More on McCain
David is pretty upset over the McCain thing. And David tells us that McCain is not exactly a great ally to gun owners. True. He’s not what I’d call a stellar gun rights supporter. However, he is not openly hostile to gun owners like Hillary and Barack Obama. And the significance of his attendance at the NRA meeting shows that, if nothing else. After all, who is lining up to speak at Brady Campaign events? And who had to go through all the trouble of creating a fake grassroots group that appears pro-gun to endorse Democrats?
McCain is far from perfect. Hell, guns aside, conservatives are not happy:
We should probably consider ourselves lucky, because McCain is giving us a taste of what’s going to happen when he gets to the White House. This, in other words, is what is in store for us conservatives: daily disappointments, frequent betrayals, and constant regret for having voted for him.
Well, that’s what we’ve been getting for the last eight years anyway. So, I don’t exactly understand why I should be that much more pissed about it now.
Meanwhile, Robb notes the Democrats are having similar issues:
Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten quite an earful on the upcoming elections and it pains me to say even the Democrats don’t appear to be happy with their choices. Many of them are talking about voting McCain since Hillary! and Barrack Whatchootalkinaboutwillis Obama do not represent their views. There’s the typical “If my candidate doesn’t get the nod I’m voting McCain” shtick, but there’s a lot of general unhappiness with both of them overall.
Could be. But conservatives are doing it too. This morning’s local talk radio host asked for a McCain supporter to call. The host stipulated he wanted a real supporter and not just someone who was going to hold their nose and vote; nor did he want someone who was voting against the Democrats. He wanted and honest to God McCain supporter.
For the 35 minutes I listened, one guy called in and he wasn’t convincing. He talked entirely about McCain’s military record and said not one word about his policy positions.
Facts are that our current political system just generates shitty candidates. And we have to deal with that.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:00 am
You know, it wouldn’t bother me as much if people actually understood that, in America, we don’t elect leaders. We elect representatives. I really don’t care about the president. They don’t have that much power when you read the constitution. But the brain dead idiots out there who think that the federal government should have all this power keep relinquishing more and more to them and now it does matter who gets the job.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:05 am
“Facts are that our current political system just generates shitty candidates. And we have to deal with that.”
And if we keep voting for’em we’ll keep getting ’em. It’s because we obey the evil system that keeps’em coming. STOP VOTING FOR THEM!!!
Vote FOR someone…say like Bob Barr the likely Libertarian nominee who is pro–gun and pro Bill of Rights…ALL of them.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I’ve voted for my last liberal Republican, aka, George Bush. McCain sure as heck won’t get my vote, I’ll be punching the button for the Libertarian candidate.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
So institute a draft.
Like jury duty, your number comes up you get handed a political office.
Would it be a disaster? Sure.
Would you be able to tell the difference?
May 14th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
As long as most conservatives will vote for an R no matter how bad, there’s no reason for a politician to treat them differently. There’s zero cost for doing so. Things aren’t going to get better until they sit on their hands for election, even if that means the worse candidate ends up in charge for four year.
Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Voting for McCain, or any Republican for that matter, is enabling a co-dependent relationship. Sometimes you have to let those you care about hit rock bottom before they realize that they need help.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
The issue isn’t so much with our current political system as it is with our “peers”. Nothing of value can really be explained in a 15 second sound bite. But the average American attention span, and intellect, won’t hear anything much longer than that. So the quality candidates never make it past the primaries.
The voters are the ones picking the candidates. If we really want to change things, the most effective option would be to take some time to actually help your candidate do well in the primaries in one of the early states. Can you imagine what would happen if every Fred Thompson supporter that reads this site had taken a few days, or a week, off from work to help his campaign in one of the states with the early primaries?
There are a lot of problems with our current system, most being with the way Congress wastes money. But the elections system isn’t that bad. The only issue I have ever had with it was the determination they have to keep starting the primaries in states that really don’t seem typical of the bulk of the country.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Okay, then see here, and if that isn’t enough for you, see this one (I think I linked you in that one anyway).
May 14th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better
I keep hearing this justification, that if only the Dems get their way the population will be so horrified at what they got they would wake up and see that a true Conservative/Libertarian is what this county needs.
And yet I keep looking around me at all the other countries where their is a much higher level of socialism than what is here and yet their has been no “Waking Up”. They just keep voting for socialists, get more socialists, and then vote for more socialism.
So just where is this evidence that “letting things get worse” will ever make things better?
“Holding your nose” may be losing ground, but at least we’re still in the game. The game is already over in Europe.
May 14th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
No, my suggestion is more that is that is Republican politicians suddenly began to face a cost for not being sufficiently conservative, they might begin staying more true to the principles they campaigned on. As it is now, they only have to be just slightly less socialist than the democrats to get conservative votes, so that’s what they do.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
The talking heads are beginning to mention the Unmentionable. Barack Obama AND a veto-proof, fillibuster-proof (D)emocratic Congress.
I’m not going to panic over this, although I realize that if it happens, by next Fall the Constitution will effectively cease to protect us (yes, that means our Bill of Rights, also).
At that point, it is simply a matter of deciding on how to initiate the citizen-militia action to restore that ravished Constitution.
All these dire predictions mean, is that when the end of our 232-year experiment comes, it will come very fast, and probably without much warning.
I can hear some of you say, “Why yes, RD, but haven’t all those situations in the past been blunted by the voters re-inforcing the party out of power?”
In the past, Democrats had respect for the Constitution. Not today.
After the November vote, if this one-party travesty, really a coup d’etat, has occurred, we will have less than three months to decide on our action. Let us clear our minds to that possibility now, so that we won’t have to waste a singe day arguing about it then, because then, every one of those days will be precious to us.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I love how everyone uses the average American scapegoat. That’s because everyone thinks their better than average, but they really aren’t. In fact, the average bar in America is pretty damn high. So get the message that ‘voting’ isn’t worth shit, and focus on doing something that will benefit this nation, such as taking someone shooting, educating people about Liberty, and first of all believing in Liberty and not choosing evil no matter what. Make the right choice and be an advocate for freedom.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:43 am
Depending on which State you reside in it probably doesn’t matter much which presidential candidate you vote for. For example, California is so dominated by democratic party voters that in the 2000 election when Gore got a national vote plurality with a margin of about 500,000 votes, California all by itself provided Gore with a margin of about 800,000 votes. In other words if all California votes were eliminated from the 2000 totals, then Bush was the one who got the most of the national popular vote!
That being said some of my friends deeply regret voting for W Bush in the past, and even though they won’t vote for Obama, they will probably vote third party in 2008. I on the other hand have no such regrets. I knew W. Bush was the lessor of two evils and I had no illusions about him, the important thing was to stop Gore and later on to stop Kerry. Considering just how bad Gore and Kerry were and still are I marvel at my friends loopy hindsight.
I don’t care for McCain, but it’s all we have right now. My vote in November for McCain is not a vote ‘for’ McCain, but a vote against Obama! I remember how bitterly I felt about GHW Bush in 1992. So bitter that I voted for Ross Perot. 8 years of the Clinton insanity have forever cured me of such naive notions of purity.
The time to stop McCain was in the primaries, but once he won the nomination that game was over. McCain is very much a mixed bag, in some ways even worse than Bush, for example McCain’s full throttled support of the ‘climate change’ catastrophist cult. But Obama is all that is wrong with McCain plus a mountain of even worse crap. Can you imagine giving Obama federal court appointment powers of the presidency for the next 4-8 years, in the wake of the D.C. v Heller case? There is too much at stake for the future of freedom to let petty matters interfere with a cold and methodical calculation of who should become president.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
No, my suggestion is more that is that is Republican politicians suddenly began to face a cost for not being sufficiently conservative, they might begin staying more true to the principles they campaigned on.
Or they’ll realize that if they want power back they’ll have to out liberal the Liberals.
Frankly, I think the latter is more likely. That’s what has happened historically (and is exactly what happeded with McCain). The country said “We vote for Democrats” at the mid-term elections and so we got three Democrats running for President.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
If you’re correct, then voting is a lost cause.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
If you’re correct, then voting is a lost cause.
Actually, I would say Only voting is a losing cause. Not Voting at all is the lost cause.
That’s the problem with the “I’ll only vote FOR someone or I’m taking my ball and going home.” It isn’t really the “I’ll only vote FOR someone”, it’s the “Or I’m going home” part.
Voting keeps you in the game so that “In addition to voting” action get’s you a win. You have to do both to change things.
Do nothing and “Wait(ing) for the World to Change” might work well for a John Mayor song, but it doesn’t actually work in real life.