GOP Reflections

I am not a registered voter with either party. I attempt to stay open-minded and ultimately vote for the best candidate. I will admit, however, that my voting tends to trend Republican due to my beliefs on welfare, affirmative action, taxes, and international affairs (military spending).

So, as promised, here’s my take-aways from the GOP convention:

1) I want to watch Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. I haven’t seen more than a few minutes at a time of him speaking and I hear that he’s phenomenal. I’d like to see if his speaking skills marry up with equally good content when he has the opportunity to be thorough.

2) McCain is genuinely a nice person. I was really moved by his POW experience and his decision to honor the “first in first out” policy, even when he had the chance to leave early. Choosing 4 more years of torture and not letting that break your American spirit is absolutely amazing.

3) Lisa’s right, Palin IS hot. And how frickin’ cute was Piper licking her hand to fix Trig’s hair?

4) McCain has a better policy on corporate taxation when it comes to off-shore production. Obama’s plan is to penalize businesses who send jobs overseas with higher taxes. While “spanking” companies seems justified, I think that this will actually hurt the American people. If a company has to incur additional expense they’re not just going to eat it, they’ll pass it on. And when they do, who do you think will be ultimately paying that additional cost? The consumer (us!!). We will all end up paying more for the things we buy via two rounds of taxation – once on behalf of the companies who were originally taxed and then again via a sales tax.

I feel very strongly that McCain’s plan is better – incentivize companies to keep jobs in America by LOWERING corporate taxes. If companies are paying less to do business here they have more reason to keep jobs here. They also have less reason to raise prices on the goods they sell. With this combo the economy should do better – people will pay a fair price for the items they buy and they’ll have the income (JOBS) to have money to spend in the first place.

5) The war still needs a lot of attention. Obama has, from what I’ve heard, a good plan for gradually pulling out of the war. I’ve also read online that his plan is very similar to Bush’s plan (which seems strange). I have not heard the specifics on McCain’s Iraq strategy. I need to research this a lot more to better understand it.

6) I also need to do more research on socialized medicine. I did not like paying a 12% sales tax rate while in Canada (part of their financial resource to pay for their nation-wide healthcare), but I don’t fully understand the implications on how something like this would affect company-sponsored health insurance plans. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad?

7) Both candidates talk a lot about cleaning up Washington. I'm now more skeptical of our representatives in general. How bad is it really? I hope they both follow-through on this campaign promise.