What Makes People Vote Democrat?

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I used to think much the same as you do. When my family fell on hard times, I was very happy that the Government that disgusts you gave my Father enough money to keep us going. He was unemployed for many years and raised me as a single father, now thanks to Government support, I have been able to afford a postgraduate education and have been medically insured the whole time.

As a result of this, my family has recovered financially to the point of being comfortable again (after seven years of total unemployment and periodic bouts of depression, my father is working full-time again). I have learned to appreciate the value of social support. Those 'bums' that disgust you, do exist, but they are the price we pay for taking care of those on hard times.

I think this is one of my biggest problem with the social darwinists. They argue that even if a system is valuable and beneficial, any abuse of it merits throwing the whole thing out. That is not a sensible approach.

I'm not confusing the two because Rand has never been in Federal Government, further I'm not misrepresenting his position.



John McCain doesn't take earmarks. Furthermore how many bad pieces of legislation have been passed cause someone voted for it since their pet project was in the bill.



You have to start somewhere, and some pieces of legislation like Obamacare was passed because people had pet projects in it.



Again, you have to start cutting stuff somewhere, and earmarks are a pretty good place to begin.



Then why does he put earmarks in bills. Only a handful of people do not take earmarks, one of them is John McCain.

That is a lie.


Not really, because you end up wasting a lot of time and political capital on something that isn't going to make much of a dent in our budget problems. The big three areas that really need to be addressed are tax policy, military spending, and entitlement spending. We have to change what we do in all three of those areas if we hope to balance the budget.

Cutting earmarks might be a good reform for ethics purposes, since both parties have a habit of passing them out to bribe congressmen into voting a certain way.


False. He has requested (and received) multiple earmarks. Fewer than most other legislators, but his claim that he had never asked for any earmarks was false.

Absolutely not. Everything is abused. The point is, what is the BEST system, and let's use that one. This one fails at its goal of helping the poor permanently, and it also fails because its hurting those it doesn't help by using their money.

Did you actually read my whole post or did you just pick and choose parts of it? Earmarking does not mean wasteful spending, pork, whatever you want to call it. Furthermore, getting rid of does not save any money at all, the money is already out the taxpayers hands. If it's not specifically earmarked, It would then be spent at the administration's discretion by some unelected bureaucrat in the executive branch. Earmarking is a much more transparent way of money being spent actually. Whining about earmarks is just a political move for the most part. The only legitimate point is that it has been abused to pry yes votes on larger government expanding bills.

If you were a real fiscal conservative you'd be against our crazy interventionist foreign policy, nation building, the failure that is the drug war, and for massively cutting the size of our government.(meaning whole departments such as Homeland Security, Department of Education, the IRS, ATF. EPA, Department of Energy, etc. etc. etc)

The social darwinists just don't care about being compassionate. Adrien said anyone who accepts government assistance is an abuser and a leach to society, regardless of need. This would also include 91's father. They just won't "get it" until they themselves are the subject of some grave misfortune.

you find me disgusting, that's just fine- i find social darwinists to be disgusting. so there. go ahead and judge me, but remember you are not beyond being judged as well. you would make a fine american.

I find it ironic that many social darwinists are the same crowd that claim to be upholding the values of Christianity when what they advocate is clearly the opposite of what Jesus says to do. It's also funny that the term social darwinist is applied to them when many of that crowd are out of touch with reality concerning the fact of evolution.

As long as the Republicans continue to be the main party of science-deniers and polluters of the environment, I will have to continue voting Democrat to try to counter their evil. I love truth and I respect our planet too much to do otherwise. I also have some compassion for my fellow human beings, which apparently is lacking among many Republicans in spite of their hypocritically claiming to represent Christian values.

I'm a bit split here too, but the evil will do their thing regardless of who's in power. The difference, as I see it, is that one liberates and empowers the individual, which is what makes the US unique. The other is like any other country, doing what it believes to be the right thing.

But don't stroke all Republicans as religious and science-deniers. I'm a hardcore atheist, and debate online with religious people constantly. Yet I don't blame them completely for believing something their parents convinced them of since an early age. As for science-denying, I guess you're talking about global warming and not all science. That's definitely just an insult rather than an argument. For just MMGW, there are a number of reputable scientific arguments. I think the Green buzz going on is playing right into select companies' hands, ironically. There have been multiple scandals, and I wouldn't call the climate researchers scientists, more like statisticians. IN any case, I'm all for realistic, proven and legitimate environmental changes like lessening pollution, etc. I'm less worried about the so-called "disappearing species" though, considering that millions of species have already gone extinct, and millions more will be created. It's nothing special. Well that was quite a tangent, sorry about that.

Republicans, the way I see it, are the old-time Americans that dropped the things that were bad at the time (racism, hopefully soon religion) but kept the good, solid principles that made the nation the greatest. It is practiced and refined through great minds such as the "fathers of capitalism" and mistakes done along the way. While the other side, as I see it, is just like everyone else, doing things the way they think it works in the moment. Look at the world now. Look at the economy. Look at Europe, Greece, then Ireland, and soon Spain. They all act like things are fine when they're clearly not, and yet people don't admit it, they just increase the debt limit and forget about the next generations. One day it'll bite them in the ass, and the US too if it doesn't change.

At some point there will be a change in thinking. So in my mind the battle is already won, given the current trend, and that's what helps me keep calm when I have people telling me I have no heart, or that I'm a bad person, or that they hope one day I'll be poor. The funny thing is, I am poor. That's the way my family has done it for two generations now, to build character. Work constantly, work hard, and plan ahead. But what do others (NT) do? I see them partying, drinking, using drugs constantly. Where I live, I kid you not, I am one of three people who I know do not use drugs, and this is in a major city. But fine, maybe that's a lifestyle choice. Still, people enroll into majors and dick around to try and delay the inevitable when they finally have to start giving something to society, their heads ironically filled with great ideas on how to change society, ideas about class warfare, how they're being stolen from when they haven't done crap for anyone other than work in retail to pay for the huge phone bill that they don't contest the legitimacy of out of apathy and lack of understanding of the not-so-technical intricacies of per-kb billing.

And now I forgot where I was going, but that felt good.

Last edited by Adrien on 21 Dec 2010, 1:53 am, edited 2 times in total.

Orwell: You'd have to be an idiot not to accept free money. I would. But that doesn't make the system good, and it doesn't make people hypocrites. It makes them people who accept free money.

In fact, if there are people USING the system who tell you that it's wrong, that's makes their position even stronger.

Last edited by Adrien on 20 Dec 2010, 10:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.

No, they still won't get it then. I know several die-hard Republicans who have accepted welfare, unemployment, etc. They simply don't even realize their hypocrisy. And anything that goes wrong is somehow become the blame either of the government in general, or liberals (especially Obama, though previously Clinton was a favorite whipping boy) in particular.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what it took for me.

To get back on this - people tend to vote democrat for a few reasons:

1) Family - they've always done it.
2) Work - tied in with unions.
3) Have a particular special interest or activist interest that is satisfied by the party.
4) May perhaps be anti-war, or if centrist they happen to be social liberal but not quite social libertarian
5) some social libertarians may choose the democrats because they believe their social order even if intrusive with larger government is still not as bad as what they may think of as theological staples in law, other social liberals or libertarians may still think too conservatively in the economic or defense directions and because of that they'd rather deal with blowing off/alienating some fundies than having to grapple with government doing exactly what they don't want (hence the later my still prefer to vote Republican instead).

I think these days there's a lot more to it than to say that if you vote democrat you must love socialism or if your voting republican that you must love social conservatism and religious fundamentalism. There are much bigger issues at play and both parties have everything ranging from minor to major annoyances, depending where your political/economic/defense/social welfare beliefs are at.

They will "get it" when they suffer some grave misfortune or extreme level of suffering that they are unable to pull themselves out of and are refused any outside help from anyone, not family, not the government, nobody. They will "get it" when they are spat on, kicked in the face, and called lazy bums for being unable to maintain a job due to an untreatable physical or mental illness.

Clearly, half the country doesn't agree with you because they're crazy.

I'd appreciate some responses of my bigger post, and not insults again.