I used to be a Liberal (conservative) voter here in Australia but over the past 10 years the Libs went to the right - in our media's vernacular they became the 'billy' tea party. Anti women, anti immigration, anti environment, anti science and pro god. 

I now vote on the basis of policy. I get a list before an election of major party policies (not promises) and tick the ones I support. Doing this in the last election I was 60 per cent Labor (liberal social democrat workers party) and 40 per cent Green.

We have a Labor/Green coalition and an atheist prime minister so I got almost everything that I wanted, just rather watered down.  

What I was surprised by was that when I went through the process I found I supported none of the policies of the conservatives. I just never knew it until I objectively assessed policies. 

And yeah, our conservative party, (the confusingly titled Liberal Party), has deliberately tried to block everything the ruling coalition has attempted over the past few years. Party before country every time.

The leader of the opposition was called 'Dr. No' in a recent newspaper editorial. 

I think no matter who you vote for, economic issues affect all of us, and the biggest mistake was that the right was far too focused on social issues. But beyond that, what built our middle class was investment and not the casino economy it has become. You cannot let the bottom fall out and let wages drop which makes demand drop which causes loss of jobs. I get tired of the right scapegoating the working class as if they want welfare and those people who falsely cry that spend absolutely no time in those communities other than to pat them on the head like condesending narscissists.

Nowhere in the rest of the industrial west do we have such a huge pay gap. No other country spends as much on health care with the exploding cost and continuingly fewer covered. Nowhere in the west are we so far behind in education. And for the past 30 years the republicans have dominated the cure for all those ills and it has only gotten worse as a result of their propaganda.

Find me a party other than the democrats that is willing to adress those things without pushing the lower two classes down further. As far as I can tell democrats seem to be the only ones right now who are making that effort.

Libertarians have the social issues correct, but are nothing but republicans on steriods economically speeking and have an even worse "wild west" attitude on economics. Both republicans and libertarians fail to see that smaller government depends on self policing and right now, that will not work in our current climate.

Give me a party that values investment and education and a rising tide that lifts all of us. Give me a party that does not see one class as being the only class with any rights.

with this. Our conservatives are so clamped to fiscal policy, driven by magnates, they seem immune to the travails of the blue and white collar working classes, though in Australia our unemployment rate is only about 5.4 per cent at present. The stress here is the mountains of debt families have taken on in the competition to own a living place. I think our average house price is 450,000 and our dollar is higher than the USD. So we sort of have a debt crisis but its a personal debt crisis. You can't walk away from an indebted house here the way you can in the US. Adding a sting to this is the sale of infrastructure owned by state governments to pay of huge debts, leading to skyrocketing utilities costs from newly privatised energy companies. When people are being tortured by silly mortgages, extra bills can be the bridge too far. Not sure how we avoided the GFC so far but we somehow escaped the worst of it. Regulated banks.