I Want To Vote Republican

I want to vote Republican.  That is, I want to be able to.

I believe in free markets.  I believe in less government intrusion.  I believe in lower taxes for myself, and not putting too much of a tax strain on the wealthy.  I could vote Republican, couldn't I?

Unfortunately, no.  Because I, with my Libertarian leanings, am in the center, and that makes me a radical, pinko, left-wing communist.

Used to be that I could find at least a few Republicans who were pro-choice.  Maybe once in awhile, I'd find one that supported labor.  I might even find one that thought the whole gay marriage thing was just one big distraction from more important things.  But no.  With Schwartzenegger gone, the last Republican in the center went the way of the Dodo.

Of course, the way to fix this is to always vote Democrat until somebody on the Right decides to join the rest of us common-sense folk out here in the land of reason and science.  But this has been a long time in coming.  We centrists might feel compelled to vote for someone on the Left who stinks on ice, just to make sure we get a few more rational people on the other side, but fortunately, we don't have to do that.  We have what should be a shoo-in with Obama, who inherited a mess and cleaned it up pretty damned well, all things considered. Instead, it's actually looking like a fight.  Against a holy-underwear-wearing fool whose own party says is a two-faced liar.

I can finally ascribe a name to this, and maybe in my arrogance, I believe history will agree with me on the title. The era we live in today is the Great Ideological Holocaust -- an age where ideas, not people, are arrested and thrown into concentration camps by right-wing radicals.

Where are you, Paul Tsongas?  Where are you, Lamarr Alexander?  Where did everybody in the Republican center go? Please, come back! Don't leave us here, stuck with nothing but Ron Paul!

On second thought, never mind.  I found someone who is Republican, but in the center.  His name is Barack Obama.

And he's a pinko commie just like me.

Eric