boba wrote:RCP wrote:Romney will never get my vote either, not in the Primary or in the General. I sincerely believe that nothing would change under Romney (at least not for the better).
I'm voting for a pro gun fiscal conservative in November 2012. If the Republican ticket has someone like that, I will vote for the Republican candidate. If not, they don't want my vote, and I can vote for a third party candidate with a clear conscience.
When someone decides to vote 3rd party, they are accepting (whether or not they want to) a hardcore reality: that their guy will never win. Not ever. That means a few things more than just the principle of voting for what they believe in. I'm not saying it's the best system possible, but we have a reality that there exist two major parties, and a handful of smaller parties which are statistically relevant
only in whose major party candicacy they will hurt worse or benefit more.
I am perfectly willing to concede that the republican party—once the bulwark of fiscal sanity in this country—lost its way over the past couple of decades and moved away from its base toward the center/center-left. I absolutely admit that, and I'm not particularly happy about it either. BUT....the fact remains that anyone who calls themselves a conservative and votes for a third party candidate is someone who took a vote away from a republican and gave it instead to a politically irrelevant candidate. Similarly, anyone who votes for say...the Green Party candidate...is probably taking a vote away from a democrat. Statistically, registered democrats outnumber registered republicans, but historically, republicans always turned out in greater percentages than democrats. The result is that actual votes cast by democrats and republicans tend to be pretty near even. Therefore, Independents decide elections.
Surveys show that independents are more likely to self-identify as conservative-leaning than as liberal-leaning. But, independents, despite their vaunted reputation for being free-thinkers who self-identify as conservatives, voted in a very large majority for Obama in 2008—the absolutely stupidest political decision they'll ever make, likely in their entire lifetimes. The last poll I saw, which was admittedly a year ago or so, showed that something like 75% of those independents polled who had voted for Obama in 2008 said would vote for
any republican challenger in 2012. Who knows what it is now? As it turns out, and based on the 2008 results, Independents are a fickle bunch with no real standards. While I concede their political importance, their vote for Obama clearly demonstrates that they are not free
thinkers, and whatever respect I had for them is long gone.
The minor parties are camping places for people who want to stake out absolutist positions. In one sense, I cannot blame them. I consider myself a constitutional absolutist for instance, and much of what the republican party has done over the last two decades is constitutionally troubling. But, the republican insults to the Constitution are not nearly as egregious in the aggregate as are the sum total
shredding of the Constitution by the democrats. So, they are NOT the same, and it really IS a case of voting for the lesser of two evils. The fact of the matter is that the next president is going to be a democrat or a republican. He's NOT going to be a Libertarian, or a Green, or any
other third party member. So, if you are a third party voter who leans toward the conservative, your vote
FOR the candidate of your party, having no real chance of electing your candidate, can
really only has the effect the election outcome by helping or hurting either of the two major party candidates, the effect depending which of the two major party candidates is more liberal, and which is more conservative.
So, with that in mind, you have to look at the two major party candidates in that light. Is Romney
REALLY Obama-lite? Not unless you are shallow enough to believe sound-bites. People who examine a fact of history outside of its historical context do not have an accurate representation of the history they are examining. Case in point: Were the "Crusades" a defense of Europe which pushed back Muslim invaders
out of Europe and then took the war
to the enemy; or were they the attack of an aggressive church upon a peaceful middle east? The first is correct. The second is the revisionist theory.
So when you examine Romney's record in Massachusetts, do the due diligence, and have the intellectual
integrity to process that record through
this filter: a republican governor in a state with an overwhelmingly democrat legislature—a legislature with
more than enough democrat votes to easily override an gubernatorial veto. I would submit that, whether or not he is conservative enough for the purist ideologue, it took courage for Romney to run for that office, knowing that every day of all four years of his term would be an uphill battle against an opposition majority legislature. Then consider what
you would have done in similar circumstances. Your only real choices are:
- Cave in on everything and rubber stamp all bills that come to your desk.
- Resist everything by veto, and have your vetos universally overridden by legislative vote.
- Quit.
- Stay, and try to attenuate the toxicity of leftist legislation by wheeling and dealing and negotiating, and getting a few concessions here and there from the commies.
Here is what each choice would say about you, if you were in that boat:
- You lack character.
- You lack wisdom.
- You lack courage.
- You have character, wisdom, and courage....propped up with a good deal of patience.
When it comes to gun rights and the Massachusetts AWB, and Romney's signing the bill if it contained concessions on behalf of Massachusetts CCW permit holders was about the best thing he could hope to accomplish in the environment he faced. He didn't cave in. He didn't resist without purpose, and won some concessions as a result. He didn't quit.
Before gaining the Oval Office, Obama had no real world experience outside community activism and the cloistered halls of Academia. Where are his college records? Sealed. Why? Even the allegedly dumb Bush didn't hide his academic credentials. Where is Obama's Harvard Law Review editorial record? It doesn't exist....and never has. We're talking about a man who wrote two autobiographies before he was in his mid-40s. For what
possible reason would he think that his life was so significant that the world was dying to know about him.......other than to satisfy his massively narcissistic ego. Why are his ties to known terrorist bombers who kill Americans, and to radical agitators and self-confessed communites being buried in these hagiographies, if he is so avante guard? How is he getting away with the lie of being called a "Professor of Constitutional Law," when HE WAS NO SUCH THING! He was a minor lecturer on the law,
some of which was con-law. My parents were both full professors at Caltech. Being a professor is a career, and it takes YEARS to accomplish that. They are jealous of the title, and justly so. Go check out his Wiki page. He was NEVER a professor of anything. He was a "Lecturer," a lower title with less meaning. How is it that HE allows the lie to be perpetuated instead of stepping up and saying "Look, this "professor" thing is a bit overblown. Yes, I did lecture on the law, and sometimes I lectured on Con-law, but I want the record to accurately reflect who I am."
I just barely scratching the surface here of how many ways Obama is evil. Not just wrong, but deliberately evil and deceitful. And yet, either he, or Romney is going to be the president. Not the Libertarian candidate. Not the Green candidate. Not the American Communist Party candidate.....although there is little difference between Obama and whomever that is. There is just no way on God's green earth that Romney is Obama-lite.
Is he less conservative than I would prefer? Yes he is. Am I troubled by his gun stance? Yes I am. But in truth, George Bush, the same guy who signed CHL into law here in Texas, said in 2004 that he would sign an AWB into law if Congress passed it. So Bush is Obama light? Give me a break. Yes, he was disappointing on some things, but there is no way in hades that he was/is Obama-lite. That's the problem with aboslutism.....it makes no allowances for reality. And it is the REAL world which is going to rear up and bite us on the butt if we don't take sometimes unpleasant steps to make sure that the
greater of two evils doesn't get elected. And that is what this all boils down to.
People who vote with an absolutist's conscience—in this day and age, right here and now—are people who are willing to endure another four years of the
greater of two evils so as to avoid having to hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. That's what it all really boils down to, because that IS what is going to happen if they can't hold their noses and vote for the republican nominee, as ideologically imperfect as he might be. You want a cure from cancer without the radiation and chemo. We can all dream for that, but if faced with cancer, you're either going to take the treatment, or you're going to be all noble and stuff.....and die.
Honestly, if you're that far removed from caring about the outcome of your vote, then this country is done for and we're just waiting around for the death rattle. I think we've bled out and we're just waiting for the heart to stop beating.
I think that's the core of my argument.
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