Political Rant #1

I am registered as a Republican. When I joined the party some time ago, I was registering with the "Reagan" Party. I was a big Ronald Reagan fan growing up. Democrats were high taxing politicians that were for abortion. The total antithesis of what I believed in. Low taxes, low spending, low government involvement in the lives of its people. When Clinton was elected, I admit that I was a little afraid for our country. I was in my early 20's back then. I don't think I was wrong, even now about those things during my mid-30's, although I probably over-reacted. But a few things have changed. My knowledge of government has been enlarged during law school and by listening to things like NPR for the past 8-10 years. Also, the Republican party has changed. This party now likes to spend and doesn't seem to be as bothered by taking away rights as I thought. The Patriot Act has steamrolled some rights and Pres. Bush has decided that warrantless wiretapping is a wonderful thing. Hmmph.

I voted for Bush both times. The second time was because I thought he was the best one to get us out of Iraq. I thought it was a mistake to go in after much of the info became public about the lack of WMD's, but now that we were in, I thought he would do better at following through. I don't know if that is true or not. My disgust with him and the Republicans has to do with what I see as corruption in the Government. In addition to the aforementioned warrantless search stuff, the firing of the U.S. attorneys for what looks like political reasons is shameful.

I think it is time for a change. I don't agree with all of the views of the Democrats running for President. But neither do I agree with those everything espoused by those running for the nomination of the Republican Party. I think there needs to be a swing back. We need to stir the pot. Get some of our rights back that were trampled in the rush to get the terrorists. We need to send a message that things are not ok. At least I do.

I am not a fan of abortion rights still. I am not a fan of gay marriage. But having a president that protects those rights does not trouble me as much as one that tramples freedoms that are in the Bill of Rights, or at least that we have maintained through tradition for the past two centuries for those rights that were not explicit. Lying and using what I think is disinformation sort of bugs me too. That is hard to escape for politicians though.

I am voting for Obama if he is the Democratic Party Nominee. I may change my party affiliation here so that I can vote for him in the primary. I think he can shake things up in a good way. Not that I back everything, but I think he is the right person for the job right now.

I used to think the Democrats were crazy liberals that were going to take this country down to some immoral and horrible end. Ha, my party has been working on that pretty well. They had the majority in the House and Senate and succeeded in blowing our budget and taking away a few of our rights in arguably a fundamental way if you read the Patriot Act. They had more than their share of sex scandals too. I admit that I have not been personally touched in the same way that others have been by the War on Terror. But I think that our forefathers would have said that the deaths of some is worth it in order to protect our freedoms for the rest. I feel like we as a country kind of freaked out and acted like chickens in order to make ourselves feel safer. We gave the Federal Government more power than they should have in order to find these terrorists. I agree would should do all that we can, but what if the rights and protections we have given up are used against us by bad politicians and the power hungry? What recourse then? Maybe none will be available. We need to be aware of what the government is doing.