Yeah, but RINOs are better than Ginsbergs aren’t they?
And what about Iraq? With McCain we win, with Obama we lose. That’s HUGE. And I don’t see how we could later redeem the damage done. After 4 years of Carter, it was pretty easy to pick up the pieces. Just lower taxes, increase military spending, etc. These were internal matters that could be corrected through legislation. But how do we pick up the pieces when Iraq implodes and Iran rushes in, and the world sees that we don’t have the stomach to finish what we’ve started? We would never undo the damage. A failure in Iraq would dog us forever.
And healthcare? With Obama we get socialized care, which is a huge win for the Left. Frankly I worry less about the practical implications than the philosophical ones. Once people have accepted the premise that the government is responsible for ensuring their health, well, that’s just very bad for a nation founded on the notion of individual liberty and responsibility. Once we’ve ceded that premise, there’s probably no getting it back. And once healthcare is socialized, it’ll never be reversed. We may get a Republican back in office in 2012 or 2016 but we won’t get our healthcare system back.
McCain is a disappointment on global warming but global warming will ultimately be self-refuting, so the damage he does will not be permanent. The warming trends won’t pan out like the demagogues need them to and the whole thing will fizzle. As an issue it will be self-correcting, and resulting policy will be reversible. It’s not a one-way ratchet like these other things.
Immigration policy is also reversible. McCain might blow it but the next real conservative to come along can change course. Bad immigration policy can have very real bad effects but it’s not a ratchet.
Bottom line in my opinion is that lesser-of-two-evils type choices are the norm in politics. Providence gave us Reagan and Thatcher (and a great Pope) at just the right moment but that is not the norm. Most of the time you muddle through, and in 2008 it makes the most sense to muddle through with McCain. He has qualities that are irritating as hell, but he’s an honorable man who loves his country and has a basic conservative core.
That core orientation is critical because it guides a president when the sh*t really hits the fan. Consider Dubya Bush. He’s no pure conservative but he’s got the core, and as such he knew what to do when the terrorists attacked. We don’t know what might come up in the next 4 or 8 years, but we know that in a broad sense, McCain wouldn’t fumble it the way Obama inevitably would.
And remember this LS — unlike Obama who is basically a Christian-flavored agnostic, McCain is a Christian. He is also strongly and consistently pro life. In fact, this is reason to think that McCain might actually try to appoint conservatives to SCOTUS. If he is sincere about life, which he seems to be, it will be a real factor in his SCOTUS choices.
On judges, I'm not sure Ginsberg is any worse than Souter. Again, I don't trust McCain anyway.
As for healthcare, NONE of the three are addressing the disaster by allowing the market to lower costs. Actually, from a personal standpoint, McCain's "donut" would financially destroy us. My family would personally be better off with Obama/Hillary rationing (which is ultimately what we are going to get anyway) than with a financially destructive McCain plan. With Obama or Hillary, it will break sooner, so that it actually has to be fixed. McCain will drag it out, destroying thousands in the meantime. As to "never get it back," I don't know. Actually, I think we are headed for free-market bastions offshore. That won't help with mundane illnesses, toothaches, and so on, but for serious illnesses, people will do medical "vacations" the same way they go to Disney.
Global warming is more dangerous than even health care, because once it is written into law that pols will be bullied by unscientific blowhards like Algore, we're finished anyway. You're talking Lysenkoism. At least with Dems we can blame the economic disaster on them and start again.
My greatest concern is that McCain will win, and thus "Republican" solutions will be tagged with failure for the unavoidable collapse of SS and Medicare, much the way we are STILL battling the notion that "big business failures" caused the Great Depression. That has plagued us for 70 years, and allowed people to say that a Republican helped cause the GD and that a Democrat "got us out."