understanding democrat & republican voters

[bishop]

one thing that has struck me, both in my musings on media outlets as well as this forum, is the lack of genuine excitement establishment voters seem to have for their respective candidates. on this forum, it speaks volumes that obama supporters are the primary thread starters in the mccain forum. conversely, mccain supporters seem to be most active in the obama forum. the general theme of the posts rarely every revolve around specific policy disputes, but rather, are little more than regurgitated campaign rhetoric.

can the democrat/republican establishment voters please explain? i would've thought that you all would be wet in the panties to highlight why people should support your candidates - but all i've seen is campaign mud on why people shouldn't support the opposing candidate. it baffles me, and is a dose of cold water on the notion of intelligent voters imo.

(perhaps nobody really believes in any of these candidates and are jaded to the point where they only live to vote against the other guy?)

[NoMoreDems-Reps]

It's kinda like stepping in crap. You can't say that the crap you stepped in Smells Good
but you can still explain why the crap some one else stepped in Smells Worse!

Even the Dimmest of folk know that they are being screwed by "Government", but they
have been fooled in to believing that they are only capable of selecting who can screw
them, a Donkey or an Elephant !

[ViolaLee]

There are several posters with Obama supporting avatars and signatures.

I don't think there are any with McCain supporting avatars and sigs, are there?

[NoMoreDems-Reps]

heh.. i have much less faith in the dimmest of the dim. ;)

watching the convention last night was incredible.. every 4 years, these establishment politicians get up at the podium and repeat the same damn speech they make at every convention.. hell, kennedy repeated lines that he used some 30 years ago (not slighting the fact that he was even able to give a speech in his condition)... at one point, i thought michelle was about to yell out "i have a dream!".. and every shot at the crowd showed a flock of mindless sheep. i sat there asking myself "do people really believe their bullshit??".

and in a few weeks, we'll all get treated to watching the same thing happen again at the republican convention.

I would figure that any human being that has enough cognitive ability to speak and write
would be able to figure out :

REPS&DEMS promise stuff that sounds good, and they promise solutions to problems we
have.

But what they do (REPS&DEMS) is, never deliver the good stuff that they so vigorously promised, and just use the blame game to excuse their non-performance.
All the solutions that they promised never work or happen, and in fact they usually make the
situation worse with the solutions they use.

[bishop]

There are several posters with Obama supporting avatars and signatures.

I don't think there are any with McCain supporting avatars and sigs, are there?


so, to support someone you need to cake your profile up with bumper stickers, avatars, pictoral signatures and other kinds of flair? one would hope that supporters would have more to contribute - perhaps helping shed light on their candidate's positions on the issues..

bumper stickers don't make a damn of a difference imo.. the common thread between obama and mccain supporters remains the fact that they are pitifully light on substance. if the best they can do is sling mud and cake the site with youtube links and flair, it truly is a sad state of affairs.

[Osborn F. Enready]

The silence in this thread is deafening isn't it Bishop?

[bishop]

It's kinda like stepping in crap. You can't say that the crap you stepped in Smells Good
but you can still explain why the crap some one else stepped in Smells Worse!

Even the Dimmest of folk know that they are being screwed by "Government", but they
have been fooled in to believing that they are only capable of selecting who can screw
them, a Donkey or an Elephant !

heh.. i have much less faith in the dimmest of the dim. ;)

watching the convention last night was incredible.. every 4 years, these establishment politicians get up at the podium and repeat the same damn speech they make at every convention.. hell, kennedy repeated lines that he used some 30 years ago (not slighting the fact that he was even able to give a speech in his condition)... at one point, i thought michelle was about to yell out "i have a dream!".. and every shot at the crowd showed a flock of mindless sheep. i sat there asking myself "do people really believe their bullshit??".

and in a few weeks, we'll all get treated to watching the same thing happen again at the republican convention.

[Phyxius]

if you don't support anyone then you could've said so at the outset, rather than grace us with such enlightening posts. the question i'm looking to get answers to obviously doesn't apply to you, so please stop disrupting this thread.

My posts are on point. Who do YOU support, bishop? And why? I see YOU spending a lot of time knocking down those candidates you don't like, but not a whole lot of detail on who you DO like.

Pot, meet kettle. Dress code for the day is basic black... :peace:

[bishop]

i posted quite a lot when my candidate, ron paul, was still in the race. dig back through those threads if you want to see specifics behind my support for him. in short, i support him because he supports small government and has the voting record to prove that he means it - and i too support small government and expect that candidates' voting records validates their campaign rhetoric.

aside from your trolling in this thread, not a single mccain/obama (i.e. establishment) supporter can muster up an answer into why they can't focus on explaining why they support who they support.

[DamnYankee]

No candidate is perfect, that includes McCain. He has my support because of his...

Energy policy.
Economic policy.
National Security policy.
2nd Ad. policy.
Judicial policy.
Ag policy.
Pro Life policy.

[bishop]

thanks damnyankee.

i agree that no candidate is perfect. and for myself, i find that i support candidates when they support the issues that matter most to me.

that said, would it then be correct to assume that you care less about limited government and states/individual rights in comparison to the issues that you listed above? (not to create a tangent, but do you believe that there should be a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?)

[DamnYankee]

thanks damnyankee.

i agree that no candidate is perfect. and for myself, i find that i support candidates when they support the issues that matter most to me.

that said, would it then be correct to assume that you care less about limited government and states/individual rights in comparison to the issues that you listed above? (not to create a tangent, but do you believe that there should be a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?)

Less gov't is always a good thing. But less gov't doesn't figure very high for me this go around. There are more pressing issues.

The homosexual marriage thing is not that important to me.

[AlanC]

bishop,

Your question sounds simple. It is not. There are so many things that would go into how one arrives at their support of one candidate over the other that there is probably a couple of volumes that could be written about it.

But to your first point. I am not enthusiastic about any candidate because I veiw all of them with an incredible amount of suspicion.

As I have said in other threads, either John McCain or Barrack Obama will be the next president of the United States. I don't like either of them. But I do view McCain as being the lesser of two evils in a number of important ways.

Why is there no enthusiasm for him? Because he isn't really the Republican candidate. McCain was made by independant voters, cross over democrats and the New York Times which has always seen him as a "good" republican. Why? Because he either supports or can be easily mannipulated into capitulating with democrats on at least some issues.

But there are two things he has been strongly supportive of his entire career. Cutting Federal spending and consistently expressing a pro-life stance. On most other things, he plays to a populist center instead of principled absolutes.

Obama on the other hand is a radical leftist. He has been on the far left of not only his party, but the political mainstream of this country. His books, speeches and voting record all show it. I prefer McCain between the two.

As to third party candidates I don't like any of them either. Bob Barr is no president and neither is Ralph Nader. All of the others are throw aways.

Ron Paul was interesting but I have some basic disagreements with him on a number of issues. On the rest, there are some that I agree with in principle, but think they would be destructive if anyone tried to pursue them with any earnest.

Isolationism has never worked for this country. It is a remarkable ideal, but the truth is it won't work. The idea that we can or should close all foreign bases and bring out troops all within the borders of the US sounds good but it fails in two ways. The US has interests all over the world, whether we like that or not. They are there. If those interests cannot be protected by us, no one will do it for us. Those interests are financial as well as political. They involve the freedom and protection of our own citizens.

Secondly, reducing the size of the military to one capable of protecting our own shores only, would make it impossible to protect those interests elsewhere. Washington saw the dangers of entangling alliances, but others also saw the dangers of having no friends in a world where we participated so eagerly in free trade across the globe. Both positons have hazards, but we must remain involved in the world.

I can love the idea of a new direction on the war on drugs. Does Ron Paul have the answer? I don't know. But I do know he has introduced or passed no legislation on the subject and I doubt if he could as president either. Nor will he be able to eliminate the tax code, nor will he eliminate the IRS, nor will he be able to put the country back on a gold standard and eliminate the Federal Reserve Bank. Not only does he not have the ablity to do this, it would be counter productive to try.

If Ron Paul was elected President, what he would do is convene a period of 4 years of war with the congress during which, the best he could hope for would be to have some of his vetos actually not be over ridden. At the end of it, he and his party would have been crucified by congress, the press and probably his own party for all that was not done.

I lament the fact that the Republicans did not insist on being able to pick their own candidate, without all the interference. If they had actually selected someone competent, they would have a double digit lead in the polls right now.

[bishop]

alan, thanks for your thoughtful response.

as for the question itself, i tend to think that it's easy/difficult depending on the individual answering the question. i'm not convinced that all people are open-minded, critical thinkers - i do wholly believe that there are a lot of people who tend to vote for certain parties out of habit/tradition. for it to be a difficult question implies that the individual does think critically, and those are the people i find interesting because they can elaborate on their thoughts.

when i paid attention to the republican primaries, there was only one candidate who stood for what i believe in (small government and states rights). aside from paul, i didn't see the other candidates as being any more "republican" than mccain - did you? it's laughable how they all preach about small government when their actions support the opposite. and, it's sad how voters don't hold them accountable - unless they have a different set of priorities than what they state in public forums.

i do agree that one of the two will be the next president, and also agree that if i had to choose between the two, i would favor mccain. of course, i'm not going to vote for either, which is my right. what i don't understand, though, is why virtually all of the mccain supporters here spend their energy bashing on obama - and vice versa as far as the obama supporters go. it is a sad state of affairs when people pour all of their energy into arguing over who we shouldn't vote for, rather than who we should vote for. this is the frame of mind that prevents chronic issues from ever getting solved, keeps people divided on non-issues like gay marriage, etc.. and then there's the overt hypocrisy that is equally frustrating to see - democrats complaining about "republican deficits" even though they politicians they support voted for the same spending bills. what a bunch of ostriches..


and just because you said it - i wholly disagree with your comments regarding paul, but that is for another thread.. suffice it to say that when i see comments about how his policies would "destroy" the country, i'm left asking myself what have the democrats and republicans done in that regard... a debt-laden financial system whose longevity is waning, total dependence on foreign oil, shrinking global prestige & influence, chronic infringements on individual rights, etc... all of this is a product of the two-party system.