This Republican Party Bothers Me

(I am a registered independent and my views align with the Libertarian, Republican, and Democratic Parties, yes, all at once. I consider myself a social libertarian, something I conjured up on my own to explain my views, which are too complex to explain here.)

The Republican Party of the United States over the past several years has bothered me, more and more.

The party has in the past years undergone a change that I believe will not cause the party to gain more unity, but rather cause more people to split from the party. The party has been pretty consistent in only area, everywhere else it says and does two very different things. The party also seems to be promoting the idea that logic and intelligence are flawed qualities in a politician. Wikipedia (as normal in this day and age) has more sources and more information than I could hope to convey regarding this so go look there for more details.

My largest problem with the party has been a promotion of people who genuinely appear to know nothing about how proximity doesn’t equal experience, economics, international affairs, or it seems just about anything other than religion or lipstick. I am genuinely bothered when opponents paint Obama as an elitist to win an election. I want an elitist President, I want a President so ridiculously smart and intelligent I can’t even hope to follow him/her. I want a President who believes in science, a President who is curious beyond anyone else I know, a President who sees the world as the complex system it really is, I want a Renaissance President. And yes I do want a President that actually causes excitement amongst both this nation and other nations. Let’s face it we can’t do everything on our own, we do not rule the world, not by far. Especially in the face of our declining economic strength and political power in the world (awesome book on this subject).

Most of all, I want a President who expresses a belief and actually applies it fully. This is one of the largest reasons why I can’t vote for a Republican the majority of the time. As I stated at the beginning of this post, I do believe in some of the views that the Republican party expresses, but they don’t apply those views.

• Limited Government: Homeland Security was the largest increase in the federal government since the Dept. of Defense and WWII
• No Government intervention between you and your doctor: See Abortion
• Congress should have time to review bills and needs oversight over the President: The Patriot Act was approved by the House of Rep. hours after being revised in the middle of the night
• Less Federal Control, more State Control: DOJ under Bush pushes for Federal Government to have final say on drugs or environment.
• Proclaiming that their candidates have executive experience and can run a business: HP former exec. Carly Fiorina said neither McCain nor Palin could have run HP.
• Education: Uhh the entire point of this post
• Appointing Judges who don’t interpret the Constitution: You know except when they want the Constitution to fit their ideas
• Party of Pro-life: Except when it comes to you know the mother (I dated a girl who if she became pregnant will most likely die, so not only will she not be able to get an abortion but she can’t learn about ways to not get pregnant, so just never have sex is what I guess she is supposed to do.)
• Limited Spending by the Government: Have you looked at our deficit?
• Freedom of Speech: You know except when people might disagree with you.
• How about just simply raising the level of discourse of the election: I took a look at the RNC.org Homepage and observed 8 different promoted items on the main flash window (4 Attack, 1 pro-McCain, 1 Donate, and 2 to Organize). When you only have one ad to promote your platform – that doesn’t raise the discourse level in this country. For comparison the DNC has 4 main ads (1 attack, 2 pro-Obama, 1 Fact Check both anti-McCain and pro-Obama).

What is going on with a party that as far as I can tell says one thing and does another except when it comes to religion? The only thing that the party seems to actually say and do regards social conservative positions.

This party needs to find itself and figure out what it really believes or work out some new form of logic to explain the disconnect between what they say and do.

Most of all a party that believes in the idea that one religion is somehow righter than everybody else and that the rest of the country should fall into line with a religious belief. Let’s get one thing right – Social Conservatives ultimately believe in their views not because it makes sense or they have the evidence to back it up, but because their religion says this is the way things should be. Their religion doesn’t and shouldn’t dictate my life. It’s freedom of religion – not freedom to have religion pushed on you. How does homosexuals being allowed to marry harm their marriage? I also didn’t realize I needed to be reminded to pray in school.

If I was a member of the RNC I would be embarrassed by Sarah Palin just as any Democrat should have been embarrassed by Kerry in 2004. We shouldn’t be embarrassed by our candidates, we should be proud of them.

Intelligence and logic should be first qualifications for a candidate something the Republican Party seems to ignore as far as I can tell, though I would love to hear otherwise.