I hate to disparage the average Democrat because I truly believe that if they were to ever get both sides of the issues, at least 50% of them would become Republicans immediately. I believe that that's why Republicans are now ascendant: a lot of former Democrats have found alternate news sources and different points of view than the ones they have been subjected to from the MSM.
However, I also believe that there is one major difference between Democrats and Republicans: voting for your own self-interests or voting for the good of the country.
Look at the unions, for example. Most of the people in these blue-collar unions are Democrats. They're (relatively) hard-working people who have a lot in common with other blue-collar people on the Right.
When they vote, they seem to always vote on what's best for them, personally. Democrat candidates always promise them the world ( and rarely deliver) and the union pukes vote for them lockstep.
When my friends and I vote, we are always looking "long-term" at what's good for our children and our country 20 or 30 years from now. We realize things such as the fact that if we don't fix Social Security soon, our kids will be paying 70% of their income in taxes and that this country won't stand for that for long.
My mother is a lifelong Democrat who loves my daughter completely. She does, however, seem to have this blind spot when it comes to my daughter's future.
My mother votes Democrat because she's worried about her Social Security check. It doesn't matter how many time you explain to her that any of Bush's proposed changes won't affect her because she's already retired, it's as if she doesn't hear a word you say. She keeps up the same drumbeat of her taxes being raised or her benefits cut. And when you point out that it's always Democrats (i.e. Bill Clinton) who raise taxes on Social Security, she again tunes out. It's like she's deaf on this frequency.
In other words, she's fallen for the Democrat line of "Republicans starving the elderly" completely. It's no cooincidence that she gets her news from The Minneapolis Red Star Tribunal and C-BS news. If she got both sides of the story, I have no doubt that she'd do what was right in the interests of my daughter.
I could somewhat understand her fears if she was living on the edge of financial ruin as the Leftist media like to portray, but she and my step-father are living a pretty comfortable life. She manages to go shopping every day of her life. They're living a lot better than I am and I'm supposed to be a "rich Republican".
(To my step-father's credit, I happen to know that he's voted for Bush in the past two elections, though he's a bit embarrased by it. He is, after all, a product of the Minnesota "Iron Range". They've voted for Democrats up there since the state was founded.)
What it all boils down to is that these people, who think that they're still voting for the party of John Kennedy, have completely ignored his best sound bite: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country".
The shrinking percentage of Democrats who are not the raving Leftists but the regular people, are looking for the Government to do things for them, personally, right now.
The Republicans are looking to the future. For my child and my country.
- The Exile
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