This site assesses your answers to generic issue questions and plots your position against those of the presidential candidates.
I took the quiz and placed closest to Senator Edwards . . . farthest away from Senator Thompson. I’m not surprised by those results.
One notable aspect of the grid is how closely the candidates within each of the two parties are clustered together. In other words, primary voters aren’t being offered substantive choices on the issues.
That’s apparent in the Democratic campaign, where the “debate” has recently focused on a nebulous and meaningless platform of “change.” One candidate claims to be for real change. Another candidate tells us we can believe in change. Another touts how years of “experience” set the stage for change.
Whatever. It’s all sounding like hallow rhetoric to me. Don’t tell me your for “change”–tell me what you are going to change.
Based on what I’ve seen from the debates, it seems there is more divergence on the Republican side, but only a little more (except for Paul). There’s real contention between the candidates over whether we should build a 20-foot wall along the Mexican border, or a 30-foot one. I’m kidding (mostly).
It is interesting how closely McCain and Huckabee are plotted in relation to Thompson and Romney. If you just got your information from the right-wing noise machine (talk radio), you’re lead to believe that McCain and Huckabee are flaming liberals. In reality, however, most of their positions don’t vary much from those of the favored “conservatives.”
Why is the right-wing media against McCain and Huckabee? In Huckabee’s case, I think the issue is electability. In order to win the presidency, the GOP nominee needs to garner the support of the neocons, the theocons (religious right), and the corporatecons (business interests). Huckabee only has the backing of the second group, so the noise machine is trying to undermine what they perceive as a fatally-flawed candidate.
I’m less sure why they are working against McCain, as he has a profile which could theoretically hold the coalition together (socially conservative record, pro-Iraq war, has generally supported tax cuts). Perhaps they simply don’t like him because he has thumbed his noise at the Republican establishment too many times?
At any rate, because of these undercurrents I find the GOP nomination contest to be the more intriguing of the two . . . at least for now. I don’t have a clue why the Democratic race is going one direction or the other. Nor, apparently, do most of the Washington pundits.