After hearing that I started dating a Republican, my friend Stephanie booed and hissed until I stopped her. “Wait,” I said. “He’s also an atheist who’s pro-choice and supports gay rights.”
“Oh, never mind,” she said. “Then everything’s fine.”
This got me thinking. Have certain hot-button social issues made it impossible for us to talk about anything else these days?
You probably reacted with the same shock upon hearing there is a Republican who — gasp — does not believe in God, supports gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose. I assumed the qualifications to be a Republican entailed jumping on the anti-abortion, anti-gay wagon. So I asked him, “Why are you a Republican then?”
His answer was enlightening. Turns out, there is far more to the Republican approach than what the stereotypes about “right-wing nut jobs” suggest.
For one, Republicans should be committed to following a strict interpretation of the Constitution. In his article in the Duluth News Tribune titled “Young Republicans Will Restore the Party,” Robert Correia said, “If our federal government followed the Constitution, our federal government would be one-fifth the size, [and] would not be trillions of dollars in debt.” Trouble is, Republicans have not succeeded in being the party Correia mentions, and instead they have inflated government spending and the deficit.
Yet at its core, the Republican Party must be concerned with frugality and responsibility, not bashing gays, preaching about the “evil” of abortion and hunting down illegal immigrants. At the end of the day, Republicans believe in conservative spending, lowering taxes and putting money back in the hands of the people to stimulate the economy.
Democrats have been considered the ones to open the government purse for any conceivable reason. Republicans are expected to be tight with money and not to spend more than they earn.
Take the guy I’m dating, for example. His respect for the Republican Party lies in its historical commitment to fiscal discipline and personal accountability. He does not approve of the anti-abortion, anti-gay and anti-immigrant shrieks of some Republican voices. He wants the Republican Party to return to its frugal roots — plain and simple.
Have the majority of us done ourselves a disservice by defining Republicans and Democrats largely by their stance on hot-button issues? How many of us go to the polls and vote down party lines knowing little or nothing about the specific issues? How many of us believe that agreement on social matters means agreement on fiscal matters?
That way of thinking is easy. It’s also irresponsible. Social and fiscal issues need to be addressed separately, not bundled together.
Older-generation Republicans may tightly grasp onto their anti-abortion and pro-nuclear family ideals, but the world is changing and a new generation is bursting onto the scene.
Meghan McCain, who some might call a poster child for young Republicans, has already found a forum to advocate a new set of values. In an article she wrote for The Daily Beast, “Memo to the GOP: Go Gay,” she said, “If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past our anti-gay rhetoric.”
The guy I’m dating identifies with this new breed of Republican, advocating through actions of spendthrift and responsibility instead of self-caricaturing themselves as prayer-pushing, abortion-hating homophobes.
I certainly hope Stephanie eventually gets to like him.
Linda Edwards is a junior journalism major and a contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
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