posted July 09, 2020 12:58 PM            

2) People who don't support laws prohibiting gays from getting married.
Straight folks can get married and divorced and remarry as many times as they wish. How is that preserving the sanctity of marriage, but gays getting married is attacking it? I never understood this. I understand not forcing this argument on religious organizations because I respect religious freedom, but outside of religious settings, people should be free to live as they wish and getting married and divorced regardless of gender is something that is part of individual liberties we should all cherish and protect.

Anyway, as someone who feels the democratic party is completely lost to all ideals of democracy, decency, freedom and fairness, I am asking because I am now planning to vote Republican in the coming elections.

I suspect the republican party would attract many more voters if they were not so narrowly fixated and inflexible on the two issues I have mentioned above.

Your thoughts?

posted July 09, 2020 01:17 PM            

If the Republican party stopped pushing for laws prohibiting ALL abortions, and stopped pushing for anti-gay marriage laws:

1) If you are registered republican, would you still stay in the republican party?

posted July 09, 2020 02:10 PM            

It seems to me that the answer to your two questions depends on which Republican party you are referring to: the party prior to the election of DJT or after. So, two questions that come to mind at the moment:

Is there room in the Republican party led by DJT for people who think that endless wars are not in the national interest of the U.S.?

Is there room in the Republican party led by DJT for people who think that free and sovereign nations have the right to choose what form of government they collectively vote for?

posted July 09, 2020 02:23 PM            

Once the democrat party has sung its last swan song, then the republican party can finally begin its own fracturing and evolution. I imagine more people identify with libertarian principles than staunch republican - and those who still support stronger government and police and moral conservatism will stick with the republican side, while the civil libertarians will switch to the libertarian party. I don’t see the dregs of the progressive left switching to the green party so much as clinging to the democrat name.

posted July 09, 2020 02:44 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Dhyana:
Another question: As a Republican, on the issue of abortion, could you support taking the issue out of government mandating/imposing one policy or the other on all its citizens? In other words, removing the issue entirely from government.

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posted July 09, 2020 03:18 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Blind writer:
On the issue of abortion, I’m pro-choice - that said, I do not think it should be included in insurance coverage mandated by the government, since that impinges upon other’s religious principles.

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posted July 09, 2020 04:56 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Blind writer:
On the issue of abortion, I’m pro-choice - that said, I do not think it should be included in insurance coverage mandated by the government, since that impinges upon other’s religious principles.

---

I feel the same way. I also believe this is a way that the Republican party could evolve on the subject of abortion. While allowing for women's freedom reproductive rights like the Ford and Reagan administrations have done, they can continue to take strong stand on protecting religious freedom on this issue and differenciate itself from the democrats who want to impose abortion on every medical entity.

I don't believe abortion should be a mandate for insurance companies.
I don't believe doctors who feel this go against their conscience should be forced to perform abortion.
I don't believe catholic organizations who don't believe in the pill and other chemical types of birth controls should be forced to provide chemical birth control benefits to their employees as part of health insurance.

posted July 10, 2020 12:53 PM            

The first time I voted was 2012 when I was 20 years old. I had slightly different views then. I was more pro life, but not against gay marriage. I actually do know many people that were anti gay marriage, but have changed their minds on that as time progressed (which is great!).

posted July 10, 2020 01:40 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by etherealsaturn:
I align more with the Libertarian Party to be honest, but I am a registered Republican - mostly to be able to vote in primaries, but I'm thinking I'm going to change that.

The first time I voted was 2012 when I was 20 years old. I had slightly different views then. I was more pro life, but not against gay marriage. I actually do know many people that were anti gay marriage, but have changed their minds on that as time progressed (which is great!).

With some time, I realized that I didn't really identify with the republican party, I just knew that I was definitely not a democrat. And let's be real, the sad truth is to win an election you have to be from one of these parties.

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Similar - I think JoJo would make a great first female president, even if I think her immigration policies are incredibly naive. But this election is the most important since the one that got Lincoln in office, so I don’t want to take a chance on third party this time.

posted July 10, 2020 02:47 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Belage:

2) if you are democrat, would you consider switching to the republican party?

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posted July 10, 2020 05:33 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by teasel:
I asked friends the other night, if we'd ever had a Republican president, who also believed in what you've mentioned here. We've had Christian Democrats as presidents.

The Democratic party hasn't lost everything else that you mentioned. They happen to be fighting for it. But I'd be willing to replace Biden with someone more acceptable, if the Republican party would replace the vile Trump, with someone more acceptable. Even Lindsay Graham had only good things to say about Biden, at some point in the past, and he hated Trump until he realized that the party could use his cultism to push through everything they wanted - or try to.

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posted July 10, 2020 06:51 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dhyana:
Another question: As a Republican, on the issue of abortion, could you support taking the issue out of government mandating/imposing one policy or the other on all its citizens? In other words, removing the issue entirely from government.

---

Interesting question.

An important base of the republican party is the one issue voters who identify themselves as Pro-life and want to abolish abortion at any stage from conception to late term in the entire country. They have been a single minded, obstinate, like a dog on a bone voting bloc. It does'nt matter what the republican party does or does not do, as long as it sticks to that particular platform, they will vote republicans. So there is a lot of reluctance to alienate these voters.

posted July 10, 2020 10:08 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Randall:
No one said the virus wasn't real. The science is what Republicans rely on--not hysteria.

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posted September 12, 2020 12:24 PM            

From the Washington Examiner: Is Nick Freitas the future of the GOP’s libertarian wing?

[URL] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/is-nick-freitas-the-future-of-the-gops-libertarian-wing?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Beltway+Confidential&utm_t erm=PostUp+Opens&utm_content=20200912141655 [/URL]

If Virginia Del. Nick Freitas wins a seat in Congress this November, he might just be the most promising rising star of the Republican Party's libertarian wing.

The former Green Beret is running to represent Virginia’s 7th Congressional District. All-star endorsements from the likes of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Utah Sen. Mike Lee have bolstered Freitas’s campaign. He is challenging Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who won her seat by just 2 percentage points in 2018.

RealClearPolitics classifies the race as a toss-up. And because the district went for President Trump in 2016, Freitas is bullish on his chances of joining the ranks of libertarian-leaning Republicans in Congress. I sat down with the candidate to discuss his background, pitch to voters, and broader ideological and policy worldview.

Freitas comes from a military background, and his service informs the foreign-policy agenda he is campaigning on. He enlisted in the Army Special Forces after Sept. 11 and served two terms in Iraq.

“We have to have the most powerful, best-equipped, best-provided-for military in the world,” Freitas told me. “I believe in peace through strength.”

“But by the same token, we are not the world’s police force,” he went on, striking a somewhat Trumpian, “America First” tone. “Nor do I think that the objective of the United States military should be focused on nation building. Ultimately, one of the things I understood from serving in Iraq was that this idea that you’re going to impose a type of government or type of economic system on a particular culture is a little bit absurd.”

Overlap on foreign policy is one of the reasons Freitas is running an ardently pro-Trump campaign.

“[Foreign policy] is one of the things I’ve admired about the Trump administration, the idea that we are going to have a powerful military,” he explained. "But we are not going to go through the process of getting ourselves involved in more wars for which we don’t have a clear, strategic objective in mind."

Freitas stressed the need for Congress to reassert its constitutionally mandated war powers.

“Congress wants to vote to fund wars but not to declare war,” he said. “I think the men and women in Congress need to display at least an ounce of the courage they expect of our [troops] we send overseas.”

Freitas said he fully supports Trump’s stated desire to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and Syria. This sets him apart from the typical Republican politician with military credentials, a subset of Congress that has historically skewed toward more hawkish foreign policy views. In this, Freitas represents the new, young Republican Party and its more nationalist, anti-interventionist approach to foreign policy.

But on the domestic side, Freitas’s agenda harkens back to the Tea Party era.

He tells me his top legislative priorities would include reigning in federal bureaucracies, cutting red tape and regulations, and expanding school choice.

Education reform, in particular, is an issue close to Freitas’s heart.

“When we look at what’s going on with COVID-19 right now, we see the problem when the government tries to monopolize our education system,” he told me. “If we’re serious about having an education system that is as diverse and effective as the student body it seeks to serve, then we’re going to need a system where we actually have a marketplace of ideas.”

Freitas is deeply concerned with deficit spending, two words one rarely hears from Republican politicians these days.

When I pressed Freitas on the fact that Trump promised to eliminate the entire debt during his 2016 campaign but has actually overseen record deficits, he argued the real blame for that rests with congressional Republicans and that they can’t afford to make the same mistake again.

“If we get a Republican Congress and we keep the White House and still don’t get our deficit spending under control … we’ll have a lot to answer for to the American people,” he said. “If you look at the fiscal status of our country right now, it is going to require people who are willing to take unpopular votes to do what’s right.”

On social issues, though, Freitas is threading the needle between the cosmopolitan beliefs of young Republicans and the more socially conservative orthodoxies found in the halls of the Heritage Foundation.

The result? He’s staunchly pro-life but also voted to decriminalize marijuana. He takes a neutral stance on gay marriage, preferring to get the government out of marriage altogether, but opposes adding anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people to the law.

Freitas’s mix of libertarian inclinations and conservative roots similarly manifests itself in his criminal justice reform platform.

“My father was a police officer and a homicide detective … but unfortunately, criminal justice reform has taken on this tenure of being anti-law enforcement,” he said. “And that’s why I haven’t been able to support a lot of the bills in our special legislative session here in Virginia.”

Freitas does support moderate criminal justice reform, though.

He said he would support reforming and rolling back, but not eliminating altogether, qualified immunity, the judicially invented legal doctrine that often shields government officials, such as police officers, from civil liability for abuses of power. In the same vein, he would support rolling back, but not eliminating, “no-knock” search warrants, which have led to tragedies such as the death of Breonna Taylor.

As for Freitas’s disposition on the culture war?

“Just take [these issues] out of the hands of the government, and a lot of this just goes away,” he said. “We can all live our lives in terms of our own conscience and our own beliefs without having to force someone else to agree with us. Coexistence is not a bumper sticker you put on your car. Coexistence is resisting the urge to coerce those who you can’t convince.”

This stance is part and parcel of Freitas’s overall approach to politics.

posted September 12, 2020 12:56 PM            

I think that libertarian voice of the GOP needs to be heard more and I hope that Freitas guy wins.

posted September 12, 2020 06:45 PM            

quote:

---

Freitas said he fully supports Trump’s stated desire to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and Syria. This sets him apart from the typical Republican politician with military credentials, a subset of Congress that has historically skewed toward more hawkish foreign policy views. In this, Freitas represents the new, young Republican Party and its more nationalist, anti-interventionist approach to foreign policy.

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The Republican party used to be the party of old, white men, iirc. But there's a new group of young candidates running for Congress, for example, Kim Klacik in Baltimore.

posted September 12, 2020 09:32 PM            

There is a lot of fresh, young blood on the right. The left is still clinging to old elites. The populist leftists (ie, Sanders, AOC) are too extreme to gain much support. They should have chosen Gabbard or Yang as their candidate, if they wanted a more moderate leftist populist.

Trump is the most moderate candidate to come out of the republican party in a long time. He’s also more libertarian than the actual libertarian party candidate in certain ways, which is ironic. His promise to slash two regulations for every new one made, his defense of the border, and his effort to bring troops home are all libertarian in nature. Meanwhile, JoJo is supporting anti-racism, open borders, and cancel culture. Trump is more moderate/conservative than he is libertarian, but he brings a balance this country needs. If only Congress weren’t constantly bickering amongst themselves and ignoring their constituents. Establishment has got to go.