[EternalVigilance]

I meant we have to prioritize the principles.

That's easy. We go with the founder's priorities. They listed our God-given, unalienable rights in order of importance:

Life
Liberty
Private property

[billybudd]

First of all, those weren't the founders' priorities. They were Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. You're thinking of Locke.

Second, the founders didn't list them in order of importance. Remember Ben Franklin? - "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety".

Third, you know damn well these abstractions don't come close to what we're talking about. We're talking about making tradeoffs. For example, do we choose between a politician who is pro-life but will jack up our taxes, or one who is not pro-life but will lower them? This is what I mean by priorities: *which* principles should we focus on, given a tradeoff?

Choose Ye This Day made a good point that a President is really unlikely to affect anything having to do with abortion. But, for example, he is very likely to affect tax policy or a number of other things. These asymmetries are why we have to prioritize. You don't seem to be taking these considerations seriously.