Reply #189: not a Rep

[fearsomepirate]

I'm not a Rep. Okay, I guess I registered as one when I was 18, but I think the party basically sucks. I'd probably vote libertarian except that a) it's throwing away your vote, and b) legalizing crack sounds like a bad idea. I voted for Forbes in the first primary, FWIW (he was out of the running by the time the 2nd one happened in my state).

If you think the Republican party is beholden to fundies, then you must not know a lot of fundies. Most fundies view George Bush as a heathen imposter. And what about Arnie and Andrew Sullivan? Sure, Christians are more or less glad their president is a Christian rather than, say, a Confucionist. But then, atheists tend to be glad when an atheist is president, so what's the big deal?

From the inside, the Republican party looks like a big amorphous blob that has more of a platform than the Democrats, but lacks the balls to actually do a whole lot other than create bureaucracies, spend prodigal amounts of money, and enact new entitlements. It's hardly this vast conspiracy of evil. I consider it a miracle that W lowered taxes at all, let alone made any sort of dent in the way they're actually administered (as I am in the very, very bottom tax bracket and on a career path to never rise above lower-middlish middle class, you can't castigate me as immoral for thinking the top tax brackets are too high).

Like I said, we have intelligent opinions. Try actually <i>reading</i> National Review sometime. The fact is, the Borks and WFBs of the world are serious intellectual heavyweights, and to dismiss them as holding the opinions of madmen is to only make your own position look untenable.