I must say, however, there is a lot of naivete in this entry, even if some of the comments can be easily dismissed as silly GOP partisanism.

It is good to support conservative Democrats, who are usually more small-c true conservative than what the imperial demagogues that pass on the other side. However, there are some major problems with what you attribute to Democratic policies.

1. The Democratic Party is not run democratically. As is the case for the GOP, the views of its popular base are better than those of its ruling elite. Thus you can have decent Democrats at a local level, at a state level, sometimes in the House, but rarely in the Senate or White House.

2. This has a lot to do with the fact that the Democratic Party relies for its funding on institutions of finance capital, and to a lesser extent from lawyers and socially liberal bourgeoisie.

3. Black Democrats might be half pro-life and heavily against gay marriage (in fact, they defeated it in CA, not the white moderates who voted largely for it), but their political leadership is entired co-opted and rarely ever votes conservatively on anything. In order to make an alliance here, you would have to get the preachers to diss the politicos, but Blacks have high political solidarity and this hardly happens even in the case of serious corruption.

4. Socially conservative labour Democrats have some Midwestern House seats but can never get anyone into the Senate, much less influence the White House.

5. More generally, you fail to notice that the electoral trends are still relatively in the direction of working class economic populists > GOP; yuppie moderate libertarians > Democrats. The groups with which you wish to ally are an ever increasing % of the GOP base, but of course they are even LESS represented there as there is perhaps not a single working class Republican congressman.

6. So the Democrats at a national level might pass an occasional minimum wage increase or review this or that labour regulation, but overall they are rabidly pro-free trade (Clinton was worse than Bush in this regard), pro-war, pro-private bankers and Fed Reserve, pro-cap and trade, pro-gay (but not to the degree of sacrificing elections), pro-free abortion, and pro-PATRIOT ACT and wiretapping.

7. Even if these social conservatives had the will to take power for themselves within the Democratic ranks and oppose these political realities, they would get no funding for their campaigns. This is why Conley’s result in SC was actually quite good, considering he was abandoned by the whole party elite. You never see a social conservative run in the presidential Democratic primary! Not since who, FL Gov. Askew in 1984?

I do not wholly oppose the idea of registering Democrat. It simply is not as rosy an opportunity as presented, and really depends more on one’s local/state circumstances, I should think. I am and will remain an Independent.

Working class people in America are constantly being set back by government mandates. The days when you could get a jalopy and keep it on the road are gone. Clean air car inspection mandates you know. Want to put a dormer on your house. Think again. Building codes and zoning busybodies make it cost prohibitive. and the list goes on. We are actually making it hard for actual working people to afford families.

No disagreement here, What I should have clarified was the working poor, particularly the working poor without children, or working but married with children.

As for the welfare types your talking about, they are indeed leeches.

I’m more concerned about the working class, who actually break their backs just to wind up slightly less well off then the welfare types.

I’m sure Warren Buffet’s secretary is paid handsomely. But the bigger point about the rich not paying via various tax schemes is true. That’s a good argument for the flat tax.

What David doesn’t understand is that in our country, it’s the middle class who are most put upon by our system.

As many here have tried to explain, the poor pay no income tax in the USA. You find this hard to believe but it is a fact. The poor are coddled in my country to a point that you clearly don’t understand. Neither are they the sturdy workers who awaiting for the call to one nation conservatism. Our underclass resembles the alien Muslims of France. They are parasitic, ignorant and dangerous.

You write, “The black church is a major force in the Democratic Party. It is also a major force for moral conservatism,…). I suppose they they may look that way from the UK, but we who deal with them, know them to as a class political hipsters and thieves. They support the Democratic Party in precisely the same manner as the tapeworm “supports” its host. Many ghetto reverends are also Democratic party operatives. If you knew my country, you would know this.

We have been edging closer and closer to “Strict campaign finance reform.” for a good while now. With each step our system become less free and more corrupt. Americans used to support whom they chose with their own money. Not so anymore, thanks to such campaign finance reform as we have. More “reform”? No thanks.

I was initially interested in your idiosyncratic writing, but it’s clear now that you are writing frivolous nonsense about a country you don’t know. Perhaps the Canadians could use your advice? Please git it a try.

Note that you’ve left out the defense budget–19% by Google–and included two programs, Medicare (14% by Google) and Social Security (20% by Google), that are not restricted at all by income. Medicaid + Unemployment + Welfare looks to be about 23%. Those appear to be 2007 numbers. Here’s the link. I can’t claim to know the numbers are right, but they square with my recollection.

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1001289_who_pays.pdf

Who pays for new corporate welfare and wars? Right now, apparently no one. Hence the insane deficits. Now, you could argue that future inflation due to current deficits is a regressive tax (i.e., the poor will suffer more than the rich), but that does not appear to be what you are saying.

Furthermore, while corporate welfare and pointless wars are expensive, they do not account for the majority of the federal budget. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits/welfare make up a far larger percentage of the budget — and all of those programs exist to help the poor.

If I could look up “fair trade” somewhere, I could maybe understand it. Unfortunately, “fair trade” comes down to the individual who determines the agreements. That is, as ambassador, I say who can do what and when. It’s interventionism, and always arbitrary. Completing the tragicomedy that is interventionism, is the fact that it never accomplishes its stated purposes, all while creating new problems. –See “What is Seen and What is Not Seen” by Bastiat

I am not going to lump “black churches” into a giant, amorphous mass. I would remind you, however, that Obama came from a black “church.” Being Catholic, I would never consider the rantings of Wright remotely holy, moral… even constructive or interesting (at least no more interesting than studying any other pathology). Yes, of course, America should be proud of the civil rights movement and celebrate the fact that it originated in black churches. But your near obsession with black churches as a political force is very strange to this American. I prefer to leave race out of my politics, and out of my thinking generally. I’m not sure whether your Britishness (you are, I assume, British, no?) is confusing you on the issues of race in America, but honestly we are pretty good with race relations. …were certainly better under Bush than Obama, but I digress. Racism is a type of hatred, and it’s addressed not in politics (which, through the criminal justice system, is reactive) but in one’s own soul and by influence of one’s social circles.

I have a short day and little stomach to continue my deconstruction of your untutored political rantings. Enjoy your weekend.