Hello?? *tap tap* Is this thing on?
Boy, do I wish you were right about this.
Several of my friends immediately come to mind.
I have tried to get them out to vote several times, but they wouldn't as they didn't have their perfect csandidate to vote for.
One, and his large ecxtended family are all Southern Baptists.
If a candidate isn't exactly with them on abortion, they won't vote for him. If he's at the top of the ticket, they all stay home.
Another friend couldn't care less about abortion, but, like me is 100% 2nd amendment.
If he doesn't have his perfect candidate, he stays home.
I hold my nose and vote.
None of the members of these families have voted since the first Bush.
Most of the members of several of the local churches are the same way. Baptist and Assembly of God.
I also have quite a few relatives of the same ilk.
I don't know of any democrat who thinks this way.
The ones I know always support the rats and vote for them, no matter how bad they are.
Why do you try to get people "out to vote" who don't care enough to do it themselves?
Listen, I consider voting a DUTY. Blood and sacrified paid for my vote; to stay home and decline to use that franchise when I knew better would be spitting in the faces of veterans, as far as I'm concerned. I have a DUTY to vote because I pay attention. Ignorance is bliss -- ignorant, lazy folks should stay home. But knowledgeable folks?
If what you say is true, then the "purists" you're talking about have either never voted or vote very seldom. Those kinds of one-issue "purists" are not purists. They're shallow one-issue voters too lazy to do their due diligence. When those people stay home, we're ALL better off. I'm glad when they stay home because they're doing it not to protest lack of decent candidates, but because voting is out of their league. America is better off when elections are decided by folks who care enough to vote carefully.
But for FReepers to stay home? I rarely say so, but I consider staying home as a protest to be surrender, stupid surrender, and a betrayal.
And one other thing, Mogger -- even mostly indifferent shallow one-issue Americans who nonetheless really just want the same things we do -- freedom to live morally and prosperously -- would get out in DROVES if they ever had anything to vote for. But intead, they get browbeaten into voting "against" the other guy by voting FOR somebody they loathe.
You hold your nose. WHY? Your nose is WARNING YOU that you're voting for something that STINKS!!!!
Unless you've been voting steadfastly Republican in every election since before the late 1970s, I wager I have held my nose a lot more than you have. It took me 35 years to figure out that I should have been heeding it.
Those of us who want to restore limited government so we have the freedom to live morally -- that is, the freedom to tell open homosexuals to take a hike, the freedom to prevent murder (abortion), the freedom to embrace this nation's CHRISTIAN heritage and put it in its rightful place as the inspiration for our laws, the freedom to have Christmas trees and creches where ever we want, the freedom to be charitable in a CHRISTIAN way rather than the amoral government welfare EBT entitlement way -- we have a duty to vote.
Since the option of voting "against" is moot (learned the long and hard way), if you're going to use your vote WISELY, you will vote FOR. Always. The imperfect candidate -- Newt -- I'd have voted for him gladly in 2012, though he was about as far from perfect as you could get. No "purism" there, but the "you purist 'cause you didn't vote for Romney!" folks erase that truth because they cannot handle acknowleding it.
I have to vote. Sitting at home is surrender, it is betrayal of the men who died for my right to vote. So I vote, and I encourage other people to vote.
Do you know why they stay home, mogger, not the "purists" that you're talking about who would probably stay home anyway, pardon me, but real every day folks who normally vote in eveyr election but who sat it out because of Romney. Do you know why they stayed home?
I do.