Turning it around: Reasons to vote FOR Bush?

talk
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I constantly hear the drone of the media: are you voting for Kerry, or against Bush? It’s frustrating. Everyone tries to make these false dichotomies. Can’t I be voting both for Kerry and against Bush at the same time? If you answer ‘against Bush’ you are pegged as a hater and your opinion is degraded. If you answer ‘for Kerry’, you are expected to provide a synopsis of his policies and defend each one.

So, time to turn the table around. I have never once seen these polls bothering Bush voters as to their intentions. And darnit, I’m curious. Frankely, I can’t see how Bush could run on his record, because it’s atrocious. Over 70% of his ads are negative, so his voters must be voting against something, right? Is it liberalism, or fear, or Hollywood? What?

Anyone out there planning on casting a vote for Bush? If so, why?

I’m not going to tear you down. I’m just interested in a compelling case FOR Bush, because I just don’t see one.

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If I were old enough to vote, I would definitely vote for Bush. This isn’t necessarily because I agree with everything he does or stand the same on all off the issues, but merely because I agree with him on more issuses than Kerry.

What I’m talking about here isn’t just about the war on terror, but on economic issues as well. I don’t think that people who make more money should have to pay a higher percentage of taxes than others. It’s simply not fair. They should pay a higher $ amount, but everyone should pay the same percentage of what they earn. I wouldn’t care if it was a tax raise for everyone to make it fair, but why should the “rich” be expected to pay a higher amount than everyone else?

Also, I don’t think that the government should be responsible for being a charity with Social Security, Welfare, Medicaid, etc. Their sole job should be protecting the country, upholding the ideals of the Constitution, running an effective legislative body, and educating young people. The rest is what charities are for. Right now, as I see it, the government is forcing people to donate to charities with their tax money. I think a more effective way to do this would be to cut taxes (along with all of those other government programs), and then let people decide if and to which charities they want to donate their hard earned money.

I also stand with Bush on the War on Terror, along with going into Iraq. I think that in the long run, this will make the world a better place for everyone. Also, I don’t think that Gore or Kerry would have had the guts to retaliate for September 11th. I feel that they would have continued in Clinton’s footsteps and not done anything to protect our country.

Also, I am against abortion.

For all of these important reasons, along with others, I would be compelled to vote for Bush. I’m not afraid of liberalism, rather I don’t believe in most of its ideals (of the ones that are different from American conservatism).

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I’ll more than likely be voting for Bush or Nader, and Yeldarb summarized it up nicely. The economy is doing extremely well also. Besides, I don’t see any real reason for voting for Kerry. His programs are simply extensions of what the current adminstration wants to do. Also, Kerry strikes me as anti-free trade and anti-outsourcing…2 big no-no’s for me :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t believe in handouts, and unless the current education system, welfare system, etc. is reformed, I will be hard pressed to vote for any candidate who wants to increase taxes in order to spend more on those issues. The money is already there. It just needs to be handled efficiently. I read an article where 12% of state education budgets are not going for educational uses! 12% of the hundreds of billions the gov’t (state and federal) spends on education is a lot of money!

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ok, so the problem with this thread is that no one can comment on those reasons because that is not the subject of the thread…
Anyhow… and to hell with it (and hello gp…). I’m French, so people are going to assume that I don’t know how Americans think, blablabla.

The tax issue.
Bill Gates makes (lets say, even though I’m really far off…) $12 million/year. He gives 10% to the IRS (that’s to make calculations easier). In the end, he still has $10.8 million/year. That’s way enough to live easily and not really look at your purse all the time.
John Doe on the other hand, works 10h/day, 25 days per month (and that’s a lot) at the prorata of $5/h. He makes 502512 = $15k/year. He also gives 10%. He’s left with 13.5k/year, right? Do you know how hard it is to live with 13k a year? Oh yeah, not THAT hard, but he’s definitely going to have to make serious choices as to what to buy, etc. Whereas Bill Gates could be giving 15% and still be ridiculously well off.

Maybe it’s not fair to give a higher % to the IRS, but it’s even less fair to be poor… don’t you think?

[edit]I’m happy to pay high taxes. I’m well off (well enough anyhow), I have money, enough to eat, have a roof over my head, go to the movies and to restaurants, buy new shoes once in a while, etc. When I pay taxes, I know some of it will go to the ones who need it (or the government buys 59 new war planes…but I don’t like thinking about THAT…) and I’m helping make some lives better. And that makes my day every time I grind my teeth when I drop the check in the mail.[/edit-let’s dance now]

Social Security, Welfare, etc.
please tell me your family is well off… I KNOW most Americans value hard work as the main means to get by in life, but you’d have to be seriously blind if you thought that everyone has the same chances at birth. The poorer ones NEED more help than the well-off people, that’s the only way to close the gap between the rich and the poor (gap exponentially growing btw…). I also know that Americans often view Welfare as the “lazy” option… yeah, we’ve all heard stories of people living off of society, etc, etc. But you’d also have to be blind to think Welfare is just the ticket to lazyness till the end of time, there would be so many more people on welfare if that was the case…
And, if you had to count on charities to help the poorest, lol, each family would get, mmh, 1/2 a buck a month?

The War on Terror
Nooo! I’m kidding, I’m not even going to get into there… :slight_smile:

Abortion
See comment above (along with a nice thread somewhere in the ordered forum…)

Now, with that said, power to you my young friend, I’m just happy you’re not old enough to vote :slight_smile: (and this is in NO WAY a form of personnal attack, it’s just one vote less for Bush… )

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That’s why I’m against a flat tax pomme. Carves a lonely notch in the column where Pomme and I agree on something :stuck_out_tongue:

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How come when the economy was doing poor and I brought it up, I was contiuously told that “the economy has very little to do with who’s in power.”

I agree, and this is what I never understand, consevatives consistantly bring up complaints about the Social Safety Net (or programs designed to help those less fortunate people), as if if we got rid of these things then the country would be doing better. Let me bring you back to the 19th Century. The setting is England; child labour is common, the gaps between rich and poor are staggering, and workers have very little to no rights. In one English textile town, the average life expectancy is 23 years! And along comes a group of people who had been following Adam Smith’s theory of a free market economy. They are called the Reform Liberals. They realize that Adam Smith’s theory is flawed on account of one major thing (many other minor things), not everyone has equal opportunity, not everyone has a level starting field. How can everyone compete in a race if some people have no legs! (That’s not what the reform liberals said, taht was my example right there, lol). To cut it short, these social safety net programs were created to get out of the terrible situation in Britain at the time, where the working class could never rise through the class system. To simply regard these programs as helping lazy people is to disregard history.

Progressive taxation comes hand in hand with the above. What’s the point in taxing people making $7k a year so much when the point of taxation is to help these people in the first place. If you take too much of their paycheck you’re going to need even more taxes to keep them above the poverty line.
Charities fail for several reasons…One reason is there are usually many charities striving towards the same goal, and consequently they can’t unify and oraganize like a government can… but most importantly, besides welfare, most social safety net programs do not involve the handing out of money to people. That’s not the most useful thing. However having medical care always available should you get sick or injured is quite useful. We don’t live in the jungle, it isn’t everyperson for him/herself.

Kirupa, I am interested in the 12% fact. I’m just wondering more about it… like what specifically it refers too. Are salaries considered part of the 88%? Just curious because it is a pretty high number.

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Ai…how can I get out of this one :stuck_out_tongue: You are right, most Presidents cannot do anything to help or hurt the economy…except cut taxes. In my defense though, Alan Greenspan echoed this a week or so ago:

Greenspan defended President Bush three rounds of tax cuts, saying they had helped ensure that the 2001 recession was mild and brief and have provided critical stimulus to keep the current rebound on track.
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About the 12%, I don’t remember any more specifics about that. It was some economics journal, and I can’t find the link or the actual name of the journal I was reading. Most of the stuff I read is too boring to be put on the net anyway, but I’ll edit this post with a link if I can find it :slight_smile:

Regarding the taxing thing, a flat rate of 15% for example could work provided all businesses are also taxed at that same amount, and we do away with sales taxes, and all other indirect taxes. I think poor people who pay sales tax, property tax, etc. could simply pay a 15% tax on their income instead.

Though the only party proposing that (I think) is the Libertarian Party, and I would rather vote for Nader than whoever they run hehe.

Cheers!
Kirupa :egg:

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Ai…how can I get out of this one You are right, most Presidents cannot do anything to help or hurt the economy…except cut taxes. In my defense though, Alan Greenspan echoed this a week or so ago:

Well, if you wana give him credit for the economic recovery then we can blame bush for the the Economic problems.

The economy is still extremly weak, it has improved, thats true, but its far from where it supposed to be. A flat tax on the other hand will not work, because first of all the Proggressive tax is fair:

People need to learn how a progressive tax works before they start to criticize it. It works in levels and taxes people at levels exacly the same.
The next problem with the flat tax, is; as it will give less money to the gov. you will need to decrease it, but no one has any clue where to start. Thats why under Raegan
after the tax cuts the costs of deficits were paid for by the middle class in three ways: higher inflation as their paychecks were becoming worth less and less; paying for increased government costs for interest on public debt; and, higher costs of private borrowing when public debt takes money out of circulation that could have been available for private lending markets and increases the costs of loans for houses, cars, appliances and other consumer uses. (And under Clinton, gov. was at its lowest since Kennedy! (Strange how a democrat reduces the size of the goverment, like the Republicans should))

Read up on the history of proposed Flat Taxes, and you will realize why it dosent work.

I also stand with Bush on the War on Terror, along with going into Iraq. I think that in the long run, this will make the world a better place for everyone.

Oh christ, I think Pomme said it best. “Not going there”
I beleive right now we are waging the most inefective fight to protect the USA. We have gone around lumping all the Terrorist, freedom fighters in to one and uniting them against us. For example will be the Tibetian Freedom fighters, before 9/11 we were trying to pressure China to just give up some usless land for them, and we were pressuring them on human right abuses. Now we have codomed them as Terrorists even thought they where doing the same thing as before. This can be said for chechneya and other various groups that we where in a way supporting yet now are terrorists without a clear difinition of what that really means.

Iraq is what I beleive will put Bush at almost the bottom of USA’s president list. Iraq is a Bush (maybe not him personaly, but you understand) Administration created problem. Instead of focusing on Al-quada we went in to Iraq, for what reason, I am not even going to argue that we where deceived, lied and we went in uprepared, I have one question that apperanlty Bush forgot to ask: What is the national Intrest in Iraq!?

Also, I don’t think that Gore or Kerry would have had the guts to retaliate for September 11th. I feel that they would have continued in Clinton’s footsteps and not done anything to protect our country.

Even though, right of the bat, I dont think Kerry or Gore are not that great.
But, you are completle speculating, your argument is not grounded in any proof at all. What does guts have to do with anything? You are putting personal feeling and confusing it with effectiveness. Because remeber, when we retaliated we landed in Afghanistan with 11 000 troops, and as Farenheit said: “there are more cops in Manhattan!”, and it took us 2 months to bring Special Forces in to the area Osama Bin Laden was in! 2 Months! Special Forces have a 24hr deployment time! If not less!
All evidence points that Bush took too long to retaliate.

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Not only that, but Bush and his administration have created hatred of the U.S… People seem to continuously overlook that. Every other country in the world hates this man! He has supplied kindling to the terrorist fire by invading Iraq without international backing. How easy is it for terrorists to preach to the Middle Eastern population saying “See, we told you they are trying to conquer us, we told you that Bush wanted our oil, why do you think he invaded Iraq. Not even the rest of the infidels supported him!”
SOmething to that extent. I know it may not be factual, but the Bush admin has made propoganda so much easier. The United States and the World must try to understand the causes of terrorism. If we compare terrorists to cockroaches we can consider the following example:
Bush has tried to get rid of the cockroaches by stomping around on them… he kills a few, but in his stomping he excites their hormones, and they go into a breeding frenzy, though out of site. Now there are even more cockroaches than before he started stomping.

Nothing unites like a common enemy. Romans used that tactic, the Brits, every great empire. Well the Arab world is quickly uniting against a common enemy: Bush and America. I mean if the leader is like that, the rest of the American people must also be like that; a whole bunch of Bushes running around New York and LA on a daily basis.

There’s nothing to show that Bush and co have been succesful against terrorism. If we assume 9/11 was inevitable then it could have happened no matter who was leader, and since then there have been no more attacks. We can’t attribute that to Bush’s leadership. 3 years without an attack is no sign of effectiveness. There may not have even been another large attempt since then. Who knows.
Either way, there is nothing to show that Bush has done well against terrorism, and in fact more to suggest that he’s done poorly… Of course that’s just my opinion.

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Even if Gore was President during 9/11, he too would have gone after Afghanistan. I don’t think any President would not have done anything after 9/11. Yeldarb does make a point about the inaction of Gore/Clinton.

Even after the USS Cole and various Embassy bombings, the Clinton adminstration did not make Bin Laden a top priority. Nobody really did, because - even before 9/11 - ballistic missiles from N. Korea or China that could hit the US were the bigger threats than some country nobody had heard of…Afghanistan.

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drunken canadian stumbles in
yells
Bush is a bozo! I can’t believe that more people don’t see this. Bush can hardly put together a sentence, little own run a country.

I’m also part of the “Not going their gang.”

I think Lepiano made an excellent point. The world hates the United States. Most of my Canadian friends will say straight up that they’re embarassed to be associated with our southern neighbors and insulted when mistaken for being american.

I’ll leave you with some quotes from my good friend Tina.

< tina turner voice >
Whaaaaaat’s Iraaaaq Got-ta-dooooo, Got-ta-dooo-with-it? Whaaaaaaaat’s Buuuoooouush, he’s a simple minded moooorrrrrroooon?
< / tina turner voice >

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100% agree with you, thats the most realistic and level headed statment I’ve ever heard.

Okay on welfare and gov handouts:
Today my freind, and I agree, made the most politicaly incorrect but a very true statment on that.
Welfare, all it is, is hush money! We don’t want poor people rioting and trying to convert us to communism, so we give them money so they shut up! Its that simple, would you rather have theft and crime, or just give them some money so they be quiet. Realisticly speaking thats what Social Security was, in the 1920’s there was 4million registered communist, and with the depression it grew. So what did we do? we gave them money so they shut up! Boom, we are still a democracy!

Hush money! thats it!

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Comments about the tax thing: I know it may not be a perfect system. But if someone is making minimum wage (Which is MORE than $5 an hour) they should not be living on their own. Go move in with mom and dad or something.

Second, I vote for Bush because all Kerry talks about is himself in 'Nam and his purple hearts. Personally, most of the people under 30 (and some older) could care less about what he did in 'Nam, considering most people think that was the worst war ever waged by the Americans. Bush has been president through something pertinent to our day and age, and don’t give a **** (sorry) about what Kerry has done in the past.

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i heard that kerry was going to bring back the draft and draft men AND WOMEN… just what i heard

id become canadian so fast…

oh, and never listen to a drunk canadian! :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

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Comments about the tax thing: I know it may not be a perfect system. But if someone is making minimum wage (Which is MORE than $5 an hour) they should not be living on their own. Go move in with mom and dad or something.

yup, more than $5 an hour. But the example was still extreme, since nobody works 25 days a months, 10h a day… And not everyone on minimum wage is young enough to hang out with mom and dad (or something…). You think that only 18 year-old yuppy kids from the uptown subs are being payed minimum wage? You have to be kidding, right?
[ooc]Minimum wage is how the bosses tell you that they’d pay you less if they could, but it’s illegal…[/ooc]

As for the worst war waged by the Americans, mmmh, I’d say Iraq is getting quite close to being a really nasty war…

The fact that Bush was president when 9/11 occured doesn’t mean anything, imo. It could have happened with Gore in the White House, it could have happened with anyone in the White House (but that’s speculation). How can you give credit (though the word isn’t well chosen) to someone about something that happened for the simple reason that he was there at the time and not someone else…

No, trully, when it concerns American foreign policies, I really do not understand why people are backing up Bush Jr.

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Second, I vote for Bush because all Kerry talks about is himself in 'Nam and his purple hearts. Personally, most of the people under 30 (and some older) could care less about what he did in 'Nam, considering most people think that was the worst war ever waged by the Americans. Bush has been president through something pertinent to our day and age, and don’t give a **** (sorry) about what Kerry has done in the past.

Its a fair argument, but his argument is not aimed at you, or your audience it is made so he would distance himself from Bush (because many time he looked alike) While Bush was going AWOL just out of laziness, Kerry was dodging bullets and saving people in NAM, its just so he can draw contrast.

i heard that kerry was going to bring back the draft and draft men AND WOMEN… just what i heard

Acctualy it was a rumor during this administration.

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The Draft is NOT coming back. That would never fly. We have more than enough soldiers.

It doesn’t matter if people under 30 care about Vietnam. Kerry’s point is that he went to war for a fight that no one believed it. He did it because he loved his country and wanted to defend it. He risked his life for reasons that most of us and most of those soldiers never knew. And when those soldiers came back they got nothing in return. They were spit on by anti-war demonstraters. They were hated and feared. And it wasn’t their fault. Kerry should be commended for going to war because of HIS reasons; not the reasons of that administration.

I personally will not vote for Bush. I didn’t vote for Bush in the last election and that got us nowhere so I’m actually just not voting. I would vote for Kerry for the simple reason that he’s not Bush.

Bush hasn’t really done anything right since he began his administration and a week or so ago I heard a quote where he said, “I can’t remember any mistakes that I have made during my presidency.” or something to that effect. Our economy has done nothing but go downhill since he took office. We’re at war, a time when, historically, our economy has prospered, however money is tight all around the US. His foreign policies seem to be “Speak English or get out of my way” and “The UN don’t got nothin’ on me…”

If I were to vote I would vote for Nader because I think we should be allowed to have a 3-party system in this country. We are a land of ‘democracy’ yet the only choice we get is between an elephant and a donkey? We should have choice, its the simple premise on which this country was founded. Voting for Nader would allow a third political party to access government funds and eventually in a number of years allow that party to grow in support and hopefully become a fully functioning capable party (should nader get a certain % of the electorate vote).

However, now I would still vote for Kerry because, “when your house is falling down, its not time to remodel.” While I feel that we should have that 3rd party and I want to vote for Nader, I would vote for Kerry for the simple fact that he is not Bush. We have to get Bush out, fix the country and then worry about remodelling our political situation. So for anyone out there that is going to vote for Nader, don’t do it. Now is not the time. Nader shouldn’t even be running right now simply because we want to get Bush out. Nader should be out there campaigning for Kerry. That would be the best thing he can do right now.

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Nader should be out there campaigning for Kerry. That would be the best thing he can do right now.

though I agree with you, it goes against your arguments of “democracy” (actually, the way I see it right now, it seems more like a plutocracy to me…).

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Isn’t it true that Nader was not even allowed to attend the Democratic National Convention as a spectator? I don’t blame the Dems. for doing that, but that would definitely put a damper on him trying to campaign or even support Kerry.

I think the Republican Convention will probably give Nader everything he wants, for a vote for Nader is a vote away from Kerry. Only good things can happen to the GOP from that.

I listened to, what seemed like, an hour or so Kerry’s entire speech, and it wasn’t anything new that he had not mentioned before. If Clinton were running though, I’d vote for him instantly…I don’t know why though :love:

Like others have mentioned, the draft will not be reinstated. It was, in my view, a well-timed hoax using some random bill that is still stuck in committee somewhere as evidence: http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=200

Tucker, I think Canada and the US have some sort of an arrangement where draft dodgers have to be sent back. So when Canada decides to attack…the giant piece of ice to the north of them…and somebody tries to find refuge in the US, that person will be sent back. Likewise, if there was a draft and you were to leave the US to go to Canada, you’ll be sent back here also.

:cap:

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Wow… sorry, but that is the worst reason I have heard so far. Vietnam, and these two men’s actions during it, does matter.

Simple fact is, our Commander in Chief has the power to send our troops to a foreign cause. I would rather have a man who understands that consequence than one who used political arm-twisting to get into a sweetheart gig in the national guard. Even after that, he failed to report to duty. Now, this dropout is very excited about sending other people’s children. That matters.

Kerry fought for his country abroad and then came home and fought against the unjust war, I think that gives him credibilty. Vietnam was the worst war waged by Americans, until Iraq…