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InvisibleKingOftheThing
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Registered: 11/17/02
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republicans support john kerry??
    #2948402 - 07/31/04 12:14 PM (19 years, 7 months ago)

Some Republicans Defect to Kerry's Camp

Fri Jul 30,12:23 PM ET Add Politics - Reuters to My Yahoo!


By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Ohio resident Bob Stewart says of President Bush (news - web sites): "He's been a world-class polarizer. I don't know if I can stomach four more years with him as president. He misled us into the war in Iraq (news - web sites) and has mismanaged everything since."

A raging Democrat? No, Stewart is a Republican, one of an unknown number of such voters who plan to back John Kerry (news - web sites), out of despair over the war in Iraq and disappointment over budget deficits and social policies.


It remains to be seen whether they can tip the scales in hotly contested middle American states like Ohio as the Democratic nominee courts them and battles Bush in the final three-month dash to November's election. In past elections defections from both parties have sometimes canceled each other out.


Kerry and running mate John Edwards (news - web sites) kicked off that fight on Friday, leaving Boston and the concluded party convention for a two-week campaign swing across 21 states.


Stewart, 44, an insurance agent from Anderson Township near Cincinnati, voted for Bush in 2000 and is a registered Republican.


"I just have a gut feeling that Kerry can be trusted to make the right courageous decisions and will make a good president. He showed that with his heroism in Vietnam," he says.


Bush is "supposed to be a conservative and yet he's run up the biggest federal deficit in history. One thing that really turned me (away from Bush) as a lifelong Catholic ... was to see Bush go to the Vatican (news - web sites) and try to get the pope to come down hard on Kerry for his stand on abortion. That is absolutely appalling."


In Michigan, Dan Martin has run for local office as a Republican. He says his biggest disappointment is that Bush's reputation as a "compassionate, conservative" governor of Texas hasn't proven true in the White House.


"The foreign policy is a mess. The offensive in Iraq is reckless and built on bad decision making. On the domestic front I understand that terrorism has struck and he's occupied but any real progress on a domestic agenda has ground to a halt," added Martin, 32, a customer service manager at a health maintenance organization who lives in Rochester Hills.


In Tennessee, Brian Boland, a young music company manager shopping at a market near Nashville, said: "I've always voted Republican and my folks will just kill me if they find out I'm switching to Kerry this year ... but I am just frustrated with the way Bush has mishandled everything. All the untruths."


His wife said she too was switching. The Republicans carried Tennessee in 2000, even though it was the home state of Democratic nominee Al Gore (news - web sites).


At the same market Ron King, a black Vietnam Veteran, said: "I always voted Republican before but I'm against Bush ever since I found out that he doesn't love this country. His so-called military record is a sham. And the worst part is that he lies so much. He lied about weapons of mass destruction."


Lloyd Huff, 64, retired director of the Dayton Research Institute in Ohio, says he has "voted for a Republican in every presidential election I can remember" but it will be Kerry this time because "the Bush administration has been the most deceitful, duplicitous, secretive administration this country has ever had."


"Going to war in Iraq was a horrible, horrible mistake," he said. He accused Bush of "an arrogant, swaggering cowboy mentality ... he has done more than anyone to inflame the Muslim world by his words and actions,"


Kenneth Warren of St. Louis University, who has studied and taught about voter behavior for three decades, said turning a trickle into a trend will be a tough job for Kerry because historically Republicans tend to be faithful. Democrats are more diverse and divided, a "party of factions," and more easily hived off, as former President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) did with the "Reagan Democrats," he said.


Clay Richards, assistant director of the Polling Institute at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, says Kerry is getting about 11 or 12 percent of the Republican vote in Pennsylvania and New Jersey while Bush is drawing 9 or 10 percent of his support from Democrats, not a statistically significant crossover.


Before any Kerry draw could be rated similar to the "Reagan Democrats" effect, he said "the gap would have to be a lot bigger."

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OfflineAncalagon
AgnosticLibertarian

Registered: 07/30/02
Posts: 1,364
Last seen: 15 years, 1 month
Re: republicans support john kerry?? [Re: KingOftheThing]
    #2948422 - 07/31/04 12:19 PM (19 years, 7 months ago)

On a related note...

The Conservative Case for Voting Democratic

by Doug Bandow

Republicans have long claimed to be fiscal tightwads and railed against deficit spending. But this year big-spending George W. Bush and the GOP Congress turned a budget surplus into a $477 billion deficit. There are few programs at which they have not thrown money: massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork-barrel projects, dubious homeland-security grants, expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, even new foreign-aid programs. Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."

Complaints about Republican profligacy have led the White House to promise to mend its ways. But Bush's latest budget combines accounting flim-flam with unenforceable promises. So how do we put Uncle Sam on a sounder fiscal basis?

Vote Democratic.

Democrats obviously are no pikers when it comes to spending. But the biggest impetus for higher spending is partisan uniformity, not partisan identity. Give either party complete control of government, and the Treasury vaults are quickly emptied. Neither Congress nor the President wants to tell the other no. Both are desperate to prove they can "govern"?which means creating new programs and spending more money. But share power between parties, and out of principle or malice they check each other. Even if a President Kerry proposed more spending than would a President Bush, a GOP Congress would appropriate less. That's one reason the Founders believed in the separation of powers.

Consider the record. William Niskanen, former acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, has put together a fascinating analysis of government spending since 1953. Real federal outlays grew fastest, 4.8% annually, in the Kennedy-Johnson years, with Congress under Democratic control. The second-fastest rise, 4.4%, occurred with George W. Bush during Republican rule. The third-biggest spending explosion, 3.7%, was during the Carter administration, a time of Democratic control. In contrast, the greatest fiscal stringency, 0.4%, occurred during the Eisenhower years. The second-best period of fiscal restraint, 0.9%, was in the Clinton era. Next came the Nixon-Ford years, at 2.5%, and Ronald Reagan's presidency, at 3.3%. All were years of shared partisan control.

Bush officials argue that it is unfair to count military spending, but Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan also faced international challenges that impeded their domestic plans. Moreover, if you do strip out military spending and consider only the domestic record, GOP chief executives emerge in an even worse light. In terms of real domestic discretionary outlays, which are most easily controlled, the biggest spender in the past 40 years is George W. Bush, with expenditure racing ahead 8.2% annually, according to Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth. No. 2 on the list is Gerald Ford, at 8%. No. 3 is Richard Nixon. At least the latter two, in contrast to Bush, faced hostile Congresses.

Given the generally woeful record of Republican Presidents, the best combination may be a Democratic chief executive and Republican legislature. It may also be the only combination that's feasible, since in 2004 at least, it will be difficult to overturn Republican congressional control: Redistricting has encouraged electoral stasis in the House, while far more Democrats face reelection in the Senate. Thus, the only way we can realistically keep Congress and the President in separate political hands is to vote for John Kerry in November.

Returning to divided government would yield another benefit as well: Greater opportunity for reform, whether of the budget process, tort liability, Medicare, Social Security, taxes, or almost anything else. Niskanen has observed that the prospects for change "will be dependent on more bipartisan support than now seems likely in a united Republican government." He points out that tax reform occurred in 1986, and agriculture, telecommunications, and welfare reform a decade later, all under divided government.

The deficit can be cut in half if Congress "is willing to make tough choices," says President Bush. But GOP legislators are likely to make tough choices only if he is replaced by a Democrat. History teaches us that divided government equals fiscal probity, so vote Democratic for President if you want responsible budgeting in Washington.


--------------------
?When Alexander the Great visted the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: 'Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.' It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.?
-Henry Hazlitt in 'Economics in One Lesson'

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OfflineDoctorJ
Male

Registered: 06/30/03
Posts: 8,846
Loc: space
Last seen: 1 year, 4 months
Re: republicans support john kerry?? [Re: Ancalagon]
    #2948503 - 07/31/04 12:43 PM (19 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

But the biggest impetus for higher spending is partisan uniformity, not partisan identity. Give either party complete control of government, and the Treasury vaults are quickly emptied. Neither Congress nor the President wants to tell the other no. Both are desperate to prove they can "govern"?which means creating new programs and spending more money. But share power between parties, and out of principle or malice they check each other. Even if a President Kerry proposed more spending than would a President Bush, a GOP Congress would appropriate less. That's one reason the Founders believed in the separation of powers.





one of the few things you've posted I actually agree with.

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OfflineJesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
Re: republicans support john kerry?? [Re: Ancalagon]
    #2949372 - 07/31/04 04:05 PM (19 years, 7 months ago)

That is an interesting piece. You know things are going bad when the CATO institute tells you to vote for democrats.

I agree with a good part of it. It is a shame that Conservatives can't take advantage of pushing their stated beliefs now that they have come to power. The article talked about the best ballance being a democrat in the white house and republicans writing the laws in Congress. I guess that would be the Clinton model. It did seem to work well, but John Kerry is no Bill Clinton. CLinton drug the whole party to the middle and was a moderate conservative. Kerry is ku ku for Cocopuffs out in left field. We don't need a President from the "New Left" of the sixties. From a fiscal standpoint, I would have been happier with Gephart or Dean. I would have welcomed Joe Liberman.


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Tastes just like chicken

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OfflineThe_Red_Crayon
Exposer of Truth
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Registered: 08/13/03
Posts: 13,673
Loc: Smokey Mtns. TN Flag
Last seen: 6 years, 10 months
Re: republicans support john kerry?? [Re: KingOftheThing]
    #2949514 - 07/31/04 04:43 PM (19 years, 7 months ago)

good article man.

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OfflineDivided_Sky
Ten ThousandThings

Registered: 11/02/03
Posts: 3,171
Loc: The Shining Void
Last seen: 15 years, 9 months
Re: republicans support john kerry?? [Re: KingOftheThing]
    #2949944 - 07/31/04 08:13 PM (19 years, 7 months ago)

I think that article (the original) was contrived by an obviously anti-Bush journalist who had access to alot anecdotal and useful idiots. Several of these "Republicans" word for word regurgitate highly disputable Democrat and leftist talking points. If they fall for the other parties line that easy they must obviously be uninformed or fairweather Republicans.It's like these people "I was a lifelong Republican but then I saw Fahrenheight 9/11 and believe everything Michael Moore and Jim McDermott say!" Right. Not thinking for themselves.
Seeing as Bush is getting only 2-3% less Democrats than Kerry is Republicans I think the article was pretty superflous. He might as well have written it about Bush Democrats. It looks to me like some journalist wants to give more airplay and bandwagon appeal to the Bush hater camp. "See, Bush is so bad even Republicans don't like him!" Borders on a sublte propaganda piece.

Edited by Divided_Sky (07/31/04 08:19 PM)

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OfflineJesusChrist
Son Of God
Registered: 02/19/04
Posts: 1,459
Last seen: 11 years, 6 months
Re: republicans support john kerry?? [Re: Divided_Sky]
    #2950558 - 07/31/04 11:57 PM (19 years, 7 months ago)

You make some great points. I think the CATO Institute article was much more relevant than that anecdotal blather in the first article cited in this thread. Anyone can do a hit job. And plenty of people don't like Kerry on both sides of the coin. That is obviously no secret unless we play pretend.


--------------------
Tastes just like chicken

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