The secret is I’m registered as a Republican. Next time I go back to the US, I’m definitely going change my political affiliation. Not sure to what I’ll change it to though.
The country I left doesn’t seem like the same one that’s there now. I’ve felt that way for a long time, and I keep hoping I’m wrong. Boy, do we need a change in leadership. What we really need is a time machine. Considering how badly the Neocons have messed things up since 2000, 2008 seems a long way off.
When Clinton was president, I wasn’t the only one thinking “Good riddance” when his time in office was running down. Last week when I saw his interview on Fox News, I was in awe. I had forgotten how an intelligent and literate president is able to express himself. And now we discover that not only does Tom Mark Foley has a penchant for little boys, but it’s been known about for at least a few years. Then there’s the thing about US citizens now being eligible for Gitmo, the situation in Iraq being worse than ever, health insurance premiums up 80% since the beginning of the decade, more school shootings… Short of another terrorist attack on US soil, can things get any worse? Can the average law-abiding citizen do anything more productive than just complain?
Waking up and reading the news is probably the worst way to start off a new day. I need a change in routine, because right now I’m feeling quite depressed. Even putting partisan politics aside, our government is an absolute disgrace.
I’m a registered Republican too, man. I registered back when I was in high school, but I didn’t meet any real young republicans until I went to university. After attending one meeting of the campus republicans, I had decided that I would never identify myself with one of the parties again. I stay registered because it allows me to vote in primaries, not because I’m actually Republican.
That would be former Rep. Mark Foley (R, Florida) — Tom (Dem) was the Speaker of the House when the Republicans took over in 94.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Foley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Foley
Speaking of pissing things away. Regardless of how clumsy(or retarded) the Democrats are being, or are capable of being, don’t piss away your vote as some “independent” or other irrelevant party. Sure, there should be more than two legitimate parties in this country but what’s the effective reality at this point? Do I want to vote for pro-war Hillary? Not really. But just like Al Sharpton said, “I never got my 40 acres but I’m gonna ride this donkey as far as it’ll take me”. So, basically, get behind whoever the next Dem for president is – there is a difference. Unless you don’t think much of civil rights, weekends and school lunches, that is.
Drew, that’s the kind of thinking that leaves with a GOP competent at doing things badly and a Democratic Party with nothing to offer. (Like most non-Christianist Republicans, I find myself feeling the rug’s been pulled out from under me. I remain a Republican, so I can vote in Republican primaries.)
An election is not a horse race. It’s distressing to hear so many people say they’d vote Libertarian or Green or whatever, but that they’d be pissing their votes away. If people just voted for who they WANTED instead of who they thought was going to win, a decent alternative in the form of a more viable third party might seem a little more realistic. Look at the Libertarians – they won statewide offices in a few states and did better than the Greens, all without much attention.
FYI – the school unch program was initiated by a Republican Congress. Civil Rights, I don’t think the current GOP has even heard of (ironic, isn’t it?) Weekends? I missed the Republican threat to weekends.
Just out of curiosity, not to be combative, who’s the real Democratic contender who was not pro-war?
(At the time, I was disturbed to find myself shocked by the invasion, but to the left of the Democrats on the issue. That’s what I started to think something was wrong.)
Rich, I think it’s simple. Register as either a Republican or a Democrat to vote in primaries and try to get the best candidate you can from the compost heap, then vote for who you actually want in office. The GOP and the Democrats are becoming like the LDP in Japan b/c we just assume it has to be that way.
Well, if people had not wasted their votes on whats-his-face instead of Gore, he would have had a definitive win over Bush, and this whole disaster would have been avoided. Having 3rd parties is great because they can help to raise issues and awareness, forceing the dems and gop to take notice. But regardless, it is generally a waste to vote for someone who is not a dem or gop. You just need to suck it up and vote for the one who is closest to your indy fav.
Ralph Nader? It came down to Florida (where I voted for Harry Browne) and, yes, had every Nader voter voted for Gore, he would have clearly won the state and its 25 votes. And that may well have prevented “this whole disaster,” but I think that’s judging a little too much from hindsight. I understand why we all, including me and, apparently, Rich, look back on Clinton fondly and I think it’s easy to say that Gore would have been a better POTUS than Bush (not a tough call there), but, aside from the Iraq War, I don’t think much of what is going on now is directly attributable to Bush nor do I think that, looking at Gore’s record and considering the enormous pressure he would have been under to move in the opposite direction of Clinton, Gore would have handled many issues much differently. Gore would have looked like a hero on 9/11 and Gore would have continued to make taxes more business and wealth-friendly, that’s a macro-trend.
As for 3rd parties, the Dems are a lot closer to the GOP than they are to the Greens or the Natural Law Party and the GOP is a lot closer to the Dems than they are to the Libertarians. If I am, for example, a Communist (although there are only 15,000 in the US as compared to Japan’s 400,000), I’d really, truly be pissing my vote away if I voted for the Dems. Likewise if I were a Libertarian who voted GOP.
Neo cons can hardly call themselves republicans. They have bloated the government and have the same money management skills as a spoiled rich teenager.
Garrett, those were all liberal causes. Look em’ up if ya want – for some reason I associate liberal causes with Democrats instead of Republicans – call me crazy. And yes, of course there are a bunch of incompetent douche bag democrats, but at this point I’ll take anybody over John McCainn or any other “flip flopper” who’s going to owe the religious right ANYTHING. Look what they’ve done to our country – what more is there to say? They have control of every branch of government – it’s unbridled – there are no Republicans who are mitigating this disaster, whatsoever. The priority at this point is to slow down the damage. I’m anti war but Hillary is a far cry from any Rebublican – any day. Maybe I’m just this guy sitting on his couch but I’m knoweledgable enough to understand she’s hobbled by dishonest GOP tactics. You’ll probably say politics are politics but i disagree – it’s a whole different animal with the right. It’s unpatriotic. It’s disgusting.
Drew, you’re definitely right when you say that no one in the GOP is doing anything to mitigate the damage being done the Bush administration and the Congress the can’t say “no.” And you’re also right when you say it’s disgusting. Unfortunately, I don’t any Democrat proposing anything other than not being a Republican, which is nice, but is exactly how we got stuck with such a powerful GOP. They weren’t the Democrats who had controlled Congress for decades. Simply not being the bad guys doesn’t make them the good guys.
While the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 was signed into law by LBJ, school lunches started in the US in 1946 under Truman and a GOP Congress. The concern was that there wouldn’t be enough soldiers. Seriously. Apparently the majority of draftees declared ineligible on medical grounds (now 4F) had been malnourished as boys. That’s why the US initially instituted school lunches. I’d agree that it was a liberal cause, but it was done by a Republican Congress.
Civil Rights is a liberal cause, I didn’t disagree with you. I called the fact that the Republicans are weaker on civil rights than the Dems “ironic” because the GOP was founded as an anti-slavery party and, way back in the time of Reconstruction, pushed for and got the 13th and 14th amendments.
I’m still lost on the Republican threat to weekends.
While I firmly agree with you that the GOP is disgraceful and that having the Dems in, even just for a change, would be good, I really don’t see the Dems doing a whole lot better, which makes the GOP situation even more depressing.
While I’m as anti-Christianist as anyone, perhaps more than most, I think McCain deserves a lot of credit for leading some areas of opposition to the Bush administration. Sadly, I don’t see any Dems in Congress, including Hillary, actually proposing bills to change what’s happening, refusing to fund the Iraq War, or calling the President on his lies. Why is McCain a “flip-flopper” and not Hillary or pretty much any other prominent Dem? There’s only one reason they wouldn’t be doing those things: what they really care about is power, just like the GOP.
That would make it all really easy to understand wouldn’t it? If they were just the same thing. Reduce it down to the stunning fact that “it all revolves around power”! to borrow a line from Rich: “GASP!”.
Everything is relative but there is a major difference. And sure, Hillary should be doing lots different – but I guess you missed my point with the Al Sharpton quote? Republicans invented(or at the least approved of – which is equally bad) the “flip flopper” bull-crap, as well as all the other extraordinary tactics they use, even on each other(illegitimate black children etc…). There are “flip floppers” in both parties… but… refer to Sharpton quote again…
The McCaine thing is as clear as day. I’m not even going to type it myself but instead paste parts of a nicely written editorial by Krugman on that subject. And this was before passing this new torture bill:
“the Right’s Man”. You can search it on NYT:
” The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn’t a moderate; he’s a man of the hard right. How far right? A statistical analysis of Mr. McCain’s recent voting record, available at http://www.voteview.com, ranks him as the Senate’s third most conservative member.
What about Mr. McCain’s reputation as a maverick? This comes from the fact that every now and then he seems to declare his independence from the Bush administration, as he did in pushing through his anti-torture bill.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Guantánamo. President Bush, when signing the bill, appended a statement that in effect said that he was free to disregard the law whenever he chose. Mr. McCain protested, but there are apparently no hard feelings: at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference he effusively praised Mr. Bush.
And I’m sorry to say that this is typical of Mr. McCain. Every once in a while he makes headlines by apparently defying Mr. Bush, but he always returns to the fold, even if the abuses he railed against continue unabated.
So here’s what you need to know about John McCain.
He isn’t a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don’t have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation’s central provision show that he’s a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush. ”
Unions are responsible for the “weekend” as we know it – seriously – call me crazy for associating interest in workers rights or the poor with progressives. Also, who gives a shit if the Republican party was the party of Lincoln? It’s obviously been morphed into something else, irrelevant to that factoid, and has been for a long time. I always cringe when I heart that mumbo jumbo actually. It could be further scrutinized but I’m moving on…
School lunches: I should have been clearer – your hints: Gingrich, eliminate, school lunches – you can do the googling.
I hope you register as a Democrat Rich! It’s not a save all by any means but there is a difference.
I know this is late, but I really appreciate hearing your comments. I’m actually the Chair of the Dems in Japan, and many of us were (and still are) Howard Dean supporters, who turned around and supported John Kerry because we felt strongly that the Bush administration had gone rogue…I was at a GOTV event at the MTV Cafe last week, and a very nice Republican guy came to register, and made it very clear that, with 2 kids, Katrina was it: he couldn’t lie to himself anymore, and that, as much as he’ll always be at heart, a fiscal conservative, he’s not a racist nor does he want people in poverty to suffer like those folks did because ultimately, the Federal government didn’t protect the people…It was really heartening, and gave me hope that, once the current batch of neocons is out of power, we can have the best of the sane Republican party, and the best of the reformed DNC and find ways to work together with integrity. anyway, for those who want to, it’s getting late to register and get your ballot, but you can still do it here: http://www.votefromabroad.org. It’s a Dem site, but you can register any way you like.
Sorry to hijack, but I wanted to let you know that a progressive Democrat (who voted for the first time in my life in 2004) says thank you for being sane…and let’s take our country back!
best,
Terri
OK, my final comment on this. I fully agree, Drew, that civil rights, etc. are progressive causes. I disagree somewhat with the idea that “progressive,” “liberal,” and “Democratic” are the same thing, but it’s a minor point.
As I see it now, the best thing the Dems have going for them is that they aren’t the current batch of Republicans, which is a big, big plus. However, I really think that what we’ll see if the Dems win is another party in power that can’t do anything.
I voted for Kerry in 2004 as a pragmatic choice (and b/c I didn’t see any third party candidates who hadn’t either gone off the deep end or become vote-grabbing centrists, which makes them unsuccessful amjor-party wannabes.) Unfortunately, the choice was between an incumbent that I KNEW had done a bad job and a challenger that I had every reason to suspect would do a bad job. Kerry got the benefit of the doubt and won my vote.
The idea that the current major-player Dems are progressives, though, is as big a load of bullshit as the major-player Republicans pretending to be fiscal conservatives. They just aren’t. Has Nancy Pelosi pushed for progressive casues? Yes. Has Lantos? Clinton? Kerry? Kennedy? Not consistently. In some cases, about as much as a moderate Republican, which isn’t much.
Drew, you’re right. It’s not relevant that the Republicans used to be for an early form of civil rights, but it’s also not relevant now that labor unions used to do good work. They’re now anachronistic in amny sectors and contributing to long-term problems in exchange for benefits for a relatively small group of people. For example, it’s great for some GM workers that they can be in a reserve pool for years, do nothing, and get paid. It sucks for all the guys lower on the totem pole who might not have jobs b/c it’s virtually impossible for GM to cut costs. That’s GM’s fault as much as it is the unions, but the unions aren’t helping.
Somewhere around 13% of American workers are unionized, and the fastest growing group is service workers, such as hotel janitors, who work weekends in many cases anyway. There are enough legitimate things to go after Republicans for without pulling a Bill O’Reilly and insinuating that the GOP is anti-worker. (The Teamsters, UAW, etc. donate to the GOP as well as the Dems, which is what most large groups do. Those same unions deserve a hefty share of the blame for the decreasing relevance of unions, too.) On the other side, the Dems don’t have much problem taking Wal-Mart’s money and haven’t, when they controlled Congress, exactly cut Halliburton, Lockheed, etc. off.
I guess I just don’t see the overall difference as being as big as you see it. I wish the Dems were that good.
Yea – I guess I’ll try to wrap it quick:
That’s the thing – as bad, stupid and lame as the Demaocrats can be, they’re still better than the Republicans. That’s how disturbing the GOP is! I just don’t see how someone can be a Republican and say they’re not be a part of what their big agenda is. Have their cake and eat it too. The Dems are pathetic and powerless – the Republicans are just plain old repugnant.
Yea – I generally agree with you about the Union stuff – my point wasn’t ot say Unions are perfecto yippee, or anyhting like that. Ther need to be changes but I don’t know what they’d be. Not just eliminating unions, obviously.
Ciao
i was a registered republican before bush came into office, because i thought that republicans were for fiscal conservatism and small government. and like a reverse reagan, i think a lot of us could say “i didn’t leave the republican party, the republican party left me” so partly out of protest, i’m now registered reform party because i think we’re pretty much screwed either way right now. like someone said before, the dems are powerless; lots of bark but no bite. the republicans are just disgusting.
in highschool in america, we are brought up to think that voting really makes a difference. i graduated in 2000, ready to get out there and be a part of it. hell, i was even born on election day. but my first taste of a big election is one that was decided by the courts. how could i not immediately lose faith? how can i not question the system? but wait, that would make me unpatriotic. and people wonder why i want to leave america… not that it would be any better, but theres a difference what you are born into, and what you adopt. perhaps one day i’ll be saying “i didn’t leave america, america left me”