Politics

[rowyn]

I am apparently a Republican, but not a very enthusiastic one.

69% Ron Paul
67% John McCain
65% Mike Huckabee
64% Rudy Giuliani
64% Mitt Romney
58% Fred Thompson
53% Mike Gravel
49% Tom Tancredo
49% Bill Richardson
46% Dennis Kucinich
43% Chris Dodd
38% Barack Obama
38% Hillary Clinton
37% John Edwards
33% Joe Biden

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

I don't know who Mike Gravel is either, nkcmike

In unrelated news: Happy Birthday, mister_wolf!

Comments

I knew we were going to end up opposites on this one

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

...I just wasn't sure how :)

While your most prefered aren't my least (there's a few below) the same applies in reverse. I'm bemused. I'm trying to figure out where we differ and I hazard the following guesses

--> You're anti-Row vs. Wade because you're state's rights? (I don't think federal hospitals should be banned from performing them as long as its federally funded.)(This works out to killing women to uphold religous values and I follow "to save a life" here myself. The fetus isn't alive till the head is out of the womb and they draw the first breath, by Torah standards. Jews still don't condone abortion on demand, and I'm not wild about it myself, but I cannot value potential life over life that's already here.)

--> You're anti-minimum wage and unions because you're economically a neo-liberal? (For my part, I quote Dwayne "these sorts of measures force the rich to lower their savings curve in favor of putting the money in circulation. I can't see this as being a basically bad move given that the Depression showed the rich will be quite happy to see the rest of the country fall apart in the fight to maximize their savings.")

--> You're "hell or high water we stay" on Iraq (that I know for sure). (I respect your conviction even if I disagree, if this were Vietnam, I'd be anti-withdrawal. Things were actually going tolerably well towards the end of that. The Viet Cong were exterminated in 68 and most of the conflict after was the army of north vietnam covertly invading.) (For my part I'm unconvinced a fast civil war will be substantially more damaging overall than a slow one. Bosnia seems to have done relatively better than the Sudan, for example. The sooner peace is restored the better, and if its the peace of the grave, that's unavoidable at this point. The conflict will only end after enough combatants are dead (on the side that will eventually lose the civil war). There is no possibility of a political resolution. The Malaki gov't is in the process of breaking down as I write this. If somehow it doesn't fracture entirely I have strong doubts it will reflect any improvement in function.)

--> you're anti-gun control because you're libertarian (I'm pro gun control because I don't buy the "resist a tyrannical gov't argument" and they kill more people than they save. Scott might be willing to be a guerilla partisan, I doubt if 1 person in 100 would have the guts and the skills...and that's in places like Wyoming.)

--> you probably favor a non interventionist foreign policy because the US is so bad at foreign policy and the potential for corrupt influence is high (this I admit is my most irrational point of opposition. Somehow, I hope against hope, one day the US State Dept will not be a bunch of lame ass monkeyf*cks, aloof from ogliarchic patrons in the US. Rationally, I should be non interventionist too.)

--> You might be pro death penalty because some cases are clearly guilty and there seems little reason to spare a murder's life. (I just don't think guilty men dying is worth killing innocent ones, myself. They're caught, the recidivism rate on murder is low, and if you think they're the devil himself, just never let him out (afaik, there have been almost no hard core "devil himself" female killers.) (I'm not sure on this at all though. I'm clutching at straws)

--> You prefer a moderate position on environmentalism maybe? (which is not unreasonable, I'm just willing to take a hit to my standard of living (yes, I'd give up my computer for this) to rest assured everything that could be done had been done. This is an only partly rational position.)

(I expect I did agree with you on spending cuts, pro- free trade, and social security reform, marijuana legalization and gay marriage being allowed...)

Re: I knew we were going to end up opposites on this one

[rowyn]

I'm in favor of Roe vs Wade, or at least, I'm not so legally outraged by it that I want to see it go away. It was terrible jurisprudence but it had good results. Thus proving I'm not as down on bad means as you think. :)

Opposed to the minimum wage 'cause I'm a libertarian and I believe it harms more people than it helps.

Still opposed to withdrawal from Iraq, yep.

Opposed to gun-control; libertarian and I strongly disagree that disarming people saves lives; quite the opposite. Taking guns away from Americans is totally unfeasible overall and trying to disarm them just makes life harder on legal citizens. You can make a different case for countries that don't already have tens (if not hundreds) of millions of guns in circulation, but in this country, guns are not going away and the balkanized attempts to disarm law-abiding citizens do no one good.

You pegged me on foreign policy. I would be pro-interventionist if I thought there was a chance in Hell we would do any good at it, but we totally suck at it, everyone hates us when we do it, and no good comes of it. So yeah, feeling pretty cynical about that one.

I can't remember what I picked on the death penalty. I'm ambivalent about it. I think I picked "opposed". One reason: it's massively unevenly enforced. But I generally agree with you about the death penalty.

I oppose government-sponsored environmental intiatives. I think we're going to invent our way into a cleaner and better habitat (working so far, pollution in the US today is SO MUCH less than it was a hundred years ago). Most (but not all!) of the regulatory measures that Congress proposes to "protect" the environment will do, IMAO, more harm than good. No, I'm not willing to give up my computer to protect the environment, nor do I think it's necessary.

And yes, sounds like we agreed on the others you mentioned. :)