How so?
Well over half of the FR posters will vote for Romney/Ryan.
I expect FR and the Conservatives in Congress to help keep President Romney in line, after the election.
It is entirely possible to support Romney/Ryan and still be, very much, the type of person that Jim is tell us this site was designed to serve.
Agreed.
Conservatives dont trust romney with really good reason.Do you think romney figured he needed a conservative on the ticket to have a chance of winning this rat killin?
Hell, you could even believe that Romney won’t be held to conservative principles, and still vote for him while holding the principles of FR. Voting is a compromise, and making a decision about how to act in the real world is driven by your principles, but doesn’t ensure that results match your principles.
Then you have the problem where there are reasonable disagreements on whether a particular candidate does, or does not, reflect the principles that we believe in. It would be absurd for someone to argue here that we should support a liberal pro-abortion candidate. But you might argue that we should support a “pro-life” candidate who isn’t that pure on the pro-life issue, like they might not be willing to eliminate the rape/incest exception.
Or worse, a candidate might talk the talk, and then the argument is simply whether you believe them or not. Belief is not a conservative principle. It’s a personal decision.
So if a candidate has a good platform, a conservative can choose to trust the candidate, another conservative will choose NOT to trust the candidate. That doesn’t make the first guy a liberal, since he is supporting the conservative platform. And it doesn’t make the second guy a liberal, because he’s not rejecting the conservative platform, he’s rejecting the man who he doesn’t trust to implement the platform.
That is where most of the fights at FR end up — with two conservatives arguing NOT over what the goal is, but over which candidate can be trusted to implement the goal, and can actually get elected to do so.
I will vote for Romney in the general election, because we are way past the “trust” question. I don’t vote to send messages, I vote based on the better outcome, and I believe that conservative principles will be better served with a republican president than with Obama. If Romney ends up governing as conservatively as his platform, that will be an added bonus. I wish we had a solid conservative, but that’s what the primary was for.