Presidential Election.

While the nomination process needs serious reform, it is pointless trying to alter it this time around.

The existing legislation/constitution has to be followed.

The Steen debacle is consequently over for this election.

It's pointless noise on these threads at this stage and should be in a separate one tbh.

Give Steen the attention she craves on FB or somewhere else?

Government approved placemarker candidate vs a tankie.

Good point.

it is indeed, there definitely is an audience for the more conservative voters, but is failing to meet critical tipping points for success within our political system, the more our established parities fail, the more likely these voices will be heard, its very likely such opinions will play more so in future elections

she wants to cancel the presidential election 😂😂

A barrister not knowing the Irish constitution is worrying

definitely would have made the whole debate process far more interesting, many would have voted for her, but she would very likely ended polling very poorly

Yeah but there is also the aspect of taking responsibility for your own campaign. She ran late, her campaign wasn't organised and she failed to get the momentum required.

What makes it worse is that she has gone down the irritatingly childish route of claiming that it's all down to some oppressive consensus shutting her down when she gave herself effectively two weeks to mount a successful campaign for a place on the ballot. This is the Presidency of this nation we are talking about, not some application to a graduate programme at PwC that you can cobble together on deadline day.

She also ignores the reality that this supposedly oppressive environment we live is also one in which Irish people have been given full civic participation in big decisions relating to the topics which have seemed to feature highly in her passions (gay marriage, abortion, and further back divorce) and her views were rejected in that democratic process. I mean, Gareth Sheridan has more cause to be aggrieved than Steen when he actually put in the hard yards early on.

I have never agreed with Maria Steen on the issues which seem to be central to her, but I had respect for her intelligence and for her opinions which she is entitled to. But I must say, my respect for her has dropped materially in how she has chosen to attack our democratic system instead of taking accountability for the fact that her campaign was a poorly planned f**k up.

That's not really an answer. Or do you mean to say that in your opinion all 3 candidates are terrible? Which just shows a lack of understanding of the role of president

Connolly was very smart yesterday when commenting on the budget to stick to the politically neutral topic of climate change. That tells me she understands the role of president quite well but that she also won't be afraid to speak when she can

Humphries, as far as I can tell, has said nothing at all about the budget in any official sense which suggests she will be a much quieter president than Connolly

Both have shown that they can be politically neutral presidents in the last 24 hours

I am old enough to remember a different kind of oppressive consensus in 'Holy Catholic Ireland', which repressed social freedoms, including freedom of speech.

But a lesson I learn from it is that imposed political consensus is a bad idea. Catholic social engineering was wrong. But I think on the family care referendum she made points that most Irish people seem to have agreed with, judging by the 70% no votes.

Steen is wrong on many issues. But not all.

I see parallels between Catholic censorship and progressive censorship. Last year they attempted to pass a Hate Speech ban. While I abhor hate speech, I dont trust politicians or judges to decide what is isnt "hate speech". In the UK and Germany, hate speech laws have been used to shut down Gaza protests. SF in the end changed position and opposed the bill because of this.

There wasnt even a definition of hate speech in the bill.

The “gap” is more glaring now that JG is out of the race - more right wing candidates bring more voters out on the day- their candidate may not have a hope of winning but the presidential debates become richer, the candidates are challenged more and then at the polls, transfers from these voters who may otherwise have stayed away may influence the outcome of the election.

As much as I dislike Connolly, ignoring a “Burke” is actually the best policy as we’ve seen from their many attack videos they have made against others - they’re not interested in discussion and debate - they just want to shout at the person and act the maggot

You keep bringing this up and posters have to repeatedy explain to you he was speaking out of turn, not waiting till the allocated time slot for questions.

“A nomination is defacto support, you nominate them in the understanding they could win therefore you believe they would make an acceptable president ie SUPPORT the idea of them being president.”

No it’s not- many politicians have nominated a candidate in the interests of democracy but have expressly stated they will be supporting a different candidate.

You don’t even have to think the candidate as a decent chance of winning - just that they’re a good person (as far as you can tell) and that democracy would be the better of it if they were present throughout -however I don’t think any elected official would nominate a candidate whom they thought would scupper the chances of their preferred different candidate