Red at Heart: Confession of a Republican Among Democrats

I have never been good at agreeing with others.  I argue every issue and let nothing go.  When I feel a certain way I vocalize it.    I take both pleasure and pride in thinking differently than my peers. Some say I’m eccentric and others insist I’m a fool, but their insults have never bothered me one bit. The taunts of popular thought and majority opinion simply don’t appeal to me, but rather push me to further assert my own thoughts and beliefs.  Yet on one topic I have remained silent; on one issue I have publicly agreed while, at the same time, I privately revolted.  In my town there is an overwhelming support for the Democratic Party and Barak Obama.  I have passively listened to heated debates and nodded my head in agreement with this argument or that discussion.  The truth is, I think Obama is a conniving amateur and find his democratic ideals to be foolishly short-sighted.  I flash my friend a nod of understanding and agreement as he proclaims some trumped up statistic about Bush tax cuts but I secretly sneer at his inability to see the other point of view.  Take it as you please, but the truth is, I am a Republican. 

Now, that’s not to say I think the Republicans are right about everything.  I find their policy involving gun control, or rather lack thereof, abhorrent and as far as abortion goes, I’m as pro-choice as can be.  Yet at the end of the day, I find Republican values to be stronger, mostly because the same values were instilled in me from a young age.  One of those values is hard work.  The entire Republican philosophy is the support of free enterprise, hard work and, in turn, receiving rewards (i.e. money) in exchange for one’s labors.  Republican financial policy is generally to support businesses.  Not just big business but small business as well.  But from the way people talk about them, one would think Republicans only cared about fortune 500’s. 

Even more aggravating is the way people rant about the president.  That’s right; I don’t agree that President Bush is actually the devil in disguise, even though over half my peers accept that as a fact.  And yes, I am Compos Mentis.   I feel, no, I know that not everything people blame on Bush is entirely his fault and some of it has nothing to do with him whatsoever.  Comments are constantly made about how Bush has failed in Iraq.  First of all, Bush did not just decide to go into Iraq, as it is not within his presidential powers to do so.  First he was advised by his cabinet.  Then he brought it to Congress, and Congress declared war, not Bush.  There was heavy support at the time for the war, both in Congress and among the American public at large.  It was not until the progress of the war started turning south that people began ridiculing the war.  All of a sudden, the war wasn’t popular any more and all the same people who supported it before started denouncing Bush and claiming they had nothing to do with the war.   The same accusations have been made against Bush involving the current economic crisis.  Everyone points at Bush when Congress controls economic policy and you could just as easily say it is the fault of the newly Democratic congress.  Yet no one points fingers at Nancy Pelosi, who, in a time of need, decided the members of the house should go on break without passing a single piece of legislation or taking any action whatsoever. The fact of the matter is, the economic predicament in which we find ourselves is simply part of the economic cycle and could not have been avoided regardless of anything done by Congress or the White House; it is not that fault of Democrats or Republicans. 

The part that really scares me about Obama and the Democrats is that the reason people are attracted to them is that their platform is hope – blind, groundless hope.  Now, I love to hear flowery speeches about the single Kentucky mother of three who works in a factory for minimum wage and has no health insurance as much as the next person, but at the end of the day, I want the candidate who can help the majority of the country, not just one person.  People hear these hyped-up speeches and lose sight of many of the facts. For example, how can Barak Obama pay for all these programs?  People don’t realize that there’s no free lunch.  Instead of creating a welfare mentality, we should be helping people to get the things they need and want themselves. 

That’s why I support the Republicans.  I support small business, so people going through hard times can possibly go out on their own and make more money through owning their own stores.  Does Barak Obama ever speak about the poor family who opened their own mom-and-pop shop and worked as hard as they could every day to bring it to success?  No, he does not and there is a reason.  The Americans of today don’t want to work hard for things like health care.  They want a guaranteed middle-class lifestyle that simply does not exist.  They feel they are entitled to it, but the truth is, we are not entitled to anything and if we don’t work for what we want, we won’t get it.  And no one will get it for us either, not even Barak Obama.  I support McCain and the Republicans because I know this to be true, even if everyone else doesn’t. so the next time you are watching Senator Obama talk on TV, or listening to one of his commercials on the radio, think about the hard-working business that will face enormous taxes if he is elected and remember, someone has to pay for lunch.