Republican

Oyster asks, over at YRHT why I support the party of big government.

Right now, gummint is pretty much out of control, and frankly that pisses me off. Our President should get a handle on that immediately, and some of the bonehead stuff on his domestic agenda has been making me crazy. Yeah, I know we are at war, and appropriations has to pay for our boys overseas, but dammit, we don't need things like No Child Left Behind, which is a topic for another post.

To answer the original question.

When I was a young lad, just turned eighteen, my Father took me down to the registar of voters to register to vote. The Democratic Party ran Louisiana in those days and (1971) and I knew that. However, when I actually filled out the form to register, the preprinted form had the block Democrat already checked. That block was checked in the same ink used to print the form. In short, the block was checked at the printers office. There were no other choices.

Shortly thereafter, I was in the service when Jimmy Carter destroyed the US military. I was a company grade officer and I watched as the morale and equipment of the strongest army in the world deteriorated to the point where we couldn't field a complete company of tanks. I also watched, from a military perspective, as he allowed US civilians to be held hostage by a tinpot fanatic.

Sometime thereafter, I switched my party affilation to Republican.

Then came the Reagan years, when I really didn't pay close attention to politics because I was raising a family and starting a career, but what I little I payed attention to, I liked. Strong military, plain speech, easy humor. Reagan made me feel good about myself and made me feel good about being an American. He called the Soviet Union an Evil Empire, and the Berlin wall crumbled through the force of his words.

I was a reservist when George Bush became President and stood with him during the First Gulf War. Years of planning and training made our reserve mobilization almost seamless. The stuff we had been doing at the reserve meetings worked! We defeated the third largest army in the world in just under four days of ground campaigning. We were invincible.

Then came Clinton and the party of inclusion. I watched as the military struggled to maintain the gains that we earned under Reagan and Bush. I listened to the President and his minions talk about their loathing for the military. Bill Clinton came to represent for me the worst of the Democratic Party. He embraced anyone who could futher his ambitions and his agenda. The Democratic Party lost focus, became an amalgamation of splinter groups, each with its own agenda; a tower of babel, if you will, all hawking their individual creeds. The Democratic Party ceased to exist for me as a viable alternative to the Republican Party.

I watched the 2000 campaign with renewed interest. The Democrats again seemed to continue the downward spiral. Al Gore said some things that I felt at the time were unbelievably stupid. He invented the internet, you know. I remembered the message traffic during Desert Storm, and was amazed that one computer at one post could talk to another computer at another army post and that we could communicate real-time, with things like lists of units and photographs of machinery and that we could speed up the planning process. This in 1990. I knew that Gore in 2000 was full of shit.

Then came GWB and the events of 9/11. Suddenly, we were at war. I had retired from the military in 1999 and watched as the President rallied a wounded nation. I was excited and relieved when he made plans to hit the bastards that hit us. From my experience with Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War, I was personally convinced that Saddam was a madman and was supporting terrorist activity. I was also convinced that he had biologicals and chemical weapons and I thought that Bush1 had made a mistake when we didn't follow through and go to Baghdad. We had his army on the ropes and nothing stood between us and the palaces. We could have taken him in three or four more days. I believe that deposing Saddam Hussein was the right move, just a bit overdue.

Then, came John Kerry and the 2004 election cycle. What a disgusting candidate. Vietnam vet that abandoned his unit after three engagements. Kerry reprented for me all that was wrong with Viet Nam and the way we ran that war. During Kerry's early years after Viet Nam, he allied with Jane Fonda, who in my mind is a traitor. Kerry communicated with the North Vietnamese government at least once during a time when US servicemen were in the field. He still hasn't released his military records, after pledging to do so. Kerry has something to hide, and until we know what it is, we can't trust him.

Yeah, some of the bonehead things GWB is doing on the domestic agenda are disturbing. But, many of the things he is doing on the international front excite me. There are democracies in the Middle East where there have never been before. We are killing terrorists every day, which pleases me. Syria is out of Lebanon. The Iraqi people have a real shot at governing themselves and the Afghans are paving the way for Arab democracy.

Yeah, Bush pisses me off, but that is okay too. He and I are a lot alike. I generally piss someone off daily. I know what he stands for.

I don't know what the Democrats stand for. Mainly, they've been running against the Republicans. If a Democrat wants my support, he (or she) will quit running against Bush and begin laying out plans for securing our borders, downsizing government, and continuing the War on Terror. Just as important, that candidate will have to have solid planks on reducing the budget through downsizing government, on abortion, on gay marriage, and affirmative action.

Enough for now. Did I answer the question?