For those who are curious:

Usually I'm fairly cautious about openly stating my party affiliation, just because Republicans are bias against democrats and vice versa.  Recently on this post I got into a bit of a tussle over whether  or not the Republican party has had a lot of sex scandals recently.

*sigh*

For the record: in the past two years there have been the following scandals:

1. White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, a favorite of Bush's and a Fox news commentator, is outed as a gay escort.
2. David Vitter, Republican Senator, is implicated in a prostitution case.  He admits to having sex with the prostitute, who later tells news sources that he liked to be spanked while in diapers.  He doesn't respond to those allegations.  (After his press conference admitting to his "downfalls" he is applauded by his fellow Republican Senators, who all wish they had the balls to say, "yes, I slept with a whore and it was fun."
3. Ted Haggard, advisor to the President, is outed in the news as having had a VERY gay affair with a drug dealer.  He admits to the gay but not to the drugs.
4. Larry Craig, Republican Senator, is caught in an investigation into complaints of lewd activities in an air port restroom.  Larry Craig pleads guilty to a misdemeanor offense for lewd conduct and later says he didn't realize the implications of his plea and he'd been "set up."  Now, my personal feelings?  If someone paid an extremely hot woman to pretend to be open to my husband's advances and he took the bait, I wouldn't consider that being "set up."  Doubly so if it were a MAN and my husband claimed to not be gay.  Regardless of whether or not the officer in question was sending off "signals" it was Craig's choice to proposition him.
5. Mark Foley, Republican Congressman, is accused of engaging in blatant sexual discourse with a young aide. There are implications of lewd and improper conduct, including the possibility of sex with a minor male.

1. Rumors that Obama engaged in gay sex.  The man in question volunteered to take a lie detector test and failed, everyone in Obama's inner circle states that the allegations are patently false and the man just wanted attention.
2. Eliot Spitzer sleeps with a whore.

My question to you is: does that make me "obviously" a liberal democrat?

I hope not, because I'm registered as an independent.  Had I been old enough to vote in the 2000 election, I would have voted for Bush.  At the time I was still a devoted Republican, and I'd been a republican for as long as I'd been old enough to understand the significance of politics.  Both of my parents are Republicans and donate to the party, they receive nice things in the mail like signed pictures of the President and his wife and faux "Gold" medals for their party loyalty.

I've grown beyond that, mostly because of Bush.  Because I have a close family member who was in the military, who felt that it was a bad decision for his battalion to be pulled off the battlefield and sent in to Iraq.  Because I've heard story after story of soldiers who are poorly used and refused benefits.  Because I care about the message our country sends the world, and right now the message is, "we don't care about the UN or our agreements, we'll do whatever the hell it takes to have this war, even if it means screwing our soldiers." In most areas I'm still fairly conservative.  I'm fiscally very conservative.  I feel that government has taken the place of social etiquette when it comes to feeding and clothing the poor, and that bothers me.  I'm economically conservative in that I feel we should return to the system of tariffs and trade policy that built the wealth of our nation.  I'm socially conservative in that I feel marriage itself isn't the business of the government, that marriage is an issue of religion and the state should ONLY offer civil unions.

I've voted for republicans and democrats, and will continue to do so.

So there you have it.