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Trainman wrote:

If you want to vote for the candidate that represents your views, vote for the candidate that represents your views--whatever party or "chance of winning" that may be......

A philosophy built upon idealism.

The practical use of that ideal can be viewed historically when Ross Perot was a third party candidate in 92 and 96. Because of that, this country had 8 years of Bill Clinton.

That is what strict idealism will bring.

Ideological goals are great - until the parties have chosen their candidates. Then you have to decide if you want to win, or be a loser.

So we're not supposed to vote for who we believe is the best candidate? I respectfully disagree with you here.

Both the Democrats and the Republicans tend to do stupid things when given absolute power. The Democrats erode our rights and liberties with government mismanagement in the form of gun bans and social programs. The Republicans do the same in the form of wars waged on false pretenses and mass surveillance on its citizens in the name of security. The only thing that really seems to temper such action is a deadlock of power between the parties.

Regarding Ross Perot, there's no evidence that Ross Perot "won" the election for Bill Clinton. It has even been stated here that statistics show he "pulled" more votes from Clinton supporters than Bush supporters, which would make your point moot. Ross Perot ran a valid campaign and won substantial votes. I find it irritating that we are so entrenched in the status quo that when someone who runs for office as an independent, he is essentially labeled as a vote thief. Last I checked, people still had minds of their own. They have the freedom in this country to vote for whomever they please. If I vote for someone independent, it's my own choice. I am not stealing a vote from "your" party, or anyone else's. If it were to come down to such horrible choices as Giuliani and Clinton (both have terrible 2A records), I would most certainly count a vote for an independent as a valid choice. If the Republican party makes so poor a choice as to give its candidacy to Giuliani, I think it is perfectly valid to take my vote elsewhere. To do otherwise serves only to provide validation for an obviously broken system. Were an independent to "lose" an election for the Republican party candidate, it would certainly force the party to take a step back to see what it is doing wrong.

Oof. What really gets me is that the media is already proclaiming the winner of the primaries before we're even close to the election. Even here, we seem to have already resigned ourselves to the fact that the election is going to be between Hillary and Rudy. I'm quickly losing faith in the people of this country, as it seems that the nation is letting its popular opinion be dictated by what the media's agenda focuses on. What happened to voting for the candidate we think will do the best job? We've been scared into voting for the most media-hyped candidate for fear that otherwise, whatever party we're affiliated with will lose!

If we keep running our country like this, we're not going to have any rights (gun or otherwise) left, just power-drunk rulers and subjects complacent to whatever the media feeds them. Elections are swiftly becoming nothing more than a contest of influence and power, rather than an expression of the will of the people.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather focus on the task at hand - the primaries. Our time would be much better spent discussing the merits of the candidates running for the primary elections. We'll have plenty of time in a couple of months to discuss the outcome and merits of the selected candidates then.

Let's start a thread about Giuliani vs. Huckabee vs. Hunter vs. McCain vs. Paul vs. Romney vs. Tancredo vs. Thompson and where they stand on the 2nd Ammendment and other contributing issues that affect our rights as gun owners and CHL holders. We could even have one for Biden vs. Clinton vs. Gravel vs. Dodd vs. Edwards vs. Kucinich vs. Obama vs. Richardson! Resigning ourselves to Clinton vs. Giuliani before the polls have even opened seems a little defeatist to me.