Good for Paul! I’m keepin’ my fingers crossed for McClintock.
With regard to the presidential race, I just can’t find any rationale to vote for McCain—and no one has yet offered me a compelling reason. To me, it just sends a message to the RINO bunch in the GOP (you know—the guys that brought us Arnie) that we’ll vote for anyone.
The problem with such reasoning is that, first off, conservatives have succumbed to fear, which has blinded them to any rational consideration of this election and its potential outcomes. The only (and I repeat, only) upside to an Obama presidency is that conservatives (and many others) are guaranteed to fight him and a likely Democrat-controlled Congress. After all, it's easier to fight an enemy that you can see and who flies his true colors than an enemy who skulks about in your own camp and pretends to be one of your own. Consequently, there is no guarantee that conservatives, or even Republicans [and most Americans] on the whole, will fight McCain...and that is what makes McCain extremely dangerous.
Second, the long-term dilution of the core values [i.e. "principles"] and motivations behind the Republican Party and its policy decisions and proposals is now extremely evident. [Basically, the division within the Party is now an open, gaping sore.] The question is which side will win out—the globalists, who more often side with the Democrats, or old-school conservatives, who more often side with Libertarians and third-parties—and whether the "big tent" will fracture into two or more tents, similar to how the Whigs broke apart. Mind you, only one of those tents will come back as a new GOP. And, to all of you who claim that third parties are silly and useless: remember that in the election of 1856, the GOP was an insignificant party, barely polling...but by 1860, its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the presidential election.
However, if something of this nature does not happen, and the globalist branch of the "big tent" GOP is the one that comes to power...well, many of our worst fears may come true, including the possibility that authoritarianism [Socialism, control] will triumph over democracy and republican government because it was let in by conservatives and by the GOP, the same bunch that sought to keep it out of this nation.
To cut to the chase: either way is acceptable if conservatives [and more generally, Americans] will take the steps necessary to make sure that we stay on the right track in the long term.
Vote for McCain if you must, but understand that if he and the globalist wing of the GOP are not reigned in, all of us are in for a screwing of the worst kind [i.e., we will sentence ourselves to what Reagan called "a thousand years of darkness"]. After all, McCain is a good choice in the short term but terrible in the long term.
Alternatively, vote against both major parties. Vote to end the dilution of conservatism by the leftist Trojan horses in our midst. Fight Obama and the Marxists for two years while cleaning up your own house, and then, once and for all, end the cockamamie tomfoolery practiced by the Democrats. [Just make sure not to get corrupted yourselves in the process.]
“I just can’t find any rationale to vote for McCain—and no one has yet offered me a compelling reason.”
For what it is worth to you, I am not happy about voting for McCain either. I am voting for the Republican ticket because of Sarah Palin. What I have seen and heard of her impresses me. I think she does have the potential to be a President in the mold of Ronald Reagan (or maybe even in class of her own). I may be wrong about that, but I am willing to put up with McCain to give her a shot at it.