Replies

You’re post shows you responding to my #706 but all the references are from my original post. Was this intended?

Is this the question you want me to answer?

“What could a candidate possibly do, that would disqualifiy them as a person you could vote for, just to keep Hillary or Obama out of office?”

I’m, sorry R, this is a “when did you quit beating your wife” question. To me, political philosophy and political reality are two different things. Philosophically we have opinions and standpoints that define us as a citizen and voter. We work and strive hard to get the person that most reflects our own philosophies into positions of power so those philosophies can be put into action.

The political reality is we live in a country of 300 million, each with his or her one set of philosophies. People that think EXACTLY as you or I do might only make up 2-3% of the population. But 2-3% of the vote is never going to get anyone elected. So we join up with others who have some of the same beliefs as we do and pool our votes, so to speak, to elect someone who generally holds enough of the same philosophies of the group as a whole in the hope that we can get a majority to elect them and when they get into power we can get some of things we believe in a reality.

The entire time you got the other 50% who generally disagree with your positions working against you in the hopes that they can get their candidate elected.

But no matter what, you’re not going to get 100% of what you want, the system doesn’t work that way. If you get 80% you’re hitting bullseyes but I would say if you’re getting 50% that makes the overall effort worthwhile.

I have no illusions about politics. National parties have less to do with precisely defined philosophies than about getting their people elected and that has a lot to do with money. The party in power gets the salaries and budgets. I have seen too many people who I thought could make a difference get ground up and spit out by the system.

This is my opinion of most politicians...they’re either a whore going in or a whore going out. Nobody is clean and everyone is compromised to one degree or another.

If you’re lucky enough that “you’re candidate” wins the primary, good going and congrats. But if he doesn’t you’ve got to suck it up and do the best you can with what you got. I wasn’t a GB man and actually I was horrified when he got the nomination...but I wasn’t surprised, he was the lowest common denominator and in a democratic society it is usually the lowest common denominator that can pull in enough support from everyone to hit that 50%+1.

I won’t even go into how much Bush has disappointed me, but I would still vote for him over Kerry because I know I’ll get some of what I want. The bonus withBush is we got Alito and Roberts and the long term value of that cannot be estimated.

So to answer you’re question, I would vote for any candidate that would give me more of what I want than O or H, has a chance at winning and it doesn’t matter what party theyare affiliated with.

Call me a principled conservative but a pragmatic voter.

You have you’re reasons to vote or not vote as do I. You took umbrage at some of my comments and I understand (although I wasn’t directing them at you, I didn’t make that clear) and will have to be more selective regarding my language in the future. But I take a little umbrage at the implication that those of us who have decided to vote for McCain because we’ll get some of what we desire and to keep the dems out of the White House, have abandoned our principles, our philosophies and our honor.

I understand completely when you say you have to vote your conscious, you’re heart. Don’t criticize others for believing they are also voting with a little reality in mind.