Huindekmi
For the longest time, I considered myself to be a Republican.
I believe in fiscal responsibility. I believe in a smaller government that provides a strong regulatory framework to ensure safety (food supply, drug supply, water supply, energy, etc.) and fairness (fraud, monopolies, etc.), but by and large stays out of people’s lives. I believe that providing basic infrastructure (transportation, education, defense, energy, etc.) and a baseline safety net against poverty helps business by ensuring businesses an educated work force, prosperous customer base, and the means to produce and transfer goods and services.
And over the years, one by one, the Republican party by their ACTIONS started to abandon those positions. They still use WORDS to claim to be each of the above, but haven’t been backing it up.
The new Republican party claims to believe in smaller government, but in exactly the opposite manner that I do. They want no regulations on safety and business, but they want intrusive laws that tell us how to live. Abolishing the EPA is moronic. Telling us citizens who we can marry or defining whether a woman can have an abortion is NONE of the government’s business.
The new Republican party no longer invests in infrastructure. Our roads and electrical grid are crumbling. They no longer invest in an educated populace. Many even want to abolish the Dept of Education. They no longer invest in stoploss insurance measures like social security or basic health. Allowing the middleclass to fall into abject poverty is not good for business. Yet the current breed of Republicans want to dismantle the safety nets that were built.
The new Republican party is not fiscally responsible. Cutting taxes and raising spending is idiotic. Starting unnecessary wars and paying for them off budget to make the balance sheet look better is cynically political.
Tax cuts were needed in 1980 when the top tax rate was 70%. But with the top tax rate less than half that, and capital gains tax rates less than half again… there’s no justification for it. Anyone truly fiscally responsible would let those temporary Bush tax cuts expire and go back to the tax rates we had in the 90’s. Anyone truly fiscally responsible would not have handcuffed Medicare to prevent them from negotiating better prices with the drug companies. The list could go on forever. The current Republican fiscal policies provide a short term benefit for a few, with longterm drawbacks for all.
Oddly, as the Republicans have gone off the deep end with policies antithetical to my core beliefs, the Democrats have moved more towards the center. The Democrats, despite the silly “socialist” spin you hear from Fox News, are much more fiscally responsible and much more in tune with my core beliefs than the Republicans have been since the first Bush left office.
So, you can call me an independent. Or you can call me a moderate. Or you can call me a centrist. I tend to vote for whichever party is closest to my beliefs. That’s been the Democrats for more than a decade now. And the Republicans just keep moving further and further away from the center.