Republicans and Democrats

As a reporter, I attend lots of events and meet with and talk to a lot of different people all the time. Most of the people I talk to seem to be level headed and even tempered.  I get a bit confused by the mix up in terms that I hear sometimes.

What I mean is this; my regular readers will tell you that I tend to lean a little to the right in my opinions.  Okay, so maybe I lean so far to the right that Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are to my left, but let me not get off track here.

When engaged in conversation, I like to ask about people’s values and principles, what they consider to be important, then possibly whom they might vote for.  It never ceases to amaze me that some very conservative minded people say they’ll vote for an individual simply because of party affiliation, regardless of how that individuals record and rhetoric matches up to their values.

While the condition is hardly exclusive to one party or the other, I most often see it from southern democrats. Let me explain.  I’ve met a good number of native Floridians that are ‘typical’ Bible belt Christians.  They work hard, respect our flag and troops, are gun owning, like to hunt, and fall in line with mostly all conservative platforms.  But then they’ll blindly vote for a democrat without even listening to what he or she has to say, because they’ve always been democrat, their parents and grandparents were democrats, and they somehow feel committed to the party.  I’m guessing this happens with lots of Bible belt democrat voters across the south.

What I find most disturbing is that some of them actually do listen, and they will jump up and down and spit nails over issues they disagree with, and then back down and vote the party line anyway.

Then I see republican voters forced to do the same thing.  They are republican because they believe in the stated conservative platforms of the party, and then become dismayed when a less than conservative candidate, now labeled as RINO’s is ‘forced’ upon them by the party.  They don’t really want to vote for that person, but feel they are left with no choice, creating a lesser of two evils scenario.

I don’t know the ultimate solution, although I think one way might be to change the name of the parties.  Instead of Democrat and Republican, why not call them Liberal and Conservative?  Maybe, just maybe that could clear the political mud.  Or not.

Either way, we are faced with a huge, mounting problem in November.  More and more people are recognizing how bad the current administration is for the country.  We need to stop voting along party lines, and put aside any thoughts of race, gender, or anything like that.  Any who are undecided need to look really hard at the facts, check the records, and not buy the lies and half truths from either side.  Recognize that no one will match up perfectly, and ask yourself which candidate matches your values better.

Bear in mind that this is very critical because this cannot be a close election.  There are very bad things happening behind the scenes that will stack the deck for the current administration.  For starters, seiu, the same union that the president has in his pocket, has the exclusive contract to maintain all of the voting machines, and the votes will be final tallied by a company in Spain.  This is scary and brings into full focus the famous quote from stalin, “it doesn’t matter who votes, what matters is who counts the votes.”

Stay tuned, I’ll be opining about this a lot over the coming months.