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What Are Your Big Three Issues?
Too many voters choose candidates for stupid reasons. “Which candidate would I rather have a beer with?” Or, “I want to be part of history and elect the Historic First Woman/African-American/Transgender-Atheist-Vegan-Differently-Abled-Muslim-Illegal-Immigrant™.” Or, “He’s angry for the same reasons I’m angry!” But there a few of us left who care about philosophy, policy, and other stuff that isn’t cool. And while there’s a broad range of issues to consider, one can usually boil it down to three issues of paramount importance.
What follows are mine. What are yours?
- Immigration: I want current law enforced until such time as the law is reformed. The law should be reformed to make illegal immigration as difficult as possible, and limit legal immigration to a level that is socially and economically sustainable.
- Constitutional and Human Rights: I want uncompromising support for Constitutional Rights. In a candidate, I want a commitment to appoint and fight for strict Constitutionalist judges.
- Regulatory and Agency Reform: The Regulatory Apparatus of the Federal Government should be pared down severely and future major regulations subject to Congressional approval.
I agree with 1 and 3.
My number 2 is a renewed American Nationalism, which embraces a robust foreign policy. In short, I want Reagan’s approach to the world, except without backing down (as he did after Beruit), and bombing those who take hostages, instead of selling them arms.
There would be several corollaries to those three points that would require action on other issues. Like for no. 3, a strong military. Or low taxes for No. 2. Pro-life is definitely my number one issue.
Constitutional government seems the umbrella under which all other issues reside for me. Well before government asks if it should do a thing it should ask whether or not the thing is even permissible. Most of what government does would never pass that test.
Put me down with King Prawn for my #2
1. Immigration/National Sovereignty
3. Balanced budget this year, surplus next and address national debt.
I’m not sure how specific I need to be. Is economics too broad a category?
Anyway, in a very particular order.
1. Abortion – I’m opposed to it in almost all cases and willing to compromise to get the number down as quickly as possible.
2. Entitlement reform – Entitlement spending has the capability to completely collapse the republic. It’s going to be a long fight and why Republicans need long lasting majorities and not just electoral results this cycle.
3. The responsible nomination of justices to the Supreme Court. – This measure has the chance to put the brakes on whatever spews forth from the progressive maw for the next twenty years. I don’t want to see that opportunity go to waste.
My only issue that may get me to the polls this year is the size of the Government. If there were a real chance of shrinking (does not equal slowing the growth of) the Government, I would vote.
1. The national debt. If this country ever falls, it won’t be brought down by Islamic terrorists, Mexican immigrants, or too many gay people getting married. We will be crushed under our debt and it will be our own damn fault.
2. Respect for constitutional limits. No president is going to bring us back to a pre-New Deal government in 8 years, obviously. But he or she could at least veto further violations of the 10th Amendment, and perhaps undo at least a little of the damage done in the last 80 years.
There are many other important issues, but these are at the top of my list. My ideal presidential candidate would have the campaign slogan, Mind Your Own Business.
If this is addressed (for realz), 90% of everything else takes care of itself.
Getting rid of Obamacare, illegal immigration, and debt.
So far, most of what I see here could be summed up as the rule of law. That is my number one. I’m tempted to put it as numbers 2 & 3, too, but…
1.) Fix SS
2.) Maintenance and restoration of the social trust
3.) We ought not slaughter an order of magnitude babies than the holocaust.
That’s it i brief.
I’m tempted to regurgitate Charlotte’s answer, but
And there’s the rub.
Is debt still a thing? Because I don’t hear any politicians talking about it.
So, what’s your number 4?
Rand Paul has talked about it at the debates.
It most certainly is. Even if John Adams is as dead as Abe Vigoda, he wasn’t wrong about debt.
So, Libertarian?
I guess Keith Richards gets your write-in vote.
All of the above. What they all have in common is the drift, now stampede away from the constitution and limited government. At the heart of all of it is the belief that government can fix human frailty, error, mistakes, reform human nature, stimulate the economy, foster innovation. The founders knew better and we’ve undermined what they did. So the question is where do you begin to dismantle the administrative state?
Toss the tax code and adopt something simple like Cruz’s, toss the regulatory regime, one bad law after another and put some real rules and barriers against its growth while we systematically dismember it. Cruz also proposes this. This is why the establishment hates Cruz and will embrace Trump.
I think that makes him a Republican Party Reptile, right?
I would put “Right to Life” at the top of the list, but since Reagan all the Republicans have done is be a tiny speed bump. The Democrats have been “all abortion, all the time.” There’s no point wanting something that isn’t going to happen.
I like your three, but I would expand the third to encompass smaller government in general, including fiscal sanity and reduced spending.
A “lesser” issue that I am nonetheless quite passionate about is tax simplification. The Byzantine tax code is an outrage. Nothing to me exemplifies the ruling class’s contempt for the taxpayer better than the accretion of complications in the code. I believe that no one should have to pay an expert to file their tax forms.
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For sorting out number 2 (in the unlikely event that there are multiple candidates that meet that criteria by the time the primaries get to Florida), I would have the following priorities:
a) Pro-growth policies – the only way out of our various economic messes is growth – it must be job 1.
b) a commitment to the rule of law and constitutionalism.
If any of these happen in the next four years without causing any great harm, I will be ecstatic. If any two of them happen, I’ll start believing in miracles.
Go ahead and print, I own timber interests.