What made you decide which political party to align yourself with?

The fact that my whole family is Republican and at the time I registered to vote there were no running Democrats that I liked.

I'm truly a libertarian by nature. However, in between primaries I usually change my party affiliation to match whoever I like at the time so that I can vote for them in the primary. Its a pain, but so be it. My mom is a straight democrat---which i think is stupid cause she does not even bother to find where people stand on issues.... it's just, "Republicans are heartless and do not care about people". The other side of my family is "Democrats wants good programs, but we can't afford them."

I'm of the persuasion of "leave me/everyone else alone to live our lives" lol

Registered as "unaffiliated" years ago because I was sick of partisan politics. Prior to that I was a registered democrat.

CeCe wrote:

Registered as "unaffiliated" years ago because I was sick of partisan politics. Prior to that I was a registered democrat.

When I used to write to my elected politicians (notice I do NOT say elected leaders) I couldn't tell the Repugnican Senator from the Democrat - both Southern Good-ol-boys.

In fact it was Connie Mack (R) who defended 2 Live Crew's civil rights not to be arrested for performing "Nasty As They Wanna Be" whereas Bob Graham (D) went with the mainstream sentiment. (Luther Campbell won the case in court).

My parents, and most of my family were democrats, so I simply fell in line. As I got older, I was able to critique the parties for myself, and decided to remain.

Here in Canada we don't register by party, in fact it costs usually about 5 bucks to actually join a party. However I have voted for all three major parties, today I vote only NDP (new democrat party) or Liberal(only federally) because the Conservatives have gone totally right wing. Provincially I will be voting NDP since the Liberals have become more right wing than the Conservatives and are destroying BC, for personal rewards by the right wing Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Suzi wrote:

the Liberals have become more right wing than the Conservatives and are destroying BC

Damn! When the lefts act more like rights, who can the people turn to for lefts? lol

I had an interesting book years ago that talked about the "left" & "right" spectrum. It said that we had it all wrong. That the extreme right, was anarchy, then just to the left was true democracy, then a little more the the left was the democratic republic established by the constitution. The extreme left was totalitarian government (regardless of conservative/liberal, the more legislation we have the more to the left we move--- moving towards a totalitarian government). Twas an interesting theory.

Marc™ wrote:

What made you decide which political party to align yourself with?

Because of the alternative.

Since I wanted to actually belong to a party that is more than just an unseen political statement, it was either the Crats or the GOP. I didn't agree with much of anything the Crats actually did, so I chose GOP.

Grew up a Democrat and further examining all parties as an adult, I will stay that way.

Marc™ wrote:

What made you decide which political party to align yourself with?

I've never aligned myself to a political party, nor am I likely to in the future. I'm against the whole "party" system in the first place, particularly the two-party monopoly that has had a stranglehold on American politics throughout my lifetime. I believe in individuals voting for individuals, not "parties" that cater to special interests only so that the members can further their own political ambitions. It's disgusting and I refuse to participate in it! That's why I'm registered as an Independent voter. A lot of people will just go into a voting booth and vote for every republican over every democrat (or vice-versa) without knowing anything about the candidates themselves. They will simply vote because of party affiliation which is just as ignorant as not voting at all. After some diligence and doing RESEARCH, I will vote for the candidate that feels is most qualified, has the most credibility, seems the most trustworthy and ultimately makes the most sense.

Having said that, the policies and positions of most candidates of the Democratic party generally seem to fall in line with my beliefs much more than anyone in the Republican party, and because of that it is more likely for me to vote Democrat than Republican (but that's not a sure bet either). With regard to the upcoming Presidential election, right now, there is a 100% chance of me voting for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney for only about a dozen reasons.

1) I'm part of the 99% (who makes less than 100k a year) and despite Mitt Romney's ignorance I still fall into the "middle class". I make over 60K a year, but he thinks that 250k somehow represents "middle income" because he's an out of touch multi-millionaire.

2) I'm part of the 47% that he thinks as President of the US (who represents all Americans) that it's his job to "not worry about". Why am I part of the 47%? Because I'm active duty military who sometimes serves overseas (which means that I don't always pay income tax). It also means that I feel "entitled" to healthcare, food and housing (as any human being should, but especially someone who serves their country)

3) Mitt Romney believes that as a citizen I am of lesser value or consideration than other citizens. He thinks that as President, it's his job to instate federal laws that inhibit the individual rights of minorities. Even though as a republican he claims that states should regulate themselves, when it comes to issues that anger their constituents like "gay marraige", all of a sudden it's the federal government's job to regulate states.

4) Mitt Romney has no concept of foreign policy whatsoever. He thinks that the Soviet Union still exists and that we should have boots on the ground in Libya (fighting another war). Yet despite how much further that would increase the federal deficit and debt, he claims that he can cut spending. In other words, he'd cut spending by gutting social programs like education and medicare that my parents depend on.

5) Mitt Romney thinks that we can reduce the deficit by cutting taxes on millionaires and billionaires. Because we all know how great that idea has worked so well over the past 8 years! Obama on the other hand wants to raise revenue by increasing taxes on the wealthy (like Clinton did when we had a budget surplus).

I could go on with this but it would take too much time and space. Suffice it to say, the only people who are not in the top 1% who are actually dumb enough to vote for Romney, are the ones that are guided by fundamentalist social views based on the suppression of individual rights, the ones who are similarly ignorant on foreign policy and the ones who vote for any candidate that just happens to be on the republican ticket. The more educated folks in our country (and this is actually statistically proven) will vote for Obama.

I'm a registered Democrat and have no interest in changing it.