Not all of us buy into the notion that the line that between Democratic Party and Republican Party platforms is the only line that one’s political perspective can be found on.
In terms of civil liberties, individual freedoms, private behaviors of citizens, I’m “prochoice” on everything. Government, butt out.
That’s as long as it isn’t behavior that genuinely victimizes other people. My voting behavior, and attitude, towards protective legislation is complicated and hard to predict. Draconian inflexible approaches like three-strikes laws repel me but under certain circumstances I favor “will-arrest” laws or other laws designed to prevent a behavior from happening rather than fining someone for engaging in it. Sell me on an idea, I might vote for you.
Economically, I’m cynical and highly critical of the raw unfettered market economy but wary of stupid redistributivist schemes. I’m a fiscal conservative in the sense that I want government to tax no less than they spend, to spend no more than they tax. Explain to me why your economic politics sucks less than the pisspoor ideas generally embraced by the two main parties and I might vote for you. Or just tout a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility and a lack of interest in messing with the rest of it and I’ll at least not vote against you for economic policy reasons.
I’d like to see profound change enacted slowly and carefully, inspired by a vision of how things could be different. That doesn’t tend to happen. Most of our politicians have a very short attention span, or else they only seek to communicate with voters who have a very short attention span, so they address themselves to the issues of the day without developing a philosophy that informs me about how they’d respond to various possible issues of tomorrow if they were to come up. Give me reason to believe that in your ___ years of public office you hope to do something besides occupy it and prepare for your reelection and I’m listening: I may decide you’re extremely dangerous or I might volunteer to help your campaign in some fashion.
I’m always gonna vote for someone, but believe me, the wells of my enthusiasm are seldom tapped. Show me why you oughta get my vote.
(registered as independent)