Republican

I might be what's considered a RINO (= "Republican in Name Only"), but I think it's far better to be your own person and not tow the party line 100%. I'm Republican mainly in terms of the military, economic matters, and certain social issues, but I'm very liberal when it comes to civil rights, feminism, and certain civil liberties. I also think it's interesting to note that one of the most well-respected Republicans out there, i.e. Secretary of State Colin Powell (a man I truly admire and adore), has come on the record as supporting affirmative action, a stance you would normally associate Democrats with.

Besides, if another Republican were to scoff at my positions, I'd just tell them I've been Republican for ten years while keeping my own personal opinions intact and I'm not going to change my mind about things I've thought long and hard about just because some little pissant succubus-to-the-party-chief wants to lay an ego trip on me. I know who I am and I know where I stand. And yes, I was pissed when Tom DeLay pressured state Republicans into going into redrawing district lines just two or so years after those lines were redrawn (to reflect changes in the census). Every little idiotic move like that dilutes the party statewide and I'm not about to have that.

i voted republican once, for mayor of pittsburgh. we haven't had a republican mayor since the 30's, and as you can imagine the republican candidate is usually a protest vote more than anything.

(oddly enough.. HAHA, no one I ever voted for in O.C. ever won.... now I might have voted for Republicans for non-partisan councils and positions, like city mayor, etc., but that shouldn't really count here)

Who do you admire and adore, j fail? Do you have any heroes?

if i ever get round to moving across the river, it's conceivable that i could vote for bloomberg or pataki.

i would have voted for pataki because i thought he did a great job re 9/11, he seems to be as acceptable as a republican can be, and his opponent in the last election was a joke. pataki's latest antics (threatening to sue the state legislature over the proposed tax hikes, his dickering with the MTA and fare hikes) is making re-think that, though.

I'm shocked and disappointed no one else wants to talk about the radiant halo of come-fuck-me-ness that is fiscal conservatism :(

I either abstained from that one, or I voted for a third party, because I've never voted Republican and I never will.

I suppose if I had to choose between an honest Republican and a corrupt Democrat for some local office, I just might vote Republican. The last mayor of my hometown was a very liberal Democrat who ripped off the city and is now in federal prison.

I could never stomach voting for either major party again. The Republicans' obsession with theocracy and hypocritical standards of liberty are shameful, and the Democrats' ever-sliding scale of justice is just as abhorrent. Both parties are awash in paid political influence and an obsession with power, even if it comes at the cost of priniciple and dignity. Fuck that shit.

Politics has often been summed as the willingness to compromise, but in the United States compromise is only an exit strategy to stay in power. If it were a principled approach to governance, then maybe I would consider voting for a major party. But as of now, I refuse to attach my name to the list of enablers.

I never had the opportunity - he was voted out just before I turned 18 - but it's possible that I would have voted for one Republican congressman - Bill Green, who was sort of the last liberal Republican - but he was also defeated right around the time when the Republicans started to become an especially vicious party-line organization at which point I might have voted against him to vote against the party he no longer belonged in. It's possible I'll vote for Bloomberg, who has been surprisingly good, though we'll have to see what he does for the party during the election. It's hard to imagine any other current Republican I would vote for over any Democrat. When John McCain is a moderate, something ain't right. Anyone who thinks Pataki is interested in anything other than a higher position in the national party is kidding themselves.

I wonder what Dee the Lurker means when she says that she is a Republican "in terms of the military," and how she would characterize the military policy of the current administration and whether she agrees with it. I also wonder what exactly is the basis for her admiration and adoration of Colin Powell.

Both of our Senators are supposedly Democrats, but feel like oil-whore Republicans.

other than bloomberg (who, as i said, is really a democrat at heart), i really can't think of any republican (even a "moderate" one) that i'd vote for right now -- not even chaffee, spector, or colin powell (should powell ever run for anything). well, maybe justices stevens and souter should either quit the Supreme Court ...

fwiw, as a new jerseyan i never voted for christie whitman -- for which i will be eternally proud.

There. I said it.

Aside from Al Sharpton, of course.

He basicly stated in a public appearence, something to the effectm or something that sounded like it that "Upstate recieved too much money for education compared to new york city", this hurt his campaign in new york state (the ad's for this palyed nearly on the hour in upstate and western new york). Also the voter against pataki was split between Mccall and Golisano (who main base of support was in western new york), along with the boost in pataki's popularity due to both 9/11, and handing out cash to projects across the state and a huge advertising presence both from his campaign as well as apperances in commercials from the state (such as for the various health care program the state was pushing) lead to pataki winning the election.

In the UK we are voting for a member of parliament, but few people pay any attention to most of these people as individuals. Bar the odd fringe candidate with zero chance, all are members of well-defined parties that generally act as blocs, and it's the numbers that define who gets to be in charge. Whether the candidate is a good person or not makes very little difference. I'm thinking that when voting for a senator or governor maybe the individual counts for a lot more than the party, but I'm not really sure. I can't imagine, for instance, saying that I voted for a tory once, but it was Person X so that seems okay - my vote would still have gone towards electing a tory government as a whole. So is party more or less important in different kinds of election?

I have never voted Republican and can't see a time when I would. People talk a lot about McCain forgetting that he was a major Hawk until this war, he's not like the moderate savior of the republican party (though he seems generally decent).

I'm supporting Howard Dean for president (socially very liberal; as he calls himself "a member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party"), but the democratic party seems to be doing its best to force him out of the running.

By "socially liberal" I meant mostly non-economic political issues like abortion rights, gay rights, drug decriminalization (which is economic obv but in different ways) and that sort of thing, though I suppose all of those are less controversial or not necessary as a "stance" in the UK. This combination works out in theory to be a sort of libertarianism, but I have friends and acquaintances who voted for Bush (who is hardly a libertarian) based solely on complicated economic reasoning without really considering any of the uber-conservative social positions he represents (which is especially odd considering how many of the people in question are gay or bi).

Hmmm. Maybe I should've elaborated there.

I feel as though the Republican position on the military, and on defense in general, is that the party is very pro-military, very pro-military spending, and very pro-defense in general. I personally believe that we (i.e. the U.S.) need a strong military and need to fund it. My own personal experiences have enhanced my feelings on this issue, as the only national politicians who have traveled to my city to try to prevent a military base or post from closing are those in the Republican party, namely Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Another aspect of this is that I feel there are more so-called "hawks" in the Republican party, and I know I'm certainly not a pacifist. I dislike war, sure (I have a hard time believing anyone actually likes war), but I feel I'm pragmatic in my belief that there are times when war is absolutely called for. If that makes me a "hawk", then fine, I'm a hawk. I just don't feel that "peace at all costs" is an admirable goal. (That might make me extremely unpopular here, but what the heck. I'm used to being extremely unpopular.)

Also on the "unpopularity contest" front:

If you want me to refer to the current "war on terror", I agree with Bush there. I thought going into war with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was a good idea, as was going into war with Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq. I do feel it's all a part of the "war on terror", even if it's only because despotic regimes led by tyrants in the Islamic world do tend to produce masses of individuals desperate for any message, and there are tons of Islamists out there actively bastardizing the religion of Muhammad who prey on these individuals and turn them into foot soldiers in the terroristic war against the post-industrialized countries in Europe and the Americas. Libertating these people and establishing "pro-Western" governments in these countries is a major step in eliminating future sources of terror, at least when it comes to people power.

Now, for the other point: I admire Colin Powell because I know his background, and he's an individual who hasn't forgotten the lessons he learned in the past. While serving in Vietnam, he learned that one should never enter into a conflict without clear objectives already laid out and a definite plan for limiting the loss of life. He saw no clear objectives being carried out in Vietnam, but more importantly, he saw this massive loss of life that didn't need to happen and was quite moved by it. That's why he was so resistant to go into a war in Iraq (when Karl Rove was pushing for one and George W. Bush was still making up his mind about the issue) until he knew there were clear-cut details laid out in terms of how the war would be fought, and that the planners would strive as hard as they could to limit the loss of life (i.e. "collateral damage"). Colin Powell, for all his military experience, also values diplomacy, and if it weren't for him and his camp in this administration, the government might've taken the "screw the U.N. -- we're getting out of it anyway" approach. I personally don't care for the U.N., but I don't feel so strongly about it that I would support our getting out of it. I still think there are some issues for which the U.N. is absolutely necessary and vital. (*cues gasps from her former posting pals at FreeRepublic.com*)

Ok, I think I'm rambling on right now, but hopefully you can make sense out of this post. I have so many ideas and opinions floating through my head right now that it's hard to put all of them together and in a post, so I'll just end this right now and maybe this will be enough to express what I feel.

p.s.: Colin Powell is not a war criminal. If he were, it would've come out in any one of the thousands of documentaries done about his life. Certainly it would've come out on his Biography special, as the A&E people would've never glossed over this. Besides, if this were more than just a tabloid-level story, it would've made front-page news back in 1995 and 1996, when many people were trying to push Powell to run for president. If you can link me up with a story from a source *I* can trust (the Washington Post is my personal pick here, but I'll also take something from the NBC News or BBC News organizations), I will delve into it. But I have a feeling this story might've been fabricated or cleverly edited into being. (btw -- "My Lai" sounds familiar. I think I might've heard about it in regards to the list of stories Peter Arnett made up. Is this the "crudely made 'milk factory' sign that falsely damned a U.S. military action and tarnished the reputation of hundreds of soldiers" story? If that's the case, then dismiss it. I personally do not believe anything Peter Arnett has ever reported on, at least not without three other sources.)

They've also been socially conservative, 'with a human face'.

Maybe I shouldn't do this (and sorry if it renders the thread off-topic), but...
Dee the Lurker - you might do some research on a number of the things you posted about. My Lai is a well-known and well-established event of the Vietnam war. And Donald Rumsfeld has had the upper hand in directing the administration's military policy, which he hopes to use to bring about a large number of changes with which many in the military are quite upset and which many defense policy analysts regard as seriously misguided. He is part of an administration that essentially admits that it seeks to implement policies more for their political effect than any other. (See quotes in yesterday's New York Times article regarding the passage of the tax bill for an illustration.).

Of course Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison are the only politicians to visit the military base near you. They are/were the two senators from your majority-Republican state. But Phil Gramm supported Bush Administration-ordered base closings.

As for the success of our miitary policy thus far, well this administration came to power greatly concerned about China and has been really good at anticipating threats from al qaeda (who we've known about for years and were predicted three years before 9/11 to be ready to strike the US) and the return to weapon-making in North Korea (which we essentially ignored for several months while concerned with Iraq). And no one can say for sure yet whether we have been successful in Afghanistan and/or Iraq.

Which democrats advocate "peace at all costs"? I can think of maybe two or three real pacifists at the national level and they would surely tell you that pacifism is a least-cost alternative (I don't agree with this). Also, costs to whom? Which democrats voted to support the resolution cited by Bush to justify the war? I can think of a couple among those running for President.

Most democrats who opposed the war on Iraq (I was not necessarily one of them) believed that it was a colossally stupid idea on a number of fronts, not the least of which was whether it had the potential to hurt "the war on terror." Evidence at the moment suggests that they may have been right, at least in the short run. There are numerous reports that it has only increased the numbers of people seeking to join al qaeda and affiliated/similar groups, who are now in an operational phase to prove their continuing effectiveness. We won't even talk about the looting of weapons (including nuclear material?) and the threat that presents. (a collection of some of the fallout evidence can be found in recent posts here.

You may be right that having a Western-style market-oriented democracy in Iraq would do something to reduce the influence of Islamist teaching in the Middle East. But at least in the short term it may have the opposite result. Islamists are angry at the West (the US being its symbol) because of how it acts and what it represents. Bringing the US to their neighborhood will just make them madder. Furthermore, bringing about such a democracy in the near term may be a fantasy. I do think that many in Iraq are desperate for a working government, and that the US is attempting (not very successfully, in part because Bush isn't providing the necessary money) to provide it, and that at least some in Iraq are granting them the opportunity, but the idea that those in the Middle East will accept "any message" is hopelessly naive. And the outcome of failure may be worse than if we had tried.

The idea that Iraq under Saddam was a breeding ground for terrorism is ludicrous - Saddam was a rival to al qaeda, a non-Muslim with a Christian right-hand man who suppressed a Shiite majority, and whose designs on Pan-Arabian rule conflicted with al qaeda's desire for a pan-Islamic nation. And if Iraqis are a sheep-like mass waiting for a message, how is eliminating Saddam's rule and opening them up to an Islamist message going to help reduce the threat of terrorism? Also, "the religion of Muhammad"? Why don't you patronize Muslims a little more (it was suspicion of your patronizing of Colin Powell - the perceivedly (though perhaps my perception is racist itself) self-congratulatory tone in your admiration of a prominent person who happens to be black - that drove my first question)? The evidence presented by Colin Powell to the UN of Iraq's WMD sites seemed at the time, and afterwards has perhaps been shown to be, completely false, thus rendering him a liar or at least one who has reckless disregard for the certainty of facts used to obtain support for a policy that was widely perceived to be motivated by grounds unrelated to those facts.

As for not taking a screw-the-UN approach, what exactly did we do that did not follow that approach? Wait a few weeks? I certainly agree that there are problems with the UN, but the administration's cavalier attitude towards it and international treaties (admittedly, the Clinton administration wasn't great on this front either, but they wouldn't have pulled out of Kyoto) is chiefly responsible for what appears to be the beginning of a decline in American power and influence. Allowing the value of the dollar to fall isn't helping.