I vote for a candidate, not a party.
To me it's like ATI vs Nvidia, go for the best at the time.
If it were like ATI vs. Nvidia, you would be right about candidates.
It's not.
In fact, I love to illustrate with an analogy, but none are immediately clear that fit.
Taking a moment - it's a bit like whether you choose the word of Consumer Reports, or the word of advertisers.
You might say in theory you accept whichever is better, but you find that because of their agendas and sponsors, you pretty much always find Consumer Reports is better.
When one party is terribly corrupt so it's wrong at least 98% of the time, you can pick 'the best candidate' AND vote for one party, because they're the same thing.
The fallacy in this thread is that voting for one party means you are choosing a bad person of that party over a good person of the other party - it ASSUMES it's a mix of quality.
That assumption is not necessarily correct. People who can't recognize that have the 'centrist bias'.
In theory I vote for 'the best candidate' - but that includes the baggage of his party's agenda, and that is quite a burden for one side to overcome.
Looking back in history, the last Republican presidential candidate I would think might be 'the better candidate' would go to the 1920's, when I don't know the Democrats.
I'm not sure there's ever been a Republican presidential candidate that's the been the better choice. Teddy Roosevelt might be, but his foreign policy was wrongly aggressive.
Abraham Lincoln jumps out, but I'd have to see how Stephen Douglas was. I'd probably go Lincoln from what I recall.
Having said that, there have been some flawed Democrats it'd be hard to vote for, like Dukakis.
I understand the seductive quality of 'person not party', for people who think 'party' is all about blind loyalty like a sports team. I support the spirit of their position.
But I think such people fail to appreciate the importance of the party agendas - that the quality of the person can fix a bad agenda little more than a nice car salesman can improve the quality of the car. When you vote for the candidate, you are really voting for his party's donors' agendas, like it or not, and his role is largely to be a good salesperson to get votes so he can serve that agenda. It shouldn't be that way, and many good people who are elected hate it, but that's largely how it is.
See how some of Obama's least controversial bills that are even thigs Republicans previously pushed get 100% Republican opposition to see how that's the case.
That's not hundreds of Republicans each voting 'on the merits of the bill' they might even have previously supported when put forward by Republicans, it's party agenda.
You are picking the party agenda, even if you don't know you are and think you're voting for the guy you would like a beer with.
You should be proud to say you understand the party agendas and prefer one (coughdemocratcough) over the other in your voting. That makes you more informed, not more 'blindly partisan'. Pretending that each politician is 'just a person' who will vote independantly of the party agenda is going to happen the way a Ford car salesman is going to suggest going to Honda if their car is better for your needs.