It is funny, in a way, how people view politics. For most it is like any professional sport, they choose a team at some point in their life, based on some illogical rationale, such as the color of their uniforms, a family member who roots for them, or maybe it was the only team on TV consistently, and they become loyal to that team in some radically religious way.
The same occurs in the political world. People choose to associate with a political Party at some point in their life, sometimes for good reasons, other times for some illogical rationale, such as a family member or friend associates themselves with a particular Party, or maybe at the time of political maturity, a smooth talking politician catches their eye, and the person decides to associate with said politician’s Party simply because of the politicians personality traits. This individual will remain loyal to this Party, as the individual remains loyal to his favorite sports team, no matter if the Party does wrong, or if the Party ideology changes etc.
This point is made clearer when we view the current state of affairs and the partisanship of the past 10 years or so.
If we look at the major policy implemented by the Bush Administration what we see are two wars, massive increases in health care entitlements (Medicare Prescription Drug plan etc.), large budget deficits ($300 billion), bailouts, stimulus packages, civil liberties violations (through the Patriot Act detaining individuals without trial, etc.,), and abuses of executive power. During Bush’s eight years, Democrats despised him and pointed to this list above as their reason. Republican’s defended Bush for these policies.
Now in two years under President Obama’s administration, we have seen the continuation of both wars and the escalation of one, a third new one in Libya (and also with huge increases in drone missile attacks in Pakistan, Yemen etc.); a massive unaffordable increase to health care entitlements; budget deficits 4 or 5 times larger ($1.5 trillion and growing) than Bush’s previous record deficits; a bailout of biblical proportions; a stimulus bill that would make FDR blush; worsening civil liberties violations (continuing to support the Patriot Act, detaining prisoners without trial, refusing to shut down Guantanamo Bay, and defending assassinations of American civilians, etc.), and continued abuses of executive power seen under the Bush administration. The Obama Administration is simply the Bush administration on steroids, and yet the Democrats support him, and the Republicans do not.
This is partisan politics at its best. Did the Democrats rethink everything they believed? Do they now think Bush was an excellent President who just didn’t go far enough? Maybe the Republicans did the same? All very unlikely. The Democrats now support the Bush Administration on steroids (Obama) because he has a ‘D’ next to his name. They support him due to some emotional tie to their favorite Party, the Democrats. The Republicans despise Obama, not for any serious policy reasons (or maybe they are serious now, but just forgot about them during the Bush years), but because of that same ‘D’ next to his name. The Republicans are against him because he is the opponent of their associated Party.
If Democrats were consistent with their supposed principles they would be praising both Bush and Obama, and if the Republicans were consistent with their supposed principles they would be disgusted by both Bush and Obama. (For full disclosure, I fall into the latter group. The Bush administration was a disaster, and the Obama Administration appears to be on its way to being a calamity of unthinkable proportions.)
All this being said, it is not necessarily a bad thing to associate with any one particular Party, it only becomes so when that association is based on blind loyalty, or illogical reasons. Partisanship is an evil that must be fixed. Politics is not a game; it dramatically affects the lives of not only Americans but of individuals worldwide. People need to take notice of their hypocrisy, and begin to re-think their loyalties, preferably away from a Party and towards the idea of Freedom. Begin by asking yourself when the last time was that you refused to vote for you Party’s candidate and instead chose not to vote for the lesser evil, voted for a 3rd Party, wrote in a candidate, or refused to vote altogether, if this is a common occurrence than you are likely not part of the problem. If you can’t remember the last time, than you are more than certainly the problem.
