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Instead, that ABO conservative would send a powerful message by voting for a real conservative, Goode, rather than waste a vote on a losing Romney.

Why do you say Romney will lose?

My hunch is that, after next Tuesday's Texas primary, Romney will have sewn up the necessary votes to make him the successful GOP candidate. At that point, do not expect any "surprises" out of the nominating convention in August. Do not expect any back-room maneuvers to replace him on the ticket in the general election in November. (By the way, why do you expect a convention run by the GOP to intervene in, and change the verdict rendered by voters in the primaries? It is simply not going to happen.)

In any case, the good man Virgil Goode — the rock-ribbed conservative — hasn't got a chance of defeating Obama in the general election anyway. Short of divine intervention, of course.

Yet I expect our good Lord leaves this kind of electoral business to us, We the People.

You seem to want to cast a taint on the "ABO" crowd. That there is something deeply immoral about people trying to remove this tyrant — that would be Obama — from office.

I find myself located in the ABO company. This must make me a very bad person, on your view.

And yet, for me the bottom line is: I can no longer stand to live in a political society premised on outright, daily lies and spin of the real situation in which America finds herself nowadays, under Obama and the thugs that surround and enable him. If Obama does not want to deliberately destroy the country we know and love, you could have fooled me: His policies — which he constantly misrepresents (i.e., lies about) — are designed to do just that.

In conclusion, Obama is a serial, pathological liar. He is trying to create a "second reality" out of sheer rhetoric....

I'd vote for my cat before I'd ever vote for him. And I won't waste my vote on Virgil Goode — who hasn't got a snowball's chance in Hell of being elected President of the United States — just to send a "message" to the GOP "establishment."

Secure the well-being of the country first. Though you have demonized him and constructed an unrecognizeable caricature of the man — in my view from Massachusetts — Romney has the right stuff to at least stop the bleeding. Then we can deal with the feckless and seemingly increasingly unprincipled GOP establishment.

In short, if the boat is sinking, bail the boat first. A sunken boat only means drowned crew and passengers.... And that sort of thing is "forever."

FWIW JMHO.

You seem to want to cast a taint on the "ABO" crowd. That there is something deeply immoral about people trying to remove this tyrant — that would be Obama — from office. I find myself located in the ABO company. This must make me a very bad person, on your view.

ALL: "ABO" is simply a euphemism for a (potential) Romney voter, or a Romney supporter/advocate, or a Romneybot troll [those are 3 separate categories of "aid and abetting")

How do we know that?

Because usually when we suggest -- say, a Virgil Goode as an "ABO" alternative, it's met with some measure of displeasure by the euphemistic "ABO" company...meaning, it's not REALLY "ABO." (It's Romney ONLY)

“When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn’t like it.

“Compromise” was a dirty word to them and they wouldn’t face the fact that we couldn’t get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don’t get it all, some said, don’t take anything.

I’d learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’

If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it”.

Ronald Reagan on politics and compromise from his autobiography

Hi Sister Betty. There isn’t anything in your response that would indicate you keyed in on what I thought I wrote. Perhaps I expressed myself so poorly that it wasn’t clear. Let me try to be more clear. Hopefully, I’ll do better this time.

There is a hypothetical in it. IF (note the “if”) Romney is losing by a significant MOE at the end of October, then he’s going down.

Why would an ABO...who’s only voting for Romney because he/she is forced to by virtue of no better candidate...vote for Romney if Romney is losing by a statistically significant margin?

Why vote AGAINST one’s principles at that point?

There actually would be no good reason for doing so. It would be better to let the GOP-e know they messed this one up by NOT voting for their hand-jammed candidate. Instead, a vote for Goode would be a protest vote that could actually be counted.

As you can see, Romney has an extremely difficult electoral college path to victory. That, of course, is the real contest with the popular polls being only a reflection of broad sentiment. Obama, on the other hand, has simply to put Ohio, Michigan and either Virginia or Wisconsin in his column for a victory. Right now RCP has him leading in those states. Two of them, Michigan and Wisconsin are fairly reliable blue states.

Ohio is a state that has a history of voting with the winner. I believe that for republicans Ohio has proven to be a must. No republican has ever won, iirc, if they lose Ohio. If Romney loses Ohio, then he loses the election.

So, let me encourage conservatives again...those in the ABO boat...IF IF IF Romney is losing by a statistically significant margin on Oct 31 to send a message by voting for Virgil Goode. What is a statistically significant margin? It is the MOE if one is speaking mathematically. That will be about 3-4% in a large national sample.

However, ABO voters can determine themselves what margin lets them know that Romney is in big trouble. Surely, most would agree that a 5% margin deficit 2-3 days before the election is a really bad sign. I know there are those who deny the applicability of polls, or their fairness, or their accuracy, but experience has taught me that they are a reasonable reflection of what’s taking place in the electorate.

I hope I’ve done a better job of explaining myself with this post. If not, let me know, and I’ll try again. The key is the IF.