I've already confessed to being politically ignorant, right? Well, this presidential election is coming up next year and it seems like I should be informed about it. But, I've yet to tune into a debate, so that doesn't help. And I'm too lazy to invest a whole lot of time searching around the internet for info. Plus, how do I know what's reliable or not? Isn't there a resource for someone like me?
I've been leaning toward voting for Mitt Romney in the primary elections. I'll admit it's just because he's Mormon. I think that would be so cool to have a Mormon in the White House. I realize this is an ignorant point of view and is just as bad as those voters who say they refuse to vote for Romney solely based on his religion. So I wanted to find out if his political views even came close to matching mine. I found a fun resource.
USA Today came out with a candidate match game. It is a quiz of 11 questions and when you're done answering them, it tells you which candidates most closely match your viewpoint. Andrew has me so convinced about the liberal media conspiracy theory that I was skeptical. Would it just tell me to vote for Hillary regardless of the answers I plugged in? Nope. It actually matched me up with Fred Thompson--who knew? And Mitt was a close second. Cool. Now I won't feel so bad if I vote for him in the primaries. Not only do we have religion in common, but an on-line quiz validated our compatibility. And online quizzes would never lie, right?
18 comments:
I have also become grossly ignorant in all things politics...all I know is that if Billary becomes president again, I might seriously consider moving to Canada. I'm not anti-democrat, but I'm HUGELY anti-Hillary (I just wrote some highly slanderous comments about her, but deleted them...I don't want to offend your other readers, haha). I did the candidate match game and it came up with: 1.) Mitt Romney. I won't even say who the other two were, because I don't know who they are and I might just embaress myself!!
Here are the three that the quiz came up for me 1) Mike Gravel (who is that?) 2) John Edwards (pretty close) 3) Dennis Kucinich (now that is more like it!).
This was fun. Thanks for sharing!
That was interesting, thanks for the link. I match the closest with
1)Mitt Romney
2)Mike Huckabee
3)Sam Brownback
It was hard to play 100% fair though because I knew a few of my answers would lead directly to Mitt.
I thought my results were really interesting, mainly because there were both Democrats AND Republicans that did well and did poorly. (Andi--my worst one of all was Fred Thomson! I didn't pick one single answer that he gave. But we can still love each other!) My #1 was Joseph Biden (D) (I do like listening to him when he's on Meet the Press . . . forgive me, Drew), my #2 was the Mittster (R) (I knew answering the "running a business" question would give him some extra juice, but I think I would have said that anyway, regardless), my #3 was Bill Richardson (D), followed closely by both Barak Obama AND Rudy Giuliani. So I guess I'm what you'd call a moderate. Or just muddleheaded. Or just have too many opinions. Fun quiz, though!
Andi, I meant that you and I can still love each other. Not that I'm having an illicit affair with Fred Thompson. BTW, have you seen his little trophy wife? Hubba Hubba, Fred. Sorry if that was sexist.
Thanks for clearing that up, Ang. I was hoping I wouldn't need to have an intervention with you over an affair.
And, no, actually, I haven't seen his trophy wife. I don't know anything about him except that I apparently match up well with him (politically, of course) and that he is a former actor, right?
1. Romney
2. Guiliani
3. Huckabee
But I'm voting for myself.
Thanks for the link to the quiz.
There were two or three questions I felt deserved more than one choice but that would only complicate things.
You can probably see my age group and religion reflected in the three that came up for me:
1. Romney
2. Thompson
3. Paul !!
Do we need to have a family intercession with Angie?
Dave, if you were on the ballot I would vote for you, too. Perhaps we could start a write-in campaign.
Ooh, Grandpa, you probably don't want to know my views on immigration or the war or health care reform--radically middle of the road!!! :-)
Only Angie could come up with being both radical and in the middle of the road.
(And I would LOVE to know her views on all of these issues.)
Nooooooo! Mine was a tie for first between Hillary and Obama! Just kidding. After adjusting the scale to place relative importance on each of the issues (very high on Iraq and immigration, low on tax reform and global warming) my results were 1. Brother Romney, 2. Mike Huckabee, 3. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince (just kidding, it was some dude named Duncan Hunter). My top 8 were all Republican.
It appears that I am also diametrically opposed to John Edwards. One of the tiny, paper-thin bars appeared on all 11 of my answers when compared to his. John Edwards is the Bizarro Andrew, or me on opposite day, whichever comes first.
I match closest to Fred Thompson too, and my top are all Repub. Pretty interesting. I wish I knew more about how politics really work, but it's good to know I can vote for a Repub who has decent standards - esp this time.
I'm not Mormon, so as soon as Romney started getting press I asked Andrea if Mormons liked him or not. It doesn't matter to me whether or not he's Mormon, but I have NO regard for candidates who claim to be a particular religion but then don't actually follow it, so I needed to know if he was respected amongst Mormons or not.
BTW, what a great quiz!! But I'll have to take it again to get valid results. I see from Andrew's comment that you can adjust the scale to weight the issues. I didn't do that.
Angie
What are your views on immigration? I say load them up and ship them out. And then make the legal process for obtaining a visa easier and realistic so that good people have a chance of getting in. Either that or take over Mexico so they will already be in the USA.
So I redid the quiz and changed a couple answers (some didn't have answers that adequately expressed what I thought, so it was hard to pick) and it changed my outcome somewhat. Joe Biden dropped to 4th, Mitt took over first place and Chris Dodd popped into the top three. My Democrat/Republican preference was still all over the map, though. And I apparently still don't like Fred Thompson much at all!
Okay, Dave, as to your question. Although I think that a strict enforcing of laws is often important, I think that the immigration issue is very complex. The recent raids on the Swift meatpacking plant here in Utah is a great example of both 1. families torn apart and devastated and 2. American businesses having a very difficult time recovering and retaining enough workers to keep afloat. I think (as does President Bush--ack!) that there's got to be a dual approach that both beefs up border security to reduce the number of illegal immigrants, but also allows some kind of temporary worker permit, or path to citizenship for those who are contributing to society. (It's often overlooked that illegals are often paying the same taxes we are--like the Social Security tax--but that they aren't receiving that benefit and it's in turn helping to strengthen our flailing social security system. So illegals aren't always the drain they're made out to be.) Plus, the mercy over justice part of me thinks the whole "ship 'em out" mentality causes children and families to suffer great hardship. (In the same way that the "letter of the law" law enforcement devastated polygamous families when the heads of household were sent to prison earlier on in Utah's history--this is the reason Utah looks the other way unless underage marriage is concerned.)
Okay, enough rambling. That's what you get for asking me questions, Dave!!!
Nothing like politics to get a bunch of comments :)
I took the quiz a couple of times and am not sure I liked the results either time. I might have to take it a few more times before I find the right candidates.
Interestingly, Chris Dodd was in my top 3 both times. His wife is LDS, does that count for anything?
I'm sure you've all heard the joke about the potential this election of the first black, the first Mormon, or the first woman to become president. Why not elect Gladys Knight and kill 3 birds with one stone.
That is hilarious dad!!!! That seems like the most "logical" thing to do. Tell everyone to write old Gladys in.
-paul
Wow, Mitt Romney didn't make my top three and that's probably who I'll vote for...I got John McCain, Duncan Hunter, and Sam Brownback.
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