GOP Supporters in Their Own Words Before the NH Debate

We visited the demonstrators confined to the "Free Speech Zone" a mile away

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GOP Supporters in Their Own Words Before the NH Debate

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At Saturday's Republican presidential debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, demonstrators were kept in a "free speech zone" a mile from the media assembled at the venue. Reason TV spoke with some of these politically active citizens about who they are supporting for president.

We also caught up with Vermin Supreme, a performance artist and occasional presidential candidate. 

Approximately 2:45 minutes. 

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher and Joshua Swain. Camera by Swain. 

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV's YouTube Channel to receive notification when new material goes live.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

"I'm gullible and I can prove it!"

[AlmightyJB]

Cruz is holding that football for them. I'm sure they have plenty of practice falling on their ass. At least the older ones.

[Heroic Mulatto]

For those wondering, the "wearing a white baseball cap on top of a black baseball cap" is currently the hottest fashion trend here in NH. No young man dares go out in public without at least 1 black baseball cap on top of his white baseball cap. I believe Fritz Weatherbee reported on this phenomenon a while back.

[Fist of Etiquette]

...which was the stile at the time.

Hey! He was the most articulate of them all (right up until he said Cruz's name).

[Fist of Etiquette]

(Now that's a weird typo.)

[Heroic Mulatto]

Well, we only have 1 Spanish teacher for the whole state.

[Crusty Juggler]

Two-hat Guy is Bae.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Yes, BAE Systems is one of the larger employers here in NH.

[Francisco d'Anconia]

He's clearly racist (of course he is, he considers himself libertarian). The white hat above a black hat certainly denotes racial superiority.

[creech]

Does this mean the display of the shiny sticker on the bill of the cap is now over?

[Heroic Mulatto]

You can put leave it on the white one, but not the black one(s), I don't know why.

[Heroic Mulatto]

*put/leave

[Crusty Juggler]

Racism is why.

[SilentCal]

Irish makes hats?

[Heroic Mulatto]

I thought yokai is why.

[AlmightyJB]

I can't keep up with the hair styles and accessorizing of the young "ladies" of today.

[AlmightyJB]

Purpose?

[C. Anacreon]

No, that's a dolphin.

[MSimon]

I'm looking for a Dauphin.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Supreme for President! He's going to double down on abridging speech, an admission I find refreshing. While others fall ass backwards into cracking down on free speech, he's got a plan.

[Jerryskids]

At Saturday's Republican presidential debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, demonstrators were allowed themselves to be kept in a "free speech zone" a mile from the media assembled at the venue.

No need to crack down on free speech when nobody wants it anyway.

[Crusty Juggler]

"Who leaves a country packed with ponies to come to a non-pony country?"

[Heroic Mulatto]

Vermin Supreme is exactly what I imagined a Brony to look like.

[Chumby]

I would have picked Omalley or Santorum. Or that dude that used to be Secretary of State. What's his name? Oh yeah, Clinton.

[Ken Shultz]

I found some of the things they said encouraging.

More than one said they were "Constitutional conservatives", which is, ideologically , a hell of a lot better than "social conservative" or being about "family values".

Another one said they wanted, "the government run like a business".

These people aren't there yet, but damn! They're headed in the right direction.

[Ken Shultz]

Can you imagine a progressive saying, "I want the government run like a business"?

Can you imagine progressives calling themselves "Constitutional progressives".

"Constitutional progressive" is an oxymoron, isn't it?

[Heroic Mulatto]

"Constitutional progressive" is an oxymoron, isn't it?

'Living document', 'interpretation changes with time', 'we can amend it for a reason', etc.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Can you imagine a progressive saying, "I want the government run like a business"?

I don't see what 'government as business' is an ipso facto good. Most businesses I know seek to grow as large as possible so that they can capture as much market share as possible. Also, most businesses I know don't possess tanks and bombers to accomplish this task.

[Jerry on the rocks]

Plenty of companies are run like little governments, with managers simply holding meetings and giving presentations simply to show "that something is being done," no matter if it is needed or not. Then you have the yearly fights between departments on who should get what share of next year's operational budget. But the whole process sometimes seems to be as irrational as elections.

[pogi chips for liberty]

That's how it works at the large corporation that employs me. PowerPoint must die.

[Ken Shultz]

Businesses serve the interests of their customers by striving to offer the highest quality service they can at the lowest price.

I'm fairly confident that's what they were talking about--not that they wanted the government to grow as big as possible.

[MSimon]

most businesses I know don't possess tanks and bombers to accomplish this task.

They need a better business model.

[SilentCal]

As someone who has to interact with progs on a regular basis, I can tell you that they think all of their shit is not just allowed by the Constitution, but encouraged by it and the principles of the founders. Having other people pay for you healthcare is an inalienable right, dontcha know.

[Rhywun]

Can you imagine a progressive saying, "I want the government run like a business"?

I have heard both Cuomo and Bloomberg say exactly this, in the context of "targeted" tax cuts and a program to cut red-tape for small businesses (which may or may not have gone anywhere). IOW they know exactly what is wrong with NY but for most part don't care.

[Aloysious]

I always get a little puzzled by someone saying that they want gov. to be run like a business. Not that I think it is a bad thing to say, I just get puzzled.

The incentives are entirely different. They can overlap, to a small degree, but they are different.

[SusanM]

It already is run like one kind of business - a Used Car dealership.

[AlmightyJB]

Or the Mafia.

[Jerry on the rocks]

An auction house that specializes in the advance auction of stolen goods.

[MSimon]

+20 H. L. Menckens.

[Chumby]

Or a business that has a sole-source contract with a public school system.

[AlmightyJB]

I think they are talking more about fiscal sanity. Not running up more debt than you can pay back, cost/benefit analysis , etc. There are certainly things governments can learn from the business sector. But you're correct, the incentives are totally different.

[Francisco d'Anconia]

Most mean they'd like to see it run efficiently. It's a nice notion, but completely impossible as government will always lack profit motive.

[Episiarch]

It doesn't lack a profit motive, it's just that it can make "profits" by force, which "normal" businesses can't. And since it *can* "profit" (meaning "steal") by force, it does, because that's easier than getting people to give it money voluntarily (which "normal" businesses do by offering products people want at prices they are willing to pay voluntarily).

The idea that one can run a monstrously huge money-extraction-via-force "business" efficiently is beyond fucking laughable. People are abjectly delusional about government. In fact, it makes them retarded, because they actually believe it can be anything but a ravenous monster that will always, always grow out of control.

[kbolino]

It can (sort-of) be run "efficiently" (if you look past that whole "funded by theft" part), but not for very long. The only incentive anyone really faces is a lost election, and the voters (presuming the election actually counts their votes) don't care to hold anyone accountable past a single election cycle, if that. There will usually be some new "issue" that's far more important than last year's fuck-up, and even when there's not, people will vote for reasons of social signaling more than anything else.

[Ken Shultz]

I would like to replace most of the government with profit seeking businesses. The incentives the government has that are different are mostly different because they're not a profit seeking business.

I'd like to replace some of the government's other functions with charities--charities that are run more like a business.

Markets are better at serving the interests of their customers than bureaucracies overseen by politicians in a representative democracy. There are a number of reasons for that. Whatever reason matters to you most, I bet it has something to do with the way businesses are run when they're run successfully.

I was talking to some progressives recently who seemed mystified by the observation that the profit motive keeps costs lower for businesses vis a vis the government--because profits are the difference between revenue and costs, the incentive to maximize profits means cutting costs aggressively.

Yeah, I wish the government were run like a business. And when people say that, I understand what they mean.

[Aloysious]

The incentives the government has that are different are mostly different because they're not a profit seeking business.

Precisely. Well stated.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

"I would like to replace most all of the government with profit seeking businesses."

FTFY

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Oops, I guess I didn't fix nuthin'

Did I mention I failed HTML 101?

[Chipper Morning Wood]

"I would like to replace most all of the government with profit seeking businesses."

FTFY

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Yaaay

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Doesn't a business want to grow as much as possible? So I guess they want Trump to grow government as much as possible.

[ernieyeball]

"Run the government like a business."
Forbes: 90% of Startups Fail
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ne.....5afcd855e1

[kbolino]

And 90% of government projects fail. But unlike a startup, the government can use force and fraud indefinitely to hide this fact.

[pronomian]

According for Forbes the 5 main reasons startups fail:
1 Lack of capital
2 Expanding too soon
3 Heavy reliance on debt funding
4 Poor strategic management
5 No business plan

Sounds to me like the idiots in charge already run the government like a failed startup

[endytho00147]

My roomate's sister makes $86 an hour on the internet . She has been without work for 5 months but last month her pay was $17168 just working on the internet for a few hours. linked here.....
Clik this link in Your Browser........

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[Agile Cyborg]

The windows on the walls flickering with frantic bureaucracy jostling for the dark strings sandwiched by insurance oil and pink miracles reveals salvations dripping with menace and upper lips disguising teeth filed into points.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Agile, the subject and object structure of that sentence is too pedestrian for your standards. And don't even get me started on the lysergic deficiency of the verb!

[GILMORE?]

I think government should be run like a little-league soccer team

[MSimon]

How about a whore house. You pay the fee and they fuk you.

[Chumby]

Free speech zone used to be between Canada and Mexico.

[AlmightyJB]

I would be remiss if I did not mention the Trump girl. Would.

[MSimon]

Trump girl

Ds. Although they look artificial.

[Nonstopdrivel]

I have worked enough years in both government and private industry to be utterly disabused of the notion that private corporations are necessarily more efficient than government. As shockingly inefficient as government can be, especially when zero-sum budgeting is involved, large corporations are at least as bad, if not worse in many ways. At least government execs aren't given seven-figure severances when they drive their fiefs into the ground. I'm willing to believe that young, motivated start-ups are lean and efficient, but they can also be hell to work for.

[Nonstopdrivel]

Fiefdoms, not fiefs.

[kbolino]

At least government execs aren't given seven-figure severances when they drive their fiefs into the ground.

No, they just get promoted.

If somebody walked away with $9 million right before the company declared Chapter 11 but after bringing $50 million in investment capital into the company, then they did exactly what they were paid for and earned every penny of it. That the company ultimately went under is a reflection of other factors. CEOs and other corporate execs at that stratum are not hired to make money from selling widgets; they're hired to bolster investor confidence.

The idea that the problem with corporate culture is the "overpaid" CEOs and not the underlying factors that lead a board to hire such individuals is more vacuous and insidious than any golden parachute.

[Nonstopdrivel]

One of the fundamental problems with current executive compensation structures is that company executives?CEOs in particular?are not paid on how well their companies perform ("real market" performance) but on how well earnings conform to investor guidance ("expectations market" performance)?guidance, ironically, the companies themselves issue. In terms of real-world unit sales, market share, profit margin, and other metrics, a company can be performing pretty poorly, but as long as stock performance hews satisfactorily to investor guidance, the CEO is compensated for a job well done. This creates perverse incentives to issue conservative, predictable guidance that doesn't rock the boat. Imagine if NFL coaches were paid based not on how many games they won, but on how well they covered the spread. That's a direct analogy to how corporate executives are compensated. It's ludicrous.

[kbolino]

Furthermore, a corporation might have a small handful of highly paid executives who aren't earning their keep; the government has an army of GS-15s who've never done anything but aggrandize themselves and waste taxpayer money. The government spends more money on employing people for the sake of employing them than most corporations will ever have at their disposal.

[Nonstopdrivel]

In absolute terms, you're right. In relative terms, I don't know how gross the disparity actually is. The number of vice presidents, senior vice presidents, senior executive vice presidents, and who knows what else at my previous employer was mind boggling. I say "former" because the last year I was there, our profit margins were 17% instead of the target 21%, so they laid off every one of the dozens of workers in my department, most making less than $36,000 a year rather than parting ways with one or two of the executives pulling in excess of $600,000 in base salary alone. The VPs informing us of the impending layoffs even openly admitted that slashing personnel would help them make their bonuses. It felt more than a little insulting to be told I was "too expensive" (yes, they used that phrase) by someone who made more than twenty times my salary.

[Nonstopdrivel]

I forgot to add: It was a major damper to department morale to receive every emails every few weeks announcing the creation of still another new executive position, even as lower-level jobs continued to be slashed. By the time my job was axed, the company had become little more than an executive suite in Texas overseeing a bunch of outsourced contractors, most located overseas. As a political and philosophical libertarian, I would have no problem with axing the agency for which I work, but I'm under no delusion that private equivalents do the job any better.

[creech]

Sorry, such waste and incompetence puts the private company at risk for bankruptcy, takeover, or
long-term irrelevancy. Government agencies never disappear or grow smaller.

[The online me]

Paying a 7 figure severance package and being rid of the dead weight at the top beats the hell out of the government way of promoting the dead weight and letting them pull you down the rest of their career.

I think we could collect 7 figures for severance packages for a large number ofor politicians as long as they promised to go away.

[amybailey001]

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Clik this link in Your Browser........

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[amybailey001]

My roomate's sister makes $86 an hour on the internet . She has been without work for 5 months but last month her pay was $17168 just working on the internet for a few hours. linked here.....
Clik this link in Your Browser........

??????????? http://www.HomeSalary10.Com

[[e-mail]]

My roomate's sister makes $86 an hour on the internet . She has been without work for 5 months but last month her pay was $17168 just working on the internet for a few hours. linked here.....
Clik this link in Your Browser........

??????????? http://www.Wage90.com