drinking

Politics and Pints

Lowen Baumgarten

— 1 min read

Whenever I go to Toronado, I seem to end up talking politics. I almost never get to talk politics since leaving DC and I miss debating shit like the donut hole and SOFA [PDF] over good beer, so I should really go more often.

Friday night, I met up Rocco Garcia and some of his buddies there. We ended up handicapping the Republican nomination and accurately predicted Herman Cain would drop out this weekend. Now, I tend to think of myself as a political buff, but I found out Rock has watched every single Republican debate so far. I haven't been able to to sit through one all the way. I read about them the next day. Three other things I learned last night:

  1. Character is king. None of of could name one of Newt Gingrich's famed "big ideas" that we disagreed with, but we grew up in the 90s hating him and we still hate him. He's slimy. Very smart and a possibly a capable leader, but slimy. And that matters.
  2. All politics is local. Rigth before I left, Rock started waxing rhapsodic about "personal responsibility" and shit. How his dad came to this country, worked hard all his life and doesn't expect anything from anyone. How we can't count on the government for anything, just oursleves. I respect that, even agree with a lot of it, but he's from Nebraska, and that frontier mindset has been the foundation of politics in Western states for 100+ years. Of course, being from Nebraska, he's also deadset against the Keystone XL pipeline.
  3. It's not who you like; it's who you can't stand. No one last night was arguing that Obama was awesome. We were just saying how wrong and wacko the Republicans are. And that's what conservatives talk about whenever they get together: how fucking crazy San Francisco liberals are. It's not that anyone is lining up to vote for Obama (this time). We just strain to imagine ourselves voting for any Republican, except Romney, who's not really a Republican; he'll just say anything to get elected.

If you find yourself at Toronado, I bet you'll find people around happy to talk politics. One guy there was all too happy to invite himself to our convo. Also, you have to try Pliny the Elder.

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