What would it take for us to change our minds?

Current stance:

Should be well known, but I am for Kerry currently. Bush has shown himself to be virtually the opposite of what he advertised in 2000 and has skewed himself so far to the right that I don't think there is even a pretense of moderate thought anywhere near his administration.


Past impressions:

I was extremely proud of the way Bush handled 9/11 and the immediate aftermath. He threw down the gauntlet with the Taliban and when they refused to capitulate, he sent the troops to kick Al Qaeda and Taliban a$$es.

Then came the war in Iraq, which has been one debacle after another, from "intelligence" provided by a hostile government, to yellowcake reports leading to a CIA operative being outed, to Abu Ghirab and the growing resistance.


What they could do to change my mind:

At this point, they would have to make massive changes to get my support. Coming out for a consumption tax to replace the income tax would be one thing, rolling back the tax cuts to get our fiscal house in order would be another, rescinding the ban on stem cell research would help, as would scaling back or repealing prohibition.

There are eight or ten other issues, but those above would be my biggest ones and the Bush admin would probably have to do at least two of those to engender my support at this time.

 

First state your current stance

I oppose Bush. I didn't feel any of the Democrats fielded in this election wholly represented me, but I respect John Kerry and feel that he can make a positive difference.

Second, state any relevant history about yourself and your past opinions of the president (in 2000):

In 2000, I was a few months too young to being able to vote in that election. Young as I might have been, I had developed a political awareness over the years that started with the Lewinski scandal. While my baser instincts are moderate (i.e. I didn't feel one way or the other about Clinton), that 3 year period basically pushed me toward the Democratic side, as I simply couldn't support the Republican witch hunt that I felt was being conducted unlawfully and to the serious detriment of our nation. Which, unfortunately, I think bore itself to be true in the shape of the terrorism problem we face today.

Anyway, I knew Bush was a Texan. I knew he was our Governor. My entire family and virtually everyone I knew was supporting him for President. But anytime I'd ask people why, they'd just starting hemming and hawing and never really give me a definitive answer, usually just some tripe about guns, God, or Al Gore just being boring.

So I started reading up on the Bush family myself. I took the good and the bad and just melded it altogether, what I came away with was a strong respect for George Bush (despite ideological differences), and a strong, STRONG dislike for George W. Bush.

The fact that everytime Bush was opening his mouth on the campaign trail he'd somehow stick his foot in it didn't help my opinion of him either. I really felt embarassed for my state and Texans as a whole that this guy was representing us.

Then came September 11th. As I saw the President standing on top of the rubble at the WTC with the bullhorn in his hand, I thought to myself "God, let this be this man's finest hour." And it was. I was honestly inspired by what Bush said and did in the months following 9/11. I felt going to Afghanistan to find Bin Laden and oust the Taliban was justified and swiftly executed.

Iraq, on the other hand, was a harder sell. I was very young when the first Gulf War came about, and I never really understood the ins and outs of it, except that Saddam invaded Kuwait, and we didn't like that, so we kicked his ass. I was listening with an open mind to Bush's case at first, and as the months passed and the changing reasons came leading up the war, I grew more and more skeptical and eventually stood in opposition to it until we had a serious, definitive, concrete reason to go. But once we were there, there was no use protesting it, I felt it was time to do the job right and get our ASAP. Unfortunately the job has turned out to be bigger than anticipated, and getting out isn't an option.

I don't know whether Bush intentionally lied to the public about this war or not, and quite frankly, I don't care. At this point it's just another drop in the bucket.


Third, state what would the administration have to DO, CHANGE or PROVE in order for you to change your mind. Focus on what your MOST important issues are:

Finding Bin Laden would help.

Renewing the assault weapons ban would help.

Taking the brakes off of stem cell research would help.

Finding the WMD would help.

Supporting gay civil rights, or at least not opposing them, would help.

Focusing on the causes of terrorism would help (rather than just the who, what, where, and when tactic).

And I'm no economics wiz, but I think we're in big ass debt right now.

 

Do Bush supporters know why they support him? That is the question. I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers but I truly cannot understand anyone's support of this administration. Many of my reasons for this have already been posted - ie. stem cell, gay marriage, Lie-raq. I don't know that my mind can be changed, but I invite any GWB supporter here to try.

 

I'm a liberal Texas Democrat, who opposes Bush Jr. with every fiber of my being. I respected his father, until he pushed through the nomination of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. After that, I respected him for his previous service to his country, but not as President.

I have never respected George W. Bush. Everything he is, he's achieved with the help and guidance of either his father, friends of his father, or both. He has never had the basic abilities needed for higher office. The only office he successfully ran for, prior to his current one, was for Texas governor. His only previous elective efforts was to lose a race for the US House in 1978. Because a Texas governor is one of the weakest, for a governor, in these 50 states, he had reached his level of competence. He was a failed businessman, until he was handed a sinecure by, of course, a friend of his father's, which turned into a multi-million dollar bonanza. I could care less about his Guard service, or lack of it. Bush is simply not competent to be President of the United States. What he's done, since being "elected," has proved that to anyone paying attention.

There is nothing George W. Bush could do to make me change my mind about him. I would vote for my neighbor down the street, a Republican running for county sheriff, before I would vote for G. W. Bush for President. If he is re-elected, god forbid, it will be a disaster for our country, that will be even worse than the disaster his current term has turned into.

Bush isn't smart. He has bad advisors and, when they give him bad advice, he refuses to replace them. Instead, he praises them. He has destroyed the near universal support the world gave us after 9/11, and given us the worst relations with our Allies in decades. He has produced record deficits, when he was presented with a budget surplus on taking office. He has done far more for corporate business interests, and fundamentalist right-wing Christian activists, than they ever hoped for in their wildest dreams.

And he is the only President I am aware of who has cut taxes, and run on it for re-election, during a war. Oh, and he invaded and occupied a sovereign country that wasn't a clear and present danger to the United States.

I'm old enough to have voted against Richard Nixon in 1972. I never thought we could have a worse President than Nixon. I was wrong.

Why, in heavens name, would anyone even consider voting for him??
If I left out anything, I apologize. Again, nothing could make me vote for Bush.

 

First state your current stance
I support Bush, even though I have a lot of misgivings about him and his policies. But the alternative is so awful I am forced to vote for him. Kerry is probably the worst candidate the Democrats have ever ran for the highest office. While Bush has made made an ugly practice of growing govt. to ridiculously high levels thanks to a GOP Congress that has abandoned any pretense of being for smaller govt., Kerry would be far worse.

I've been a libertarian for quite a while now and this will be the first time I'm voting GOP since I voted for the elder Bush in 1998. In the 2000 election, I voted for Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate for President. I didn't like the term "compassionate conservativism" because I've always believe politcos are compassionate, with other peoples' money. Bush to me was too lukewarm on issues such as really cutting the Federal govt. back within its constitutionally mandated limits.
I'm voting on only one issue this time, because I believe our very nation is at stake and a Kerry presidency, with its weak foreign policy, will lead to another even more horrific terrorist attack. Rome managed to stay afloat on autopilot as they endured many bad emperors, but eventually, the lack of leadership at the top caught up to them. Kerry couldn't lead hungry wolves to meat and he's a liar who'll say anything people want to hear. Terrorists and dictators will rejoice the election of another do-nothing, weak president like Clinton and Carter.

War on terror- Kerry in no way will fight any sort of war on terror, despite all of Andy's claims he will do it "better." Andy, you've got many years of history to fight and history has shown the Left can not be trusted with national security.

Leftists have an ugly tendency to ignore threats or just give a half-hearted attempt to swat at them briefly (see Clinton). They are far too reliant on a ridiculously chaotic international system filled with actors who would like to see us brought down a peg or two. He can't even make up his mind about Iraq. And anyone who can't tell the truth (he's recast his stories in light of the Swifties numerous times) about his 4 months in Vietnam, which he made the centerpiece of his campaign, does not deserve to be C in C.

 

For me to embrace Bush he would have to do the following...

Embrace science and lift all restrictions on stem cell research and truly fund aids research.
Detail a true, workable plan for ending the war in Iraq. And admit there were mistakes.
Propose some type of new ideas wrt the "war on drugs."
Drop his unreasonable stance on a gay marriage.
Nominate true moderate Supreme Court justices (actually all judicial appointments).
Renounce his beholding to corporations.
Fire Rove, Cheney, Rumseld.
Kill the Patriot Act
Actually fund No Child Left Behind.
Drop the God routine.
Read a newspaper every now and then.

you see my dilemma?

 

I don't want to give the impression that I am anti-conservative. It is not the republican party I am against, it is merely Bush/Cheney that frighten me.

 

Sorry, I will never vote for this man:

 

Go figure, a guy who can't even intelligently articulate his support for his presidential candidate instead posts a silly picture of the opponent.

At least bamaslammer, despite his tendency to overdo the hyperbole, clearly and intelligently articulated an explanation of his support (BTW, bama, Kerry WILL do it better, 9/11 changed everything, remember?). No wonder you are too chicken to debate me.

SQUAWK

 

I don't understand this. There will never be an effective 3rd party if people think like this - though eliminating the electoral process would help too. You voted libertarian last time, you still seem to think Bush isn't that good...why not vote for someone you want to be in office?

 

Between Kerry and Bush, I chose Bush.

For me to change my mind he would have to become pro-choice, radically change his views on taxation, and/or begin a campaign of firearm confiscation that would make any Dem proud. Basically, I don't really agree with any of the Democrat platform, so it would take the Republican candidate out Democrating the Democrat for me to switch sides. Ideally, there would be a viable third party that more closely followed my views, but that is not going to happen, at least not anytime soon.

 

For me, it's pretty easy. My two most important issues are lower taxes and our national security. Bush is the natural choice on both of those issues. John Kerry will raise my taxes and not keep me safe. No thank you.

For me to change? Kerry would have to address my two concerns listed above.

 

texxx:

Kerry has addressed those issues. If you make less than 200K, your taxes wouldn't go up under a Kerry administration and they might go down.

 

There is nothing Kerry could do, short of morphing into the second coming of Ronald Reagan, that could make me vote for him. The admin has waged an effective war on terror. While most of it does not make the newspapers (some does, like those Al Queda big wigs we waxed in Yemen with Hellfires launched from a Predator drone), the Left's history of weakness and overreliance on finding "consensus" rather than leadership would make them unable to wage any sort of meaningful terror war.

Just look at their stances during the Cold War, almost as pro-Communist cheerleaders who sought our unilateral disarmament. We hear about how supposedly Clinton took the terror threat seriously, but this is from a man who was not briefed daily by his own CIA director, as Bush did BEFORE 9/11. There was no effective reply after the embassy bombings or the Cole suicide attack by his administration.

He basically blamed the GOP saying that they would have talked about how he was using it to "wag the dog." Well, damnit, Mr. President, you swore an oath to protect and defend the U.S. and you're worried about what people THINK? And we want to trust these people AGAIN to fight this war that will determine whether civilization itself falls to barbarian subhumans who worship a blood-thirsty Allah? I think not.

BJ, the problem with your "under $200,000" tax cut deal is the fact that:
A. The Democrats have not cut taxes since JFK. JFK!!!! Clinton promised us a middle class tax cut, but like most Clinton promises, it never came to pass.
B. THe Democrats have raised taxes umpteenth times since then.
C. $200,000 combined income sounds like a lot of money, but in California and NYC, that isn't really a lot of coin.

As for the third party voting deal, I don't support the libertarian candidate because the party has made a swing to the isolationism side of the ledger, something we can ill-afford to do. And basically, a vote for a libertarian or any other 3rd party candidate would take away a vote that would keep SKerry from rising to the big chair, something that must be prevented at all costs. Maybe if there wasn't this terror issue, I'd vote libertarian again, but really, 9/11 did change everything. The candidate I believe who will wage a real war on terror is GWB.

 

I'm having a hard time answering this. Most of the things I think to put are things that Kerry would do or might do, so that hardly makes me want to abandon Bush for him.