Posted on 05/06/2009 8:30:12 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Do you have ANYTHING about which is your “line in the sand”????? Or are you just another squishy, whiny sheeple???
See post 21. I ask you the same questions.
I’ll fight for what I believe in. But when it comes to casting a vote in an election, I’m not sure that not voting, or voting for the lesser of the two candidates, could ever help me to “fight for what I believe in”.
I believe in a lot of things. If there are two candidates, and one candidate will be on my side for 70% of the things I am fighting for, and the other for about 10% of the things I am fighting for, I’m not sure how logically I should not vote for the 70% candidate, because I AM fighting for a lot of different things.
The only reason I can see to not vote for the 70% candidate is if you have a pretty solid majority of conservatives in a voting area, and know that if you reject the moderate, the next election cycle you can replace the democrat with a conservative.
We did that in 1994, so it isn’t impossible — but the conservatives of 1994 became the moderates of 2000, became the losers of 2006.
We need to win over a majority of the electorate, and I can see that having “republicans” who do the wrong thing makes that harder. So I do understand the desire to get rid of the “bad republicans”. I just don’t see a winning strategy in the current rhetoric that would reject voters who don’t agree with us 100%, and that appear to put us in a permanent minority.
If solidly conservative Americans were 40% of the electorate, I could see us getting there with this strategy. But the number isn’t anywhere near that. And the more we scream about purity for the 20% who are, the easier it is for a liberal media to dismiss any candidate we support as obviously far-right and out-of-the-mainstream.
It doesn’t help that if we have a solidly conservative candidate but he says something that sounds like pandering, we immediately attack and demand they re-take the purity oath. Why would anybody want to run as a conservative if you can’t please the base no matter what you do, and if doing so makes you toxic to the majority of the electorate?
Look at Ric Santorum. He made a serious error, but he was otherwise a strong conservative, and conservatives abandoned him for that one error. There are conservatives abandoning Jim DeMint for the same reason — one “error” in their minds over a political support issue, and he is no longer “conservative enough”.
I’ve seen others reject solid conservatives because they weren’t sufficiently strident on immigration, or because they didn’t support pro-life to the womb, or they said something nice about a democrat once. Rush’s poster-child for conservative, Bobby Jindal, was nearly run out of conservative-town on the rails because of a decision he made at the start of his term as Governor. A couple of the really strident conservatives have even attacked Palin for being insufficiently pure.
Of course, here at FR we regularly go after each other for perceived failings in the purity test.
I wouldn’t vote for someone who had a lack of integrity, or a lack of character. Beyond that, I presume there could be a case where the choices are so bad I would choose not to vote, but that has never happened in my lifetime of voting.
My line is more secure when it comes to who I would send money to — I never gave a dime to John McCain, even though I voted for him.
In a primary, you find the candidate who best espouses conservative principles. I have had times I didn’t vote in a primary because we couldn’t get ANY candidates to run who were really conservative.
When I get a chance to vote on ISSUES, rather than on people who then represent me, it is easy to vote the correct side of issues, and I do so.
And when I write to my representatives, I tell them to do what is right. I don’t compromise on my principles to make people like me, or to try to get people to listen. The question is whether voting for the BETTER candidate is considered a “compromise” if none of the candidates are perfect.
Governor Jindal claims to have delivered the largest tax cut in LA history. Funny thing is it has yet to take effect and may not do so because of the “recession”.
Did PA conservatives really abandon Santorum in 2006, or was he just another victim of the unpopularity of GWB?
It would be 45 D, 30 R, and 20 C, best case scenario.
Yes, and we don’t need to purge C. Powell either. As Rush once explained in another context about liberals on campuses, we meed Powell to remind us of the failures of GHWB.
Having said this, though, RINO's need to be willing to work with conservatives moreso than they have been in recent years. I live in NY State (for now), and I can see what a disaster it is when RINO's have a death grip on the state GOP. Bottom line, the RINO's need to stop lecturing conservatives and joining in on the attacks on some of our candidates (Palin, for one), and they need to recognize that the Marxist in the White House is the enemy.
See post 23. I agree with his well-written and, in my opinion, accurate analysis.
I regret that I could not have said it better.
As long as you cast a vote for someone just because of that (R) after the name, you give the party ZERO incentive to change its ways. Rewarding bad behavior only and forever gets you MORE OF THE SAME.
I wouldn’t cast a vote just because of that (R). I vote for what is best for the country and when given two choices on election day, the choice is obvious.
I campaign for the best possible conservative candidate prior to voting day, but when that day comes, we all have a choice to make and I do what I think is right.
Everything I learned about Obama before the election told me all I needed to know about who I should vote for in the end. I wasn’t rewarding bad behaviour, I was trying to prevent the national crisis that we are in with Obama and the Dem’s in control of our country.
Obama is just getting started and look at what he’s done. Look at what a Democrat controlled congress has done. Changes are being made that may forever change the very fabric of our great nation. We are in more danger than we have ever been since 9/11.
The only comfort I have is knowing that I tried to prevent it on election day.
Nobody can count on my vote because of what party they belong to.
I evaluate the candidates, and make my choice based on two criteria.
First, I rank the candidates based on desirability, which for me consists of three criteria: conservative principles, character, intelligence. Probably in that order.
Second, I choose the candidate highest in ranking that has ANY chance whatsoever of winning. Meaning I would sometimes vote for a less conservative candidate if I felt that the less conservative candidate could win while the more conservative candidate would never win with my vote. BTW, I fault nobody who skips that step and votes for the most desirable candidate on their list, without regard to winnability.
If there are no candidates that can “win” that I have any interest in, then I would vote for the candidate highest on my list to “send a message”. Note that I put “putting a decent person into office” above “sending a message”, again others do not and I don’t fault them for their choice.
It makes no difference which candidates are “D” vs “R” vs “I”, although I don’t believe I’ve voted for a democrat since my first election in Maryland where I voted for a conservative democrat over a liberal independent when the republican was nonexistant.
I am not currently a member of the Republican party. I lapsed my membership last fall, after the TARP fiasco.
The steps you take in evaluating candidates, ranking them and making a final choice mirror my own.
I’m still registered as a Republican and have donated to the RNC in the past. However, I started sending a message rather than money last year.
When I said I vote for the “R” on voting day, I was referring to presidential elections. In my experience there hasn’t been one presidential election in my lifetime (50+ years) where there were more than two candidates that could possibly win the election. In those instances I have always voted for the Republican candidate. That being said, I can’t think of any other elections where I’ve voted for a Democrat, but I think somewhere along the way I may have voted for an Independent.
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