If the Republicans were to nominate Olympia Snowe, I’d vote for her against any Democratic candidate I can currently think of.
If the Republicans were to nominate John McCain, I’d vote for him if the Democratic candidate were Harry Reid, Al Sharpton, or any of several other Democrats who are pro-life and/or I find profoundly unappealing for other reasons. He’d have an uphill row to hoe to obtain my vote against a generic pro-choice Democrat though.
If Congress somehow falls into Democratic hands in '06, I’d be more likely to consider voting Republican. I’m rather unhappy with what the Republicans have done during the period when they’ve held the keys to all the power sheds on their key ring.
Meanwhile, if the Democrats would field someone who ran as a committed no-kidding fiscal-responsibility candidate and had the creds to back it up, plus pro-individual-freedom on all civil liberties / privacy rights issues, I doubt the Republicans could field anyone I’d vote for in preference to that.
I wouldn’t vote for a Repub under any conceivable circumstances. You don’t just elect a single guy when you vote for President, you vote for a whole administration. A vote for a Repub is a vote for Big Oil being in charge of energy policy, it’s a vote for mining interests and developers “protecting” the environment, it’s a vote for corporate lobbyists “protecting” the consumer, it’s a vote for the wealthy getting all the economic breaks while the poor and the middle class get none.
The Dems have fallen down in these respects as well at times, but overall they tend to do much better than the Republicans, whose instinctive response to the sight of a henhouse is to find a fox to guard it.
Congenital Democrat chiming in. I’d seriously consider voting for McCain. Bayh stikes me as a fundamentally decent guy (read: he hasn’t said anything that I disagree with, or just plain scares me), but my biggest Republican heartthrob is…god forgive me…Arlen Specter.
George Voinovich, Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, the GOP moderates with backbone, would all be fine. But they’re not the party anymore and it won’t be any of them. You want a moderate President, you gotta look under the sign of the donkey.
What if this hypothetical Democrat was indeed a no-kidding fiscal-responsibility candidate who had the creds to back it up, plus **was **pro-individual-freedom on all civil liberties & privacy rights issues, and was also “pro-choice.” Would that put the kibosh on him or her, in your eyes? Just curious.