Lately, I have had a lot of discussions with my friends, colleagues, and peers about what issues are important to them and who they tend to align with (Ds or Rs). Every conversation ends with the person saying the same thing, “no party truly speaks to the things I care about”. So I would like to pose a question to the informed voters and posters of this board. Why do you support the party you support? By reading your posts, most of you seem to have a history of voting for a particular party and not just voting the opposite of who is in office. This question comes from my own confusion about supporting a particular party or candidate. I have never blindly voted for a party or candidate. I have tried to research everything and everyone I (used to) pull the lever for. This week’s change of power brings all of these issues back to the front of my mind and I am interested in everyone’s thoughts.

Again, why do you support the party you support? I want you to think deeper than the polarizing issues that the media (and most candidates) like to use to define a party (abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, etc.) What are your fundamental reasons for supporting the party that you do? Maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I am curious to hear what everyone thinks.

This is why I generally vote Democrat: Republicans don't even pretend to care about the plight of the unwashed masses; Democrats at least pretend to care.

while I am not a member of any party (but a reggae party), I will say that I align myself more to the left. I have voted for Republicans, and other non-Republican conservatives if they appeal to me as a candidate (or even if their opponent is a crook) in the past, but I tend to vote left on most issues.

And to be honest, those "hot button media issues" are important in the debate - honestly I am strongly against anti-choice laws, anti-civil rights laws, or any other wavering of the separation of church and state, and the latest branch of conservatism has decided to align themselves with the branch of religion which suffers no other choices. So they lost me 100% without even getting into other monetary and electoral corruptions, which are also important to me.

Speaking of which, I have no problem paying my taxes. yes, I would love to have much of the system overhauled to simplify it, and would prefer it to be spent more intelligently, but taxes should benefit the country. I do have a problem with the hypocrisy of people who complain about things like welfare and immigrants going to the hospital, yet somehow ignore an even greater misuse of the commons through rampant military contracts and cronyism.

Another issues to me is the idea that the Democratic party itself is not very cohesive, and honestly I like that. We lefties of any stripe have several issues we disagree on, and that's ok - we bond together for strength against a common "enemy." I am not into authoritarianism (unless... never mind) and this bootlicking rubberstamping congress has allowed the Executive branch far too much power, and more importantly used that power to usurp much of the Bill of Rights. Fuck that.

I think the idea of being ‘progressive’ or liberal is far more appealing than being ‘conservative’ and while those labels can change as far as what party they apply to, I have no love with conservatism. Because our Democratic Constitutional Republic is an experiment, it should be always evolving and getting better. In other words, the strength of our Constitution is that it is a living document, which allowed it to do things which expand the rights of the people.

And on a related subject, while I will compromise and align with the Democrats to be rid of the TheoCons, if they allow themselves to be corrupted by their power, I will not support them. But in the near game, it benefits me to align with the Dems, even the ones with whom I disagree on some issues (such as the war).

So a short answer for the above is I am willing to make small realistic compromises with those I almost agree with in order to not lose larger ground on more important constitutional issues.

Honestly, I think our system of representation is extremely archaic and also needs to be overhauled. I think we should have limited public funding of campaigns, no attack ads, run off voting, and other things which would benefit the people by allowing more ‘everyday’ people to run for office, and also allow for more diverse parties than the two which run the show now.

what i said was that in some ways it shows a mindset of people. in some ways it is an example. I think you're picking on this and politicking on the rest of what i'm saying. I think what i'm saying is so scary to you that you don't want to think about it.

Where did I start saying that the govt shouldn't exist, or help you when you get laid off? What are arguing about? Why haven't you attempted to answer my question. Was it not a valid one? Are you a politician?