After feuding with my wife about what vacation we are going to do this year before the baby is born, I found myself reading a Left2Right blog entry about the Oklahoma Republican Party’s Platform. Since it seems way out wack, I got curious to see what the local Washington State Republican Party Platform looks like.

Things that I like:

·         The defense of Israel statement has a coexisting Palestinian state piece.

Things that I like but don’t trust the Republican Party to actually do (or do right):

·         Property owners implementing environmental practices that are supported by sound, peer-reviewed scientific method are a model of responsible natural resource stewardship

·         Increasing competition among health care providers to promote accountability to patients

·         All people are entitled to be treated equally by government.

Things that I don’t like:

·         The protection of innocent human life born or pre-born through natural death.

·         An amendment to the United States Constitution defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

·         A policy that public schools not promote or identify homosexuality as a healthy, morally acceptable, or alternative lifestyle.

·         Research of adult and placenta stem cells and oppose human cloning.

·         Compensating property owners when government actions reduce the value of their land secures our right to own property.

Stuff I found cute:

·         Support President Bush‘s Energy Bill to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign crude oil. This is immediately followed by the ANWR drilling platform element, I guess foreign is the keyword there.

While there is a couple things that I find off for me, it sounds like the more tolerable form of the republican party. Let us see how the democrats do: (-1 to start with by making me open a pdf)

Things that I like:

·         Oppose the “Corporations are people too“ Supreme court ruling

·         reinstatement of I-728 that calls for reduction of class sizes;

·         enforcement of sunshine laws and transparency in sessions that discuss and make policy

·         the separation of church and state, and we oppose organized prayer in publicly funded schools

·         the right for medically assisted death with dignity with suitable safeguards for terminally ill patients;

·         a woman’s right to choose as protected by Roe vs. Wade and the Washington State Reproductive Freedom Act;

·         the right to confidentiality of medical records and genetic information.

·         that the state should not interfere with couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitment of civil marriage, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

·         property forfeiture should be permitted only after criminal conviction, not on arrest or by seizure

Things that I like but don’t trust the Democratic Party to actually do (or do right):

·         Supporting diversity of ownership in broadcast media

·         dedicating tobacco settlement monies only to tobacco-related health care programs and tobacco use prevention;

Things that I don’t like:

·         Proclaim the executive and legislative branches of government shall abandon the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare and shall make nonviolence the primary organizing principle of foreign policy.

Stuff I found cute:

·         Supporting Kyoto, but against marketplace pollution credits

Overall, the Republican Platform avoids specific actions and tries to go with general principals. The problem is that while it is easier to agree with the Republican principals, I know a number of the actions they actually have in mind behind some of the principals and I generally don’t agree with the actions. The more specific the Republican Platform is the more I have a tendency to disagree with it.

The Democratic Platform has a huge laundry list of ideas and like a rainstorm; you can’t avoid getting hit by a few drops. There is going to be some that I like, while also have a large number that I just don’t care about or in some case dislike. As a whole it looks impossibly expensive to do all of them.

A quick scan pretty much sizes me up as socially liberal on all the big conservative causes, and since that has always been such a defining aspect to that party I believe I’m pretty much lost to them. But aside from a couple pet causes the democrat one isn’t all that much better. I wonder if the Democrat Platform in a heavily republican state would be more appealing to me, but that’s for another blog entry.