Plus, all Democrats make broad genaralizations, and all Republicans are perfect in every way.
:rolleyes:
I think you are going about this the wrong way. Parties are about getting people elected and getting legislation passed. They only have an ideological component if that helps them get elected. So there is no point in listing your political beliefs and then asking which party you’d fit into better. It really doesn’t matter how many traits you share with other party members.
What you should be looking at is: if I vote for a candidate of Party X, or contribute to Party X, will that make policies that I think are important more or less likely to be enacted?
For instance, suppose you are in favor of the death penalty, but against cutting the capital gains tax. And there are two candidates, one who supports the death penalty but is for cutting capital gains taxes, the other who opposes the death penalty but is against cutting the capital gains tax. The reality is that the death penalty is not in jeopardy. It is broadly supported. So voting for an anti-death penalty candidate doesn’t mean much, since there is almost no chance that their position will ever be enacted. Even if you care more about the death penalty than capital gains, voting for the candidate that shares your views on capital gains is more effective than voting for the candidate that shares your view on the death penalty.
Or take me. I’m an atheist who likes low taxes and lives in a pretty liberal state (WA). I would have no problem voting for a tax-cutting christian conservative candidate over a tax-and-spend secularist, because I know that the christian agenda is moot. It won’t go anywhere, it means nothing, it’s just posturing. Some policies are meaningless because they have no chance of being enacted, others because they have no chance of being repealed. So why worry if an otherwise compatible candidate holds some of these meaningless views?
All I have to say is that I took the test at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and my dot lines up pretty much exactly with the Dalai Lama.
Humbly yours,
Toadspittle the Beatific
The implication here is that Republicans want small government, while Democrats want big government. A standard Republican falsehood.
Republicans are happy with big government, big deficits, etc. as long as they benefit the right people. And the question of more or less taxation needs to take into account who pays the taxes, how they are collected, what they are used for etc. A simple call for more or less taxation without considering these issues is unproductive fantasizing.
While i have some problems with the true libertarian position, they are at least usually consistent. The real trouble is that some who claim to be libertarians are happy to point out the impediments to liberty put in place by the Democrats, and just as happy to ignore or rationalize the impediments to liberty put in place by Republicans.
Read a libertarian journal like Liberty, among others, and you’ll see that true libertarians were largely opposed to the war on Iraq, on libertarian principles. The faux-libertarians who defend almost every move made by Republican administrations often seem to be nothing more than conservatives who dress their ideas up in libertarian rhetoric when it suits them.
I just checked out that political compass site. I came out to be smack-dab in the middle of the Libertarian Right quadrant. Interestingly enough, there were no famous examples of persons who share political views that place them in that quadrant. I wonder what that means?..
-FK
FK, if you go to this part of the website, you’ll see that your political point of view is shared by authors such as:
P.J. O’Rourke
Ayn Rand
F.A. Hayek
Milton Friedman
Grahame Thompson
I’m in the libertarian left quadrant myself, but i would certainly recommend reading Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. An extremely interesting book. Friedman is also interesting, and O’Rourke was funny once.
You are a dotcom junkie (welcome to the club)… memberships are limited and proof of yacht ownership or private jet required. Additionaly references from atleast one super-model (implants accepted/ no sex changes allowed) from the silicon valley porn indutry are required. 
**While i have some problems with the true libertarian position, they are at least usually consistent. The real trouble is that some who claim to be libertarians are happy to point out the impediments to liberty put in place by the Democrats, and just as happy to ignore or rationalize the impediments to liberty put in place by Republicans.
**
Although the Republican establishment as a whole has been the party of big government as much, if not more than the Democrats, the Republican party is the only party with individual members committed to smaller government. I vote Republican about 30-40% of the time, Libertarian the rest. I vote for Republicans who have a voting record consistent with libertarian goals, and there are some who are, like Ron Paul, Mark Foley, John Kyl, John McCain, and Dana Rohrabocher. There are almost no Democrats with a small-government voting record with the exception of Zell Miller, who is retiring anyway. Most libertarians vote Republican simply because the REpublican party offers better long-term prospects for smaller government. Obviously GWB is a disappointment in that respect, his tax cutting notwithstanding.
Read a libertarian journal like Liberty, among others, and you’ll see that true libertarians were largely opposed to the war on Iraq, on libertarian principles. The faux-libertarians who defend almost every move made by Republican administrations often seem to be nothing more than conservatives who dress their ideas up in libertarian rhetoric when it suits them.
Although the official Libertarian Party is noninterventionist, many libertarians supported the war on Iraq, for various reasons. Foreign policy is not really an area where there is a settled Libertarian philosophy, so there is plenty of variation in thought among libertarians.
Screw the parties! Register as an independent!
Then you don’t have to feel like you are “betraying” anyone by voting your conscience. I’ve never felt worse than knowing that I went on (even anonymous) record as supporting a candidate who I thought could not do the job, in the name of supporting my party.
I generally vote Dem, but in the last California election I could not bring myself to pretend, in the name of “party loyalty”, that Gray Davis had done even a remotely competent job in his first term as governor. After some reflection, I put my vote in for the Natural Law candidate and never batted an eye.
ALWAYS vote for the person you think would do the job the way you would do if it were you. If everyone who hated all the candidates filled their ballot with write-ins rather than “withhold” their vote in “protest”, we’d have a more honest reflection of political opinion in this country, and politicians would have a more challenging job than just talking prettily for the party robots who vote most consistently.
My sister once wrote in my mother for a local office. She voted early in the day, and mentioned it to a couple of her friends, who also knew my mother. The paper reported her as getting over 15 votes, which was fun for us, and my sister didn’t feel like she had voted for someone she didn’t believe in.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by scotandrsn *
Screw the parties! Register as an independent!
[quote]
There is a problem with this though, at least in my state. It precludes you from voting in the primary where your opinion can also count a great deal. Better to think independently and register as suits your persuasion at the time.
**
ALWAYS vote for the person you think would do the job the way you would do if it were you. If everyone who hated all the candidates filled their ballot with write-ins rather than “withhold” their vote in “protest”, we’d have a more honest reflection of political opinion in this country, and politicians would have a more challenging job than just talking prettily for the party robots who vote most consistently.**
I remember arguing this point with my political science teacher. He was of the popular school of thought, “Why * waste * your vote on some candidate that has no chance of winning?”
The way I see it, the only way to have a candidate that wholly represents your views is to run yourself. Beyond this, vote for the candidate that most accurately represents your views. When you shun your idealism for a candidate that might have a better chance for winning, that is when your vote is TRULY wasted.
OTOH, I copped out and was a Nader trader last time around.
Oh well. Vote Buchanan if you think it is right. Just make an informed decision and vote what you think is right. Just Vote!
Unless you’re a complete slacker like I am, in which case you probably want to vote for the candidate who is as opposite as possible.
Julie
To check voting records, this site may be helpful:
I haven’t thoroughly checked it out for bias, however.
I like Scotandrsn’s idea about write-in candidates. It might be fun to make the politicians work harder to collect votes. I’m going to start voting for myself.
Keep in mind, though, that in the unlikely event that write-ins start to actually effect the political situation, the major parties will see to it that write-ins are eliminated.
The issues you care about are irrelevant to the political parties. All they care about is getting your vote, so they can go on with their REAL business: making themselves richer and more powerful, and kissing up to the rich and powerful interests that help them do this.
Any statement of a party’s “platform” is ultimately meaningless, because a party will cheerfully claim any position it thinks will result in a net gain of votes.
(Recall, for example, how Clinton neatly took most of the Republican platform for himself during the 1996 election.)
Whichever party is in power favors big government, so it can increase its power. It will lie about this, or not, depending on what it thinks will attract votes.
Basically, vote however the mood strikes you, because it won’t make a bit of difference, except to change the content of the candidates’ speeches.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by frithrah *
**
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by scotandrsn *
Screw the parties! Register as an independent!
[quote]
There is a problem with this though, at least in my state. It precludes you from voting in the primary where your opinion can also count a great deal. Better to think independently and register as suits your persuasion at the time.
**
If you’re an independent, it doesn’t matter who a party nominates.
Don’t let the rhetoric fool you. If your favorite loses a primary, there is NOTHING preventing you from writing them in in the general election except party loyalty. Sure, there’s strength in union, but if you don’t think a party is backing YOU, why back them?
That’s sure as hell right. If my uncle (who was a democrat) was to hear this, he’d go N-U-T-S.
I suppose it depends on what you feel is most important. I think of myself as basically libertarian, but unlike Lemur866, I view the Christian right as a very real threat. Scientific issues are of fundamental importance to me, and I despise attempts to teach Creationism in public schools or ban medical research in the name of protecting “human dignity.” Sufficient hostility to science on the part of those in power could easily lead to my death or the death of someone I care about. In California, the Republican party appears to me to be dominated by the Christian right, and I will uniformly vote for the Democrats for the primary purpose of minimizing their power. I have many disagreements with the way the Dems they’ve been running the state, but I don’t feel like I have a choice; the only alternative is totally unacceptable.
I’m with scotandrsn on this one. Screw the two party system and call yourself independent!
In fact I urge everyone to register as independent. Make the political fat cats work for a living instead of just spouting party catch phrases.