I’m a Republican, but …

I’m a Republican. I was practically born that way. I grew up listening to talk radio with my dad—Limbaugh and Hannity mostly. When I turned 18, I couldn’t wait to cast my first vote and I naturally voted party-line. I voted for Bush Jr. twice, and I voted for McCain. Though there is a significant portion of Bush-era policies that I abhor, I still think he was a genuine person and a strong president—and I think he was intelligent despite his terrible presentations to the contrary.

But it’s different now. Things have changed. They started changing a few years ago. The crazies have taken over the GOP. They call themselves the Tea Party and they are fucking insane. (If you’re a friend of mine who considers yourself a Tea Party member, I love you, but you’re either fucking insane or don’t actually have the slightest clue what you are into.) Now, I’m not going to go into all of my issues with the current GOP. Instead, here is how I stand.

I’m a Republican, but …

• I can’t stand Limbaugh and don’t really like Hannity
• I don’t believe America is or ever was a Christian nation, thank God
• I think church and state are and should be separate
• I’ll say it again, the church should stay the hell out of politics and vice versa
• I believe Obama is a U.S. citizen and is not a muslim
• I don’t understand why his religious affiliation is at issue anyway
• I believe Obama wants a great America
• I’m 100% for gay marriage (not just civil unions), though religious organizations should have the right to opt-out of performing ceremonies
• I’m for reasonable but very strong gun-control
• I think Rick Santorum and others like him make this country world a measurably worse place to live
• I think global warming is a real issue
• I never, no not ever, liked Sarah Palin, she is, simply, an embarrassment
• I support non-late-term abortion, at least in the cases of rape and danger to the mother
• I want universal health care and think that it should be 100% free, paid for by, yes, yours and my tax dollars
• I believe the richest among us should pay higher taxes by percentage than the rest
• I believe the poorest among us should pay very little or no taxes at all
• I believe that the poor, by and large, are not poor because they’re lazy

There are other departures that I can’t think of right now, but my final thought on the Tea Party specifically comes from my favorite screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin:

“Ideological purity, compromise as weakness, a fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism, denying science, unmoved by facts, undeterred by new information, a hostile fear of progress … They can call themselves the Tea Party. They can call themselves conservatives and they can even call themselves Republicans, though Republicans certainly shouldn’t. But we should call them what they are. The American Taliban.”