Posted on 07/14/2008 10:55:43 AM PDT by Gordon Greene
Seems to me there’s an unsettling trend in American politics.
Every four years now we come up to a presidential election and we’re faced with a choice. Each time we decide that we will vote with our party because the candidate is “the lesser of two evils”.
Now let me wrap my brain around this for a minute.
Each party has a pool of thousands, maybe tens of thousands of American folks to choose from. Each party is unrestricted in the choices they can make. Each party is filled with people that “We the People” choose.
Each person we choose is supposed to represent the people who voted for them. Each time these politicians we elect show more contempt for the people’s opinion than the year before. Each time we complain that there is no choice.
Each time… we choose those same people again.
I see a pattern here. If there is a problem in this country it is with the people who go to the voting booths and the people who don’t. We’re not willing to walk away from the television set just long enough to go and throw the bums out so we sit back and complain. There are 290 Million people in the USA give or take a few million “undocumented workers”, and the best you can say is, “We have to choose the lesser of two evils?”
This country was founded on solid God-given principles and we were also given a way to get rid of politicians who do not represent the people who elect them. Yet time and again we not only elect incompetent morons to powerful positions, we re-elect them as if they will finally get a clue, only to find they go from mediocre to worse with each passing election.
So here we are again… Obama and McCain.
How do you like that! A flaming liberal in sheep’s clothing and a socialist at best, an extreme Muslim at worst (unsubstantiated).
There’s not a dime’s worth of difference in these two wannabes’ as it pertains to most social issues. And if you count McCain’s service before he started running for president, the war in Iraq is the only difference.
I’m so tired of voting for the “lesser of evils”!
In my humble estimation, either way you slice it up, the lesser of two evils is still just plain evil.
Think.....
Take a look up and down the street where you live.
Then imagine you are being ruled by majority vote from among those people. And your candidates are chosen from a pool consisting of your neighbors.
I don’t know about where you live, but the thought of my neighbors ruling me, and the thought that one of them would be my elected leader just frightens me to the core.
But, essentially, thats what does happen. Take a look at the losers standing in line with you to vote next election day. Then consider with awe that things aren’t way worse than they are.
Agreed.
I am in favor of returning to the state legislatures voting for U.S. Senators and the elimination of the popular vote for President.
We are Conservatives, we don't (shouldn't) live our lives based on who is elected in DC. We should never get to the point where we are clamoring for someone to cry on the hilltop “I'm from the government and I'm here to help”, even if he is carrying a so-called Conservative banner. Conservatives succeed in spite of what happens in DC, not because of it.
Like it or not, unless something unusual happens, Obama or McCain will be the next Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces. Who will screw things up the least?
A very true statement.
However, there are these things called primaries where you have more than two choices.
Unfortunately, too many of our fellow Americans thought that the current two clowns were the best out of the choices set before them.
Now we are left with the choice of the lesser of these two evils.
Recognizing that there is significant evil in either choice doesn't change the options before us.
McCain want's the one I voted for in the primary, but the primaries are now over. We can't turn back time, do it again, and hope voters choose better.
We now only have two viable choices to choose between, and while I considered McCain to be near the bottom of the list of primary candidates, the evil of Obama is far greater than the evil of McCain.
We have a decent chance that Obama will do a repeat of Carter and be gone in four years, but can we turn the country over to one such as Obama in a time of war? Think of how much damage the kind of supreme court justice he would appoint could do, not that I have faith in McCain appointing true originalists.
Personally I've resigned myself to vote for McCain (or more accurately against Obama).
I've found that it is much easier for me to think about doing that if I don't read his campaign literature, or any of the emails I get from the RNC.
I'm never going to agree with McCain on much, but I disagree with him far less than I disagree with Obama. A McCain presidency scares me. An Obama presidency terrifies me.
C.S. Lewis in my reading this morning: “It matters not to the man dying of thirst in the desert by which route he missed the only oasis.”
Colonel, USAFR
In my experience (watching elections since 1976 and participating since 1984), no Republican candidate (and, tell the truth and shame the devil, not many Democrats) has been “evil”.
The “lesser of two evils” meme (and its brother “...is still evil”) has always struck me as being over the top.
I believe it was Reagan who said something like “just because I only agree with someone 3/4 of the time does not make him 1/4 my enemy.”
Someone else said “the perfect is the enemy of the acceptable.”
I voted for my first choice, FDT, in my state’s primary (before he quit...all to soon, to my mind). He was imperfect; he was acceptable. Others then running, and a couple still out there, are likewise imperfect but acceptable.
I cannot vote in another primary; so, as in about half the presidential elections I have voted in, I will now have to vote not for the lesser of evils, but for the least imperfect.
No matter who it is, that one will be identified by the letter “R”.
I’ve dealt with this same problem in 1996 and 2008.
(Been participating since 1984; ‘84, ‘88, ‘92, 2000, and 2004 were all no-brainers to me.)
In each case, my thought was to vote for my principles in the primaries, but against my enemies in the generals.
(I do not use the word enemies lightly. I would rather support someone I agree with a third of the time than one I believe intends my country— as I know it— actual harm...one who doesn’t even mean well.
Results? I did not contribute, by vote or silence, to BJC’s second term; I will not contribute, by vote or silence, to BHO’s first.
If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
You can either choose to vote, or to just accept whoever other people pick.
If too many conservatives choose to simply stay home, our choice will be made for us by liberals.
Even if there are no really good choices, do you really want liberals choosing who they think is best?
Early January 2009 begins the time for reparative surgery.
Of two evils, choose neither
-Charles Spurgeon
“If too many conservatives choose to simply stay home, our choice will be made for us by liberals.”
Our “choice” was already made for us by liberals.
Consider Bush vs Clinton. Who screwed things up the most?
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Each was awful in his own way, but who did the most long-term damage? We won’t know the answer to that question for a long time and then even the historians will be debating it.
One of my favorites! Well said. Now what do we do about it?
Do?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.