If so, enough Dems defected in 1991 to give Bush Sr. a majority, and nearly half the Dems defected in 2002.
It’s possible that Kerry was voting the party line, but it’s not clear there was a party line.
And, excepting Byrd, when did they say these things?
Byrd was right - it was a blank check. But everyone knew that - the question was, did you trust the guy you gave the blank check to, to use it in the way he said he would?
Did Carville or Begala say in 2002 that the vote was a vote for war? I’d be surprised. Teddy might’ve, but Teddy is accepted as a kind of unreconstructed liberal relic - he can say stuff like that, and gets ignored by the people actually running things.
Registered Republican who hates just about everything Bush has done since being elected. I’m a small government, stay out of my private life kind of republican. (we should break off from the religious right and form our own party) I often vote libertarian but as someone who’s not nuts, I know there are things that hard core libertarians want that are nuts.
Bush has done more to push me away from the republican party than I ever thought possible. I actually voted Democrat in '04, something that if you had asked me 10 years ago… I would have said, No way.
I really can’t see me voting for any of the current crop of republicans either. I’ll probably vote libertarian again.
Bush hatin’ Pubbie? Read this by a Pubbie that oughta know. He contrasts Bush with Barry Goldwater, and Bush comes off very badly. A quick and lively read, even for those not fans of Goldwater.
Add one to the count.The sooner ol’Dub gets a’cuttin’ brush fool time won’t be none too soon.With permanent SS guards he won’t get hurt with the chainsaw but if he slipped and severed Mr.Halliburton’s femoral pipeline no tears shed here,though a Blackwater mercenary doin’ the deed would be more fitting.
But the party was going wrong before this admin.When Bonzo man enlisted the Bible thumpers I figured payday would come due.Trying to legislate someone’s sexual orientation offends me.And a maroon such as myself wonders how can you spend more than you make?
Starting a war?Unforgivable.Sorry John McCain,this is one area I’m with Obama.
I’m a long-time Democrat myself, but my wife has been a Republican most of her life. However, Shrub and Cheney have turned her into a frothing die-hard Democrat. She can’t stand either one of them, and despises what they’ve done while in office. Didn’t help that her sister lives in Mississippi, and had to deal with some of the wonderful FEMA work during the post-Katrina fiasco.
His Solicitor General just filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Second Amendment case arguing that the right to keep and bear arms was indeed an individual one, but that restrictions of this right were subject only to “heightened scrutiny” upon judicial review (not “strict scrutiny” as the appellate court had held). This sort of “nuanced” view is an invitation to Kennedy and the other “moderates” to uphold the District’s gun laws. Bush’s SG similarly veered away from a real conservative position in the Bollinger affirmative action case – arguing that quotas weren’t the best way to achieve diversity, but agreeing to the principle that diversity was indeed a compelling state interest (after which the Court rightly ignored the SG’s speculation about which alternate methods would best subserve this interest).
He spends like a drunken sailor. His centerpiece legislation (No Child Left Behind and the amnesty bill) represents about the least conservative positions on the role of government and national sovereignty and security, respectively, that are imaginable.
The Iraq mess goes against everything George Washington said about entangling alliances and everything conservatives of the past have warned about foreign adventurism. Republicans being pro-war (any war) was, I always thought, a Democratic slur, a caricature. In his case though the shoe fits.
My reason for it is because there seem to be a whole lot of people who say “Bush is destroying the Republican party, now if only they’d nominate someone different so I will vote for them. Of course, I’ll never vote for a Demoncrat, so I’ll vote for whomever the Republicans nominate, but I’m still quite disgusted!”.
So, I wanted to know the answer, in case I was wrong.
I voted for Bush the first time because his mistakes hadn’t happened, and because he pretended to be a Real Christian, and because his opponent was the wooden Algore. (Although I didn’t know Al’s self-serving global warming cause at that time).
I voted for Bush the second time through what I now think is a combination of ignorance and the inability of the Democratic Party to present any kind of attractive opportunity. I didn’t trust Kerry to administrate the US govt. or the Iraqi occupational govt (even though it shouldn’t be there), and I hadn’t met the professor with the opinion that the power brokers in the region had a real incentive to never let a democracy happen, period, especially when the Americans left.
I wish there were something else to vote for. But voting for Gore I fear would be voting for mandatory electric cars (I exaggerate only a little), and voting for Kerry, heck, I don’t know, would be voting for some vague Demo agenda.
Not that the current Pubbie agenda had proved to be anything worth defending.
At this hour, though, and maybe through the propaganda of the Pubbies, I don’t remember a compelling reason to vote for Kerry. In fact, I asked at the time, on this board, for reasons to vote for him, and I almost exclusively got “Bush is a doodie-head” arguments, instead of compelling reasons to vote for Kerry. As far as I could tell, the Libs were voting against Bush just because he was Bush, instead of voting for Kerry.
Admittedly, I almost wish I’d voted for Kerry, now. Except that I trust him to fight for my values almost as I trust Bush.
Bush a doodie head? Gosh, wouldn’t it have been great if that was a bad as it got? He’s a one man Mongolian clusterfuck and turd avalanche. He has brought more destruction to us than any five of our worst enemies. Stupid might not have been so bad, stupid, self-righteous and arrogant…oh, Lordy!
I am also a lifelong Republican disgusted with G.W. Bush, but again, who else is out there? Let’s look at our choices this year:
McCain—might as well be a DEM; liberal as can be except when running in primaries
Huckabee-- socially conservative, but economically a big government tax and spend liberal
Guiliani-- authoritarian of the highest order, and socially liberal
Romney-- pretty boy closet liberal who magically “changed” his social positions just before entering the primaries. Supports gun control.
HRC-- Her only qualification I can see is being married to Bill Clinton. If she never met him, she would be a lawyer in Little Rock, AR
Obama-- If he were white, he would be a permanent Senator. The fact that he is young, charasmatic, AND BLACK puts him where he is.
Is this the best we have out there in this country? I might be voting Libertarian for the first time in my life. I know it is a wasted vote, but I think any other vote would be wasted as well this year…
Two nitpicks: McCain’s record is pretty solid as a fiscal conservative. His support of the Iraq war has not been, but otherwise, he has a solid fiscal record. On social issues he is all over the place, often at odds with both parties.
HRC moved to Little Rock because of Bill Clinton, she met him at Yale.
For what it is worth, I voted for Kerry in 2003, strickly as an anti-Bush vote. I liked Kerry almost as little as I liked Bush. At that point, I still didn’t hate Bush, I disliked him and hated most of his cabinet, I thought Iraq was an illegal war and found it unforgivable that he listened to the clueless Neo-cons over members like Powell. I of course have hated Cheney from the beginning.
It is hard to describe how strongly I feel he is evil and utterly corrupt. The worst VP that Bush could have picked. I foolishly held out hopes when Bush got the nomination he would at least add either McCain or a moderate (liberal) Republican as his running mate. Instead he picked a family crony and ultimate political insider Dick Cheney.
These policies that you prefer haven’t been part of the Republican party since Eisenhower. Why do you identify with the party? Do you think that 40 more years of patient waiting will bring the Republican party around to your side?
I’m honestly not being snarky, I am seriously baffled why people profess one set of morals and ideologies, and then vote for and support those that are near polar opposites
I hope you folks have been busy writing your Kongress Kritters and the various bigwigs in the GOP about your feelings. After all, they’ll never change, unless you guys let them know how you feel.
