You’re not listening. My vote is not a negative “protest” vote as you keep trying to characterize it. My vote is a positive vote, for the core principles that make America America, and that support true republican self-government and liberty.
The negative vote is the one that is cast for those who destroy those indispensable principles upon which our liberty is premised and the future of our children and grandchildren is secured.
You’re playing a loser’s game, one in which your own liberty is being wiped out, and your posterity is being robbed.
I’ve done something different I never really did before 0bama got in office—I’ve been donating to all sorts of races to help swing things to the most conservative person possible, across the country. I never used to care about races that I couldn’t ever expect to vote in before.
In Arizona, we’ve got McLame and JD. Neither are that great, but JD is better. I believe we should give money to JD to help him, even though he’s not nearly as conservative or as trustworthy as I would like. Is this a wrong thing to do because he doesn’t represent the values I believe America should best stand for? No.
We need to be incrementally helping the more conservative person in every election, everywhere. No one person will be able to do anything to help our liberty, but many moving that way can most definitely do so. In Mass., we donated to Scott Brown even though we don’t live there. He was the best of the available options there and he’s already helped in some ways to block some spending. Sure, he’s voted with the Dems on other things, but he’s a help anyway and was worth the money—and I live half a country away.
If I see an opportunity to, with a little bit of help, swing even RINOs into taking over for classic Democrat seats, I see that as an incremental win. I won’t help him in the primary next time he’s in one, but if the general looks really close, I might help him again. It’s all about pushing toward the conservative goal, because there’s basically no one who has ever made it to my “perfection list” to support.
I encourage others to see it the same way and see it as a marathon, not a sprint. This battle to move us back toward true conservatism will be life-long and will need to be fought be others long after I’m gone. However, in the meantime, whether in the primary or the general, a race I can vote in or one I’ll never be able to, I see the need to push the conservative envelope everywhere.
We need to encourage a culture shift. That takes time and that takes, unfortunately, supporting a ton of people who aren’t really meeting your ideals. No one today meets those with me, but I won’t let that stop my incremental support for better any longer.