Who are you voting for and why?, page 1

I'll be voting for McCain. The first role of any president is, IMO, to protect the citizens of the United States. To that end, I simply trust McCain far more than I do Barack Obama. I believe he'll do a much, much better job handling the current situations in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but is also much more capable than Obama of handling any future crisis that might arise, particularly given the state of the world today. I am also very concerned that Obama's proposed cuts in future weapons programs and in the US nuclear arsenal will leave the US very vulnerable in the future.

I also align much more closely with McCain on economic and fiscal policy. In the vast majority of circumstances, I do not believe in punishing the achievers in society or in wealth redistribution. Both have more negative consequences than positive ones. In other words, I support low taxation and small government. We have neither right now, IMO. Granted, neither party supports this in practice, but at least McCain and the Republicans are willing to run on this platform. Maybe one of these days, they'll get a clue and actually implement it. Obama and the Dems? That'll never happen. Most of them appear to be in favor of something close to full socialism and that's unacceptable to me. I believe that Obama's tax policies, particularly doubling (more or less) the capital gains tax, will have a disastrous effect on business activity in the US at a time when we're already mired in a mild recession.

Social issues? Again, I align very closely with the Republican party. I'm a major supporter of the 2nd amendment, in particular. The litmus test for me on social issues is their stance on the AWB. McCain has consistently opposed it, which is the position I take on the issue. Obama wasn't in the Senate to vote for it at the time, but his record, particularly proposals to ban all semi-automatics, leads me to believe he'd take it even further. I also agree with his stances on most other social issues, which tend to be on the political right, but not too far.

Finally, there's the fact that an Obama presidency means that all three branches will be controlled by Democrats. Not just any Dems, but Pelosi and Reid. That's a disaster waiting to happen. Obama would simply be signing off on their socialist agenda as it comes through Congress.

This is just the quick version. I could go into more detail and I have more reasons for supporting McCain, but in summary, I agree with about 75-80% of his platform compared to perhaps 10-15% of Obama's. Could I change my mind? Yes, if McCain does something particularly bad, but in that case, I'd vote for Bob Barr. I will not vote for Obama or Ralph Nader under any circumstances. I simply have too many disagreements with them.

EDIT: I knew I was forgetting something, but another major issue for me is energy policy. Again, I support McCain's policy of expanding domestic oil drilling and other domestic energy resources including nuclear energy. Given that we have the largest coal reserves in the world, his clean coal research subsidies make a lot of sense (while I disagree vehemently with social spending, I generally support gov't spending on research and infrastructure improvements; we're simply far more efficient at the latter). I also believe that its much, much more likely we'll move forward with developing our oil shale reserves under McCain than Obama where, again, we have the largest reserves in the world.

Incidentally, this is the one area where most of my agreements with Obama occur. While I prefer McCain's strategy of using proven coal, oil and nuclear technology to bridge the gap until something better is developed for the long term, Obama's proposals aren't bad at all for a mid-century strategy. I simply believe they're potentially lacking in the short/intermediate term of 10-20 years.

[edit on 6-8-2008 by vor78]