Excuse me, but I find this improbable.
You'd be surprised, Sam. The point has been made that party affiliation is a good guide to voting choices, and I find it is. I will listen to a Republican, but I so rarely hear what I think should be done, and so often hear courses proposed that I know will lead to disaster, and have so often watched that disaster come to be, that I've come close to giving up. It would take a really special sort of Republican for me to vote for one; I'd almost hesitate to call such a person a "Republican," although the values I seek were once the province of the GOP. Not in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries, of course.
This seems to contradict what you said above.
Yes, doesn't it?
Now that has more of the authentic Schneibster ring to it.
Beyond the cartoon Hollywood image I know little of the man. He clearly has a good deal of get-up-and-go. It's always dodgy commenting on the politics of a foreign country and the USA is foreign despite the similarities with the UK. I'm just surprised to hear you say you would toe a party line even if the candidate was a twerp. (In Scotland the equivalent saying is that someone would vote labour if the candidate was a red shirt hanging out to dry). Why would you abandon your usual analytical stance when it comes to politics?
Mostly because every time I listen to a Republican talk for five minutes I'm mad as hell at what they're saying. I suppose you could say I'd rather have a twerp than an *******. The twerp might screw things up most of the time, but through incompetence; at least a stopped clock is right twice a day. The ******* will screw them up every time, through malevolence and greed.
I've watched multiples of the GDP taken out of the pockets of the middle class in this country to line the pockets of the rich, over and over again. Social Security has been stripped in order to guarantee compliant employees dependent upon the good will of their employers for safe retirement, and the unions busted for the same purpose, among others that will occur to the experienced mind; the S&L system and the stock market have been looted, and the looters have now turned to the housing market. The insurance industry has been taking advantage of the situation as well; some of the newest rich people in the country got that way in the medical insurance industry, and they are using their money to make sure no one interferes in their theft by blocking health care reform.
None of that except the health care reform blockage happened during a Democratic presidency, and the current administration has raised theft to an entirely new level. It is now being protected using executive privilege. Combined with oft-repeated scandals of the nastiest sort, evidencing hypocrisy nearly beyond imagination, profession of disbelief in scientific evidence and suppression of science unprecedented since the nineteenth century in this country, and the civil rights issues surrounding interference in what should be private matters (GLBT lifestyles, abortion, and so on), I nearly cannot imagine voting for a Republican.
But fear not; I do look. Call me an optimist.
