I'm still torn about what to do when I vote in the primary. I've come to the conclusion that I can't vote for McCain or Huckabee, for vastly different reasons. On some things Ron Paul is absolutely right, but on many he's stark raving mad. (And let's not even get started on his supporters.)
What does that leave? Well, it leaves Mitt Romney. Based on the campaign positions he's taken, he'd be the logical choice. The problem is, I'm very unsure any of this is believable. Joe Carter pretty fairly sums up my concerns with Mitt.
I have no idea if Fred Thompson is still on the ballot in Oklahoma. If he is, that's how I'm voting.That seems the best way to show my utter disgust to the party regarding the choices they've offered me. If not, I don't know. My recollection is that Oklahoma doesn't allow write-in votes, so maybe I'll vote Mitt.
While I'm by no means as convinced as Joe that McCain has this thing in the bag, that seems to be how things are running. What will I do if he wins the nomination? No idea. McCain is simply not acceptable to me. Joe shows one of my concerns here:
I'll admit that I'm troubled by the idea of a McCain presidency. He still seems to me to be a cross between Conan and Charles Foster Kane: A fascinatingly flawed and haunted man whose main goal in life is to crush his enemies and see them driven before him.
Beyond that, though, there are so many constitutional and conservative principles that he's willing to turn on if they suit his purpose that he simply can't be trusted outside the national security arena. At this point, I seriously doubt I could vote for the man in the general election, regardless of who he's facing. If he does ultimately get my vote, it won't be with any enthusiasm.
None of that's to say that I'd vote for Hillary or Obama. I sure wouldn't mind a legitimate conservative 3rd party candidate with a chance of winning right now. (Like that's going to happen. Third party runs can work at the state level, but winning at the national level without a party apparatus rivaling the major parties doesn't seem plausible.)
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Hmmm.
the evangelical outpost: On Conservatism:
Introduction
While not the subject of his post, this sentence from Joe Carter's introduction to a series of posts on conservatism caught my eye. While I have frequently heard libertarians lament that in the uneasy alliance between libertarians and conservatives, that the conservatives had them quite outnumbered, I don't remember ever hearing a professed conservative express concern about being outnumbered by the libertarians.
This makes me wonder about terminology. How, exactly, should these terms be defined? Self-identification, comparison to some "standard" of conservative or libertarian thought, or something else entirely?
Certainly, in the blogosphere prominent self-identified libertarians seem to vastly outstrip prominent conservatives. However, in America as a whole I somewhat doubt, based solely on my own experience and observation and no research whatsoever, I doubt that this would be true. (Although this analysis of one poll, indicating that only 20% of people polled purported to even recognize the term libertarian, would tend to back me up on this.)
Of course, how people identify themselves and even how some others ID them is hardly dispositive. I've certainly seem some people refer to themselves as "conservative" whose actual political beliefs would more than strain the definition of the word. For that matter, I seem to recall some leftist (No, I'm not going to try to find the link. Just too lazy.) calling George Bush a "radical libertarian" right after the 2004 election. (That probably rates as one of the most absurd things I've ever heard, but there it is.)
Still, I wonder how many others would take the position that "conservatives" are outnumbered by "libertarians"?
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Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)