Pin The Tail On The Donkey (or Elephant)
and
Iowa Caucus Results chart (click on Iowa on map). Note the total votes cast for Democrats (2,501) versus Republicans (117,415).
My son's American Government class is going through candidate comparison charts now. He'll be voting for the first time in our state primaries next month and in the Presidential election in November. Here are two excellent candidate-evaluation sites he showed me, and one is done with a twist.
Print out this 2decide.com table, fold down the top of the page that shows the candidates' names and double-crease the part with their names repeated across the near-bottom. You want to hide the candidates' names, showing only the bottom legend of what each mark means.
Be honest now. Doing this "blind" removes the personalities and preconceived notions about the men and woman themselves.
Then go across each column marking the positions you support and add up how many points for each column. Only then look at the candidates' names.
I admittedly am not well-versed in what "Energy & Oil: ANWR Drilling" and "Energy & Oil: Kyoto" are in depth, so I left them blank. I presume the first is whether to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife region or not, but I don't know enough to know the true (as opposed to inflammatory-rhetoric laden) ramifications.
The copy my son had listed "Abortion", but today, that row is called "Roe v. Wade." Not exactly the same exact issue, for those of us who know better. It's still rather sad that the general populace still considers Roe v. Wade to be equal to the entire abortion issue when it clearly isn't. "Roe v. Wade" (scare quotes intended) has become the catchphrase for the litmus test but it only made abortion legal up to a certain point in the pregnancy. Its companion case, Doe v. Bolton , made abortion essentially legal at any stage of the pregnancy and further, if Roe and Doe were overturned tomorrow, abortion would still be legal as this decision merely would revert back to the states.
Lastly, the abortion issue can also be addressed with the statements, "Human life (or the right to it) begins at conception" versus "at birth."
Making those distinctions would result in a more accurate depiction of the issue and would further distinguish the Republican candidates (if not, of course, the Democrats).
This site phrased issues in "votable", actionable terms so this may not be possible. But if there was a way to do this, I believe we'd find out the true numbers of those identifying themselves as pro-life or pro-choice. It all depends on how the questions are worded, even in these tables.
One takes on faith that the checks, X's and other markings accurately reflect the candidates' positions. But do Thompson, Huckabee, Giuliani really have so many issues left "unknown?" Even Edwards and Obama have one or two unknowns. This is disconcerting!
Even with these concerns, this really helped me begin to put it all in one place. Surprisingly, Giuilani had the majority of my tickmarks with 15. Huckabee, McCain and Romney tied for second at 14.
For me, the problem with this is two-fold:
1) across those four candidates, they didn't share the exact same 14 points of agreement with me, and
2) Giuiliani supports Abortion/Roe v. Wade.
A potentially useful tool in solving that dilemma is this USA TODAY site, even though it asks far fewer data points than the above table (only 11, versus 25) and omits the abortion issue altogether.
Take the quiz but don't watch the "racing heads" in the columns at the bottom. Don't let that influence how you answer the questions.
These questions were less helpful. In question 4, I'd pick the first AND third choice, not either/or. Same for question 7: I'd like to see forcing the reduction of administrative overhead costs and medical fraud, but I chose "provide incentives for healthier living and reducing chronic healthcare costs."
I also didn't like the fact that all the questions were about "what the federal government should do," as if "bigger government" was the panacea for all our woes. It isn't. So for question 10, I chose "set mandatory caps on carbon emissions" because while that's more government involvement, that would force private industry to do the "investing in alternative energy sources" rather than "big government" doing so. A cap and trade scheme just allows the worse companies to "buy" their way out of violations. I'd support a carbon tax only if it had the desired effect, but I fear it wouldn't. "Implementing taxes" just makes most Democrats drool and want to hang onto those extra monies instead of supporting the original intent.
So when I was done, my top three were "Huckabee, Kucinich (Democrat), and Romney." !
This poll didn't ask any questions about "right to life" issues which do rule out Kucinich. The fact that he advocates a government-backed healthcare system rules him out as well. The government would botch that so bigtime.
What's neat is you can adjust, with slider bars on the lower right, to reflect your own personal emphasis on seven major issues. After adjusting how much I weight these, my top three are Huckabee, Romney and McCain.
Who was last on my list? Ron Paul, regardless of where I moved the sliders!
I still need to do more research so the following is a work in progress:
Current showstoppers:
ROMNEY: I just can't get past his prior abortion support when in charge of an abortion-advocating constituency. I still fear he will be the "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" candidate. Think Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, both Reagan-Republican nominees to SCOTUS and considered conservatives at that time. Fool me once...
Current concerns:
HUCKABEE:Fair or Sales-based Tax instead of the IRS (implausible).
Death Penalty support.
Doesn't support an assault weapons ban or background checks prior to purchase of guns. Look at the pictures of some of these guns. What in God's name do we need semi-automatic AK-47 rifles and "Intratec TEC-9 with 32-round magazine" weapons for, really? I break with National Review-ers on this one: even "between 1% and 6%" of gun crimes using such assault weapons prior to the ban's enactment is 1% and 6% too many. With these kinds of weapons, who needs machine guns? Unless Al-Qaeda is parked on my front lawn or I'm being attacked by the neighboring town a la the TV show "Jericho", I'll pass. For this, NR would label me an "antigunner." Nice. By the way, I have shot 9 millimeters and .45's and I was pretty good at it too so it isn't that I hate guns.
To be continued, sometime...
and
Iowa Caucus Results chart (click on Iowa on map). Note the total votes cast for Democrats (2,501) versus Republicans (117,415).
My son's American Government class is going through candidate comparison charts now. He'll be voting for the first time in our state primaries next month and in the Presidential election in November. Here are two excellent candidate-evaluation sites he showed me, and one is done with a twist.
Print out this 2decide.com table, fold down the top of the page that shows the candidates' names and double-crease the part with their names repeated across the near-bottom. You want to hide the candidates' names, showing only the bottom legend of what each mark means.
Be honest now. Doing this "blind" removes the personalities and preconceived notions about the men and woman themselves.
Then go across each column marking the positions you support and add up how many points for each column. Only then look at the candidates' names.
I admittedly am not well-versed in what "Energy & Oil: ANWR Drilling" and "Energy & Oil: Kyoto" are in depth, so I left them blank. I presume the first is whether to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife region or not, but I don't know enough to know the true (as opposed to inflammatory-rhetoric laden) ramifications.
The copy my son had listed "Abortion", but today, that row is called "Roe v. Wade." Not exactly the same exact issue, for those of us who know better. It's still rather sad that the general populace still considers Roe v. Wade to be equal to the entire abortion issue when it clearly isn't. "Roe v. Wade" (scare quotes intended) has become the catchphrase for the litmus test but it only made abortion legal up to a certain point in the pregnancy. Its companion case, Doe v. Bolton , made abortion essentially legal at any stage of the pregnancy and further, if Roe and Doe were overturned tomorrow, abortion would still be legal as this decision merely would revert back to the states.
Lastly, the abortion issue can also be addressed with the statements, "Human life (or the right to it) begins at conception" versus "at birth."
Making those distinctions would result in a more accurate depiction of the issue and would further distinguish the Republican candidates (if not, of course, the Democrats).
This site phrased issues in "votable", actionable terms so this may not be possible. But if there was a way to do this, I believe we'd find out the true numbers of those identifying themselves as pro-life or pro-choice. It all depends on how the questions are worded, even in these tables.
One takes on faith that the checks, X's and other markings accurately reflect the candidates' positions. But do Thompson, Huckabee, Giuliani really have so many issues left "unknown?" Even Edwards and Obama have one or two unknowns. This is disconcerting!
Even with these concerns, this really helped me begin to put it all in one place. Surprisingly, Giuilani had the majority of my tickmarks with 15. Huckabee, McCain and Romney tied for second at 14.
For me, the problem with this is two-fold:
1) across those four candidates, they didn't share the exact same 14 points of agreement with me, and
2) Giuiliani supports Abortion/Roe v. Wade.
A potentially useful tool in solving that dilemma is this USA TODAY site, even though it asks far fewer data points than the above table (only 11, versus 25) and omits the abortion issue altogether.
Take the quiz but don't watch the "racing heads" in the columns at the bottom. Don't let that influence how you answer the questions.
These questions were less helpful. In question 4, I'd pick the first AND third choice, not either/or. Same for question 7: I'd like to see forcing the reduction of administrative overhead costs and medical fraud, but I chose "provide incentives for healthier living and reducing chronic healthcare costs."
I also didn't like the fact that all the questions were about "what the federal government should do," as if "bigger government" was the panacea for all our woes. It isn't. So for question 10, I chose "set mandatory caps on carbon emissions" because while that's more government involvement, that would force private industry to do the "investing in alternative energy sources" rather than "big government" doing so. A cap and trade scheme just allows the worse companies to "buy" their way out of violations. I'd support a carbon tax only if it had the desired effect, but I fear it wouldn't. "Implementing taxes" just makes most Democrats drool and want to hang onto those extra monies instead of supporting the original intent.
So when I was done, my top three were "Huckabee, Kucinich (Democrat), and Romney." !
This poll didn't ask any questions about "right to life" issues which do rule out Kucinich. The fact that he advocates a government-backed healthcare system rules him out as well. The government would botch that so bigtime.
What's neat is you can adjust, with slider bars on the lower right, to reflect your own personal emphasis on seven major issues. After adjusting how much I weight these, my top three are Huckabee, Romney and McCain.
Who was last on my list? Ron Paul, regardless of where I moved the sliders!
I still need to do more research so the following is a work in progress:
Current showstoppers:
ROMNEY: I just can't get past his prior abortion support when in charge of an abortion-advocating constituency. I still fear he will be the "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" candidate. Think Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, both Reagan-Republican nominees to SCOTUS and considered conservatives at that time. Fool me once...
Current concerns:
HUCKABEE:
To be continued, sometime...
posted by Annie at 5:33 PM
