I Want To Be A Republican So Badly
Republicans are the worst.
Okay, are you significantly riled up yet? I was once told that if you had to give a speech, you should start it with an incendiary first line to captivate your audience. Given that 97% of TFM’s readership identifies as a Republican according to a poll I just made up, I think I accomplished that. In reality, what I mean is that I’d really like to vote the party line, but the party is really fucking me. I know, I usually tell dick jokes, but I think it’s time for some real talk.
Here’s the thing. I was born and raised in Texas, in a socially conservative family that didn’t talk about politics. In fact, my parents went out of their way to not tell me and my brothers their political views. But because of my surroundings, I was a straight up neo-con from age 14-18. I voted for Dubya in my sixth grade election. Then I went to college, started a triple major in economics, finance, and accounting, read Ayn Rand, became a libertarian, and worked on Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign. I thought I had it all figured out. Hell, I was the editor of our business review, and made my article advocating for the gold standard a front page piece. Then I switched to a straight political science major with a focus in international relations and learned some sense.
So, seven years later, where am I now, politically? Well, if you ask my roommates, I’m a liberal, apparently. In spite of the many times I’ve tried to explain my political leanings to them, they just assume because I’m willing to at least entertain the economics of single payer healthcare, I’m clearly a left-wing ding dong who thinks Jon Stewart is a non-biased source of news for young people. But in fact, I have been, and will continue to be, registered as a Republican. Why? Because I’m really hoping that the party that used to have most things right can get back to that point. I consider myself a conservative, and I believe that the party that allegedly represents that has been fucking up for at least the last 25 years. Here’s why.
The economy is allegedly what Republicans stake their beliefs on. Lower taxes, balanced budgets, deregulation, lower government spending, individual responsibility, and privatization. The problem is that some of those things have become more popular over others in recent iterations of Republican control. Lower taxes is great as a concept, but we still have to pay for the shit that we’re committing to. So we should commit to fewer things, right? Fox News pundits love to mention the National Debt Clock so much, I’m pretty sure they would let it fuck their spouse if it wanted to. You wanna know one of the main reasons why our debt is so insane? Military spending. As a dude who hates Al-Qaeda and wanted just military action against its supporters, Iraq was a stupid fucking decision, and has cost us more tax dollars than any meager social safety net has.
Speaking of social safety nets, let’s start with entitlements. Social Security is broken. Republicans seem to trumpet this fact more than they try to fix it, but I’ll give them the win, given that Democrats don’t even seem to be worried. Regular welfare is so small compared to the actual problem that I don’t even care. Unemployment and food stamps become a politicized issue every time a conservative candidate talks (welfare queens and all that), but the percentage of the budget taken up by those programs is so insignificant compared to the abuses of the system that it ends up lower on my totem pole of problems than the Kardashians. That’s right, I’d rather government intervention in reality TV show programming before we touch poverty entitlements — that’s how insignificant they are.
Okay, so social issues. The big three are gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and abortion. This is where age is a factor. By the way, for how acceptable weed was for the entirety of the ‘60s and ‘70s, I still don’t understand how this is still an issue. You’d think that Baby Boomers would have smoked enough weed in their day to not give a shit about it. Either way, the answer to all three is easy, and conveniently the same. If you wanna piss off old people, who are admittedly the Republican base right now (I wonder why), then sure, go the wrong way on these. But if you want to survive as a party, guess what? Not only do we as young people not care about any of those three issues, you’re actually on the wrong side of all of them. Even my most right-wing friends are cool with dudes marrying dudes, smoking green on the reg, and helping their one-night-stand with the cost of “taking care of it.”
Young people are your future. You can play to win, or you can play to keep winning. The Cavaliers traded Wiggins for Love. How did that work out for them? Well, Love got hurt, Wiggins balled out, LeBron’s only got probably three great years left, and then your organization’s gonna be shocked when you go back to being a sports punchline for giving up your team’s future in favor of ill-fated short-term success. And for what? Your best player to put everything he had on the court and fall short? Glad that worked out for you.
Another thing: Learn to talk. You’re a fucking politician, you placate people for a living, so I don’t understand how you have made it to your position in life, and still are able to say that women are not physically able to get pregnant from rape. I know high school dropouts who know human anatomy/physiology better than that. And that’s not an isolated incident. I’m convinced there is a pandemic of foot-in-mouth disease among Republican politicians these days, and if the only prescription is anything other than more cowbell, we might be fucked.
I have a lot more to say about this, so y’all can probably expect more from me about this subject in the future. I haven’t even talked about guns, the environment, campaign finance reform, privacy, or most importantly, foreign policy (because it requires a full column of its own). The point is, I’m an old-school conservative in most ways. Barry Goldwater and Grover Cleveland are my dudes. I just also happen to live in the 21st century, and I ask that the people I vote for act accordingly..
Image via Shutterstock
So I may get lapped for this one, but here’s what I have to say.
10 years ago at 11:57 amThe problem with mainstream republican politicians on social issues is that they don’t stand up to the left and elaborate on their positions. You look at many of the conservative candidates so far, such as Cruz and Rand Paul, and their position on gay rights is: leave it to the states to vote on, it has never been a federal government issue and never should be. This is how it should be. As it has been stated in the recent Supreme Court arguments, if gay marriage is put in the Constitution, then private schools, among others, will lose their non-profit tax exemption due to their beliefs on marriage, which will fuck them immensely. You re-define marriage, and it’s left up to be defined as anything, and that’s not a slippery slope argument.
With abortion, it’s never going to be illegal, but the left needs to stop pressing it to be subsidized. There are many young people, such as me, who oppose abortion. Don’t believe me? Go to the right to life rally in DC.
I have major issues with the Republican Party. Mainly because they’re too afraid of losing votes to elaborate on their positions and oppose the left.
Well done Sterling, you’ve recycled every major liberal talking point of the last few decades. I’d tell you to try thinking for yourself, but I doubt such effort interests you. You clearly don’t have any concept of what true conservatism is. The left has you lulled you into thinking that you’re some kind of independent-minded wunderkind, bit in reality you’ve become just another sheep in the herd, galloping towards the cliff.
10 years ago at 12:19 pmSo what I’m reading is that you’d like to be a Republican without agreeing with any of the GOP’s platform planks. You’re probably either a Blue Dog Dem or a Rhino because I didn’t read one hell ya, GOP point.
In your political studies did you read any William Buckley? As he famously said, “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” So your future generation argument for the GOP is a contradiction if Buckley is at all correct (he is).
Merely hating the word Democrat doesn’t make you a Republican.
10 years ago at 12:21 pmI must respectfully disagree concerning social issues. The unborn have a right to life; if we claim to respect the individual’s right, then we must care for the lives of the unborn. Furthermore, marijuana has a statistically high potential for abuse–victimizing our youth who have not had good parental leadership throughout their lives. Finally, I don’t have a particular liking of our government redefining what marriage is–considering that this is a term arising from religion.
10 years ago at 12:33 pmFinally, I think it is obvious that while Iraq WAS a mistake, American leadership with military strength prevents genocide–look at what happened when Obama withdrew the troops. We can’t afford to cut military spending too much with the state of the world right now.
The problem is that everyone chooses to be either republican or democrat. There is no In between. And if you are, you’re either pummeled by the left wing news outlets. Or the right wingers don’t identify with you and isolate you since you’re not with their ideals. To win the the Party’s nomination some politicians will switch their view points to get the support they need, which just goes to show how I said before that the issue is everyone is republican or democrat and there is no individuality in this, the Party’s choose what we want. There is very little flexibility in this. And because of this not much can and will change In the ways our great country is run. You will be either a war monger who invades counties and murders or a libtard who chooses to either ignore the issue at hand or just not know who to handle it (isis as an example and the Iraq war). You can either be pro life or anti life. The Catholic Church is obviously prolifer and one of the largest organizations in this world but that doesn’t make them right or wrong, and more left wingers may lobby for pro choice but their opinion doesn’t make them right or wrong either. And nothing will change since ones a republican view and ones democrat. They will always be going nearly head to head on every issue. You believe in climate change? Ha 2012s not real and I still see polar bears, and also guess what? Here’s a snowball! We’re having record breaking winters. Then there’s oh you don’t believe in climate change? You uneducated idiot, we must act now and impose strict regulations on pollution to save our only home, we have the statistics. But back to the point of what I was saying, none of these issues will change in the near future with this life or death choice of R or D controlling the White House back and forth every 4 or 8 years. No, I’m not saying we should slip into fascism how Italy did in the early nineteen hundreds (they were too divided among parties controlling the state and couldn’t get anything done, then a man named Mussolini came along who wanted one man in charge with a cut throat attitude to get shit done with no one opposing him, the country became a hell hole soon after this.). But we need a solid line of thought in this country if we want to get anywhere. Russia is nearly unanimous in their support for Putin and they’re now in competition with us for being the global superpower from being a crumbling world spanning empire. The Germans backed Hitler 100% and they went from literally a county of dirt and flattened land tk controlling everything in Europe in 10 years. We bombed Japan to hell and back during WW2 and took down their colonies one by one. They were nothing. And afterwards we poured millions upon millions of dollars into Japan our once enemy into our closest ally’s with one of the fastest growing economy’s in the world. We invade Iraq disassembling it and taking it over for whatever reason (not saying this was right nor wrong) under republican control and do what needed to be done in our opinion. Then Obama comes In and pulls every American out. History will repeat it self (Japan). And let’s Iraq govern itself in shambles. And we wonder why it’s a failed state in Muslim extremist control? We need to stay there and help them build them selfs back up, no not with guns but with a hammer and nails with legislation making them into a state once again. But since it’s republican vs democrats we must either stay or leave, and guess what 8 years or so later we leave. Look at this failed operation. And we wonder why the rest of the world hates us. We had a chance to turn around the Middle East. But since it’s right vs left wing it the retards in power don’t get jack shit done. This is why America is declining in power and ability. We need to embrace whoever is in power as long as their choices are reasonable and logical otherwise nothing at all will happen and we will stall. We went through the Great Depression and we were at an all time low. FDR came in with the new deal for reforms and changes, we all got behind him on this. America was then catapulted into the roaring 20’s and the best economy we’ve ever seen. But even today my favorite news outlet Fox News disrespects the governments choices all too much, and places such as CNN which isn’t even too too liberal bashes the opposers to their thought. This must change if we want to remain the America we know and love. Now this comment was aloof at times but I hope you see the overall picture I’m trying to paint.
10 years ago at 12:34 pmDo you actually think anyone is going to read that?
10 years ago at 3:10 pmNo 🙁
10 years ago at 5:19 pmFace it, we all love old school republicans (shit even the democrats say the same thing) but with people like bill o’reily screaming “our views” there’s no way we’ll be a dominant party, much less anyone even take us seriously.
10 years ago at 12:41 pmI must respectfully disagree concerning social issues. The uborn have a right to life; if we claim to respect the individual’s right, then we must care for the lives of the uborn. Furthermore, marijuana has a statistically high potential for abuse–victimizing our youth who have not had good parental leadership throughout their lvies. Finally, I don’t have a particular liking of our government redefining marriage–a term that arose from religion. It is not their place to say what it is.
10 years ago at 12:41 pmFinally, I think is is obvious that while Iraq WAS a mistake, American leadership with military strength prevents genocide and is necessary. We cannot afford to cut military spending too muchg with the state of the world right now.
How’s summer treating you, nervous about starting high school in the fall? I was too, don’t worry I’m sure you’ll get a bid from a top tier hs frat. Well pleasantries aside your argument is window licking retarded. Marijuana (NF) has a potential for abuse? Maybe technically habitual smokers are “abusing” pot but is it really hurting them other than making them lazy pieces of shits, no. Marriage was originally a dowry system, I’ll give you my best cow for your youngest daughter type shit not really religious. Was Iraq really a mistake or is that just what you think people want to hear? Anyway #Bush2016
10 years ago at 1:03 pmThe reason you are downvoted is a result of insulting me and posting an overall immature response.
10 years ago at 2:27 pmYes marijuana making people lazy is hurting them–if you don’t study and work due to weed then your life quality will drop faster than the deficit under a conservative president.
Yes the Iraq war was a mistake it took out a counterbalance to daesh (isis)-the Iraq army could have now had more of a fighting chance.
Finally-idk enough about the history of marriage, but I shall retain my belief that it is part of ancient religion (Judaism)
#Rick Santorum 2016
Marijuana is measurably less harmful than alcohol, should we make that illegal too? and, anyways, who’s to say that I can’t blow down in my free time just because a small fraction of problem children choose to move on to harder drugs?
10 years ago at 11:12 pmBecause it’s lowering your quality of life and destroying the lives of the kids. Keep your neurons.
10 years ago at 12:28 pmThis is why we need Rand Paul in office. The NEW age Republican.
10 years ago at 12:45 pmThen vote Gary Johnson. He is everything you’ve always wanted in politician.
10 years ago at 12:49 pmAll I got out of this article was watching someone desperately try to appear equal on both sides of the political spectrum and act as if he knows so much more than the actual people running the country.
10 years ago at 12:51 pmAlthough this article was shit, and a sad excuse to get both republican and democratic support, the people running this country have no idea what their doing either (read Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi). I still provided an up vote to your comment though.
10 years ago at 11:30 pm