“Funny how some are so concerned about the large number of ‘symbolic protest votes’.”
I am not “concerned” about symbolic protest votes. I was responding to a comment that such a vote would somehow (unexplained) weaken the liberal agenda. However, I’m happy to have given you an opportunity to hawk your seething Romney rage for the 10,000th time.
Politics is the art of the possible. Otto von Bismark said that, and he ended up getting pretty much everything he wanted in time. What that means to me is that practical politics means having to make deals you don't want with people you don't like for only part of what you're after. A lot of idealistic politicians find that out the hard way when first they descend, starry-eyed, into the bowels of government.
I can articulate what I'm after: it's a smaller, less intrusive federal government that lives within its means and makes an honest effort to minimize its load on the electorate. Basic conservatism. I hesitate to use emotionally colored cliches such as ruling class, but there really is something to that term, and its referent spans both formal political parties, and smaller, less intrusive government is not in its interest. And so "part of what you're after" may not be available from either, in which case there isn't really much point in compromise at all.
This business of "vote for A or B will destroy the country" strikes me as little better than crude extortion even if it happens to be the case. Chaps a bit to have to pay the extortionist off, doesn't it? This is not, of course, open sanction for everything the extortionist has in mind, but it will certainly be represented as such by media openly hostile to smaller government, and they too have a stake in larger government because they're now an active part in it. Hence your dissatisfaction. Hence mine.
For me the real danger is from 0bama's decidedly left-wing, decidedly radical academic hangers-on who have been happy to leverage his administration into lasting political power. The hope some seem to hold that under Romney they will all go away is, I am afraid, a bit naive. It is they who promise to cause lasting damage to the country through control of the institutions that he hasn't the slightest desire to rein in. This is a very frustrating time to be a conservative.
If Bill Clinton had won with 53% of the vote instead of 43%, do you think he'd have been hit with the Republican Revolution? He was vulnerable because "symbolic protest votes" denied to him AND to Bush made it clear where his political support WAS LACKING, and that 57% of the voters voted against him. When liberals lose, their agenda is weakened; Romney is a liberal that REPUBLCANS would be responsible for electing. If Obama is elected in a race where 66% (best case scenario) of Americans voted AGAINST him, his enemies in his own party will have more pull in opposing him, and his enemies in the other party will, as well. Being a minority in political vote count AFFECTS THE POWER DYNAMICS. Does that explain it to you?
However, I’m happy to have given you an opportunity to hawk your seething Romney rage for the 10,000th time.
The same MO Romney supporters had here four years ago: attributing any rejection of him to shallow things like rage, hatred, anger, bigotry, childishnes -- anything but the truth: Attribute my rejection of him to the fact that he is a demonstrated liberal with a record of advancing the very causes I've been voting Republican all these years to OPPOSE.
You think my motive is rage? I know that my motive is common sense.