Well, the day has FINALLY come! Tomorrow I get to vote for the first time in my entire life in the Maryland primary! I'm a registered Republican; therefore, because of MD's closed primary system, I have to vote for a Republican candidate. For me, supporting John McCain is a no-brainer in the primary election; however things will definitely get fuzzy for me when it comes time to vote in the general elections if Barack Obama gets the Democratic nomination!
I will definitely be voting for McCain tomorrow because I love his pragmatic and centrist views and his eagerness to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats to produce legislation that will benefit the masses and strike a good compromise. Even if I didn't like McCain as much as I do, I would probably vote for him anyway considering the fact that Mike Huckabee is, in my opinion, a religious zealot. I have researched McCain's economic policies and have found them to be pretty in line with my conservative beliefs regarding fiscal policy. I see McCain as a social moderate and a fiscal conservative which, to me, is the perfect combination of ideals for our next president to have. It is important to be tolerant of the varied beliefs of American citizens, after all, one cannot and more importantly should not based on the guidelines set down by the Constitution, legislate morals; but, balancing the budget and cutting deficit spending should be a top priority. Imagine (this is not really hypothetical considering it could happen in the next twenty years at the rate at which we are going) our country spending 30-40% of our budget just paying interest on our debt! You can equate that to pre-revolutionary France (before 1789) in which the government was only left with half of the budget for defense spending and all other social and economic programs! I don't even want to get into the fact that China owns about a quarter of our debt and could use that leverage to cause some serious trouble for us in the future if the economy continues its gradual downward slope.
America is faced with many issues that are glossed over by the media and aren't a topic of many dinner conversations. If we are going to make a change and address some of these issues, the American people need to stop buying into the gloom and doom sentiment of the future and start to actually make a game plan. The first step to success in this plan is to vote - no matter who you plan on supporting! Unless it's Hillary Clinton...then you shouldn't vote - ha ha just kidding! Anyway, it really concerns me that many of my friends consider the primary and even general elections unimportant. This year especially, Maryland has actually become a battle ground state in the primaries; how much more excitement could you wish for? How much more likely is it for your vote to actually count for something? I also find it really hard to stomach when people tell me that they aren't voting because they don't like ANY of the candidates. You have got to be kidding me! There has got to be at least SOMEONE who shares even half of your beliefs - no one can ask for the perfect candidate! In my case, I believe that we should make a time table to gradually reduce troops in Iraq, a view that McCain certainly does not hold. Does that mean that now I have no one for whom to vote? No, it just means that not everything that goes on in government is perfectly in tune with my own personal wants. I find it not a little self-centered to expect a certain candidate to hold all of your views near and dear to his heart. In short, it is ridiculous to expect anything to get done that you would want to occur if you don't speak up for yourself by exercising your right to vote!
Well that's enough for one night; I have to get up early and to the polls tomorrow morning with a big cup of coffee and a smile because I know that this is a first step of entering my adult life!
Side note: Please be nice to those handing out campaign literature - I've been one of those people and trust me, the job is hard enough without people snapping at you and covering their faces with their hands like your pamphlets are covered in anthrax!
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