"Voting down Obama" is your fear-filled assessment of what stands in front of us. My courage-filled assessment is voting IN a Republican who holds up the banner of a necessary movement toward limited government.
Going the fear-filled way is how I have voted straight ticket for something like 35 years, and caused much damage in the doing by voting for, giving my validation and blessing to, a politician who did things contrary to my principles more than half the time.
The problem is not Obama. The problem is liberal minorities in both parties seizing power. When at least 50 percent of Republicans are voting OUT OF FEAR for someone quite a lot more liberal than they are, then all that is doing is to compound and infect the problem.
The "lesser of two evils" argument wrongly assumes which is the lesser evil. Fear is a warning, and a useful tool. But fear is a LOUSY PLACE to come from when voting, as it is becomming more and more evident. Schwarzenegger, anyone? And look what followed -- an even more insanely liberal Jerry Brown, because Schwarzenegger skewed the "center" so far to the left. THE SAME THING WILL HAPPEN on a Presidential scale if business-as-usual Republicanism takes the White House. The next Democrat president will make Obama look like Boehner.
Fear is a good alert system, but a poor guide to solutions.
You are exactly right of course, but on the other hand this year may be unusually important and going third party is the marxists prayer, along with us voting for some nominee who will lose in the general election across the nation and coast to coast. Having already seen and learned what that kind of “principled voting” has cost us in the past, it is very hard to pretend that it works given the poor history and the present odds.
Obama was radically Left but knew how to charm and say things like “not the red states, or the blue states, but the United State.” He could not have been elected with a trail of his real philosophy broadly known. Our candidates have a trail of conservative speak that may not sell beyond the primary nomination. Yes, I’m worried. We have to win.