1) A Republican-run government says gay people can't get married.
Marriage can be a wonderful thing. But if I had it my way, the government would have nothing to do with marriage, and people wouldn't get special benefits just for getting married (and, statistically, divorced shortly after). Marriage is for some people a sacrament or a religious ceremony, and for others a practical or "worldly" expression of love and commitment. But in any case, for everybody, marriage is a private affair. So long as we're treating it as government business, however, according special privileges to the married, the government has no right to say that some people can have access to those privileges through marriage and others cannot. Republicans support restrictions on marriage equality, or the ability of all Americans to marry who we love, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. I think that stance is backward, misguided, hypocritical, and antithetical to the most fundamentally important and profound principles of the Constitution, the idea that we're all created equal.
2) Republicans want to make it harder for you to vote.
Despite an overwhelming lack of evidence that voter fraud is an issue in US elections, Republicans are using the boogeyman of widespread voter fraud to justify making it harder for people to vote. Some have even been rather candid about which specific people they'd prefer wouldn't make it to the polls: people who are poor, black, and likely to vote against Republicans. From Ohio to Pennsylvania to Florida, Republican officials have passed or attempted to pass restrictive voter ID laws at the last minute before the election. They have also shortened early voting periods despite high demand and long lines for voting during this period. I have always been a proponent of Blackstone's formulation that it's better to have 10 guilty people walk free than to hang one innocent person. I would apply the same to voting: even if there were marginal voter fraud (which hasn't been demonstrated), preventing people who have the right to vote from voting is a greater crime. Why should we elect Republican officials who demonstrate such a level of crude cynicism at the expense of perhaps the most sacred democratic right, the right that makes democracy possible?
3) Republicans want the government to control women's reproductive health decisions.
Putting aside what we're told are the extremes of the Republican party, like those who invoke God's will to justify their beliefs that a woman who is raped and impregnated should be forced by the state to carry the child to term, or risk being punished in the court of law for failing to do so, Republicans have taken a hard-line stance on what they understand to be the beginning of life: life begins at conception. Putting aside also the logical and philosophical quagmire of why, if the "potential" of human life is enough to start life at conception, life can't also start at ejaculation, or perhaps even the registering of the intention of procreation in the mind of a man or a woman, the real-life consequences of this ill-thought-out position on contraception and abortion are dire. If life begins at conception, such that terminating a fertilized egg becomes murder under criminal law, will we prosecute women for having miscarriages? Will we ban condoms and the pill? Will we force couples and women to launch themselves down the stairs, or to perform risky, do-it-yourself home abortions to rid themselves of the remnants of a rape? Will we outlaw stem-cell research? If we follow the Republican argument on women's reproductive rights to its logical terminus, all of these things become real. Not only that, but what is our justification for going down this path? What is our argument for imposing such restrictions on the bodies of female citizens in a secular democratic republic? If we're imposing a religious argument, it's the wrong thing to do, since individuals have the right to do and believe as they will according to their religions, but the rest of us shouldn't have to follow suit. If we're imposing these restrictions based on scientific reasoning and evidence, then we're misunderstanding the science. In either case, though the situation is messy, a woman, in consultation with her doctors, should have the ultimate right to make decisions about what's going on in her own body. Republicans disagree.
4) Republicans hold education and educators in contempt.
From a local ad in one of the Dakotas criticizing a Democratic candidate running for an environment-related government position for having been educated at Cambridge University and living and working on environment issues abroad, to Republican presidential candidates calling people with college degrees "snobs" or attacking Barack Obama for having graduated from Harvard Law School, the Republican strategy on education is to paint it as something that puts us out of touch with the "average American." The logic of this strategy, of course, suggests that the "average American" is an uneducated buffoon who would look upon getting into Harvard not as an achievement, but as some kind of personality defect. In Republican political discourse, teachers are represented not as public servants working long hours for little pay to educate our children (many of whom go home to parents who couldn't care less about their education, making it that much harder on teachers), but as evil liberal indoctrinators, or, by way of synechdoche, as a union lobby. If there is to be anything resembling the "American dream" of social mobility and self-betterment, education plays a crucial role in this. Yet Republicans like to insist, quixotically, that elbow grease is enough to turn a poor, inner-city kid into a success story. They want to cut education to the bone, do nothing about the increasingly insurmountable costs of higher education, and score cheap political points by labeling educators and the educated "snobs" and "elitists." One way of preserving a true elite ruling class, however, is by assuring that the population is too poor or too proud to pursue an education, a path to a better financial future to be sure, but much more importantly a path to a better society with better, more responsible citizens.
5) Republicans think America is the best at everything.
If you already think your country is the greatest at everything, from health care to social mobility to foreign policy, even when there is ample evidence to the contrary, how can you begin to understand how to make things better? Republicans aren't well positioned to address the glaring problems we face because their brand of stubborn American exceptionalism blinds them to the reality of these problems. Further, the rest of the world is not blind to this blindness, and knows that it will have a more difficult time working alongside America, and pulling weight on global issues that Americans can't address alone, if Republicans are running the show.
6) Republicans favor aggressive business and corporate welfare.
One Republican idea I can get behind is that coddling people is often a poor way to instill the motivation necessary for people to help themselves. Republicans think this way when it comes to poor people (notably I don't think basic social welfare constitutes "coddling"), but magically reverse this most central philosophical stance when it comes to treating businesses. Nevermind the public servants, the public services, the educators, and the military, who all work tirelessly to provide the best possible conditions for a thriving business--paved roads and infrastructure, safe streets and government stability, an educated and well-trained work force, etc.--Republicans believe that all the credit for anything from a strong economy to low unemployment to more efficient solutions to military and environmental challenges should go to businesses. As a consequence, one of the biggest Republican selling points in this election season has been "talk to small business owners about how they feel; they're scared!" Curiously no one in the Republican party cares about how anyone else is "feeling" right now; we're supposed to let the "feelings" of small business owners--whatever a "small business" is--define not just our fiscal policy, but our entire budget and the whole election. This is to say nothing of corporate access to the electoral and legislative systems, and huge tax loopholes and benefits for companies that literally make billions of dollars each year. Business is important, and the economy--whatever that means--is important too; but we have other important challenges that need to be addressed by serious people in serious ways. Republicans are guided by the need to coddle and acquiesce to business needs, which diverts crucial attention from the rest of our issues, some of which I've noted above.
7) Republicans think you, the voter, are an idiot.
All politicians lie and manipulate words and data to get themselves elected. But Republicans--one very important one in particular--will say anything they think you want to hear on all major issues. The Republican presidential candidate has not only launched a campaign attacking the very health system he himself created; he's changed his tune radically and in the space of mere months on issues from climate change and abortion to foreign policy in the Middle East. He's outwardly lied about simple, provable things, then doubled-down on his lies well after being caught. He's made up scary stories to influence voters in Ohio who fear for the loss of their jobs (and those of their friends and family); and he's outwardly admitted, via his campaign officials, that this is precisely the strategy, which will not be affected by fact-checkers: say what you need to say, regardless of its relationship to the truth, or his own personal convictions, if, indeed, he has any. What this says to voters is simple: you're too stupid to remember that just last week I said the opposite thing I'm saying now, too lazy to care, not likely to catch me in my lies, and unwilling to investigate the specifics of my proposals, the disclosure of which I've rigorously avoided. Something interesting to consider in this presidential election is the huge difference of means and objectives between running a business successfully and running a government successfully. The Republican candidate might have been a savvy businessman by lying to and manipulating people around him, always keeping his cards close to his chest; but in pubic affairs, all of these lies and tactics are exposed, scrutinized, and laid bare before the world. When we can see your cards, Mr. Romney, you can't play that hand as effectively as you might have in the past.
