[John R. (Bob) Locke]

There is no way whatsoever that your withholding a vote for Bush will be considered a rejection of him for being too far to the left. It will be considered that he was rejected for his being too far to the right.

Are you of the opinion that this is what happened to his father in '92?

And as was shown in '94, what the media thinks or says matters very little when the GOP runs on a strong, conservative platform. I don't recall any of the leftist media being in favor of the Contract With America. Quite the opposite, in fact. And yet there was a sweeping victory for the GOP based in large part (I would say a very large part) on the ideals laid out therein.

But the follow-up has to be there or you end up with more and more people like me who are willing to walk away for an election cycle or two until they clean up their act. The onus HAS to be on the elected officials to carry out that which they were tasked with. If they fail, then they need to be replaced. If you demonstrate to them that you will hold your nose and vote them back into office simply to avoid the Democrat, then what influence do you think you can possibly hold over them?

[Qwinn]

"If you demonstrate to them that you will hold your nose and vote them back into office simply to avoid the Democrat, then what influence do you think you can possibly hold over them?"

If you instead don't vote and allow the Democrats back into power, what sort of influence do you think that will -actually have-? Do you think any sane or rational Republican politician would consider that the proper response to a Democrat winning an election would be that Republicans need to move further to the right?

Qwinn