Redstate

Interesting post Moe.  Even more interesting is that I read, "The courage to take on liberals...AND liberal Republicans! Coburn for U.S. Senate" in a big ad just to the right of your post on my browser.  Heh.  Just seemed sorta funny.  Anyway, don't go away, because people like you in the middle are the only hope for real solutions in this world.  Just because they don't adhere exactly to any fundamentalist party ideology, your views are quite legitimate, and probably more often than not more correct or 'good' for the country than either party's.  Just my 2 cents, anyway.

Given your first sentence, Mr. Lane, I am curious why you are a Republican.  Please explain sometime.

Steffens:

I wouldn't purport to answer for Moe, but I occupy pretty much the same territory Moe does, and have often asked myself that question: given that "movement" conservatives make me so uncomfortable, why am I still a Republican?  For me, the best answer is that it is still possible within Republicanism to locate meaningful traces of the sort of dignified, open-minded, principled conservatism that attracted me in the first place -- a conservatism that, to my mind, is absolutely incompatible with the paranoid moral vigilantism that we see from the Santorum crowd nowadays.  My Republicans are the ones who, while understanding the value (indeed necessity) of personal religiosity, also recognize the profound importance to our polity of the separation of Church and State.  My Republicans are willing to say, because it is true, that our political system and culture, while manifestly imperfect, constitutes the most powerful force for the realization of human values that the world has ever seen -- and that is so precisely because of its ability to assimilate so many diverse cultures and worldviews.  My Republicans approach public affairs with a sense of humility rooted in the knowledge that while ours is the latest generation, it is hardly the wisest, and there is much (if not everything) to be learned from the experience of those who have come before.  

Truth be told, it's tough to find Republicans who embody what I'm looking for -- there are way too many Rick Santorums and Tom DeLays around for me to be entirely comfortable.  But I almost never see what I'm looking for among Democrats.

Actually Moe,

Could you address Steffens' question. Why are you a Republican? Which issues do you side with the GOP on?

Curious minds and all, you know...

I wouldn't purport to answer for Moe,

All for the best; only a portion of your answer would have applied in my case.  :)

The short - fairly short - version is that Reagan's comment about how he didn't leave the Democratic Party; they left him has always made me nod.  First I was a Democrat.  Then I was a centrist Democrat.  Then I was an independent voter.  Then I was an independent voter that leaned Republican.  I finally gave up and registered.

My opinions (particularly those on national defense and social programming) hadn't changed in the course of that drift.

So, these days I'm over here because I strongly agree with the current Administration about the nature and general plan for our current war; I can live with their policies on both affirmative action (I'm for phasing it out as a laudable but failed policy) and abortion and the divergence in my opinions and the current GOP's re gay marriage do not sufficiently outweigh my approval of Bush's national security policy.  If the Democrats want me back, they can have me - on my terms, which would include a proper foreign policy (as I said, Sen. Lieberman's candidacy was aimed at folks like me; he might have been a temptation, if nominated.  Sen. Kerry... isn't, sorry).

Of course, they have shown no signs of actually wanting me back, which is naturally their privilege.  :)

Crossed posts, Edward.  Needed some time to get the caffeine to work*.  :)

Moe

*Apropos of nothing in particular, this Diet Coke with Lime stuff is surprisingly drinkable...

Of course we WANT you back Moe.

The way it works on the Dem side, as you know, however, is that you affect change from the inside, not from the outside.

You jump into the fray and convince your fellow Dems from a position of most basic agreement and work your way up.

There are issues on the Dem platform I don't agree with, but it's a dedication to progressive ideas rather than one to protecting tradition (which was never what folks think it was anyway) that makes the Democratic Party the only one that makes any sense for me.

As the beloved French say, though, Viva la difference!

Edward, I don't believe Moe is for sale. Could I be wrong, maybe.

Now why am I a Republican.

1. Don't believe in activist courts, either from the left or the right. And this dislike pertains to all courts.
   
2. I'm Federalist, thus I'm a firm believer in the subordination of government. I believe the 10th Amendment allow state governments to experiment in the structuring of local government, even when I don't like the experiment.
   
3. I'm a realist, the primary role of the Federal government is our national security.
   
4. The only way to curtail the reach of the Federal government is to stop the flow of tax dollars to Washington D.C.

I really don't think that Edward was looking to buy, TFK.  Besides, I think that he's mostly just worried about me: after all, I am elsewhere demonstrating the early signs what may end up being an epic temperloss.  :)

TFK: Given I'm Federalist, thus I'm a firm believer in the subordination of government. I believe the 10th Amendment allow state governments to experiment in the structuring of local government, even when I don't like the experiment.

What are your thoughts on the current administration? What I'm wondering in particular is what your thoughts are regarding the Federal Marriage Amendment, the new strict FCC decency standards (which has PBS worried), and drug policy? Are these policy areas that are best left to the state, or is the federal gov't right to take the reins in these areas?

What are your thoughts on the current administration?

I support their position on national security, selection of judges and tax policy. If the Federal gov't has to be involved with education, I like the prospective self empowerment aspects of their education policy.

I'm against the FMA as currently constructed but if the Amendment precluded the role of the courts on the issue I would be for it. Accordingly, I don't view same sex marriage as a civil rights issue. If 38 states confirmed the right of same sex marriage, it should be the law of the land. Conversly, if the 38 states banned same sex marriage, it would be banned.

Anything which worries PBS is usually ok by me. The FCC has expressed an interest in expanding its oversight into cable which I object to.

The Federal Government covers all three branches, it appears to me that the Congress and the Executive is trying to reign in the judiciary (which is the real problem).

I've got to echo a lot of what Moe says.  I could really sum up why I'm a Republican by saying that the Democrats took off down a road I don't want to travel.  I'm still standing in the same place.

That being said, I think that what Edward says about being a Democrat because of the progressive ideals strikes right to the core of the complicated answer to my party membership.  What so often is misunderstood by the Democrats that routinely crucify me for my ideals is that it's perfectly possible for Republicans to share their progressive goals.  However, we tend to also believe that it is individuals and not the state that are best equipped for realizing these goals.  There are plenty of instances in which I believe the state's role to be highly justified.  And even here, many Democrats tend to irk me for their devotion  to policies that are feel-good window dressing rather than plans that honestly address the issues at hand.  

it's perfectly possible for Republicans to share their progressive goals

As someone who grew up in SC suburbs with generally Republican but do-gooder ideals I began with that idea.  But where is the debate?  OK- we all want to lessen poverty in this country- Democrats have proposed EITC, higher minimum wage, a stronger safety net, fair education expenditures, in addition to reinvestment into poor communities.  Republicans suggest hard work and lower taxes.  

I share Republican skepticism of too-big social programs and I'm all for the importance of hard work but the Republican solutions weren't quite strong enough in my case to keep me in the party.

As a former Democrat and not that far to the right of you, I know exactly what you're saying, Moe.

I am an independent voter who has usually voted Democrat, but at this point I would fit into Moe's group as well. I might lean more to being a Republican if Moe's type were in control of the party. I will vote for Bush this year because Kerry just doesn't "get" the war on terror, he is certainly not going to be more fiscally responsible than Bush, and right now the leftist fringe of the Dems scare me more than the rightist fringe of the Pubs.

I'm trying to figure out what the principles of a lefty Republican are, and I see nothing in this post or comments that illuminate them for me.

Are y'all Christians? It seems many who vote for the Dems do not go to church regularly and the opposite is true for many who vote Republican.  Is that part of the reason why you vote GOP?  Many great Republicans, as Tacitus points out, have had an "indeterminate, if Christian, religiosity;" while possessing "a profound awareness of God's blessings."  Does this describe you?

Moe you said many folks come at you with assumptions you don't share, well do you agree with this assumption?

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

It seems to me that those in the middle (i.e. lefty GOP'ers or righty Dems) like to think that they accept "approximations" and likewise abhor the "insistence on absolutes"...which is all well and good.  But, for me at least, it illuminates nothing about what your principles are.  For example if you are not a zealot for limited gov't, well what criteria do you use to judge a proposed or exisiting gov't program/entitlement?

Or perhaps it is simpler than all that:  Is it that the GOP tastes less bitter than the Democratic party and, given the lack of choices, that's why you vote Republican?

I'd be curious to hear why people think Kerry doesn't "get" the war on terror.  As I see it, Bush views the "war" as problem centered around state sponsorship of terror, a la Iraq.  Therefore, take out the state sponsors, and the terrorists whither and die.  Which, of course, is absolute nonsense.  Not that I wanted Saddam in power, but let's face it: free societies like the U.S. and Germany were the ones "harboring" the 9/11 hijackers, no ifs, ands or buts about it.  One could rightfully make the claim that the U.S. trained the hijackers who took flight lessons in Florida; does this mean we need to destroy Florida?  Democracies are easily more likely to be safe havens to terrorists than autocracies, which is not to say we shouldn't still be instilling democracy wherever possible -- but I would never take the disengenious stance that freedom is antithetical to terrorism.  Terrorists don't hate freedom, the love it -- it makes their job (i.e., killing of civilians for political power) much easier, dig?  Bush's oversimplified bluster might make people feel as though he's doing something productive ("Hulk smash!"), but let's face it: if the world is nuanced, it's nuanced regardless of whether one wants it to be or not.  Bush is making the world a more dangerous place (e.g., numerous successful al-Qaeda attacks since 9/11) with his widely-disseminated view that this is a war between "good" and "evil", rather than a complex, historically-based conflict between progressivism ("American philosophy") and conservatism ("radical Islam"), which I'm certain he is incapable of understanding.

Kerry, on the other hands, sees terrorists as free agents -- criminals, natch -- in their war on America (which has more to do with garnering power from their base, rather than inflicting actual damage on America, in case anyone hasn't noticed); they are not beholden to any state or people, in fact they are not really even beholden to Islam (witness their numerous violations of its core tenents, e.g., killing civilians and not respecting Christians and Jews as Mohammed commanded).  I hesitate to use the term "crazy", but let's face it: Osama bin Laden is not exactly what one could classify as "sane", nor "non-criminal" (to say the least).  And I don't know whether or not this has crossed anyone's minds, but isn't declaring "war" on terrorists play directly into their hands?  After all, OBL declared "war" on the U.S. first; don't act like he doesn't want to be at war with us, because he really, really, really, really does.  Kerry has no intention of engaging in the tar baby of the "war on terror" as Bush has so predictably fallen into face-first.

Thus, I cannot help but to see Kerry's forceful if nuanced view of how to treat terrorists (i.e., as criminals, not "enemy combatants") as the wiser choice to take -- not to mention his firm belief that only through international cooperation can we diffuse the situation from being "U.S. vs. Islam" and bringing it into the real of "civilization vs. barbarism".  And let's face it: Kerry is certainly no pacifist; it's not like we nominated friggin' Kucinich!  It's just that he sees the terrorist problem in a (rightly) more detailed, complicated light than just "terrorists hate freedom, ergo we must kill terrorists to protect freedom" 8th-grade level nonsense.

Not that this has much to do with why Moe is a Republican; I just have to wonder why it is exactly that Kerry is viewed as weak on terrorism, particularly in light of how poorly G.W. has handled, for instance, al-Qaeda, who's ranks have clearly been exploding with new members -- not that that's his fault, you know.  (har har)  But as little as I care for Kerry personally, foreign policy is one thing I do give him props for, so I cannot help but to at least attempt to take to task those who think he'd be bad on fighting terrorism because he isn't simple enough.  The world is not simple, 9/11 notwithstanding.

Given that Kerry believes gay marriage should be left up to the States, that abortion is wrong but should still be legal (you want the Federal Gov't. telling women they have to have that baby, or they're going to have it in jail, with restraints, if necessary?), that rifles and pistols should be legal but assault weapons should not, that the FCC should leave people alone to excercise their freedom of expression regardless of content, that the government should stay out of peoples' lives except where history has provided inadequate "levelling" of the playing field for families (and thus only forces outside the playing field, i.e., the government, can rectify said historical injustices) . . . I just don't see why so many otherwise right-minded peole like Moe think his "root philosophy" is so abhorrent.  I don't know if anyone has noticed, but the Dems have been hemorraging support to the Left (witness the 2000 election) because they've drifted so far to the right on so many issues.  I'd like to see just one or two cases where people feel they're more to the left than they were, say, in the 70s or 80s.  This is, after all, the post-Clinton Democratic Party we're talking about, right?  Right?

I'd be curious to hear why people think Kerry doesn't "get" the war on terror.

The "Sixty Minutes" interview, neither seem capable of making a decision.

FWIW, I consider myself an independent that wishes I could vote for the small gov't, local gov't-respecting, mostly "transparent in dealings" candidate for president. I was rabidly for McCain in 2000, and a fan of Howard Dean's fiscal conservatism and "let the states decide" attitude on a variety of issues in 2004. (I have a talent for picking winners, no?)

I think that prior to the Clinton-Lewinsky ordeal, I would have fit in nicely in the Republican Party. However, while I hope that it'll return to its roots of small and mostly local gov't, I'll be voting as a right-leaning Democrat this election for a number of reasons:

1. I believe that the gov't is accountable to the people. The many snubs that this administration has given to the idea of transparency is a turn off. Is there any legitimate reasons that Cheney insisted on keeping the energy task force meetings secret, Ashcroft's Dept. of Justice claiming that they couldn't process Freedom of Information Act requests on foreign campaign donors because the database was too fragile, and so forth? Personally, these actions smell fishy to me.
   
2. I believe that in order for the gov't to work properly, there must be honest and accurate communications amongst its parts. The story about the fellow being threatened with termination if he told the true cost of the Medicare is appalling. Furthermore, the continuing stories about bad intelligence about Iraq and Ahmed Chalabi do nothing to inspire confidence in this gov't.
   
3. I believe that going to war and committing the resources to rebuilding a country is not a decision to be made lightly. I was somewhat convinced that the war in Iraq was the right thing to do when I was convinced that Saddam did pose a threat to the United States with WMD. (I was rooting for Powell during his UN presentation.) When it became increasingly evident that someone dropped the ball on the WMD issue, I felt that I was cynically misled and became against the war.
   
4. I think that this president is treating the federal budget as if he were a child with a credit card. The spending must slow down, this nation must be able to cover its financial obligations. Bush's large tax cuts and reckless spending have convinced me that he has no sense of fiscal discipline. In all fairness, this criticism applies equally to the legislature, but I would expect a president to set a better example.
   
5. I'm a "live and let live" guy. I find the actions surrounding the federal marriage amendment to be little more than exploiting the gay community as a boogieman to frighten and enrage the Republican's social conservative constituents. (Whose views on legislating morality I deeply resent.) Honestly, is there a good reason to deny the same rights and obligations of heterosexual couples to homosexual couples? (Rhetorical question - go argue about this elsewhere.)
   
6. Mike Ditka for Senate? What does he bring to the table other than the (R) after his name? Is the only attractive reason that he's being considered because he's the only man in IL who can hope to stop the very competent Obama? This is a situation where I find the idea of party loyalty to be getting way out of hand.
   
7. I find Ashcroft's de facto veto of Oregon's assisted suicide law using the club of federal drug laws to be a betrayal of federalist principles. I'm a firm believer that local people are better able to govern themselves than a monolith in Washington, and the current administration seems to believe that only when it's convenient.

I could continue to go on. I'm sympathetic to more of the core conservative principles of hard work and self determination, fiscal restraint, and letting people govern themselves. However, I'll be voting for Kerry this election in hopes that he'll do better than Bush on some of these principles in the next four years. I'm also hoping that after a Bush defeat, the Republican Party will look long and hard at itself and decide that it doesn't need to pander to the Christian Right and adopt a paranoid neoconservative view of the world. If we start to see the return of the Teddy Roosevelt Republicans, I'll be back in a heartbeat.

Moe,

Good to see you here, as well as some other familiar voices. Have been away from things for awhile (a long story), and I see that things progress in my absence.

Roger Simon has/had a discussion going on that sort of parallels this one. They started out talking about media bias and drifted into the neighborhood you were in - categories and definitions, and where does one fit in. A useful link supplied by one of the posters there was the Nolan Chart, which reminded me of some of those political profile things that went around Tacitus a few months back.  This one is pretty much just concept, no dumb questions. You get to be introspective and analyze yourself. The gist of the Nolan Chart is that the "Left/Right" spectrum doesn't really seem to apply to much of anything anymore. Republicans and "Rightwingers" promote "progressive" causes, and Democrats and "Leftwingers" are defending status quo - at least on some issues. Nolan charts individual positions on XY axes based on how much one favors economic freedom, as well as how much one supports civic and personnel freedom.

In addition to the standard "left/liberal" and "right/conservative" extremes, you also get to evaluate yourself between the extremes of "classical liberal/libertarian" and "socialist/populist". To me this makes more sense than trying to wedge into the one-dimensional mode.

Interestingly, this version of Nolan colocates communism and fascism on the chart, which seems to me to be about right. Economic and political  totalitarianism, no matter how you slice it.

BTW, I am for gay unions, against the courts commanding it, for the war on terror, against indiscriminate abortion, but not willing to go to the mat for a teaspoonful of cells (I think we very desperately need some conceptual/definitional groundwork done in this area. There are some basic premises here that have wide ranging consequences.) I also started out as a registered democrat, and wound up as a card carrying independent, which position I still occupy.

Don't worry, I don't plan to be a regular poster over here: I registered "Jesurgislac" mainly to make sure it didn't get taken by anyone else. (Yes, I know, who'd want it?)

Nice looking website you've got here. Comfortable, friendly, well-designed. (I mean the form, not the content, obviously...)

Of course, if you ever decide to post your real reasons for endorsing Bush over Kerry, as opposed to the plainly hypocritical reason you gave in Obsidian Wings all those moons ago, I'll be fascinated - and relieved - to finally read it.