Why I'm Voting Republican

I (Steve) have never been a member of any political party, and I don't ever intend to join one. Why? Mainly because I have at times felt compelled to either preach or write on political issues, and I don't want to be accused of being partisan.

Having said that, however, I must confess that I have not voted for a single Democrat since 1994. There were three offices up for grabs on the Kentucky ballot that year. If you remember, that was the year of the Contract with America, which swept the Republicans back into control of the House and Senate. I voted for the Democrat for two of the three offices. The reason was that these Democrats were pro life, as were the Republicans, but the Dems seemed to understand better the nuances of other current issues, so I trusted them to make better-informed, wiser decisions.

Fast forward sixteen years. Though an independent, I have not voted for a single Democrat since that fateful mid-term election. Some would say I am a Republican dressed up in Independent's clothing. Some would say, "A rose by any other name...."

I don't see it that way. As it has turned out, every election since 1994 has been an easy choice for me. In the places I have been registered, each election has offered the option between a pro-abortion Democrat and a pro-life Republican. For me the choice has had nothing to do with whether the candidate has a D or an R next to his or her name, and everything to do with their stand on abortion. I have been called a single-issue voter. I find that term offensive. It is, I believe, an attempt to marginalize folks who have strong convictions on the abortion issue.

Almost anyone has minimum standards for who they'd vote for. Would you vote for an avowed racist? A member of the North American Man-Boy Love Association? You wouldn't? But doesn't that make you a single-issue voter? Of course not. Even if you agreed with a racist or pedophile on most other issues, you would vote for someone else because you find their stand on that one issue to be so repugnant. These are qualifying issues. To qualify for my vote, one must affirm what I'm convinced that everyone really knows, but many refuse to admit: that a baby in the womb is a real human being, created in the image of God, and deserving of legal protection. My arguments against abortion, very briefly, boil down to the indisputable biological facts concerning fetal develpment. You can't treat these facts seriously and conclude that the fetus is not a person. If it is a person, then anyone reasonable person will agree that it's wrong to take an innocent human life. In my judgment, a candidate must affirm this to be qualified for public office. For the past sixteen years all the ones who have done so happened to be Republicans; all those who have failed to qualify have been Democrats.

Of course, there are other very important issues. It's my observation that both parties have been completely out of touch with the American people. When the Republicans were in office, we went to war on a false pretense and the economy tanked due to irresponsible policies. One of these was constantly claiming to be for smaller government and fiscal restraint while habitually passing federal budgets with so much pork and waste that it boggles the mind of anyone who's not a politician. So the people ousted them.

Then the Democrats took over. My observation is that the people gave them a very limited mandate: fix the economy. Then we can talk. But the Democrats failed to fix the economy and tried to implement a radical liberal agenda that the people didn't want. This included trampling on states' rights, record deficits due to government-run-amok (which our children will have to pay back), gay marriage, self-affirming, practicing homosexuals in the military (no one is saying that gays can't serve; only that they stay out of their fellow solders' faces with it), tax-payer funding of abortion-on-demand, and government takeover of private industry (also known as socialism).

The latest polls are predicting that the GOP will take control of the House, and shrink the Dems' majority in the Senate to 52-48.* I'll be faxing in my vote to help make that happen, trusting that the GOP learned its lesson in 2008.

What will you do? Leave a comment!


*Independent senators are counted with the party with whom they tend to lean.