Folks, I’m neither a Democrat, nor a Republican. But my mom asked me to give her an unbiased, factual rundown on the political platforms – so what my mother wants, my mother gets! Here you go Mom…

I’m making the presumption that the two candidates who are going to actually be running for President are Barack Obama, and John McCain. So, below I’ve taken the liberty of narrowing down all the data to these two guys. What you need to do is line up as many of your political ideal matches and then you can rationally choose who you are voting for.

Here are the candidates views on a variety of issues:

Issue	Barack Obama	John McCain
Abortion is a woman’s right	Strongly Favors	Opposes
Require hiring more women & minorities	Strongly Favors	Favors
Same-sex domestic partnership benefits	Strongly Favors	Favors
Teacher-led prayer in public schools	Opposes	Favors
Death Penalty	Opposes	Strongly Favors
Mandatory Three Strikes sentencing laws	Opposes	Strongly Favors
Absolute right to gun ownership	Strongly Opposes	Strongly Favors
More federal funding for health coverage	Favors	Favors
Privatize Social Security	Strongly Opposes	Strongly Favors
Parents choose schools via vouchers	No opinion	Strongly Favors
Replace coal & oil with alternatives	Strongly Favors	Favors
Drug use is immoral: enforce laws against it	Opposes	Strongly Favors
Allow churches to provide welfare services	Favors	Strongly Favors
Repeal tax cuts on wealthy	Strongly Favors	Opposes
Illegal immigrants earn citizenship	Strongly Favors	Favors
Support & expand free trade	Opposes	Strongly Favors
Expand the armed forces	Favors	Favors
Stricter limits on political campaign funds	Strongly Favors	Strongly Favors
The Patriot Act harms civil liberties	Strongly Favors	Strongly Opposes
US out of Iraq	Favors	Strongly Opposes

There are independent organizations that rate the candidates based upon their voting records. The candidates have to have enough votes in a particular area to actually get rated, but here are the ones I’m aware of:

Ratings	Barack Obama	John McCain
HRC rating (Gay Rights)	89%	33%
ACLU rating (Civil Rights)		0%
NAACP Rating (Affirmative Action)	100%	7%
NCJA rating (Criminal Justice)	75%	85%
NEA rating (Public Education)		45%
CAF rating (Energy Independence)	100%	17%
LCV rating (Environment)		53%
Christian Coalition rating (Pro-family)		83%
APHA rating (Health Care)		25%
USBC rating (Close Borders)	8%	18%
AU record (Church-State Separation)	100%	33%
CTJ rating (Progressive Taxation)	100%	50%

Barack Obama is a Hard-Core Liberal.

John McCain is a Populist-Leaning Conservative.

All of the data here has come from a direct comparison of records as reported by OnTheIssues.org. Here is John McCain’s page, and Barack Obama’s.

They also have a VoteMatch quiz you can take which tells you which candidate you most closely match up with philosophically. Interestingly, I had a 48% match with Obama and a 30% match with McCain.

Tags: Abortion, Abuse-of-Power, ACLU, Barack-Obama, Death, Drugs, Election, Environment, freedom, Gay, Health-&-Fitness, Immigration, John McCain, Oil, Philosophy, Politics, President, Taxes, Women

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