This is a great article I just found in Bloomberg about the importance of doing your own research on some hot button issues instead of just trusting politicians to lead you the right way – http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-23/why-voters-shouldn-t-trust-their-own-political-party-ezra-klein.html
If you don’t take the time to determine the history on many of these issues you might be apt to vote for someone that once was for the very things they are against now. If that issue is important to you then you should take the time to figure where they always stood on the issue and determine whether they are apt to change their minds as soon as the political winds change yet again.
solfisco 
True that politicians from both sides will adopt a position based on the political points that can be scored rather than on the basis of their beliefs.
I think the lack of consistent beliefs and consistently adopted positions has eroded immensely in the last 20 years.
At this point if a Republican creates a plan or proposal then automatically all democrats are against it regardless of the merits of the proposal because to support the proposal would allow the Republicans to claim success. The opposite is true. The parties are horrified that if they allow the other side to actually accomplish anything that improves the lives of average Americans or improves the overall strength of America that they stand to become irrlelevent and extinct.
Both parties have become worthless to the public as they are far, far more interested in advancing the interests of the party rather than the interests of the country.
Where I strongly disagree with Klein is on the responsibility of the media. If the media wants to be in the business of poltical commentary rather than news reporting then it absolutely has a responsibility to be far tougher on all politicians regardless of party when they adopt positions based on convenience rather than merit.
Where I think the media can come to bear is investigating things that politicians say for accuracy (i.e. separating spin from fact) as well as calling those politicians out when they switch their position on an issue just because the other party now supports it.
Overall, the whole system in Congress is broken. There’s a reason their approval rating is lower than any president in history. The options are to throw them all out and hope the new crop does a better job or change their rules and hold them accountable to those rules.
Brian, I’m not sure if you’ve checked out some of my previous postings on No Labels but I think they would be right up your alley. It’s a non-partisan group aimed at breaking the gridlock in Congress so we can actually get some work done. They also have a 12 point plan to make Congress work.
One of those points is called No Budget, No Pay that would prohibit members of Congress from getting a paycheck until they actually pass a budget (something that hasn’t happened in over three years now). That bill is being presented to the Senate Homeland Security and Govermental Affairs Committee on March 14th. Keep your eye on that. I’d be interested to see if it makes it out of committee and who doesn’t vote for it.
Thanks Derek, yes I did read that and I am in favor of many of the ideas listed. I’d be interested in learning more about the group such as who formed it, how you join, what they do to raise money, etc.
At this point I can only really call myself a Republican because I think that the Republican positions I hold just barely outweigh the democratic positions I hold and there isn’t really another alternative in the end. Neither party should be proud of it’s accomplishments and the supporters of both parties need to take a big, big step back and ask where all of this blind support for a political party has gotten this country. By 2022 we’ll be paying almost a trillion dollars a year in interest on the debt.
There really is very little time for this thing to get cleaned up.
Without any real compromise from either side on their foundational positions there won’t be anything resembling progress on the issues that matter most.