Republican party vs Democratic Party

Author: Alec

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Which party is better and why?
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@Alec
Neither.
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Well from what I can tell, as of today, is that the Democrat Party represents everyone in the world except the citizens and the country that elected them.  They all hate Trump and will never vote for anything that Trump proposes. The Republican Party is comprised of Trump supporters and Trump haters. 1/3 Trump haters and 2/3 supporters. The US govt is a worthless corrupt seething pile of useless shit. And every single person that works for govt in any way needs to be fired and replaced. It is impossible to distinguish who is corrupt and who isn't. The parties are the same pile of shit. My faith is in the private sector entrepreneur. I, like all entrepreneurs, succeed, work and persevere despite the govt and despite the political parties. Political party loyalty is for mindless dullards who think someone else has the key to their lot in life. 
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@Alec
Over the course of American history, the Democratic and Republican parties have both developed their own unique strengths and weaknesses. It's really difficult to weigh them against each other and determine which party is better overall. I think the Democrats generally tend to have better policy positions, but I also view their embrace of identity politics as unforgivable, which is why I vote Republican.  
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Democrips or Rebloodicans?


Alec
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I think the GOP has better positions then the Democrats.
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@Alec
The question OP asks is a fair one.  Collaterally, a lot of people who I know don't understand why I, for example, bother to vote for Democrats when so many of them (Clintons) are corporate whores, whose policies have hurt the middle class and resulted in catastrophic economic harm that has spanned the last three decades.  The question of whether the Democrats or the Republicans, though, is really a misnomer.  The Democrats are only "better" insofar as they are "less worse" than the Republicans.  Even still, by no means is that to say that the Democrats are without flaws.  

Overall, the way this shakes down for me is that the Republicans fail on economic and social policies, full stop, and they get economic policies right about 1/2 of the time (with the exception of Trump, who usually gets between 10-15% of each problem right, and then fucks everything else up).  Democrats, along the same general axioms, get domestic policy right about 1/2 of the time, and economic policy right about 1/2 of the time.  They get foreign policy right about 1/3-1/2 of the time, too.  So, these things aren't equal, the democrats are less worse. 






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The real difference for me manifests on the axis of judicial politics.  Being in the line of work that I am, where about 95% of everything is predictable, it's in that universe of 5% unpredictability that truly evil things can be accomplished by and through judicial activism.  The Republicans came up with the term "judicial activist" to refer to people who read the constitution for what it is, in light of the present day; despite the fact that the same Republicans read the constitution for what they want it to be, to hurt people they don't like and help people they like.  It really is that simple.

That is not to say that "all" right wing judicial activism I disapprove of.  I don't disapprove of nearly everything Anton Scalia has written about the Fourth Amendment, and in general I think that that Neil Gorsuch's property rights theory of Fourth Amendment protection is not only the most constitutionally viable, but the most pragmatic and workable in the society.  I think left-wing types, post Earl Warren, tend to defer to the Government far too much.  The right wing, on the other hand, has almost always been the strongest defender of Fourth Amendment protections in the courts.  Neil Gorsuch, case and point.  Both Scalia and his ideological progeny have redefined the limits on governmental power, by and through their activist interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. 

Nonetheless, there's a lot more in play beyond the Fourth Amendment that has to be considered.  In particular, substantive and procedural due process rights have been constrained acutely by the right wing, and will likely continue to be in the future if present and historical trends continue as they have.  As well, the right wing has consistently made a practice of creatively interpreting the constitution to maintain the social and legal status quo, rather than to rectify historical systemic and structural injustices, as well as to achieve political ends through legal means.  The big hot button issues include their systemic erosion of the right to medical privacy over their perfectly idiotic obsession with abortion (coupled with a complete indifference to everything that leads up to abortion), and equality before the law as it relates to race, gender, and sexuality.  

Strange as it may seem for someone like me to be talking about those "big three" (race, gender, and sexuality) because of my repeated tirades against identity politics, don't be lured into the misapprehension that I'm changing my tune now, because I'm not.  The goal of legal reform within the domains of race, gender, and sexuality is to restore to members of disfavored groups the same status as is held by non-members of those disfavored groups.  So, rather than see a gay man as a gay man; to see him only as a man.  Rather than see a black woman as a black woman; see her only as a woman.  Rather than see a trans person as a sexually anomalous problem without a solution (which is basically how the right treats them), see them only as a person.  In each case, the law's objective should be to remove identity-based classifications from individuals which delineate them from majority groups.  Or, alternatively, to draw so many distinctions across every individual that one can't help but see all people as only individuals rather than as members of one group or another.  The individual is, after all, the ultimate minority.  The intersectionalists are going to inevitably come to this same conclusion; even if they took the most idiotic and circuitous path to an idea that humanity already sorted out in the enlightenment -- even if at that point the idea had not yet fully materialized.

The Republicans can't abide by that, though.  For all their talk of individual merit and merit or competence based hierarchy, at every level of analysis they still write rules in a way that it turns out that a black man is going to get a harsher sentence for the same crime committed in the same way, against the same kind of victim, in the same courtroom and often by the same judge.   As well, these are the same people who would have castrated Alan Turing for being gay, who would and still long to uphold the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws, and who at every level think women have no place in any working context.  But, for all the Republicans' horrors on social policy; all of that pales in comparison to their pro-corporate and anti-environmental bias in the courts and in regulations.  They will strike down environmental regulations that hurt Republican donor companies (see generally, the State of West Virginia) but shield stock brokers who recklessly mismanage retirement funds from facing civil liability.  A post four times as long as the one I'm writing now could be solely devoted to merely *describing* the pro-corporate and anti-person biases that manifest on every level of right wing judicial activism, and it wouldn't even scratch the surface.

Why does this matter?  Politicians appoint judges, and I want the judges appointed to be ones that aren't evil, no matter how banal that evil may seem.  A lawyer can accomplish more with his briefcase and papers than a thief can with a gun, after all. 



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@coal
I don't know if I should address your point.  Do you want me to?
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@Alec
You're of course welcome to address my post lol... 

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@Alec
Which GOP? The Neocons or the Classic liberal Republicans? (freedom from government) cause the GOP is severely fractured between those groups.
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@Alec
And which Democratic party? Because that party is severely split between the Crony Capitalists and the radical Democratic socialists.
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@coal
The question OP asks is a fair one.
What is an OP?

they get economic policies right about 1/2 of the time

I think they get economic policies "right" over half of the time.  I have a pretty extreme view on economic policies, one that gets our entire tax revenue on the basis of sin taxes and sales tax if necessary.  It makes more sense to punish people with a tax for doing bad things then to punish people with a tax for doing good things.  

The Republicans came up with the term "judicial activist" to refer to people who read the constitution for what it is, in light of the present day; despite the fact that the same Republicans read the constitution for what they want it to be, to hurt people they don't like and help people they like. 
Both parties like certain parts of the constitution.  The Right likes the 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendments(free religion/speech, gun ownership, and being secure in your own house respectively) and the Left likes the 8th amendment(against cruel and unusual punishment) and to a lesser extent, the 1st amendment when applied for muslim's religious freedom.  What the Right thinks of Christianity, the left thinks of Islam and vice versa.  At least major right wing leaders haven't been advocating for bible law, the way Linda Sarsour, a leader of the feminist movement has been advocating for Shariah law(https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/01/25/womens-march-organizer-linda-sarsour/).  Mike Pence is very religious, 

You mentioned their obsession to remove abortion, and they want abortion to be illegal because of the scientific proof that a fetus is a human being.

Strange as it may seem for someone like me to be talking about those "big three" (race, gender, and sexuality) because of my repeated tirades against identity politics, don't be lured into the misapprehension that I'm changing my tune now, because I'm not.
I hate identity politics too.

They will strike down environmental regulations
Believe it or not Republicans are more likely to own solar panels then Democrats(https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/california-republicans-are-5-times-more-likely-to-buy-solar-than-democrats).  I want clean energy for myself in the not too distant future.  The reason why they are against environmental regulations is because (at least for me) the democrats tend to be environmental hypocrites.  Many think the government should force people to clean up the environment even though they won't help themselves by getting alternative energy.  It's expensive yes, but it's also expensive for everyone else that the left often wants to convert to clean energy.  At least the Right is more likely to own solar panels while less likely to preach for them.

that hurt Republican donor companies (see generally, the State of West Virginia
Can you provide a source for this?  I'm unsure on this.