Last week I outlined a rough framework for how I approach the question of who to support for President and why I was not particularly fond of the Republican candidate, John McCain. He got decent marks for his stance on taxes, but barely passed on the economy and failed outright on civil rights. Why then am I supporting him for President?

Because his opponent is Democratic Senator Barack Obama. Today I’m talking about Obama’s positions on the issues as I see them from my secular conservative point of view. It’s time to see how Obama stacks up when it comes to what I call the “big three” issues: taxes, the economy, and civil rights.

Taxes

In 2004, as a state Senator in the Illinois legislature, Barack Obama voted to raise over 300 taxes and fees. He was not one of an overwhelming majority. He was not one of many. The vote was 30-28. Had Obama voted against it, the bill would have failed. He was a swing vote. He chose to raise taxes.

Obama likes to raise taxes. He says it himself, when pressed – though he tries to avoid the subject. The fiscal section of his web site is one of the shortest sections on it. It’s also one of the most important issues to me. I guess that should tell you something about the way I feel about Senator Obama.

Obama supports, in no particular order: Repealing the Bush tax cuts, “restoring the progressive tax” (whatever that means), increasing taxes on the wealthy, the alternative minimum tax on the middle class, increasing social security taxes, increasing corporate taxes, creating windfall taxes, increasing capital gains taxes, and increasing death taxes.

If he were making an argument that we need to balance the budget and pay down the national debt, I might not hate that plan quite so much. I’d still hate it considering how much wasteful spending the government was churning out, but maybe it would open some eyes and we could start cutting spending after we got the wakeup call of what we were really doing with our tax dollars.

If only.

Obama’s record is fairly clear on the subject, in fact. He has voted several times against a bill that would reduce funding to programs that have been identified as the most wasteful and ineffective government programs by the Program Assessment Rating Tool. He has no interest in reducing spending or balancing books.

No, Obama has plans for that money. He wants nothing less than to redistribute that money in the form of more stimulus checks and class warfare, socialize health care, and start a massive new wave of government spending. This I cannot tolerate.

Giving Obama an F on taxes is somehow not enough. If this were a test and I were truly in a position to give him a grade, I would send him to detention and pray, desperately pray he was expelled from class, never to return again.

Economy

As if Obama’s stance on taxes were not bad enough, his vision for the American economy is just as bad. Obama is nothing less than a protectionist, a blind environmentalist, a socialist, and a fierce regulator.

Obama opposes free trade. Obama believes that a comprehensive energy bill is critical to our economic viability. Obama opposes nuclear power. Obama opposes sending billions of dollars to the Middle East for oil. He supports free trade with Yemen. Wait, what?

I think I got turned around somewhere. Let’s start over again.

Obama has a few key points that he likes to get across when he speaks about the economy. He thinks that Americans are paying too much for energy, that we’re sending jobs over seas, and that the government should play a more active role in the economy.

Yes, for the record, I did sigh dramatically while typing that last bit out. I know you can’t hear me through the internet, but take my word for it. I sighed.

Obama believes that our lack of an energy bill is a burden to our economy, but opposes coal and nuclear power as viable alternatives, and wants Americans to stop buying oil from non-democratic nations and the Middle East. He also opposes drilling and domestic oil exploration – not just in ANWR, but also off shore – as well as exploration for new reserves overseas.

He voted against repealing a $0.54 tariff on Brazilian ethanol – not because he loves taxing us so much, but (and this is a direct quote) because “ethanol imports are neither necessary nor a practical response to current gasoline prices.”

And let’s not forget that he is punishing the oil companies for making so much money by taxing them, which they will inevitably pass along to the consumer as an increase in price.

No oil. No coal. No nuclear. No ethanol. I hope all the money he’s getting from rising taxes is a bribe for the magic energy fairy, because frankly I have no idea where he’s going to get our energy independence from.

But Obama’s energy policy isn’t the worst of his problems. Obama is a protectionist. He opposes free trade and would tax imports to the United States. He wants to “renegotiate” NAFTA, CAFTA (no, he doesn’t provide any details about what he means by that), and other free trade agreements.

He wants to expand union rights and encourage people to unionize and fight for better benefits, which I don’t have a problem with, but he then wants to turn around and demand that companies keep jobs in the country. What he doesn’t realize is that companies do what’s best for the bottom line, and if it’s cheaper to manufacture something over seas and ship it in, those unions don’t do much more than encourage unemployment. He wants the best of both worlds, but realistically you can’t have it both ways.

Obama wants raise the minimum wage to fight inflation. Yeah. You read that right. I’m not even going to get started on that little gem.

He believes that when markets fail, it is the government’s responsibility to respond with regulation and public projects to stimulate the economy. He believes in bail outs. He believes in socialized medicine. He believes in race-based quotas for schools and businesses.

Barack Obama is a socialist. He believes in class warfare. He believes in progressive taxes, increasing taxes on the wealthy, minimum taxes on the middle class, and sending tax refunds to people who are not required to pay taxes. In Obama’s mind, free market capitalism is “social Darwinism.” Again, a direct quote.

F. F minus, minus. Wong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Civil Liberties

Ah, civil liberties. The last true bastion of sanity of the Democratic party. Surely we can find something to praise Obama on here.

How about the war on terror? The Republicans have screwed over a lot of people’s civil liberties in the name of the holy crusade on terror. Wait? Did Obama just vote last week to give retroactive immunity to government agencies and private businesses who cooperated with them if the Attorney General says it’s okay? Yes. Yes he did.

He also voted for the PATRIOT act in 2006. He also supports FISA.

Gay marriage? He’s not a religious nut job, he shouldn’t want to deny gays equal protection under the law, right? Oh, wait, he thinks it’s a states rights issue, supports civil unions, and opposes gay marriage, just like the Republicans do. I might find it amusing that he compares the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement and then speaks against it, if it weren’t such a sad and telling position.

How about race relations? Surely someone in his position can see the need to overcome the racism, the prejudice, the quotas, and the vitriolic rhetoric of the past. Maybe not. Obama supports affirmative action. He believes that people should be granted an unfair advantage at school and in the world place because they were treated unfairly in the past.

Free speech? Well, assuming you want to burn a flag. If you want to display one, you’re going to have to take it down.

Separation of church and state? Nope. Right there on his web site. Supports faith-based outreach programs.

Is he at least a moderate on the second amendment? No. He’s actually a leader in gun control. Oh, and he publicly opposed letting people use self-defense as an argument in court proceedings if hand guns were involved after a Chicago-area man shot an intruder in his home.

I honestly don’t know any civil liberty more sacred that the right to defend one’s self from harm.

On the subject of civil liberties, Obama has again failed.

Other Issues

Obama is so wrong on so many different things that it’s hard to compile a comprehensive list. Likewise, he’s so wrong on individual issues, that it’s difficult to find a single example one can hold up and say, “here is the poster child for everything wrong with Obama.”

Unfortunately, I think I have a winner for just such a contest.

I have to preface this by saying I’m neither pro-life nor pro-choice. I think that abortion is a very, very sensitive issue and that it requires an exceptionally nuanced focus to properly legislate it. I think there are times when abortion is, if not appropriate, at least understandable. I think there are times when abortion is nothing less than cold blooded murder.

This is one of those times.

In 2001 and again in 2002, Barack Obama opposed legislation that would require medical attention be given to fetuses that survived abortions. Again, I’m no pro-life nut job, but if you take a child out of a womb and it survives, it’s a living baby. Refusing to care for, and allowing those children to die of exposure and neglect is murder. Period.

I have other problems with Obama. His foreign policy is weak, his position on crime is weak, his immigration policy is weak, the environmentalists control his policy positions, and his record is non-existent in some places, but really, I don’t think any of it matters. He is right on basically nothing. He is wrong on just about everything.

Conclusion

Obama is the candidate for change. Not just change from the Bush administration and Republican mismanagement, but change from our core American values.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Look, I’m the first person to pipe up and say, “we need to fix this” but you don’t fix a house by tearing down the walls. America has been as successful as it has been for the last 50 years because it has liberalized its social policies and let the free market economy work. It’s been a bumpy ride, but pulling the wheels off isn’t going to make you get there any faster.

He is definitely a change. Capitalism to socialism. Lower taxes to higher. Prosperity to poverty.

At least he’ll be easy to beat in 2012.