It’s not very often that I talk about the specifics of American politics. If I speak about politics at all I usually prefer to speak about political theory or a particular issue (like torture, or gay marriage) rather than party politics. However, I’ve been reflecting on my political shift from Republican to Indpendent and thought I may as well get my thoughts down in words.

I voted for George W Bush in 2004, the first year I was eligible to vote. In my defense, I was young and naive and confused. And all that. Nevertheless, by 2006/2007, I was looking back on what I had done and thought, my goodness, if I voted for that man, how can I be considered to be at all a competent voter in future elections? This has been a source – not of guilt, but of self-doubt when it comes to future voting. I voted for Bush because I had brought up to hold small government as a political value, and a strong national defense, and of course, Bush was one of “us” – he was an Evangelical Christian, and thus qualified as a man of character to run the country in ways non-Evangelicals were not. He was a member of the in-group.

I look back on his two terms in office, and I do not see a man who valued small government. The largest increase by far in federal spending on medicine was Bush’s Medicare Part D extension – which was estimated at the time it was signed into law to cost the country $395 billion over nine years. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has since revised their estimates and last year alone Part D cost over $50 billion dollars. By contrast, HR 3590 – the health care bill that passed in the Senate – is projected by the CBO to reduce the deficit by $130 billion over nine years. Small change, especially over nine years, but still a net reduction – under a Democratic president, and an increase under a Republican. Bush also created a new department of the government called “Homeland Security,” on top of the existing CIA and FBI departments. How is this an expression of small government values? He also began wars with not one, but two (three if you count Pakistan) countries with no clear objective, exit strategy, or end point. After all, we were Attacked By Terrorists, and had to Retaliate, no matter how much or how little sense the retaliations made. It has become abundantly clear that the country was misled, either intentionally or through gross incompetence, into the Iraq war. There were no weapons of mass destruction. No imminent threat. No links with Al Qaeda. And now we have been in Afghanistan for almost nine years and Iraq for seven. To put that in perspective, the “official” timeline of the Vietnam war (we had soldiers alongside the French before the official timeline starts) was eight years. Such a policy is not a conservative “strong defense” – this is an offense, a military occupation. I don’t understand how preemptive military strikes and indefinite wars and occupations are a conservative value. However, in at least the cases of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, they are and remain Republican values.

And to the point of being a gay person: how does one support a party whose defining policy document calls for an amendment to the United States Constitution to permanently enshrine a 3-4% minority of the population (of which I am a member) as second-class citizens? The claim that they are only against using the word “marriage” has been revealed as the bullshit that it is. Just recently in Washington State, they got a referendum on the ballot seeking to revoke the “everything but marriage” domestic partnership benefits that the legislature had passed into law. Why? It’s not called “marriage” is it? Well the argument goes that it was just too close to marriage for decent people to stand for. Nineteen states, all of them with large Republican constituents have passed state constitutional amendments banning not just gay marriage, but any union of two people who are not male and female whose legal status approximates marriage. The nineteen states effectively, barring gays and lesbians not just from marriage but also from civil unions and demostic partnerships are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. Over and over again these amendments are voted into law with Republican backing. This is what the Republican party wants: gay relationships ought to have no legal benefits or recognitions from the state whatsoever.

Jason Kuznicki of Positive Liberty recently attended an event discussing the place for gays and lesbians within conservatism. He blogs about it here and here. But the key point is he asked Maggie Gallagher, a ferocious advocate of denying all legal recognition to gay couples: what if he agreed with her? What if he said, yes, you’re right? He has a husband and a daughter. Does he divorce his husband and attempt to give his daughter back to the state? Does he then attempt to enter into an ex-gay ministry, knowing the incredibly low success rates? Does he live a single life, completely alone? What does he do? Gallagher’s answer is revealing, in an unusual and disturbing way: “I don’t know.” Then she hastens to add, “But you don’t have to agree with me.” It’s difficult for me to imagine that a woman who has spent well over a decade lobbying to deny gay citizens all legal recognition of their relationships has not thought about this question: what does the gay person do? Surely at some point in her years-long career in anti-gay politics this has crossed her mind. Surely someone has brought it up. Either her worldview is so small that it does not even include gays and lesbians and so she legitimately doesn’t know – because despite her intense efforts she’s never considered what to do with gay people other than to make them and their relationships second-class – or she does in fact know what the gay person agreeing with her should do, how Jason should hypothetically respond if he agreed with her, but doesn’t want to say it. I honestly don’t know which of these it is for Maggie.

But the point is, for large constituents, represented by people like Maggie Gallagher and the language enshrined in the party platform, there is no place for gay people or for their relationships. Ideally, there is no future for me or for my future spouse (if I should ever have one). We are just to go away and not pester the other 96-97% of the world with requests for equal treatment and certainly not for recognition that we exist. Although I try not to be a single-issue voter, how do I vote for a party that wants me to be invisible?

How do I vote for a party that has become the party of torture? Not to go all Glenn Greenwald here but during the Bush years we have waterboarded individuals, sometimes 183 times within a single month, placed prisoners in stress positions, forced them to be naked for long periods of time, engaged in the torture of excessive sleep deprivation, beaten and bruised detainees by throwing them against walls, never given them a trial, probably murdered detainees during torture sessions, kidnapped and shipped Muslims accused of being terrorists from their homes around the world to secret black sites… the list goes on and on and on. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the body charged with upholding the Geneva Conventions (which we signed and are therefore constitutional bound to as the supreme law of the land), has called what we’ve done torture and in violation of Geneva. And the Republicans want to continue this. They’ve thrown hissy fits at the possibility of sending some detainees to trials in the US. No trials for detainees, that’s being Soft On Terror. No closing of the noxious prison at Gitmo. Waterboarding isn’t torture, it’s a perfectly legitimate way to make prisoners say… well, whatever you want them to say. And they don’t deserve trials to find out if they’re guilty. That’s being Soft On Terror. Treat them like animals! The former vice president went on national television and talked about how he supported waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Not that the Democratic party is a whole lot better. Imprisonment of kidnapped accused terrorists has moved from Gitmo to Bagram, where the Red Cross has also complained about Geneva violations. Gitmo is still open last I checked. The United States still has not investigated the war crimes that have occurred over the past several years, further violating Geneva (which demands investigations into torture offenses). Barack Obama does not believe in marriage rights for gays, although he does support civil unions (he wouldn’t have gays go back into the “I don’t know” netherland some Republicans want). The Democrats do believe (rightly or wrongly) in continued expansion of government social programs. However, at least there is room within the Democratic party to dissent on some things. There are at least some democrats who object to torture and believe it is wrong no matter who is in office. There are democrats who believe in gay marriage or civil unions. (I just want equal rights, I don’t care about the lingo.) And even if the democrats do want expanded government, at least they believe in the need to pay for it. At least there is not continuous rhetoric about “small government” while expanding government programs and simultaneously cutting taxes. That’s a fast track to financial ruin. At least they are not in awkward and contradictory positions like the Republicans are, who now have to oppose the congressional health care bill on the grounds of government interference in medicine, while supporting the massive Medicare expansion by Bush, in addition to the equally-expensive Medicaid and Social Security programs. No health care reform, but hands off my medicare. Come on guys, really?

And so for all these reasons I’ve drifted away from the Republican party. I now see the party, on a national level, as a sad group of contradictory beliefs, stealing whatever rhetoric is convenient and playing on American religiosity (especially on the gay issue) for votes. In fact, the party is chiefly religious now. Who are its media stars? Palin, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity. With the exception of O’Reilly, all people who routinely invoke God in politics. They are neither a party of fiscal responsibility nor of small government. Endless wars, endless government expansion, coupled with endless tax cuts. And denying gays the same government recognition that straights get. That’s the Republican party. I may not be enamored with the alternative, but given what the party currently is, I cannot conceive of voting for a Republican in a national election in the foreseeable future. On a local level, well, being in Seattle tends to mitigate some of the crazy.