Replies

That's not what your ballot will say

It doesn't matter what the ballot says. In recent history, the president has either been the GOP candidate or the DEM candidate. There is no indication, and no sane argument, that anything will be different in this upcoming general election. It's not right and I wish the Tea-Party (or similar) had knocked the GOP off the face of the earth. That didn't happen, so we are left with a crap choice.

So, I'll make this simple: Since 0bama will be the DEM candidate, I'm voting for whoever occupies the *GOP* candidate's spot. I presume that will be Romney (barring divine intervention at the GOP convention). So, I'm voting for whoever the GOP candidate is as my vote "against 0bama". Or if you prefer, "Vote For Leading Non-0bama Candidate" == "Vote Against Obama".

Now, if you have a different candidate with better odds of beating 0bama than the GOP candidate, speak up & make your case and let's vote for him. Otherwise, I vote against 0bama by voting for the candidate with the best odds of winning -- however slight those odds may be -- and at this point that's going to be (like it or not) the GOP candidate. It is just that simple.

It doesn't matter what the ballot says.

Good. If that's true, then I'm voting for Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate.

I'm college-educated. So we can make it complex. If you tick the box that says "Mitt Romney" that means you're voting FOR "Mitt Romney". If you don't, you're voting for someone else.

I tell you this to expose the basic logical fallacy in which so many ABOs (or more accurately, "NBRs" for "Nobody But Romney") engage. They try to tell me that my vote for a third-party candidate will be what it isn't -- that is, a vote for Obama instead of a vote for an actual conservative -- while people like you tell me that your vote isn't what it is, and how it will be counted: as a vote for Mitt Romney. There's no spot in the results for "against Obama".

Look, you've made your choice. I respect it. But it would certainly be easier, and you wouldn't have to engage in such mental gymnastics to salve your conscience, if you'd simply admit what you're doing. For me at least, no harm, no foul.

I and people like me have mentioned them repeatedly. We still have Virgil Goode. We have FR's homegrown, Tom Hoefling. But to make a point and start a populist wave that sooner or later even ABOs admit is going to HAVE to happen to promote a spirit of resistance to socialism we see in BOTH major parties, people have to get on board. We have good conservatives sitting on the sidelines saying it can't be done because no other candidate has an "R".

The Tea Party went from an idea in a reporter's head on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to rallies of hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall in a matter of weeks. Where's that spirit here, on the premier conservative site on the web? What on earth happened?

Gay marriage, abortion, gun control, big government, Romneycare, TARP -- that is more than a bridge too far for me and for some others here. If you think voting for Romney accomplishes the stated goal of this website by advances conservatism, I'm more than willing to hear your reasoning.