Perhaps what you should have done, dick, was not have had a thread title with the name "Palin" in it if you don't want people focusing on Sarah Palin.... ;-)

I mean, it's like having a red button on a wall, and beneath the button a sign saying: DON'T PUSH THIS RED BUTTON!

Heh! What's gonna happen?

*****

Ron, I believe that you yourself personally vote on the issues. I believe that some people vote on the issues. I just don't believe that the majority of Americans really vote on the issues, I think their vote is almost entirely based on their assessment of personalities. An election, for them, is a popularity contest between competing personalities who are vying for the position of "Daddy" of the country for the next 4 years. So they look for who they would like as "Daddy" (or "Mommy"?), and that's mainly based on personality.

Now, they always think that they're voting on the issues too, because that's how the human mind works. It thinks it's more rational that it really is. But the process really goes like this:

step # 1: there is an instinctive tribal identification with your favorite tribal group(s)...such as...

"conservatives"
"liberals"
"Democrats"
"Republicans"
"Whites"
"Blacks"
"Hispanics"
"women"
"Christians"
"Gays"
"Anti-Gays"

whatever... (sigh)

step #2: There is a virtually automatic decision made in the subconscious to trust those candidates who are already members of your favorite tribal groups and distrust those who aren't.

(Note: There is an interesting phenomenon often seen which is this - your favorite tribal groups may be groups you are yourself part of...OR they may be groups you're not part of but that you instinctively support because you see them as saintly victims of past persecution...thus certain liberal-minded people who aren't black, for instance, will strongly support any black or female candidate simply because he or she is black...or female.    This might seem like an apparent reversal of tribal identity conscious, but it's still showing the automatic favoring of certain tribal identity groups that occurs in instinctive thinking.)

step #3: You then listen with enthusiasm to the issues expounded by those candidates whom you've already instinctively decided to like...and you tend to believe what they say...while you scoff at and deride those issues expounded by those candidates whom you've already instinctively decided NOT to like.

step #4: Take all of the above, harp on it endlessly, and keep adding more steam to your already established prejudices, and keep getting more and more irritated with the people who see it differently than you do.

And so it goes.

There is some rationality involved in all the above processes, but it pales in comparison to the instinctive emotional behaviour which is the main driving engine behind the process. In the end rationality merely serves as a weak handmaiden to most people's political views, because their political views are driven mostly by underlying emotional loyalties which are not essentially rational at all, and which are normally based on the past emotional events of their own lives, from birth to the present.

Instinctive loyalties are learned early in life.