Tuesday may have marked the official start of the Republican National Convention, but talk of the GOP’s failures has been a hot topic for some time now.
John McCain’s nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate has only heightened the fire under a party already in the hot seat.
Granted, Palin’s checkered past and pregnant teenage daughter can’t help the campaign, but they’ve barely started their convention and deserve the chance to speak. Those observing should watch with an open mind as well.
Neither party has been perfect in their politics, no matter the period in time. Taking the last president from each party into consideration, you have an extramarital affair in the Oval Office with Bill Clinton, and President George W. Bush has us stuck in a seemingly endless war on terrorism. While the faults are different, they both constitute unwise choices made by the most powerful elected official in our country.
The Democratic National Convention, which was held last week, had little to no negative attention at all. Barack Obama made what most thought a commendable choice for a running mate in Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, and seemingly every speech given at the convention was highly praised, even though most of them contained negatively toward McCain.
Whether you agree with what the party has done recently or what your beliefs are, potential voters should observe the Republican convention without bias and take in what they have to say before making final decisions.
This is not meant to persuade one to join a particular party, and The Daily Cougar does not support one candidate over the other, but without an open mind and the desire to learn what each party’s candidates stand for, a sound decision on whom to vote for on Nov. 4 cannot be made.
Many voters were upset when Bush won the last two election, and his popularity ratings haven’t exactly been appealing. But when voters went to the polls during the 2000 and 2004 elections, they felt he was the better candidate.
If each voter had listened open-mindedly to each candidate they may have voted differently. Now is the time to start doing that to be able to take an educated vote into the booth this fall.
When so many people can disagree with someone’s politics and still give them their vote, there is an obvious lack of knowledge of the candidates and what they stand for among the voters. This November, don’t let it be you.
