Shadow1980 said:
I like Sanders. I am in agreement with him on more issues than any other candidate. I'm voting for him in the primary. However, I doubt he will win the nomination. It's probably going to be Hillary getting the nomination. I'm not a huge Hillary fan. She's a bit too hawkish and a bit too cozy with Wall Street for my tastes. I don't think she's bad for America, but she isn't exactly good, either. But a bog-standard, rational, sane centrist is far preferable than any Republican candidate. The GOP has gone completely off the deep end since the turn of the century. Increasingly xenophobic, increasingly militaristic (and that's saying something!), increasingly anti-science and anti-environment, increasingly socially authoritarian, increasingly friendly with right-wing militia & anti-government groups (sorry, but people like Cliven Bundy aren't heroes or patriots), and still hell-bent on adhering to failed supply-side economic schemes. I never vote for someone who says "Government is the problem," because they're usually the ones who go out of their way to make government the problem, I never vote for someone who claims to be in favor of "small government" and against "big government tyranny" in one breath and then turns around and demands that the government impose their religious beliefs on society and impose onerous restrictions on people's ability to vote, I never vote for someone who says that we can't afford to hike taxes to pay for universal heathcare and infrastructure improvements but then supports wars of choice that cost hundreds of billions of ultimately borrowed money, and I never vote for someone who claims that "evolutionists" and "warmists" are conspiring to destroy Christianity and/or capitalism. The Trumps, Carsons, Cruzes and Walkers of America should be kept well away from the White House.
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A few things:
1. I agree 100% that most of the small government rhetoric in the GOP is bullcrap, but there are plenty of people who believe in a small government who also believe in a non-interventionist policy and civil liberties (see: Ron Paul/Rand Paul and their supporters.)
2. The GOP has become less socially authoritarian over time. Many republicans support the end of the War on Drugs and are indifferent to gay marriage. Sure the GOP hasn't become less not as quickly as the Democratic party, but it is false to say that the social conservativism is becoming more popular, it is becoming less so.
3. The same can be said for the environment. While most republicans in the 2000's would've outright denied climate change, there is a sizable portion who recognize it today, and the influence humans have, but view the costs to do anything about it to be excessive and debalitating, and are not yet convinced that the long-term costs will exceed them.
4. It is important to realize that the GOP is a much more diverse party than the Democratic one, currently. There are plenty of social moderates in the party, and it has increasingly become less interventionist since the Bush era.
5 No candidate is without hypocricy. Bernie Sanders is adamately against the NSA's overeaches for example, but continutes to vote to fund them. He is against the federal reserve bank, but continues to dillute/contest efforts that would actually audit it. Those are two things on the top of my head with regard to Bernie Sanders.
Hillary calls herself a progressive, yet she is still unsure about drug decriminalization. Hillary is for liberties, except when it comes to ownership of guns or property rights in general.
If you are looking for consistency in ideology, you won't find it in either party.
