I am a 46-year-old senior returning to school after dropping out in 1985.I have three sons. I believe strongly in the two-party system and voting for the better man, not the party. I voted for Al Gore for the U.S. Senate because he was a better candidate than the Republican.
I vote mostly Republican because the party platform has consistently made sense to me. I believe in the generosity of the independent person through charity rather than government taxation and control.
Does that mean I am against welfare? Yes and no. It is necessary for the safety net welfare represents to help people survive.It was not intended to be a generational system, which is just giving them a fish so they may eat today, as the old saying goes. I believe in setting up job training and day care to give people a chance to determine their own future, teach them to fish so they may eat a lifetime.
My wife illustrates my point. Jodie was born the 10th child to very poor parents in Unicoi County. She didn’t see an indoor toilet until she was 3. Through her own determination, Jodie became the only one in her family to even graduate high school. She went on to college to become a nurse. Jodie quickly rose from her first job as a floor nurse to the clinical leader of cardiac intensive care. Jodie has worked as clinical leader for pediatrics and PICU and a home health nurse. She earned her master’s in nursing education at ETSU while simultaneously building the Stroke Center at Johnson City Medical Center and losing 130 pounds. She reached her dream of becoming an assistant professor at ETSU’s College of Nursing and is now a clinical educator at Vanderbilt.
Her achievement is a celebration of how America champions anyone with the drive and determination. The U.S. government had very little to do with her success. Jodie bootstrapped herself.
The conservative philosophy defaults to the individual, not the subdivision of groups. Any man or woman can achieve their goals regardless of who their parents are or where they are from. The beauty of America is the rise of the individual free from any class system to hold them back.
The Republican Party has gotten off track in recent years and waivered from their principles, but I am trusting John McCain and Sarah Palin will redirect the party back to its smaller government and lower tax platform. I realize McCain is more like Kennedy than Reagan, but the alternative is giving total control to the extreme left of the Democratic Party. I do not trust the current Democratic leaders to make America greater by binding us up with more bureaucracy.
The people should not be great because of the government; the government should be great because of its people. I vote because I care about the future and I want less government, not more.

Author