I had to leave for church shortly after posting that little reflection, CEW, so I’m just getting to responding.
I am torn by your dilemma. Another Massachusetts conservative, betty boop, insists that the Romneys and Browns of the world are the best options available in your area.
Nonetheless, I’d prefer a conservative over a liberal.
So far as Brown is concerned, regardless of the liberalism, I’m wondering how a man can be a Massachusetts Senator for a few years and then shortly thereafter run as a senatorial candidate in New Hampshire. It isn’t that it’s an Anthony Weiner obsession with power. It’s that it’s unseemly, self-centered. That actually turns me off toward him, and I’d expect it will be an issue with others.
So, it leads me to wonder what his real game is.
Well who of our mind and spirit would not prefer "a conservative over a liberal?"
And yet as Otto von Bismarck truthfully observed: "Politics is the art of the possible."
This is an in insight more recently updated by the late, great William F. Buckley: Vote for the most conservative candidate you can find — who can possibly be elected.
That would rule out Virgil Goode, right there. And yet many dear FRiends either voted for Virgil Goode, or stayed home in "protest", in the last election. Which very likely gave Obama his reelection "victory." [And now, how we citizens continue to suffer from that.]
To say that the "Romneys and Browns of the world are the best options available in [my] area" is true — as far as it goes. The division of the United States into "areas" is understandable; it goes along deep-seated cultural lines — which have been increasingly exacerbated in the "culture war" fostered by the [atheist, anhistorical, and anti-human] programme of the increasingly culturally-dominant Left Progressive movement, Barack Obama presiding.
Against that onslaught, I supported Mitt Romney and Scott Brown, both nominal Republicans. In both cases, the alternative was unthinkable to me: Reelect a failed president who probably did not meet the criteria of Office on diverse grounds in the first place; and renew his "mandate." Or instead of the ideologically squishy Scott Brown, elect the maniacal, phony "squaw" Elizabeth Warren to the Senate. (Who is now running for the presidential nomination of her party — no doubt following the "Obama model" of presidential accession....)
One of the best on-going jokes carried throughout Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin series in 20 volumes (which I greatly admire) was: When one serves His Majesty, one is often put in the position of having to choose between "the lesser of two weavils." (Weavils were a common feature of ship food in those days.)
I.e., you get to choose between which is the lesser "bug." Both are nasty to the palate. Ultimately, the decision boils down to the choice between two evils. And the question then becomes, which is the lesser evil of the two?
Anyhoot, there were a great many people on the Christian Right who just sat out the last presidential election. Or, like Don Quixote, were out there "tilting windmills" in hopes of getting Virgil Goode elected president.
Suffice it to say, that did not happen. It could not possibly happen.
I was a Romney supporter, as you know dear brother. His record as governor of Massachusetts was certainly not "perfect," ideologically speaking, especially if judged from outside the normal experience of Massachusetts politics — which is machine politics, utterly corrupt, and has been so for decades.
But I do believe that Romney well understood that "politics is the art of the possible." And worked through that perspective as best he could, in good faith. And managed to get the Commonwealth in better fiscal order than it had been in decades. We taxpayers thank him for that.
I am aware that Romney was rejected by many on the Christian Right because he was viewed as a heretic of the Christian Faith.
But I do not see that from that proposition that Romney was in any way disqualified as a public man.
The idea of "the public man" first arises in classical Greece, with Plato and Aristotle — who are to this day regarded as the founders of political science.
In Aristotelian terms, I regard Mitt Romney — for all his theological shortcomings from the orthodox Christian point of view — as an example of spoudaios, of the "mature man" who feels a duty to engage with the affairs of the Polis from time to time. Not to make a career from such service, but to chip in as necessary, as public need may warrant.
As for Scott Brown: I am far less clear on "the content of his character" than I am of Mitt Romney's.
If he were to become a "carpetbagger" in New Hampshire to seek a seat as Senator: If he can beat a left progressive, I'm all on his side, though I wouldn't be able to vote for him.
If you were to ask me, he's still pretty "wet behind the ears" when it comes to hardball politics....
But I'd take him over the squaw Elizabeth Warren, anytime. (She is absolutely out of her gourd, IMHO....)
Just some thoughts, dear brother in Christ!
May God ever bless you and all of your loved ones in this blessed Holiday Season!
Merry Christmas! and may you and all your dear ones have a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!