What makes you Identify with the Party you do?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

This is a perplexing subject for me. I turn 27 this year, so I don't even really fit into the "18-25" demographic anymore, but the very reason I identify with the Republican Party is because of how extreme the Democratic Party has gotten.

Life is only gonna get harder for you, son.

What the hell does that mean?

1. RIP white america
2. you know those so-called "traditions" you love from the 80s? anyone who likes 'em more than as a passing affectation will be dead relatively soon.
3. complaining about gay marriage is so 2008. soon, being trans will be socially acceptable as well and being gay will be nothing of note.

In short: RIP Reaganfan. It's over. In twenty years, the youth will be a racial kaleidoscope with many sexual orientations. Your side might win an election or a policy battle but your idyllic America is dead, has been dead and will remain in the grave.

[King]

This is a perplexing subject for me. I turn 27 this year, so I don't even really fit into the "18-25" demographic anymore, but the very reason I identify with the Republican Party is because of how extreme the Democratic Party has gotten.

Life is only gonna get harder for you, son.

What the hell does that mean?

If you don't change your attitude on all of the issues you laid out, the rest of your life is going to be fairly miserable.  Most of the people with your ideals have a recent death in the next decade or two to ease the pain of the social change. You're only 27.

Life is only gonna get harder for you, son.

[free my dawg]

This is a perplexing subject for me. I turn 27 this year, so I don't even really fit into the "18-25" demographic anymore, but the very reason I identify with the Republican Party is because of how extreme the Democratic Party has gotten.

Let's say when I was becoming a teenager, around the time of Bush vs. Gore in 2000, I heard extremely profane lyrics on the radio. I would think, "This stuff is vulgar, maybe kids shouldn't have to hear this crap." Now...George Bush the Republican would agree with me. But so would Al and Tipper Gore, the Democrat. See? Even though one was Republican and one was Democrat, certain common sense things (The Defense of Marriage Act, signed by Democrat Clinton) would keep everyone in agreement.

In 2004, I thought Gay Marriage was pushing boundaries too far. President Bush, the Republican, had an official position against it. But so did the Democratic nominee, John Kerry.

When I was a kid, it didn't matter who was in the White House, D.A.R.E. programs and the importance of staying off drugs was applauded. It didn't matter if you were Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Al Gore. Now? We have a party that wishes to make drugs legal and a President who openly has joked about drug legalization. How disgusting is that? THAT'S normal? That's not the Democratic Party I knew as a kid.

Do you get what I'm saying? Yes...being a Republican does make you more close-minded, maybe the harsh reality makes you come across cold-hearted. But I'd much rather be a more traditional conservative then take this drastic far left leap into unknown territory.

It didn't matter what party was in the White House when I was growing up, because Clinton, Reagan, or either Bush, you knew it was "One Nation Under God", you knew it was "Just say no to drugs". You knew it was "One man and one woman."

Today's Democratic Party doesn't feel any of that. That terrifies me. THAT is too extreme. I'd rather be with the party of the mainstream than with a radical party which currently is what the Democrats are. To me, the Republican Party is pretty much the same that it's been all my life.

[IceSpear]

Because they're the only sane option in ~90% of elections.

[Reaganfan]

This is a perplexing subject for me. I turn 27 this year, so I don't even really fit into the "18-25" demographic anymore, but the very reason I identify with the Republican Party is because of how extreme the Democratic Party has gotten.

Life is only gonna get harder for you, son.

What the hell does that mean?

1. RIP white america
2. you know those so-called "traditions" you love from the 80s? anyone who likes 'em more than as a passing affectation will be dead relatively soon.
3. complaining about gay marriage is so 2008. soon, being trans will be socially acceptable as well and being gay will be nothing of note.

In short: RIP Reaganfan. It's over. In twenty years, the youth will be a racial kaleidoscope with many sexual orientations. Your side might win an election or a policy battle but your idyllic America is dead, has been dead and will remain in the grave.

But you might have told me the same thing in 1965 or 1975. Who would have known the conservative revolution that would come in the following decades?

[King]

But you might have told me the same thing in 1965 or 1975. Who would have known the conservative revolution that would come in the following decades?

People were more liberal on drugs, religion, and gay rights in 1975 than in 1985? The answer is no. There was an economic move the right in the eighties but the trend leftward on social issues continued steadily.

[Reaganfan]

But you might have told me the same thing in 1965 or 1975. Who would have known the conservative revolution that would come in the following decades?

People were more liberal on drugs, religion, and gay rights in 1975 than in 1985? The answer is no. There was an economic move the right in the eighties but the trend leftward on social issues continued steadily.

I genuinely believe liberals are more bark than bite. I run into an average person on the street, and they probably agree that drugs are bad, we should build a fence, the IRS sucks, yada yada.

Also, other than Barack Obama, the country is more controlled by Republicans now than anytime certainly in two or three generations.

Maybe I shouldn't be that worried.

[King]

Completely irrelevant stuff you're bringing up.

I am telling you the truth. The Republican Party will endorse gay marriage, profanity on the radio*, and drug decriminalization in your lifetime. You better learn to roll with the punches.

*Marco Rubio is already quoting Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg on the Senate floor.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

But you might have told me the same thing in 1965 or 1975. Who would have known the conservative revolution that would come in the following decades?

People were more liberal on drugs, religion, and gay rights in 1975 than in 1985? The answer is no. There was an economic move the right in the eighties but the trend leftward on social issues continued steadily.

I genuinely believe liberals are more bark than bite. I run into an average person on the street, and they probably agree that drugs are bad, we should build a fence, the IRS sucks, yada yada.

Also, other than Barack Obama, the country is more controlled by Republicans now than anytime certainly in two or three generations.

Maybe I shouldn't be that worried.

The problem is that you think your lily-white suburb represents the United States. Real America resides in a suburb of Sacramento or in NOVA where 30-40% of residents are non-white.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Completely irrelevant stuff you're bringing up.

I am telling you the truth. The Republican Party will endorse gay marriage, profanity on the radio*, and drug decriminalization in your lifetime. You better learn to roll with the punches.

*Marco Rubio is already quoting Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg on the Senate floor.

It won't be long before the Republican Party nominates a Presidential candidate who professes his/her love for Kanye West or Jay-Z. RIP Naso, it's over.

[Reaganfan]

You keep bringing up race. Not a single time in this thread, did I bring up anything regarding race, white America, black people. Why inject race?

[TDAS04]

I agree with the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party on a large majority of issues.

[RINO Tom]

Honestly, because "muh Party of Lincoln," ancestral registration and because I'm very pro-business.  Completely agree with what Rocky said about how being an independent is not helpful.

[Thunderbird is the word]

I'm still a registered Democrat just because that's the box I checked when I turned eighteen. Some in my family are involved in Democratic Party politics and I was exposed to it from an early age. So I guess here's a streak of ancestral tradition there also, going back to the new deal era. Mainly leaned towards Democrats also out of a hatred of Bush's foreign policy and the patriot act along with generally leaning left on economic issues and dispising the religious right. At this point I can't identify with he Dems anymore though since they're just as bad on civil liberties and I really find the attitudes of Democratic partisans in recent years to be reprehensible. I also have a visceral hatred of progressive paternalism and find nanny statists to be just as bad as the religious right so there's a definite libertarian stripe in my politics.

[Thunderbird is the word]

I left the Democratic Party when I came to understand that liberals and I have fundamentally different outlooks on the structure of society and the meaning of politics. I used to think that liberals were on the same page with those of us on the left, and that we just had tactical disagreements. Lived experience (working as a Democratic Party functionary in college) and the historical record proved that assumption incorrect, and ever since, I have stopped identifying with liberalism and picked up the banner of communism.

Liberalism is more or less the ideology of the bohemian bourgeois' contempt for workers. Its chief representatives look the other way as the American industrial base is gutted and sent abroad, as the right of workers to free association is eroded day after day, as young workers are sent to jail in rhetoric numbers in its phony 'War on Drugs', and actively asserts the 'right' of the United States to bomb other countries into the stone age if they do not except the dictates of its capitalist overlords. It is the raising of rule by bureaucrat to its logical conclusion, where freedom ends where the feelings of the bourgeois bohemians begin. It says that guns should only be in the hands of racist cops, that the state should be able to read your emails and monitor your phone calls, and that it should keep you safe from things like violent video games. It substitutes fake anti-racism and fake anti-sexism (like arguing that promoting more women and minorities to leadership positions in the capitalist system will somehow act as a panacea for the lived experiences of women workers and workers of color) for the genuine article, and in doing so weakens both and emboldens the identitarian right.

Liberalism as an ideology can never be truly liberatory in the capitalist epoch, because it has sacrificed every bit of what made it a revolutionary, liberatory creed in the 18th and 19th centuries on the alter of profit.

Conservatism, like liberalism, is an ideology full of contempt for workers, but on a different level. Whereas liberalism represents the trendy, bohemian version of hating the working class and apologizing for the parasitical upper crust, conservatism is its knuckle-dragging cousin. Conservatism doesn't have any of the pretensions of liberalism and knows it, openly using sexism, racism, and other bigoted ideas to divide workers into separate, hostile identities so as to better exploit them. In spite of saying that they're against 'identity politics', the conservative is the most able user of them, embracing the dog-whistle politics of white supremacy, exalting the patriarchal family unit, and defending 'traditional' gender roles and sexual norms. It promotes the idea of a white, christian male society constantly under siege by the 'other', when it obviously knows better. Like liberalism, conservatism is very concerned with what you're posting on the Internet, who you're talking to and why, and wants to keep bad ideas out of your head, although in their case the ideas are ones that challenge their retrograde view of society as a divinely ordained system where the good and virtuous are rewarded while the evil are always punished or whatever.

I can't identify with either of those ideologies because, at their root, they are the ideologies of the class that exploits my labor, robs me of my free time, and dictates the course of my every day existence by way of its ownership of the means of production. As a member of the exploited class, the working class, I can only view myself as a communist because I want to end that exploitation once and for all and build a society that truly values all of humankind, i.e. a stateless, classless, race-less, gender-less, sexual orientation-less¹, etc. society.


¹Obviously in saying this I don't mean that we'd all be some kind of gray blob with no sexual desire whatsoever (although this seems to be the end goal of some of our liberal friends, if we take their rhetoric seriously). I mean this in the sense that socially constructed identities, like straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc would be dissolved and society constructed in such a way that we reject the idea of biologically determined sexual preferences and the like

I agree with a lot of your critiques of both liberalism and conservatism. I guess I haven't gotten quite as radical as you but I have flirted with it. I've more just drifted in the direction politically of being a cynical leftist misanthrope ala Bill Hicks/George Carlin. Have briefly been involved with radical politics though including anti-war protests and OWS.

[Thunderbird is the word]

This is a perplexing subject for me. I turn 27 this year, so I don't even really fit into the "18-25" demographic anymore, but the very reason I identify with the Republican Party is because of how extreme the Democratic Party has gotten.

Let's say when I was becoming a teenager, around the time of Bush vs. Gore in 2000, I heard extremely profane lyrics on the radio. I would think, "This stuff is vulgar, maybe kids shouldn't have to hear this crap." Now...George Bush the Republican would agree with me. But so would Al and Tipper Gore, the Democrat. See? Even though one was Republican and one was Democrat, certain common sense things (The Defense of Marriage Act, signed by Democrat Clinton) would keep everyone in agreement.

In 2004, I thought Gay Marriage was pushing boundaries too far. President Bush, the Republican, had an official position against it. But so did the Democratic nominee, John Kerry.

When I was a kid, it didn't matter who was in the White House, D.A.R.E. programs and the importance of staying off drugs was applauded. It didn't matter if you were Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Al Gore. Now? We have a party that wishes to make drugs legal and a President who openly has joked about drug legalization. How disgusting is that? THAT'S normal? That's not the Democratic Party I knew as a kid.

Do you get what I'm saying? Yes...being a Republican does make you more close-minded, maybe the harsh reality makes you come across cold-hearted. But I'd much rather be a more traditional conservative then take this drastic far left leap into unknown territory.

It didn't matter what party was in the White House when I was growing up, because Clinton, Reagan, or either Bush, you knew it was "One Nation Under God", you knew it was "Just say no to drugs". You knew it was "One man and one woman."

Today's Democratic Party doesn't feel any of that. That terrifies me. THAT is too extreme. I'd rather be with the party of the mainstream than with a radical party which currently is what the Democrats are. To me, the Republican Party is pretty much the same that it's been all my life.

"Boy the way Van Halen played, watching MTV all day, guys like us we had it made those were the days, and you knew who you were then, girls were girls and men were men, Mr we could use a man like Ronald Reagan again!"

[traininthedistance]

More or less what Mr. Illini said.

[Reaganfan]

Completely irrelevant stuff you're bringing up.

I am telling you the truth. The Republican Party will endorse gay marriage, profanity on the radio*, and drug decriminalization in your lifetime. You better learn to roll with the punches.

*Marco Rubio is already quoting Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg on the Senate floor.

FYI That stuff doesn't bother me. John McCain was endorsed by Daddy Yankee for God's sake.

[Thunderbird is the word]

Completely irrelevant stuff you're bringing up.

I am telling you the truth. The Republican Party will endorse gay marriage, profanity on the radio*, and drug decriminalization in your lifetime. You better learn to roll with the punches.

*Marco Rubio is already quoting Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg on the Senate floor.

FYI That stuff doesn't bother me. John McCain was endorsed by Daddy Yankee for God's sake.

So are you just trolling then?

[Хahar 🤔]

I genuinely believe liberals are more bark than bite. I run into an average person on the street, and they probably agree that drugs are bad, we should build a fence, the IRS sucks, yada yada.

You specifically mentioned gay marriage. If you run into an average person on the street, they probably won't be against gay marriage at this point in time. It's not 2008.

[The Dowager Mod]

Let's see:
Female
Buddhist
Pro-Choice
Pro -Union
I care about the environment
Just off the top of my head, Republicans would burn me at the stake if I tried to go there.

[Goldwater]

I'm not a Democrat, and third parties are useless.

[Replicator]

They're simply the lesser of 2 evils. I'm pro-life, but how many Republicans support higher taxes on the wealthy, amnesty for illegals every 4 years, stronger regulations for climate change, affirmative action, more job training programs, at tools.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Simply put, Democrats have a nasty habit on being on the wrong side of history. Their insistence on taxing the rich will force jobs to go overseas, and their callous disregard for the human rights of unborn children is frighteningly similar to their past support of slavery and Jim Crow.  I don't agree with everything in the GOP's official platform, but they're far better than the rotten garbage that Democrats stand for.

Plus, third parties tend to be too extreme for my liking.

Let's see:
Female
I care about the environment
Just off the top of my head, Republicans would burn me at the stake if I tried to go there.

Funny how that works.  I care about women and the environment too, and I'm a Republican.

[Mercenary]

I consider myself independent. Not because I reject labels or belonging to a party in general but because no party really represents my views. It'd take some kind of mixture of the parties to really represent me.

I'd be socially conservative, yet libertarian. (Promote traditional values, but oppose using law to enforce those values and oppose discrimination) That is, I support living a life following Christian moral values and promoting said values but I oppose forcing others to live by them if they don't wish to and I oppose discriminating against people simply because they have different views or live in a way that I may personally not agree with.

No party represents that at all, the closest was probably something like Ron Paul's presidential campaigns. And hopefully Rand Paul's (who is my candidate of preference)

Foreign policy is easier - I support the non-interventionist platform of the libertarian or green party.

Civil liberties/Privacy - See foreign policy

Economic issues - This one is a tough one too, on some issues I am pretty libertarian. Even though I oppose discrimination, I oppose government telling a business who they have to serve. That'd put me on the libertarian/conservative side. I also oppose property tax. However, I support single payer health care, free college education, minimum income for those that work, all of which put me to left. I oppose personal income tax, but have no objection to business income tax or sales tax. I support making taxation progressive.

So what party fits me? I guess another way to think about it would be some kind of mixture of Paul/Sanders in 2016 or Paul/Kucinich in 2008. That makes me seem part R and part D until you realize those candidates are at odds with their party on a lot of issues.