I am very conservative. I am a strict Constitutionalist. I believe in small government; I am against tax raises to any class. I am in favor of FairTax and against socialized, universal health-care. I believe that the United States has become a welfare state that needs significant downsizing.
So, then, why am I voting Democrat this election? The answer’s easy. The past eight years, I’ve bore witness to things that I can only hope my children do not have to.
By Ryan Gephart
Contributor
I am very conservative. I am a strict Constitutionalist. I believe in small government; I am against tax raises to any class. I am in favor of FairTax and against socialized, universal health-care. I believe that the United States has become a welfare state that needs significant downsizing.
So, then, why am I voting Democrat this election? The answer’s easy. The past eight years, I’ve bore witness to things that I can only hope my children do not have to.
I have watched a presidential administration that, along with its Congressional allies, has foolishly carried out a defunct and broken foreign policy that has bankrupted our economy, tainted our country’s reputation on the international stage, and most important of all, costs us thousands of brave young men and women. Historically, Republican presidents have been elected to end wars, just look at Korea and Vietnam, but now we start them and only look to further escalate them.
I’ve seen complete and total fiscal and social irresponsibility from the Republican Party. A party that once brought us fiscally sound economic ideals such as FairTax. Not raising taxes on everyone is great and all, but not if you’re committing to unprecedented spending in upwards of a trillion dollars and counting. Big government requires big spending. Since when did big government and big spending become planks of the Republican Party? Sometime around January 2001.
I’ve witnessed the largest expansion of the federal government since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, not to mention the largest and most irresponsible deregulation of that government in the past four decades. I am in favor of deregulation, however, but the pace and degree to which it’s been occurring throughout the past six years has been dangerous and absurd, and we are just now seeing the beginning of this irresponsible economic policy of massive, rapid deregulation.
I’ve experienced the increasing socio-economic gap between the rich and the poor at the expense of the gradual dissolution of the middle class. Did you know that people and companies, with capital gains and corporate loopholes considered making over 125K annually on average, actually only pay under 20 percent of their income to taxes? On average those making under 75K pay over 25 percent of their income to taxes. Under our country’s current tax plan and McCain’s purposed tax plan, the situation isn’t looking any better. Does that sound fair to you?
I have sat by and watched as the Republican Party has been overrun by neo-conservatives who believe that secrecy, deceit, and imperialism are the best ways to run our country. Our forefathers would be ashamed of how we police the world and of enactments such as the Patriot Act. To quote Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Since when did big government, big spending, tax cuts only for the rich, taxing health care benefits and premiums, imperialism, nation building, public deceit, invasion of privacy, and a failure to listen to other nations become attractive to the Republican Party?
What happened to small government, fiscal and social conservatism and a foreign policy that advocated talking and trading with nations while doing its best to maintain a non-interventionalist stance set forth by our forefathers? Your guess is as good as mine, but let me know if you see any signs of it.