YouTube

I actually just looked at his legislation on the national level, I couldn't find his IL legislative record easily. For all I know, he did introduce anti-gun legislation there. If you've seen those records, I'd be interested.

Not quite. He's pushing for transparency in the legislative process. He wants us to know what Congress is spending money on, and give us the opportunity to let them know whether we approve. No more eleventh-hour spending bills.

The "change" he is talking about is that he wants to end the partisan infighting in Washington, and try to get the major parties to come to consensus on the issues. Personally, I think he's going to fail, the Republicans have developed too much of a superiority complex over the Democrats to ever work with them in this way. And, it's a bad idea anyway, Republicans have shown over the past few years that they bring nothing useful to the table anymore (which is why they have been getting voted out of office in mass around the country for the past few years). But, whatever, how much damage can he really do?

And, the idea that the Democrats are after all of your money is pretty tired by now; the largest tax increases in recent history have been Republican tax increases. Democrats do like to spend money on handouts to the lower brackets, which I disagree with, but I find that it's less repugnant to me than the handouts to large corporations that the Republicans regularly engage in.

I addressed the flaws in this line of thinking in one of my earlier posts, so I'll be brief here. There are very few, and have always been very few, small-government Republicans. Right now, you have Ron Paul (who I personally like a lot, I'm glad he'll still be in the Senate). Not that the Democrats are particularly inclined towards small government, they do like their social programs, but the Republicans are, currently and historically, MUCH WORSE in this regard.

I strongly agree with you. However, realistically speaking, one of John McCain, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. There is a 100% chance of this. Early polls show that Barack Obama has the most chance, followed by Hillary Clinton, followed by John McCain (not that polls eight months ahead of the election mean much). None of these candidates are going to bring us much less government. So, I'm voting on the government transparency and accountability issue instead.