I think I’m actually exactly the opposite of a single issue voter. I’m not just voting for whichever candidate agrees with me on Gun Control, or Abortion, or NAFTA, or whatever. Rather, I’m so concerned with the larger impact of a president of a given party, particularly the veto power and supreme court appointments, and the ongoing affect on basically ALL issues, that I would be loathe to vote for a GOP candidate even if, on the surface, they agreed with me on many or most issues.
Yeah, that’s definitely true, I was oversimplyfing. Still, there have been local or state races where I preferred, and even voted for, the Republican candidate (albeit not often). The issue I’m trying to bring up in this thread is that even though in some theoretical sense I would like to feel able to do that for a presidential candidate, the power of the presidency is so extensive and long-lasting, and the difference between the parties is currently so stark, that I feel like it’s not even a possibility.
Let’s say I find a Republican candidate this election cycle that I can not only live with, but actually trust and prefer over any of the Democratic candidates. Even if this Republican intends to keep any and all promises made in the campaign, and even if by some freakin’ miracle this Republican gets elected, it’s a sure bet she/he will be the lamest lame duck President in history. The Republican Party will consider her/him to be a traitor, and absolutely nothing will be accomplished.
I think the poster child for a candidate that the Republican party has hung out to dry is Richard Tisei from Massachusetts. I had to choose between him and Seth Moulton, a relative unknown, last fall. Tisei is exactly the kind of Republican I wouldn’t mind voting for – he’s a fiscal conservative and hand’s-off social policy (he’s openly gay) and no one really had anything negative to say about him at all. But aside from the obvious question of why he identifies as a Republican, it would have been very difficult to hand the Republicans yet another House seat after the clown show they’ve been putting on since 2010. But I actually felt bad voting against Tisei just because he had an “R” next to his name.
I don’t disagree, but… I think the issue is not just that the current Republican party is fully of nutbars, although that certainly exacerbates the issue. I think that even in more sane times, when each party could respect the other one even if they disagreed, the way the balance of powers is set up makes it much harder than one might think it should be to rationally vote for a president of the other party.
IMHO it is worth making these kinds of decisions differently for the national elections vs. state and local elections.
A recent example I have encountered is with my family and friends in the state of Michigan. They are all very strongly Democratic voters at the national level, but were sufficiently impressed with Rick Snyder in the last Governor’s race that they voted his way. According to them, what he said made sense to them (at that time), and the Democratic candidate did not sufficiently sell his story to them.
However, I would speculate that in a Presidential election, for the foreseeable future, they would not consider a Republican, no way no how. Nor would they vote Republican for Senator or Congressperson.
Absolutely.
I don’t vote for Democrats because I’m a Democrat. I vote for them because my beliefs and my standards are (in general) supported by Democratic candidates. That’s why I’m a Democrat.
Substitute Republican for Democrat, and you’ve got Shodan’s attitude.
There is nothing wrong about either my view or his.
Not being American, I have no vote but a different perspective, but I think you’re reaching the wrong conclusion. In your case you should vote for the Republican because you’ll be able to respect his or her decisions, even if you don’t like them, whereas you may neither respect nor like the actions of the sleazeball Democrat. Further, when push comes to shove you want someone there to do the right thing, and your Republican will do that when the Democrat will not.
But you’re missing the point entirely. What I’m saying is that even if the immediate presidential decisions made by a Republican were ones that I thought were better, I would find it difficult to vote for them because of the penumbra of additional affects that come from having a Republican in the presidential office, with the obvious two being the impact it has on congress and on the supreme court. (Granted that wouldn’t be an issue if I believed that this particular Republican would both use the power of the veto and appoint supreme court justices in a way that made me happy… but at that point, how is this person a Republican at all?)
You should vote to have the best impact on American society. And since the GOP wants to turn the US into a Handmaid’s Tale themepark, voting for them is counterproductive.
It will change in a bit, when the Tea Partiers die. Which, hopefully is soon, but no one will make it through a national GOP primary right now without being an imbecile, or at least advocating for the political will of imbeciles.
I might have voted for McCain the first time around, before he broke bad. There is nothing inherently wrong with voting for the GOP. It’s just right now the GOP has gatekeepers in the primaries that only let vile idiots or cynical assholes through turnstile.
Nothing wrong with waiting until the TPers lose power before considering a GOP candidate.
Back in the good old days you’d frequently have elections where the candidates from either party had standards you could support. In 1968 George Wallace said that there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Humphrey and Nixon. Not quite true, but compared to today reasonably true. While they had different positions on the War, their economic policies were not all that different and Nixon started EPA, something Humphrey would have done also.
The whole Goldwater movement was about conservatives finding not enough difference between Rockefeller Republicans and Democrats.
As for the Supreme Court, Earl Warren was a Republican nominated by a Republican.
If you ignore the real issues brought up in the OP about the side effects of electing a Republican, I bet more Democrats than radicalized Tea Party Republicans would vote for someone like Rockefeller. Hell, even Saint Ron did stuff that would be unacceptable to the right wing of the party today.
Don’t feel bad about it. The GOP made their beds, now they must lie in them. There’s nothing wrong with seeing that party for what it really is after decades of selling out to extremists and nothing bad at all about choosing Democrats because they’ve been the sane, adult party. Choices have consequences, and if a party decides to forgo inclusiveness for divisive short-term gains, then your reaction of not voting for them under any circumstances is exactly what they deserve.
Its not like you don’t have a voice. Don’t lament that you have to agree with “The Democrats” because the GOP is so unpalatable. Instead, your new choices are between one Democrat and another. With the way the right-wing extremists have pulled the country towards the right, you’re really not losing much in a conservative choice. Want a liberal? Go for Bernie Sanders or someone like Kucinich or Barney Frank. Someone moderate? Obama, Clinton, or Cory Booker or Feinstein. Someone a little more conservative? Jim Webb or Joe Lieberman. Those are some of the more famous examples, I know some of them are no longer in office, but replace them with less famous counterparts. I don’t see why someone should lament that the GOP is unelectable. There are plenty of Democrats who are more socially conservative than Obama, or more economically conservative than Sanders. And they will have the benefit of not having decades of self-created baggage like racial divisiveness, religious extremism, or Trump’s abject insanity
Yes, you’re doing it wrong. No political party has a lock on having the best approach to solving particular problems or being “right” for a particular time and circumstance. Voting only for one party, even if their candidate is a sleazeball is bad for both the country and the party, in addition to being ridiculously sheep-like by the voter.
Vote for the best guy for the job, regardless of party. Take the time and effort to learn about the candidates, the issues, and vote accordingly. I vote a split ticket in most general elections. You should too.
Well, that’s a helpful post, given that (a) I acknowledged in the OP that neither party has a lock on being right, (b) you ignored all the actually substantive arguments I said, and (c) you called me sheep-like. So, thanks for that.
The democrats most certainly do not have a lock on being right, the Republicans on the other hand have a dead grip on being wrong. I am a single issue voter, and that single issue is “the Republican party must be kept out of power at all costs”. That is the most important issue for america, everything else is secondary. The democrats are constantly disappointing and usually incompetent but they sadly are the only sane choice.
I agree with you, but I think you’re understating your case here. It’s not just veto power and Supreme Court appointments. It also the SOS and AG posts that you mention. And more broadly, the general influence of the party on the president.
A guy gets elected president, and he has to fill a lot of positions. And these positions will tend to get filled by the broad spectrum of whatever party he is a member of. No president can or would even try to ensure that all of his appointees were exactly aligned with his own ideology. So even a moderate Republican/Democratic president is going to appoint people from the spectrum of conservative/liberal to moderate, which would be on the whole more conservative/liberal than he himself is.
And the same goes for actual policies. And this is where constituencies and lobbyists come into play. Each political party has constituencies that tend to support them, and they need to keep these constituencies happy in order to ensure continued support for the party. That doesn’t mean that they will never cross them, but it means the positions supported by the constituencies of a given political party will have more influence with presidents of that party than the positions supported by other constituencies, regardless of the symphathies of a particular president on that particular issue. So if Labor strongly supports a particular position that is going to count a lot more if a Democratic president is in office than if a Republican is, and conversely if religious leaders support a position. And the same goes for lobbyists. If a Democrat is in office, then the specific-issue lobbyists who have the inside track and connections to key people in the White House will be a liberal group, while if the Republicans are in the White House it will be a conservative group.
In sum, as a practical matter the viewpoints of a particular presidential candidate are not completely determinative as to what ideology his administration will follow once he’s in office, and the party he’s a part of also has a big influence. To focus solely on the candidate would be a mistake.
Still not clear on how a sleazy and corrupt President can be counted on to nominate good candidates to the Supreme Court, no matter what the party.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not sure about ‘counted on’, but I trust a sleazy, corrupt Democrat to nominate good SC justices far more than a non-sleazy, non-corrupt Republican (the current crop, anyway, not Bob Dole, GHWB, or even Nixon)… but I wouldn’t come close to “counting on” any of them.
I’d argue that the general Republican ideology has benefited greatly from having Clarence Thomas on the court even if he’s far from an intellectual heavyweight. You don’t necessarily need GOOD nominations if you’re just trying to further your interests, you just need dependable nominations.
The dope is not a good place to get a balanced discussion on this topic. IMHO, the majority of posters here are very entrenched in their views, right or left. I would suspect we will have difficulty finding numerous posters here that have switched their votes back and forth for President between parties over the years.
My problem with the Republican party is that I tend to be moderate to liberal on social issues yet more conservative on economic and fiscal issues. With the right wing bent of the republican party it his been historically difficult to win the nomination unless you court the right wing social conservatives. Then when they win the nomination, the remaining true moderates (whom really decide presidential elections) don’t like the stance on social issues that the Republican nominee spouts, so they vote with the Democrats.