Speaking of non R and non D candidates
Tam reminds me why they might be appealing:
Oh, Republicans, you never fail to disappoint me.
Sure, you talk a good small government game, and then the minute you get into office it’s all about the gays and the ‘bortion and the flag-burnin’ and drug warrin’ and Family-Values-with-a-capital-KJV and next thing you know you’re No Child Left Behindin’ and Department of Homeland Securityin’ and if I wanted all that snoopy government busibodiness I’d have voted for the Democrat in the first place.
October 24th, 2012 at 10:14 am
My local senate candidate (R) has on her website “Christian family values” and “we need more defense spending” as two of her (three) main topics. Somehow that doesn’t really appeal too much to my priorities at the moment.
October 24th, 2012 at 10:47 am
“For evil to prevail all that needs to happen is for good men to do nothing” is an often repeated, but true concept. I agree with Tam, and everyone else, that many of our past picks have been disappointments on many of the issues that matter to me. I agree that Romney is not the standard bearer I would personally have preferred, nor the one I voted for in the primaries. But he is the guy we picked to go to the dance and so I’m on board. A protest vote for a third party, or just not voting to show my frustration, does not advance my agenda at all.
One of the reasons the liberals have been so successful over the last 50 years, and the conservatives have mostly failed, is that we don’t seem to understand the Fabian Society’s principle of incrementalism. With only a few deviations, they have run slightly more liberal candidates in the Democrat party in an effort to take it over. Rather than stepping up and running as an R, or getting a solid conservative or libertarian to run as an R (and thereby beginning to change the party corporate culture from the inside), we bitch and moan about how our guys never do anything different than the other guys while advocating for a third party candidate who has no hope of prevailing, at least on a national level. The core of the modern Democrat party set out to slowly move their party left before most of us were born, and have now succeeded. This is not a “this year or next year” fight but a “maybe, hopefully, before I die of old age” fight. Vote for the guy most like your ideals who has a chance of winning and then work to send even more conservative members to congress to back him up.
Remember, while some of the past Republican picks for the Federal Bench (including the Supreme Court) have turned out to be a bit liberal, ALL of the recent picks (last 50 years again) by a Democrat have been reliably liberal, and, ultimately, our cherished issues (excepting budget/taxation) are mostly at the mercy of the courts. Next POTUS will get 2, maybe 3 tries at the Sct, a hundred or more on the District and Appellate level, the AG and by implication the direction of national enforcement on the issues that matter most to readers of blogs such as this. Thus endeth the rant.
October 24th, 2012 at 12:12 pm
Riiiight. I have heard the bleat “do nothing and Obummer will wreck the US” many times, and I have repeated it myself on occasion, proving nothing except that I’m as fallible as the next pundit.
Yep, I’m going to hold my nose and vote for Mittens, only because if he wins, there WILL be a coat-tail effect, and the Congress will remain in the hands of the Right.
It’s all for nothing, though, because if defeated in two weeks, Obama will go on a 75-day Executive Orders blitzkrieg to impose everything from gun control to letting the United Nations tell us how to live, and farging up the economy all the while. He will be counting on Mittens to leave a lot of that crap in place, because that’s what Mittens did when he took the Executive reins in Taxachusetts. It will take SOME work for the next Congress to iron all mess that out with their Un-Do pens, so at least the first year of Mittens’ presidency would look like a holy shambles, and the (D)onks will use that to good effect to try to get the Hildebeeste in in ’16 and a (D)onk Congress for her to use to continue the Won’s trashing of America.
October 24th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Don’t think he’d run in ’16 if defeated in ’12?
October 24th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
I’m not actually voting for Romney as much as I’m voting against Obama… They both bring the suck, but Romney brings incrementally less suck, as per the Fabian Society theory.
October 24th, 2012 at 5:10 pm
Was talking to a buddy of mine the other day. He’s a hard-core Democrat–he doesn’t know why other than his daddy was a Democrat, his grand daddy was a Democrat, his great grand daddy was a Democrat, etc…
He refuses to vote for Mittens or Nobama, said he’s sitting this one out.
Evidence suggests Obama is a lying sack of shit. Evidence also suggests Romney is a leaf-in-the-wind lying sack of shit politician.
I AM NOT voting FOR Romney, I am voting against Obama.
IF the repug-a-nuts manage to win this election, watch them say “The American people have spoken and sanctioned out policies” (which are identical to the Dim-o-cranks, they just benefit a different group).
Everyone in both parties want just one thing–POWER. The rest of us just want to be let the fuck alone.
October 24th, 2012 at 5:11 pm
“…sanctioned our policies…” (sry, fat fingers)
October 24th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
Magus, I’m in Oklahoma; I have no idea how many people I’ve known over the years who would rather die than change their registration from ‘D’, even though they were of conservative bent and generally referred to most ‘D’ candidates in terms not allowed in polite company. It’s a family/history thing with them.
‘Course, a lot of that’s been changing the last few years
October 24th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
Rivrdog nailed it.
October 25th, 2012 at 6:02 am
I can’t understand anyone voting FOR Obama. The ones I know that are planning to seem like decent people who would be offended by his lies and criminal actions. Yet they aren’t…
Voting against him I get.
But if the republicans gave a Shit they’d impeach and try him for murder. They don’t so they won’t.
Romney at least hasn’t ordered any murders yet.
October 25th, 2012 at 9:52 am
This isn’t the election to F%&*# around with. Waste your vote on Ron Paul when the economy is stable again and half world isn’t trying to blow us up.