I too turn 18 this year and get to vote. I'm sad to say that I'm considering not voting. I dislike all the choices. Myself, I'm rather conservative, and McCain is rather liberal for a Republican. The lesser of two (three?) evils, perhaps, but I still don't know if I can bring myself to vote for him. What I would suggest you do is read, read, and read some more. Do a lot of research on each candidate. Contrast their social and economic views to yours. In general, democrats support a larger government, whereas republicans generally support a more limited one. I would have voted for Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee. However, McCain is going to be the nominee, so I don't know... McCain is different from Bush in many aspects. I think he's much more liberal. Regardless, while Bush clearly has his faults, he isn't as bad as is portrayed. IMO, the media is rather biased. The Economy, up until the past few months, has done fantastic under Bush. Well, I've personally drawn the conclusion that Democrats are moving more and more left with more and more socialistic tendencies. Tax the rich because their rich? Just on the Democratic debate a few weeks ago Obama was asked if he would rise taxes for the rich even if cutting taxes would bring in more revenue (which it does). His response was, yes, he would tax the rich even if it brought in less money. When asked why? Because it's fair, he says. It's fair to make the rich less rich because the poor are poor, according to Obama. That makes no sense. The rich aren't oppressing the poor as Karl Marx (founder of communism) believed. If they aren't oppressing the poor, then why take more wealth from them when they earned it? That implies we should all have equal wages and wealth, which is very clearly a socialist point of view. I could go on and on. They are quite different, actually. Social issues like abortion are issues because they're extremely important to some people. Economic issues like a large government and welfare are even more important because they can have vast, long-term economic consequences. I won't go into details at the moment, but you have no idea how tempting it is. Also, as lordofhats said, if you said yes to those questions that's a more liberal/democratic point of view. But then ask yourself this: why do I support abortion/national healthcare/big government/welfare? Question everything.
As an outside observer, I don't like any of the candidates for the US election. But I really don't like Obama, or Hillary. (I'll admit right now that I'm a Canadian Conservative, which would make me a moderate very slightly right wing supporter in the US.) From an outsiders point of view Obama or Hillary would be bad economically. Right now the US economy is going down. Not horribly, right now its only cooling off after years of doing extremely well, but it has the potential to plummet rapidly. Combined with world food prices skyrocketing we have too potential destabilizing factors. Hillary and Obama are both saying they would introduce protectionist tariffs around the US trying to make the US economy more secure. They would also reopen NAFTA to negotiations, and potentially every other trade deal the US has. The problem with this is, if the US decides to raise tariffs (making importers pay more money to sell to the US), the rest of the world will do the same. The US relies on markets throughout the world, and it is a major importer of goods. In most cases, this is a good thing. When dealing with other Western countries, and most developing countries (China not included) its almost always either a fair trade balance, or biased in the US favour. If the US decides to become protectionist, they will affect 99% of the countries in the world, and all of it in a bad way. When those countries retaliate, they will hurt the US and each other. This is what happened in the Great Depression. The stock market crashed the US and some other countries got hurt. They raised tariffs and EVERYONE got hurt, including the countries that started it all. So countries kept raising tariffs, and refused to sell fairly to anyone. So for the next 10 years the world economy staggered along with thousands of self-inflicted knife wounds. If the world sees the US raising tariffs, its almost a certainty the same thing will happen. Obama has said publicly he would re-open NAFTA and Hillary agreed. This has made the US, Canada, and Mexico billions of dollars, and kept a fairly friendly arrangement between the three countries that has benefited everyone. If they reopen these agreements, the markets will see the uncertainty, and stocks will fall again, and it will be harder to buy, sell, or get loans. I see the Democrats as being very bad for the economic well-being of everyone. So before deciding that Obama is a good "Change" pay attention, see what types of change he really wants. Sometimes too much change is a bad thing. Also what has he said beyond "I want to bring Hope to the US, and Change Washington"? He's an empty suit for the Far Left.
England has now had 29 conescutive years of right wing rule... and we're in a mess!!! Economy is one the strongest in the world yet we can't educate our young, care for our sick and support our old people... the streets are violent and the cost of living is extortionate.... we fight good wars tho!!! Would it be any different with a leftish wing government??? Probaly not.... It matters not a jot mate... only the names change.
I'm going with Banzai here. The Federal government of Britain at times, may be right wing, but at the local level and in the bureaucracy, it makes most of the left wingers her in North America look like amateurs.
