Quote:
Originally posted by ktsnake
What kills me about Bush is look at the alternative.
Does anyone think that getting a Democrat (and a very liberal one at that) for President is going to actually slow down spending?
Hell naw.
Say what you want about Clinton but for all of his faults, he was a fairly conservative Democrat. He shrunk government spending and cut the deficit.
To Bush's credit, much of what he's done has been necessary for the war on terrorism.
Other stuff... well.. it just doesn't add up.
I'll say it again... It's a choice between Karl Marx or the Christian Taliban.
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Haha.
The problem is that people tend to think Republican = small government and fiscally conservative, but clearly with the Bush administration this is not true. So anybody who considers themselves a Republican based on those factors (which is a lot of the conservatives I know) is not getting what they counted on when they voted for the GOP. Ditto the Democrats and any sort of social progressivism -- there are very few truly progressive Democrats left out there. So those of us who vote Democratic for social reasons and those who vote Republican because of the small government/financial conservatism -- which from what I've noticed basically covers most of Americans -- are really getting screwed.
While I agree with 33girl that the country has shifted to the right in recent years (and will probably start shifting back to the left in a little while), I disagree that the country has polarized to the extremes. In fact, if anything I'd say the opposite is true. I don't consider my political views radical at ALL but most of the Democratic presidential candidates were too moderate for me. Of course that's not really surprising -- all of the candidates, Bush included, have been catering to the middle to try and get votes, and that's not exactly a revolutionary political strategy. But -- although I'm not old enough to have really studied this phenomenon in depth yet -- it seems to me like it gets worse with every passing election.
On a complete tangent, there has been talk of a Kerry/McCain ticket and although I think it has about a snowball's chance in hell of happening, it would be really interesting and a great move on Kerry's part for attracting more moderates without isolating too many liberals (who, for whatever reasons, seem to like McCain quite a bit . . . "you know, for a Republican").