think that what she did was essentially shoot herself early on. And she could never kind of recover from that. So I don't think it has anything to do with being a female. Although she might have liked to go shooting with Congressman King. I think she had wanted to go do that.
BLITZER: I think that image of Rick Santorum when he went pheasant hunting with Congressman Steve King was popular in Iowa.
BORGER: Hunting. Right. Yes.
BLITZER: I think that helped him --
BORGER: Hunting, sorry. Yes.
BLITZER: Hunting is important. Whoever comes in last or second to last, let's say Bachman or Rick Perry or even Newt Gingrich for that matter, is it time for them to think about dropping out?
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1201/01/se.04.html
The above passage is toward the bottom of the page.
Seriously, does anyone here think Rick Santorum helped his campaign by going pheasant hunting with Steve King or that it would have helped if Michele Bachmann had done the same thing? My dad hunted occasionally and both my husband and grandson like to hunt; I don't but many women I know do. I couldn't care less whether our President loves to hunt or hates it. Most of our recent Presidents have been golfers. That's great, but it doesn't make one bit of difference to me one way or the other. President Obama got lambasted for asking for a kind of lettuce they didn't have during the 2008 campaign; John Kerry took a lot of heat for asking for Swiss cheese on his cheese steak in Philadelphia in 2004. REALLY??? Presidential candidates don't have the right to even like to EAT what they choose to eat?
If we all insisted on our President being "just like us" we'd never elect anyone since this nation is full of millions of different people with different tastes and hobbies. I always have to have pork and saurekraut with mashed potatoes and dumplings on New Year's Day; does that mean I should refuse to vote for anyone who eats something?
Annie
1 person likes this
4 responses
@andy77e (5156)
• United States
3 Jan 12
Well that is the universal problem with having a public vote on the president, and one of the reasons the president was never supposed to be elected this way.
The way the founding fathers intended the president to be elected, was to have the people in each state vote for a representative. And those representatives being duly elected by the public, would vote on their behalf for the president.
Thus would vote for representatives, who were intimately versed in the needs and concerns of their respective states.
But now the president is elected in a national vote. Thus he is required to try and make himself acceptable to everyone.
Because of this, the president must make himself appealing to the lowest common denominator of the public, and to every state in the Union.
This is why you have situations like John McCain who spoke against the use of Ethanol throughout his entire campaign, except in Iowa, where he said that Ethanol was an important part of America's future.
And daring to speak the truth, in Michigan McCain caught a lot of flack for saying that people needed to move on, find other lines of work, because those union jobs likely were not coming back.
I'll never forget women calling in after Al Gore kissed his wife on TV, and saying they had decided to vote for him. Nothing about policy. Nothing about where he stood on issues. He kissed her, and that was enough.
The point again is, this is the natural result of allowing everyone the right to vote, and having a public vote on the president. It was never supposed to be this way, and exactly for the reasons you are seeing.
1 person likes this
@andy77e (5156)
• United States
3 Jan 12
Well then you have to accept the fact that the president will always appeal to the lowest common denominator of society. In effect your vote will be even less valuable because for every one of you there's only 300 million others.
Thus, there is a bunch of people who care about hunting. And those people are going to vote for person X, because he went hunting.
And there are more of those people, than people like you.
Yes, I wager you being a more left leaning person, likely didn't hear about the women who changed their vote based on that kiss. I heard it several places, including people I personally talked to.
Yes of course. Because Tea Party people actually don't want to run the country into the ground. How dare they.
No we need more like your Barney Frank in charge.
@anniepa (27955)
• United States
3 Jan 12
You know, I don't think I was one bit disrespectful of you so where is that treatment of me coming from? Anyway, I know there are tons of people who like hunting and that's perfectly fine. My husband's a hunter, as I already noted, but he doesn't base his vote on whether a candidate shares that particular interest. He bases it on the views they share about the direction of our country.
I'm not sure how being "a more left leaning person" would affect my hearing. Hey, I wasn't calling you a liar or anything, I just told you truthfully that I hadn't heard that.
Regarding tea party people, from what I've heard - from THEM - what they want is to run the President out of office. I'd trade my tea party backed Congressman for Barney Frank any day, by the way!
Annie
@andy77e (5156)
• United States
4 Jan 12
Explain where the 'disrespect' was?
When I said 'like you', that was meant to imply a positive or negative assumption of your character.
In fact, if anything, it implied that you are more thoughtful in your selection of who to vote for, than some dude in a cabin somewhere who thinks Candidate X is cool because he went hunting.
And again, I'm not talking about your husband. You need to grasp the fact that *MOST* people base their voting on such irrelevant things as "whooo doggie! Why he's a hunter likes me!".
And thus when you see a candidate go hunting, and their poll numbers climb... think "lowest common denominator of the public". That's the result of a democracy. Something the US was never supposed to be.
And no, I don't doubt you never heard it. I would question why you never heard it, when I heard it from so many places. It seems that all left leaning groups, selectively censor out anything that doesn't conform with their ideological beliefs. Thus I wasn't surprised when you said that.
The Tea party is a perfect example what I am talking about. Barney Frank type ideology, is exactly what has caused all the problems we have right now. But you still would rather have him, than someone against that ideology.
@Taskr36 (13963)
• United States
3 Jan 12
By your definition I guess anyone who EATS isn't pro-life since something must die for any of us to be fed. I don't see why someone shouldn't hunt wild game just because they CAN buy food elsewhere. Animals hunted for food live far better lives than the ones on farms. Just ask PETA what they think of the living conditions of livestock.
1 person likes this
@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
3 Jan 12
I hate any type of stereotyping and all bigotry.. but it's about the oldest thing known to mankind (I call it the blame game) and we keep doing it over and over and with modern communications we have I think some actually promote it!
1 person likes this
@knoodleknight18 (917)
• United States
3 Jan 12
Sadly, it is, and we all are ashamed to admit it. It kind of just points the finger at us for anything we don't like about the way the country is run.
If you watched a presidential race lately you'd notice how it's more like American Idol than an electoral campaign. And the media is largely to blame for that. Rather than showing debates, speeches, and looking at their history as an official and what they are doing as far as politics. More time is spent making it a sensationalized reality show. It might as well just be on MTV as the real world D.C.
The average voter knows more about what the candidate eats and does in their spare time than they do about their policies or where they stand on issues. Kind of like I stated elsewhere, it's like high school. We're voting for the guy who plays football and throws cool parties. It doesn't matter than he can barely pass English. Heck, if you look at the history of elections. The most obvious trends for the winners have rarely had to do with politics. It's usually, the taller candidate, always married, usually has a dog and kids, the guy who acts like a generic American guy. It's doesn't seem to be the policy we vote for, it's more like the image he portrays. If we were really worried about policy our candidates would all look like nerdy scientists. Because those are the ones who are good at looking at facts, predicting outcomes, and determining the best policies.
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@knoodleknight18 (917)
• United States
3 Jan 12
Forgot to mention that hunting is especially important if you need to accidentally shoot your friend in the face. Most people are more responsible than that, but not responsible enough to be VP.
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