Why I Won't Vote Republican

In May of this year, I began writing on this blog about why I won't vote Republican. I had intended to carry that explanation through several blog posts, but here I'm keeping my reasons to a list:

• I don't believe in governments' torturing prisoners of war, or any other type of prisoner. Mitt Romney's national advisers are some of the same assholes who advised the Bush administration to torture prisoners.  [See Charlie Savage's article in The New York Times: "Election May Decide When Interrogation Amounts to Torture," 27 September 2012.] While I am not at all happy with how President Obama has continued some of the Bush national security policies, I know that a Republican-led government would not improve on these issues. President Obama has, at least, banned "enhanced interrogation" (torture!) and closed the CIA black sites. A second Democratic presidency will give us the opportunity to argue for re-examining those other issues. In addition, Mitt Romney's foreign policy technique, as illustrated by his visit to Great Britain during the London Olympics, dispels confidence in his ability to represent our country.

•  I don't trust a party that refuses to compromise for the good of the country, that is so focused on gaining power for itself that it is willing to damage or to destroy the lives of its citizens. I have written more about that here: "Reasons not to Vote Republican: Part 1."

• I believe that we are ALL mutually interdependent upon government (which is WE, the people).  This idea so loudly trumpeted by Republicans that citizens are divided between the Makers and the Takers, between those who are dependent upon government and those who are independent Boot-strappers-by-God-built-that-myself-ers is a skewed perception of democracy. As my husband so eloquently puts it: "That whole world view is bullshit!"  (This world view is particularly laughable in that all those titans of finance who imagine themselves "Makers" took a lot--even individuals' life savings--from folks to whom they condescend and just about bankrupted the country. WHY DO PEOPLE NOT REMEMBER THIS?) Public education that provides people with knowledge to become workers and business owners; police forces that maintain law and order; state and interstate highways (subsidized with our taxes) that guarantee national commerce;  a coast guard to protect those waters full of off-shore drilling rigs, commercial fishing boats, and pleasure and sport craft; a huge military complex that provides protection to many U.S. businesses abroad as well as those of us at home--these are just a few things from which we all profit, even the 1%. So, no, I don't support someone who denies this interdependency by disparaging, condescending to, or demonizing those who are so poor they don't pay federal income taxes (though they pay other taxes--state taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes). [See David Corn's article in Mother Jones, "Secret Video: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors what He Really Thinks of Obama Voters," 17 September 2012.] And Romney's last minute apology about his categorization of half of the U.S. is not convincing, especially since he double-downed on that statement several times immediately after it became public.

• Along with the condescending attitude toward the poor comes a willingness to deprive the poor of government support in healthcare. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian culture that promoted the idea that one was required to help those less fortunate, and so I don't get all bent out of shape about my taxes' going to welfare programs, such as Medicaid. Though I no longer participate in organized religion (a disaffection that came to a head during the Bush administration, as I witnessed church leaders and their congregations hurrahing torture and a war based on lies), I still believe in the ethic to care for those who cannot care for themselves, and I think government (which means US--corporations, whose wealth depends upon a stable government, and citizens) has a moral obligation to help those in need. One of my grandmothers spent her last years in a nursing home, her care supported by Medicaid. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would gut Medicaid. [See Kevin Drum's comments here: "The Romney-Ryan Plan to Obliterate Medicaid."] Medicaid is not just there for the very poor; it's available for the elderly who live middle-class lives and who find their life's savings destroyed by medical costs as they age. Mitt Romney's statement that the poor can always get medical care in the emergency room is bitterly out-of-touch. President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act is a step in the right direction in providing healthcare for most Americans and in reducing costs of healthcare. Mitt Romney has promised to repeal what could use some tweaking, not destroying.

•  I am dismayed by the increasing hostility toward science in the Republican Party. From climate change to contraception, Republicans have loudly and vociferously denied scientific research and the consensus of scientists. In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney criticized over and over President Barack Obama's economic support of green energy, and his running mate, Paul Ryan,

  has consistently voted against government efforts to tackle climate change. Like many House Republicans, he has voted to block efforts by the EPA to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. He approved an amendment that would bar the Department of Agriculture from studying how best to adapt to a warmer planet. Ryan voted to defund various climate-advisory positions within the White House. He also voted for an amendment, proposed by Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), to cut $50 million from funding for ARPA-E, which funds long-shot energy research and development. [Brad Plumer, on Ezra Klein's Wonkblog, 14 August 2012]

  I mean, really.... voting to bar studies and research to determine how we can adapt to a warmer planet? How short-sighted is that!?

• Despite the financial crisis of 2007-2008, created in large part by the high-risk excesses of Wall Street and a corresponding lack of regulation, the Republican platform still calls for minimum regulation of Wall Street. I guess this explains why a CNNMoney Survey found that "[a]n overwhelming majority — 70 percent — of investment strategists and money managers in the survey say a Republican president would be better for the stock market"--even though, "as CNNMoney notes, stocks have historically performed better during Democratic administrations" [Michael Kling, "CNNMoney Survey: Wall Street Wants a Republican in the White House," 6 April 2012.]  See also how Republicans have worked to prevent implementation of the 2010 Dodd-Frank's Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by slashing the budget of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission: Jack Kemp, "Wall Street and Republicans Team Up to Curb CFTC," Reuters, 7 June 2012.  Or you can read Public Citizen's report of May 2012: "Forgotten Lessons of Deregulation: Rolling Back Dodd-Frank's Derivatives Rules Would Repeat a Mistake that Led to the Financial Crisis."

•  Barack Obama and Joe Biden are not perfect men or perfect leaders, but I am not going to vote for president of this country a man who made millions of dollars saddling companies with debt. You can do a song and dance about that choice of careers all you want, claim that it's all-American in its worship of profit for investors (while workers lose their jobs), but I can't admire it. I'll choose the community organizer, conciliator, post-post partisan, introverted lawyer and current president. Also, as his chameleon performance in the first presidential debate illustrates, Mitt Romney's real beliefs are tough to pin down. Romney governed as a moderate Republican in Massachusetts but became increasingly more conservative on the campaign trail, eschewing even his own Massachusetts healthcare plan. Then, in the debate, he suddenly became moderate again, walking back on claims he had made over and over in the previous months. His running mate? Paul Ryan's world view seems to have been too much influenced by Ayn Rand. And, really, is Paul Ryan vice-presidential material, a heartbeat away from the White House?

•  I support environmental regulations; the Republican party would like to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. [See: David Roberts, "The Environment," in The Washington Monthly; Politico's "Mitt Romney Intensifies EPA Attacks"; and Think Progress' response to the Politico article, "Things Mainstream Reporters Can't Say: Mitt Romney is Lying about the Environmental Protection Agency".] Anyone who lived through the 1960s and 1970s (even I, who was only just old enough to vote in 1976) remembers the ecological damage that our country suffered--acid rain, polluted rivers, chemically-fogged skies, Love Canal, lead gasoline. The Environmental Protection Agency gives government a necessary tool to regulate pollution and to prepare for climate change (if we and our leaders only had the political will to do the latter).

•  I am a strong supporter of public lands; today's Republican Party (no longer the party of Teddy Roosevelt) and Mitt Romney are not so much. [See Timothy Egan's "The Geography of Nope; "Giving Reins to States over Drilling," in The New York Times; "Conservation Update: Romney Energy Plan Would Give Drilling Control on Federal Lands to States," in Field and Stream.]

• I am appalled by the Republican tactics of voter suppression. See Ruth Rosen's piece at George Mason University's History News Network: "Voter Suppression: The Unraveling of American Democracy." Or listen to local voices, such as those of The Plain Dealer's editorial board in Cleveland, Ohio: "Republicans want to limit last-minute early voting, which in 2008 was most heavily used by less-affluent, minority voters." Or listen to the voices of state Republican leaders--links in Timothy Noah's piece: "'47 Percent'--Voter ID Link Proved." See The Atlantic's piece on True the Vote: "The Ballot Cops,"; Common Cause's "Bullies at the Ballot Box"; Justin Levitt's "The Truth About Voter Fraud," on the Brennan Center for Justice website.  Get updates on voter ID laws here: "Voter Identification Requirements," on the website of The National Conference of State Legislatures.

• I support marriage equality. Making it legal for adults of the same sex to marry neither threatens our democracy nor my own (34-year) heterosexual marriage, and it provides legal protection for gays and lesbians who want to raise families, to support one another financially, and to care for one another in sickness and health. Although there may be "a growing awareness among prominent Republicans that embracing marriage equality could broaden the party’s base and soften the party’s image in crucial ways," the leaders now on marriage equality are Democrats [Frank Bruni, "The G. O. P.'s Gay Trajectory," The New York Times, 9 June 2012].

•  I believe that abortion should be legal and that the decision to have an abortion be a private matter between a woman, her medical provider, and her own conscience. The Republican Party's platform states that "the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed" and that "the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children."  That strongly-worded statement pretty much turns over a pregnant woman's decision making to the federal government. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or mother's medical condition. Imagine the consequences if such a view became law. 

• I am mightily suspicious of the support of these guys and these guys of the Republican Party. What they expect to gain can only hurt the rest of us democratic, freedom-of-religion types.

•  We had eight years of a disastrous Republican presidency under George W. Bush. Mitt Romney is proposing nothing substantially different from a Bush presidency.  His message contains the same warmongering, regulation cutting, tax cutting mantra that brought us two wars, a horrendous deficit, and a financial crisis that almost blew up the country. As my husband says, "Willard" is just W-2.

Short, Sweet, and on Message

 Andrew Tobias makes two points in his short message to the Democratic National Convention of 2012. Wash, rinse, repeat:





 h/t, James Bennet of The Atlantic

Gay Marriage a "Radical" Experiment?

I like Conor Friedersdorf's response to Dennis Prager's claim that "nothing as radical as redefining marriage to include members of the same sex has ever been publicly supported by a president of the United States" and that gay marriage is "the most radical social experiment in modern history." Friedersdorf reminds Prager and others who would make similar claims that "same sex marriage would permit gays to participate in an existing institution that encourages those who enter it to practice sexual fidelity, give emotional support, and provide financial stability."

Encouraging gay people to marry seems like an argument for traditional values to me, and giving gay couples rights is just plain fairness. Maurice Sendak, famous author of some of the best-loved children's books, recently died at the age of 83. For 50 years, he and his partner, psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, lived together. When Glynn was dying of lung cancer, Sendak made all the arrangements to provide his partner with around-the-clock medical care in their home. But how many gay couples have the financial resources for such care? Instead, their loved ones are checked into hospitals or hospice care, where in many states the healthy gay partner can be refused admittance to the loved one's bedside by family members inimical to the relationship, no matter how long or how committed that relationship has been.

Conor Friedersdorf lists the many radical experiments that have been initiated in this country, a list that includes women's suffrage, the birth control pill, the GI bill, in vitro fertilization, the abolition of slavery and the Civil Rights movement. How about public education?

So folks should just temper their hyperbolic language and dampen their fear of change. Gay marriage would not end civilization as we know it. No.....that would be climate change.

Update
Dahlia Lithwick writes  thoughtfully in Slate today about President's "evolving" thinking on gay marriage: "It's  About the Empathy, Stupid."

Here is the conclusion of his essay:

I read [President Obama's words on gay marriage] as a very literal reminder of what needs to happen more often during this election campaign: We need to listen to the experiences of others before dismissing them as dangerous, immoral, and wrong. Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope, that his whole moral code was conditioned on the idea that to be able to empathize with people richer and poorer, more liberal and more conservative, is to be "forced beyond our limited vision.” Andrew Sullivan has called what Obama did yesterday “letting go of fear.” You can’t do that unless you listen to fear first, and that’s as good a descriptor as any for what the president did this week. 

Okay, so President Obama Supports Gay Marriage

Years ago, I stood in the hallway of a Southern Baptist church discussing homosexuality with my pastor. I had grown up in a very conservative, country church but as an adult attended a much more liberal church in a mid-sized town with a large university. However, for years I had been struggling with the disconnect between my evolving beliefs and the increasing fundamentalism of the Southern Baptist Church. The whole carapace of my childhood faith, I thought, was either going to shatter or be transformed. I was seriously considering leaving the Southern Baptist Church, and the deciding factor was the church's stand on homosexuality. Oh, there were many other reasons to leave, but this one issue was the most important to me at the time. One of my best friends was gay; he came out of the same religious tradition as I, and I had watched him struggle to reconcile his sexuality with his religion. I had witnessed his pain. I had seen his first love in the death grip of AIDS, and I had watched him find love again. The gay friends I had in college opened my heart to tolerance; this friend opened my heart to complete acceptance. 

Now I had children of my own. If I left my church, in what religious tradition would I raise my family? Yet how could I raise them in this church? I knew I couldn't. 

In the hallway, my pastor described to me the Sunday School class whose members were gay, the pianist who was gay, the silent minority that sat every morning among people who would prefer them to live as celibates, who would prefer them to live a life without love, or who believed they could be "converted" to heterosexuality.  He said he believed that science would prove that sexuality was a continuum, that homosexuality was biologically linked; he was concerned that, once again, the Southern Baptist Church would find itself on the wrong side of history. He told me that he had the same concerns as I but that the day he stepped into the pulpit and announced that gays should be accepted fully in the church would be the day he would be out of a job. 

I think of that pastor today as I read the reactions to President Obama's interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News, in which the president announced his support of gay marriage. David Plotz of Slate is "irked by [the president's] all-too-eloquent conversion story" and believes that rather than evolving, the president had "always" favored gay marriage, that the president's announcement is one of political convenience.  (Others, here and here, are more generous.)

Perhaps, like my former pastor, President Obama indeed figured he might be out of a job if he officially announced his support of gay marriage, that he would lose political support. But I think he deserves praise for finally making that public announcement, even if it reveals what he has secretly thought for some years. I don't know if my former pastor ever stood before his church and revealed his unqualified support for gay rights. I moved across the country shortly thereafter and left the Southern Baptist Church.

Barack Obama's support of gay marriage will certainly affect the presidential campaign. It remains to be seen how, exactly, but I bet you there is a flyer out already claiming that Barack Obama's support of gay marriage is really a War Against Marriage and the Family. Ironic, huh?