Yep, I vote for Reagan in 1984. I vote for Bush the Senior in the 88’ Primary. Then he added Dan Quayle to the ticket and the Republican Party has been running away from me ever since.
Here in Jersey, I voted for Kean & Wittmann but this year I’ll be voting Corzine. A Moderate Dem. Forrester is not terrible, he is just promising things that can’t reasonably be delivered without hurting the state.
I am voting for Amy Handlin, a republican for Assembly who helped us keep a Garbage burner from being built when all the other Republicans Freeholders were apparently taking payments from GE. (2 are now in jail on other bribery charges and 1 escaped jail by dying).
For Freeholders, 2 Dems and for Townships, yep 2 more Dems. The Republicans want to help the tax base by developing more of the town. What an outdated load of crap.
I may need to give up and join the Democrats. I always did think I more of a Jackass than an Elephant.
What you say is largely true, but we still have to try and pick the ones who will do the best job. This is why I don’t vote party lines. I try and decide who is the best candidate for me.
Tell me about it. We get a form of smoke-and-mirrors pseudo democracy here, and I voted for a bloke called “Long Hair”. I always vote. Seems the least I can do.
“None Of The Above.” had to withdraw. Ethics charges, took campaign money from Columbian drug lords or something like that.
NJ the second most crooked politicians in the Country.
I might as well not have one at this point.
Believe it or not, I can’t figure out how to remove affiliation. They even make it hard to switch. I have thought about it in the last 5 years for some reason.
I voted almost completely Republican in my town elections today (on the absentee ballot I mailed in last week), and I am normally more of a Libertarian type who splits down the middle pretty evenly in anything state or national. In my small town of just under ten thousand, though, the difference between Republican and Democrat isn’t so much “conservative versus liberal” as it is “somewhat sane versus no connection whatsoever with the real world”. Small town politics are so silly, sometimes
My dad has voted Republican all of his life, until 2000, when he voted for Gore and then Kerry in 2004. In '96 he “held [his] nose and voted for Dole.” In '92 he voted for Perot, which surprised me. He has always been a fiscal conservative (he’s a retired banker), but has been becoming more socially liberal for years, and the GOP is just not what he wants any more.
Some woman wrote a book about ten years ago to the effect that “I’ve been proud to be a Republican all of my life. My father was a Republican. My grandfather was a Republican. But I just can’t stand these “guns, God, and gays” conservatives. I don’t know these people. Being a Republican to me has always been about taxation and the role of the federal government. After a lifetime of voting straight party ticket, I now find myself voting for Democrats.”
I think we have all moved so far to the right as a society that a lot of Democrats are what moderate Republicans used to be. The left is still there, but to some people it looks more mainstream than it used to.
Might seem silly but I cast a vote against Al Sharpton today.
He was running, of course, but as I was going outdoors to vote in the mayoral election (a foregone conclusion, Bloomburg leading Ferrer by a gazillion points) I caught a glimpse of Ferrer and Sharpton schmoozing on TV, and that made up my mind.
If my vote means something, I’ll hold my nose and consider voting for Sharpton’s man, but when it doesn’t matter anyway…
I vote in the Republican primaries because where I live, the Dems don’t stand a chance, I mean, Repubs often run unopposed. I am literally choosing the lesser of two evils in every election … and rarely is it the lesser that wins even then.
Well for NYC, I would happily have voted for Bloomburg, but he is one of the few Republican’s in the mold of what I think a republican should be. a35362 I think you have summed it up nicely. Thank you.
It’s kind of hard to choose when most of the time it comes down to Tweedle-Dee vs Tweedle-Dum ain’t it?
I’ve always said I vote for whom I think is best qualified for the job. Seems that I tend to lean toward the Dems but I really do try to think about who could best represent.
Then again, I’m in a kind of throw all the bastards out and let’s start all over mood lately.
I’m a registered Republican & former member of the Federalist Society (during school) and I’ve also voted against the party for the past few years. But my votes tend to be split rather than a straight ticket Dem.
I was considering changing my designation to Independent but I kind of like straight-facing “I’m a Republican” to insane lefties (the type that call me race traitor) and quasi-bigoted righties who play Immigration Cop when I’m sitting next to them on a plane (“by gum, do you people even have citizenship? A job? I bet you’re one of them demmy-crats ain’t you? Just tell me you ain’t on welfare.”).
I don’t have any problems with the “guns, God, gays” republicans. Because, hey I support the right to own guns. The bible thumpers and the gay bashers are in general pretty insignificant on election day, not many of them actually run for elected office. And they tend to just be the shrill side of the right that gets the most attention.
I certainly wouldn’t swap or leave my party simply because of a vocal, stupid, minority. Because the Democrats have their fair share of nutbags and imbeciles that tend to get just as much attention when a Democrat is in the White House.
For a long time the word Democrat was practicaly synonymous to Communist with some people. And I think that was about as stupid as the current Republican = fundamentalist meme that floats around the internet.
Anyways, when it comes to local elections I split fairly often between the two parties. Local candidates tend to be pretty separated from the national political line that gets so much attention day-to-day.
I voted for Warner (current Democrat Governor of Virginia) for example.
When it comes to Presidential politics I’ve only voted Democrat once, Clinton in '96.
In 2000 I felt both Gore and Bush were going to be do nothing Presidents. To me it was basically a crap shoot, I used party affiliation to break the tie. In '04 I felt Kerry would be a national disaster worse than Jimmy Carter if elected, so whatever problems I had with Bush were put to the wayside.
