Month: February 2016

Today I Will Vote For Marco Rubio In The Republican Party Primary

Today I am going to early vote. I’ve decided to vote in the Republican Party primary. (Texas is an open primary state.) I have decided to vote in that party’s primary because I do not want to see a continuation of the Obama Presidency, which is what I see with both of the major Democratic candidates. (I’ve outlined my critique of Obama here: http://deancook.net/2016/02/20/the-obama-presidency-a-postmortem/)

I have looked at the three most likely Republican candidates at this point, and tried to seriously weigh the pros and cons of each one. These three candidates are: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.

I have decided to vote for Marco Rubio because I think his views are the “least bad”. I don’t consider any of the Presidential candidates of either major party to be ideal, but if I am going to vote at all, I have to operate within the realm of these choices and not some other candidate who doesn’t exist at this time.

I generally consider my political views to be so far outside the mainstream of American thought that voting is always a “lesser of two evils” approach for me. I also think there could be good reasons to vote Democratic, depending on your particular personal context. I think this is particularly true for women. If I were a woman, I’d probably vote Democratic on the abortion issue alone. I am very “pro-choice”, but since I am not female, that issue is just not as “visceral” or “personal” for me. I think it could be a very important issue for a woman who thinks that she has a right to live her own life and make her own choices free from governmental interference.

I’ve also seen a lot of infighting between different Republicans over their particular preference for the Republican Party nominee, and I hope that this will not step on too many toes. Just like I could see good reasons for voting Democratic for certain people in certain contexts, I think it is possible that one could have a knowledge context or background that would make Trump or Cruz appealing for very personal, and not necessarily irrational, reasons. At the end of the day, I am not prepared to say that my voting choice is the best choice for everyone because I am not omniscient, and there may be facts that I am unaware of. I’ve just tried to make the best choice I could make given my knowledge and context. This is my best attempt to reason it all out.

Donald Trump:

Pros:

(1) A certain “emotional appeal” with statements like “Make America Great Again”.

(2) He is willing to discuss “uncomfortable issues” like race relations and Islamic Terrorism and refuses to be “politically correct” about it. (By “politically correct” I mean speaking in euphemistic terms on those issues, to pretend like the problem isn’t there, or to fear offending people when addressing the facts associated with the problem.)

Cons:

(1) He seems to lack any clear, express, guiding political principles. Trump seems to operate on an emotional level, and I worry that his emotions could change for the worse later down the road -without any rhyme or reason for why they have changed.

(2) Trump seems to support some of the same things that Bernie Sanders wants. For instance, Trump seems to support single-payer socialized medicine.

Ted Cruz:

Pros:

(1) Strong knowledge of the Constitution. Although I don’t agree with all aspects of his “originalist jurisprudence”, he would bring forth thought-provoking and challenging ideas when it comes to nominating judges for the Federal courts.

(2) His foreign policy seems to strike the right “balance”, in my mind, between being assertive in the use of military force to defend American interests while not becoming “the world’s policeman” or attempting to “right every wrong” out there. (This article seemed to set out the different Republican approaches on foreign policy in this election: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/05/rubio-vs-paul-vs-cruz-on-foreign-policy )

Cons:

(1) He is everything I hate about the Republican party -and I think he really believes it. He wants to erode the separation of church and state. In fact, I am fairly certain he thinks the very idea of “separation of church and state” is offensive. He is anti-abortion rights for women. Although they all claim to be “pro-life”, I suspect that of the three listed here, Cruz is the most opposed to respecting a woman’s right to make her own decisions when it comes to ending a pregnancy.

Marco Rubio:

Pros:

(1) He seems to be very thoughtful on many issues. I watched a Republican Party debate between Rubio and Cruz on foreign policy, and, although I tended to side with Cruz, I thought Rubio had well-thought-out positions on these issues.

(2) Immigration reform. Although I’ve heard compelling arguments from people that I respect on why immigration should be greatly restricted, at the end of the day, I think there probably is some sort of right to immigrate into the country consistent with the government ensuring that those coming in are not here to commit acts of war against the United States or its citizens. I too am concerned that people immigrating into the United States will want to make this nation less capitalistic and less free than it already is -and I don’t just mean property rights. Have any of you Democrats thought about what happens when mostly Catholic immigrants start voting to restrict abortion and birth control rights? Also, last time I checked, the Pope is opposed to gay marriage. However, I think there are ways to mitigate this “cultural dilution”. For instance we can allow automatic legal permanent residency, but not automatic citizenship. (This seems to be Rubio’s plan. https://marcorubio.com/issues-2/marco-rubio-immigration-plan-border-security-legal/) This will restrict the vote to native-born Americans, and hopefully, the children of immigrants will be more culturally assimilated than their parents. I also think that Hispanic immigrants can be reached and convinced that free markets and a government reduced to the protection of life, liberty, and property is best. All human beings have the capacity to think -so they can be reached. My, admittedly anecdotal, experience is that immigrants are very interested in working hard and making money -not on imposing international socialism on the United States.

(3) Rubio seems less strident on issues like abortion. He says he is “pro-life”, and I take him at his word, but I also don’t get the impression that it is going to be a major issue for him, whereas I think Ted Cruz would push that issue as President.

Cons:

(1) He seems like more of a conventional politician. I think he is more interested in getting elected than he is in pushing any particular ideology. However, given the fact that I think much of Ted Cruz’s ideology is wrong, I guess I’d rather have someone who is more “middle of the road” or “pragmatic” like Rubio.

The Obama Presidency: A Postmortem

I consider the two serious candidates in the 2016 Democratic Presidential primary to be unpalatable. I think that both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would be a continuation of Barack Obama’s Presidency, and I have become disgusted by Mr. Obama. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I considered him to be the “lesser of two evils” at the time.

Obama’s claim that he would be a “post-racial” President also made me hopeful. At the time, I thought Obama’s “More Perfect Union” speech struck just the right balance, and frankly discussed the complications associated with race. In the speech, Obama defended his decision to continue attendance at a church where the pastor had made racist and narrow-minded comments. The basic theme of Obama’s speech on that occasion was that there may be people we care about who hold racist views, but you don’t necessarily have to disown those people because a person’s views on race is not the end-all-be-all when it comes to judging a person’s character:

“ I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_More_Perfect_Union_%28speech%29

Despite Obama’s optimistic tone in 2008, by 2013, I think Obama had abandoned any pretense of being a “post-racial” President. The event that solidified this in my mind was the George Zimmerman criminal case. I’m not going to go over the specifics of that case, or try to “re-litigate” that issue. I think the jury reached the right verdict in that trial. I studied the facts, and it was clear to me that there was reasonable doubt as to George Zimmerman’s guilt. However, for most of 2012 and 2013, I had to listen to the news media do it’s best to convict Mr. Zimmerman in the court of public opinion.

Mr. Obama, the President of the United States, chose to inject himself into a purely local matter of criminal law. (http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/23/president-obama-statement-on-trayvon-martin-case/) He aided and abetted the news media in doing its best to ensure that George Zimmerman wouldn’t get a fair trial. The fact that Obama did that, regardless of his actual comments on the matter, spoke volumes to me. It said to me that far from wanting a “post-racial society”, where race doesn’t matter, he wanted to play the usual Democratic game of whipping up racial animosity within the black community to garner political support. This game consists of convincing black people that most white Americans are racist in order to get votes.

Race relations under Obama only got worse from the George Zimmerman trial. Next there was the unrest in Ferguson Missouri. In that case, the facts are also fairly clear to me: Officer Darren Wilson acted within the law and generally accepted notions of self-defense when he shot Michael Brown. Despite this, the Obama Justice Department conducted an investigation into the shooting, once again showing me that he was prepared to inject himself into a purely local matter. If a black police officer had shot a white man under similar circumstances, I have no doubt that Obama’s administration would not have concerned itself with it. The message from the Obama administration has been clear: he believes most cops, judges, juries and prosecutors are racist, and the Justice Department must step in to right that “wrong”. Since cops, judges, and juries are all drawn from the general population of America, it means Obama believes most white Americans are racist. Obama believes what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, believes. He was lying when he talked about a “post racial America” where we can finally move beyond this issue.

There are a lot of other reasons that I have become disgusted with Obama. The Affordable Care Act involved another lie. I specifically remember a debate between Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary in which Obama said he was not in favor of an individual mandate for health insurance:

“OBAMA:…So we’ve got a lot of similarities in our plan. We’ve got a philosophical difference, which we’ve debated repeatedly, and that is that Senator Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it.” http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/21/debate.transcript/index.html

What did we get? An individual mandate to buy health insurance.

Obama says the Bush Administration was mistaken to invade Iraq because it created a power vacuum in that area that gave rise to ISIS. Regardless of whether this is true, what has Obama done? He used military force to topple the Gaddafi regime in Lybia, which has now been infiltrated by ISIS. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/fighter-jets-target-libya-s-sabratha-40-killed-official-n521506

By virtue of the fact that Barack Obama was our nation’s first black President, his policies on race relations were probably always going to take center stage. His initial promise was that he would move us beyond racial animosity and strife, but instead he has fanned the flames of racial tension with his actions and words. Instead of saying: “I am the President, and I stand for the rights of all Americans regardless of color,” his actions have been otherwise. Obama has shown us that he is more in the “political camp” of Al Sharpton: someone who wants to use the animosities against white Americans that exist in minority communities to advance his own political power. Even on other major issues that don’t involve race, he has consistently said one thing, and then done another.