Last Moderate Standing?

For the longest time,  I have prided myself on being, what I perceived to be anyway, one of the last remaining moderates in America.  While I still hold this maxim to be true, I have to admit that in the last three years I have gone under a bit of a political metamorphosis that I must explain.

I am still not registered with any poltical party, nor have I ever given to any political campaign.  When I vote I invariably end up voting for an almost equal number of candidates from both parties.  What drives me in these decisions is not partisanship, but citizenship.  I vote for ideas, not a slogan.  I cherish country over any party affiliation and in so doing award my vote to whomever I believe has the best notion for moving us in a direction that will benefit the majority of Americans whether it is a federal, state or local election.

Having said that, what few friends I have may believe that in recent years, I have leaned more to the 'left'.  Whatever that is.  I'm not sure that I would characterize it as such, but I admit that I have become less impressed with the Republican party and view them much less favorably.  My comments in private and even in social media betray this attitude. Thus I seem to have lost my objectivity, my balanced apporach to all things political to some people for whom I have a deep respect.

Please do not interpret that as my being satisfied with or identifying myself with the Democratic party.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  On many, issues I find the Democrat position repugnant. 

The problem for me is that even as a Christian living in a secular society, I do not have the luxury of blindly supporting the Republican party because they supposedly represent moral values more.  First of all, I'm not convinced that they do.  Second, I expect Democrats to behave in ways that are perceived by moralists as wrong, therefore the morality of their positions has greater weight on agreeing with them.  I expect that Democrats are going to support abortion, even though I do not.  So I approach how they treat the living as having more morality than Republicans positions.

Does that make any sense?

In other words, if Republicans are supposed to be the party of morality and yet the policies they pursue benefit the aristocracy at the expense of the majority...that is not a defensible position to support.  If Republicans value free enterprise so much yet game the tax code to put small businesses at a competitive disadvantage, that is contradictory at best, dishonest at worst.  If Republicans value life so much in the womb, why do they not seem concerned about quality of life once a baby is outside the womb?

And lastly and most recently, the behavior of the Republican party in the last 3 1/2 years has been detestable and unpatriotic.  The coordinated and concerted effort they have exerted in denying the current president the ability to govern goes beyond merely disagreeing with his policies.  They have put everything on hold for the sake of winning the upcoming election.  They have abdicated their Constitutional duty to govern to the will of party politics.  To me, that borders on treason.

Any movement I may have carried out on the surface, is not an internal betrayal of my core values.  Merely, it is perhaps a temporary resignation that these are the current choices and I am, by nature a political creature.  Though I live with one foot in this world and one in the kingdom to come that should not prevent me from having opinions that may differ with my more conservative friends.  Nor do I pretend to have the market cornered on truth.