I Want to Vote Republican

I grew up in a pretty liberal household. My first entrance into political thought came as a Socialist. I felt that everyone should get equal benefits because we all share space on this rock. Once I went off to college to study political science, it only took me about two freshman level classes to realize that Socialism is a pretty shitty governance system for any country with over 30,000 people. This began my trek away from my liberal roots. I began to reconsider every political stance I had over the next four years and eventually found my way towards America's center.

The Democrats had lost me as almost all of them ran the same election: "We made Medicare and Social Security! We'll never cut them because we are the true protectors of America's Seniors! (and coincidentally, the largest voting demographic!)" and "We're less crazy than the other guy!" The Democratic party is better at feigning interest in every day people even as they take majority of their money from the insurance and financial industries that are screwing the rest of us over. I would like to join another serious political party but sadly we don't have one. This is a real shame because the core argument of the Republican party is a very good one.

As Thomas Friedman likes to say, we've gone from a connected to a hyper-connected world. New information and innovation changes the world at astronomical rates and we need to have an efficient government that can adapt just as fast. The problem is that government is not very efficient by its design. It is supposed to utilize a large amount of resources in order to function and that takes time. We need to rethink the way that our government works because the founding fathers did not design the constitution for anything remotely resembling the world we live in today.

This restructuring should revolve around one basic premise: that the size and scope of the federal government be small. Large, bureaucratic institutions bog down the decision making process and crowd out private institutions that have spent more time targeting an unseen angle in the market. We cannot afford to fall behind because of government overreach in this new world where time is the most valuable resource. So Republicans, please, please come back from the brink and coherently make this argument!

The current Republican Party makes a lot of noise about smaller government but in reality, they just want smaller government in the areas they don't care about. Military spending? Oh no, we can't afford to make ANY cuts to our military, that's treasonous. We need to spend every last dollar we have to make sure that the terrorists don't win, efficiency be damned.

The GOP asserts that they are the adults in the room because they are willing to cut every government program not associated with the military, Social Security, or Medicare (to be fair, Paul Ryan did create a plan to deal with all three, it's just a shitty plan). Oh joy, I'm sure we can find a solution to our mountain of debt by paring down 27% of our budget.

Personal liberty? The GOP screams that there is nothing more important and that any step to regulate what we do in our personal lives is akin to tyranny; that is, unless you are gay. Then the federal government should have total control over where you can stick your pecker. Their basic premise is right. The federal government should not be able to regulate much in our day to day lives, but the Republicans bastardize this argument by attaching qualifiers that exempt groups they do not like from this policy.

Taxes? Their standard argument is "Zero. End of discussion. Anything else you say is stupid. Shut up. We're not talking about this. Zero. You hear me? ZERO TAXES. Especially for the rich because...well...um...CAPITALISM DUMMY!! We give the rich money and then they build a Capitalist utopia for the rest of us. The only reason you would doubt my logic is if you were a bloodthirsty Socialist. You wanna go join Chairman Mao, Joseph Stalin, and our Kenyan, Muslim President in that line?"

If you question this argument with empirical data about how some tax cuts can end up costing us money, they laugh at you as if you just said that Ronald Reagan wasn't the second coming of Jesus.

The GOP's tax policy is so rigid you would think it was sponsored by Viagra. Lower taxes should be the goal but not the standard remedy to all financial situations. Should taxes have been near-zero during World War II? How would we have paid for all those weapons? There's nuance in every argument and the current conditions should dictate policy, not rigid ideology. Sadly the Republican party refuses to adopt this argument because it would actually require original thought and it's much easier to list your talking points on a postage stamp.

This study should alarm any free-thinking conservative (when I say free-thinking, I mean those that don't watch Fox News and actually form their own opinions as opposed to letting Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity form opinions for them). It established a correlation between stupidity and conservative thought. Now, this does not mean that every conservative has the mental capacity of Lindsay Lohan. I have met many brilliant conservatives in my brief time on this planet. It does show however, that there is something within the conservative ideology that attracts ignorant fools. The study shows that people with low IQ's are more apt to develop insular and bigoted thinking which is reflected in a handful of Republican policies like the draconian immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama (with the latter costing the state $11 billion annually, a pretty stupid law if you ask me).

However, I do not think that this study comes as a surprise to the elites who run the GOP. The central strategy of almost every Republican campaign since the turn of the century has been centered around fear. For the majority of the aughts the GOP made political capital exploiting 9/11. Once the most moderate Kenyan Socialist ever stepped into the White House, the GOP started wailing that Obamacare was coming to kill grandma.

Fear is easy to campaign on. It's a basic instinct that every human can relate to. Those who think more in absolutes and less in shades of gray (ie: stupid people) are more prone to accept these fear-based arguments because they are simple to process and fit within a narrow worldview. The GOP's election strategy has been centered around targeting those with narrow worldviews who are easily frightened by change and it has been very successful. The problem that the GOP elites are beginning to realize is that when you tie your brand to a bunch of crazy people, sometimes they'll try to elect this guy as the standard bearer of your party.

There are very good arguments inside Republican philosophy. A smaller government allows it to be more nimble and agile to changing conditions on the ground. Personal liberty is the enduring ideal of this country and it should be protected at all costs. Lower taxes give the true driver of efficiency in this country, the private sector, more capital to work with and thus more opportunities to create innovative products that will change the course of history. If America wants to be competitive in the 21st century, it must embrace many of these core Republican ideals.

I want a Republican Party that will attack government corruption at all turns. I want a party that will combat the Democrats' assertion that the answer is always more government programs without instituting big government ideals of their own. I want a party that will understand the nuances of Capitalism while still creating policies that harness its raw power. I want a party that preaches tolerance by making the argument that it's none of the government's damn business what I do on my own time just so long as it isn't harmful to anyone else.

Ultimately, I want a party that understands that we live in a complex world and that we need pragmatic and creative solutions to our problems. I reject the Democratic principle that more government can always help but I refuse to join the rigid extremists that have taken over the Republican party. My only hope to find a party that coalesces around my ideals is for the Republican party to grow up overnight. Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath.