Biden eyes GOP candidates for Cabinet slots

[pauldun170]

For those that forgot that this was once a thing...

Past presidents including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have all done the same. But that tradition died with President Donald Trump, and liberal Democrats are already warning that a Republican pick, even a moderate one, could sow distrust within the party before Biden even takes office.

Biden eyes GOP candidates for Cabinet slots

Progressives fret as Joe Biden's transition team vets a handful of Republicans for his potential administration.

www.politico.com

 

[SmCaudata]

We have to continue to do the right thing. Appointing the best people for the job ensured the right decisions are made. People like Colin Powel or even Romney are not partisan hacks. In a cabinet position they won't be dragged into the clowns of the senate GOP.

 

[interchange]

Forget the election. America doesn't work without any bipartisan cooperation. This may not solve that problem, but it's a good thing.

 

[ewdotson]

I'm fine with there being Republicans who have a prominent role in his administration. But full-up Cabinet positions? I would be … unenthusiastic.

 

[K1052]

Biden isn't going to appoint Tom Cotton as SecDef. There will be very real policy fights between the wings of the party should power be secured but appointments aren't likely to be much of a flash point because Biden and the people who advise him aren't morons. Will there be some GOPs who aren't nuts offered ambassadorships and undercabinent posts, yes.

 

[pauldun170]

Prior to Teabagging shitheads and Trumptards, there were actual Republican government officials who new wtf they the job was about and how to mange a government position.

 

[Moonbeam]

I

We have to continue to do the right thing. Appointing the best people for the job ensured the right decisions are made. People like Colin Powel or even Romney are not partisan hacks. In a cabinet position they won't be dragged into the clowns of the senate GOP.

Please, Mr. Weapons of Mass Destruction and Mr. Forty Seven Percent. I want signed statements of guilt and official requests for mercy from Any Republican who seeks not to go down in history as America's Most Treasonous. And I want the Democrats to have that reality show prime time every night until we get a new conservative party dedicated to science and reason. This country has been through a cataclysm of fear lit and fanned by the Republican party with the destruction and collateral damage of countless lives world wide and all for the sake of political party and power. That party deserves nothing but a Scarlet Letter. No redemption without the shameless admitting their shame. The party of family values and personal responsibility needs to show some instead of mouthing it at others. The country also needs to deal with their propaganda machines and the leaches that produce millions of mental drones in Fundamentalist churches.

 

[interchange]

I

Please, Mr. Weapons of Mass Destruction and Mr. Forty Seven Percent. I want signed statements of guilt and official requests for mercy from Any Republican who seeks not to go down in history as America's Most Treasonous. And I want the Democrats to have that reality show prime time every night until we get a new conservative party dedicated to science and reason. This country has been through a cataclysm of fear lit and fanned by the Republican party with the destruction and collateral damage of countless lives world wide and all for the sake of political party and power. That party deserves nothing but a Scarlet Letter. No redemption without the shameless admitting their shame. The party of family values and personal responsibility needs to show some instead of mouthing it at others. The country also needs to deal with their propaganda machines and the leaches that produce millions of mental drones in Fundamentalist churches.

Wouldn't it be easier and more effective to just kill them all?

 

[Moonbeam]

Wouldn't it be easier and more effective to just kill them all?

The religious notions I absorbed in the past tell me no and my analytical nature tells me to question what the meaning of effective and easier would actually be here.

My reaction to your question is along these lines: Everyone is created in the image of God, meaning we were born a blank slate with enormous genetic potential, the very potential we project that God is. You can't go around killing Gods if you want to become that which God represents. Unfortunately, when the path to Godhood within has been subverted and deeply damaged by being made to feel evil one can act out in revenge by becoming what those who made us feel that way suspected, we become agents of evil.

Here we come up against the notions of just war and the right of self defense. Once a person crosses the line from feeling worthless to seeking the harm of innocent people out of revenge, one enters another class of human being. One becomes evil incarnate. Faced with people like that one is morally obliged, I believe, not to allow them to act out. The Republican Party has been acting out for a long time.

The Jews brought us the easy way, an eye for an eye, the law is the law whereas Christianity broke that limited view with forgiveness for sin. Islam reconciles these two sides of the same coin with this idea: Destroy the law breaker mercilessly and without compromise to protect the good and the innocent like a Jew, but the instant the evil doer surrenders and asks for forgiveness one must at that moment become a Christian, the the repentant only gets that one chance. A relapse and the revelation of insincerity and gamesmanship then becomes a death sentence. In a modern society that can be substituted for by life in prison. The only operational value is that evil be stopped. In ordinary life the only time it is permissible to kill, or so in my opinion, is to defend oneself from a real threat or to defend some other person, where the danger is real and immediate and no alternative is available. Red Beard.

 

[IronWing]

This is a very bad idea. If the voters elect you because you’re not a fascist then don’t bring fascists into the house when you win. Republicans didn’t sign on to the party because they are ethical people.

 

[Moonbeam]

This is a very bad idea. If the voters elect you because you’re not a fascist then don’t bring fascists into the house when you win. Republicans didn’t sign on to the party because they are ethical people.

I think they did. I think they imagine themselves to be the most ethical people, far more ethical than Democrats. The problem isn't in what they believe it is good to be, it is in the fact that their ethics are the product of being tortured into believing the crap they were taught as children is actually ethics. They don't respond with natural sympathy for others, with love, but with fear they will do something evil. They live in a mental concentration camp.

 

[interchange]

The religious notions I absorbed in the past tell me no and my analytical nature tells me to question what the meaning of effective and easier would actually be here.

My reaction to your question is along these lines: Everyone is created in the image of God, meaning we were born a blank slate with enormous genetic potential, the very potential we project that God is. You can't go around killing Gods if you want to become that which God represents. Unfortunately, when the path to Godhood within has been subverted and deeply damaged by being made to feel evil one can act out in revenge by becoming what those who made us feel that way suspected, we become agents of evil.

Here we come up against the notions of just war and the right of self defense. Once a person crosses the line from feeling worthless to seeking the harm of innocent people out of revenge, one enters another class of human being. One becomes evil incarnate. Faced with people like that one is morally obliged, I believe, not to allow them to act out. The Republican Party has been acting out for a long time.

The Jews brought us the easy way, an eye for an eye, the law is the law whereas Christianity broke that limited view with forgiveness for sin. Islam reconciles these two sides of the same coin with this idea: Destroy the law breaker mercilessly and without compromise to protect the good and the innocent like a Jew, but the instant the evil doer surrenders and asks for forgiveness one must at that moment become a Christian, the the repentant only gets that one chance. A relapse and the revelation of insincerity and gamesmanship then becomes a death sentence. In a modern society that can be substituted for by life in prison. The only operational value is that evil be stopped. In ordinary life the only time it is permissible to kill, or so in my opinion, is to defend oneself from a real threat or to defend some other person, where the danger is real and immediate and no alternative is available. Red Beard.

Who has time to read all that? Do you want to justify inaction for fear of making a mistake?

 

[Jaskalas]

Wouldn't it be easier and more effective to just kill them all?

It's all fun and games until somebody shoots back.

 

[dank69]

Who has time to read all that? Do you want to justify inaction for fear of making a mistake?

I seem to remember you being a lot more thoughtful than this in the past.

 

[interchange]

I seem to remember you being a lot more thoughtful than this in the past.

I am many things past present and future. What of it?

 

[Moonbeam]

Who has time to read all that? Do you want to justify inaction for fear of making a mistake?

Are you going to make me say that it isn't only conservatives who have moral clarity? But unlike them, I don't believe, I know. There are two kinds of certainty. The certainty of those who think they know and those who know they don't. Both self defense and empathy are instinctive and reflexive. They are when 'the I' is not.

 

[Moonbeam]

I seem to remember you being a lot more thoughtful than this in the past.

There are many ways a person can be a tool. Don't be too quick to put him in the wrong shed.

 

[interchange]

Are you going to make me say that it isn't only conservatives who have moral clarity? But unlike them, I don't believe, I know. There are two kinds of certainty. The certainty of those who think they know and those who know they don't. Both self defense and empathy are instinctive and reflexive. They are when 'the I' is not.

Certainty is such a hard thing to abandon when you have the option of fooling yourself as to whether the gun is pointed in your face. I think I'm better at recognizing when it's pointed at another's. Do you think Red Beard would have struggled to act to protect himself?

 

[Moonbeam]

Let's look at the question of what it means to fear mistakes. Fear is thought and thought is of the past. Fear is the the paranoia that one's actions will be judged as good and evil because that fear already happened long ago in our past. Unconscious emotional content is connected by thought associations with current actions generating comparisons between inculcated beliefs and the worthiness of those actions. Without comparison, thought, actions are free of associations that make them appear to be good or evil. The enlightened experience collapses the notion of good and evil. There is only the present, the timeless thought undivided now. It is thought which is fear that calls to the past and future, two places we can never be.

So there are no right or wrong actions without the presence of thought and without the presence of thought no fear. The need to act is a feeling that arises out of non being to people who think about things. I know because I am such a 'people'.

 

[Moonbeam]

Back later.

 

[Sunburn74]

We have to continue to do the right thing. Appointing the best people for the job ensured the right decisions are made. People like Colin Powel or even Romney are not partisan hacks. In a cabinet position they won't be dragged into the clowns of the senate GOP.

Romney is a partisan hack.

Also is it just me or is Biden like actively trying to throw the election? It's like he has no understanding of why he's currently ahead.

 

[ewdotson]

Yeah, I wouldn't even want to see Romney getting an undersecretary position.

I will say that I've seen Huntsman bandied about as a potential Ambassador to the UN. If that's gets re-elevated to a cabinet level position and a hypothetical Biden administration wanted to go with him, it'd pretty much get an "ok, fine, whatever" from me.

 

[SmCaudata]

The thing is, the current GOP is unwilling to work with the dems. If there are high ranking Republicans it allows congress to go with a plan and save face by saying it was a republican idea.

 

[soulcougher73]

This doesn’t seem like a good idea. GOP made their bed of not working with dems at all, let them lay in it. Take it all and rub it in their faces (assuming we get senate and pres).

 

[DisarmedDespot]

Romney is a partisan hack.

Also is it just me or is Biden like actively trying to throw the election? It's like he has no understanding of why he's currently ahead.

Nah, this is a 'return to normalcy' thing. It's not popular here, but for a lot of voters it sounds good after four years of complete insanity.

Whether it's a GOOD idea, though, is another question. Are there any sane GOPers left? Even a moderate like Larry Hogan couldn't vote for Biden.