The Republican Party's platform is overall superior to that of the Democratic Party

Thank you for that opening argument, Pro, and thank you readers for your interest. I’d like to begin my opening statements with a few general comments about American politics. It may surprise you to know that I myself am a card carrying Republican, leaning towards libertarianism. In recent years though, I find myself with little choice but to vote Democrat on most issues. I greatly admire the leadership of moderate Republicans like Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, both of whom I remember fondly for their capable stewardship over my beloved home state. What has troubled me about the party in recent years is what I consider to be a preoccupation with reliving past glories, rather than charting the course ahead. In particular I find the GOP’s obsessive hatred of Obama to be truly ugly, and frighteningly successful. The most up to date study I’ve heard on the matter is that 35% of New Jersey conservatives believe our President may be the Antichrist [1]. The party platform itself may not directly use such inflammatory language, of course, but it pays the extreme Christian Right a nod by placing such high priority on things like “protect traditional marriage”. Until the GOP openly and unequivocally follows Obama’s courageous example on the issue of gay rights, they will remain on the wrong side of history. To our children, opponents of gay marriage and opponents to military service by homosexual soldiers will look no different than the bigots who rallied to keep blacks and whites from being able to marry. [2] The biggest problem with the platform overall is probably taxes. You can’t cut taxes and immediately see enough growth to cover the shortfall, that’s just pure fantasy. Nominal tax revenue is almost always increasing, regardless of tax policy, due to inflation. But real tax revenue tends to increase with tax increases, and decrease with tax cuts. Period. [3] The only cases where tax cuts increase revenues are if rates are already extremely high (as in close to 100%). Additionally, if tax reform is to remain revenue neutral, this merely means that the rich will enjoy lower rates, and the poor and middle classes will have to make up the difference. Although I don’t have space to counter GOP attitudes about unemployment compensation and welfare in this round, I want to assure readers that I disagree with Republicans, and will elaborate on this in future rounds. On energy, Democrats have supported sustainability and renewables in favor of fossil fuels. So far there has been no commercially viable breakthrough that has revolutionized energy consumption for the majority of Americans, but we all know that eventually there will be one, and it needs to be developed here if America is to be at the forefront of the industry (and we do). Fossil fuels will run out. Therefore, to try to dig our way out rather than innovate our way out is procrastination. It is a potentially catastrophic one as well, because despite GOP denial of climate change and human involvement in it, 97% of climatologists and virtually every scientific organization studying the topic agree that humans are causing it [4]. Much of the rest of the platform (for both parties) is just obvious and noncontroversial. Things like honoring our veterans, giving our children a great education, promoting self-reliance, and defending the constitution are largely universal values. I petition voters not to count such things as favoring either one side or the other. If readers would like me to identify exactly which of Pro’s items I take issue with, and which ones I see as being non-differential between the parties, I would be glad to do so more explicitly, but I do ask that in future rounds Pro use a numbering system for his lists. 1) http://www.youtube.com... 2) http://weknowmemes.com... 3) http://www.salon.com... 4) http://en.wikipedia.org...