Upon Conservatives Refusing to Support John McCain

(Every time I post something political, I lose readers. I'm doing it anyway, because the arguments in favor of sane government are a lot more important to the country and the human race are a lot more important than how many people read this particular website. Put bluntly, I'd rather influence ten people towards sanity in the US Government than have ten thousand daily readers to no good purpose. If it bothers you too much to stick around but you still want to read my real estate related stuff, go here. If even that is too much, goodbye and farewell.)

I have to agree that this presidential campaign is already the biggest disaster since 1996 at least. All of the candidates I liked are already out. The choice before me is "who is the least bad candidate left standing?", but this has been the nature of my choice in every election since 1984. Without tantrums on the left and right, it wouldn't occur to me to try to "punish" my party for some alleged failure to nominate a True Conservative or True Progressive, which I couldn't possibly care less about. The choice as to who is least bad is clear, at least to me. But if the choices before me are all evil to one degree or another, I refuse to not vote for the Least Possible Evil. I'm not taking my vote and going home. I'm not voting Cthulhu for President in the hopes it will scare people to my point of view in a few years time, nor on the basis that people of my particular persuasion can disavow Cthulhu's actions. For better or worse, we are going to choose a President for the next four years that will have an enormous power - both given in the actual Constitution and through use of the Bully Pulpit and de facto party leader that being President will give him/her - to enact their particular agenda. Congress couldn't lead a dehydrated man to water - but a strong President can lead the whole country away, and within the Constitution, at that. Any damage done will hurt all of us whether or not we are members of the President's party, and whether or not we voted for that particular candidate.

No matter who you think will get elected in 2012 or 2016, they'll be starting from a better point if they don't have to undo quite so much damage. It's also a heck of a lot easier to win if you're not fighting an incumbent.

Furthermore, I happen to believe that a further four to eight years will only make correct choices on all the important issues increasingly obvious to the electorate, whomever wins the general election in 2008.

If you can stand some foul language, Rachel Lucas (with some help from Bill Whittle in the comments, which are also spectacularly worth reading), makes this point.

I'm not happy with him at all. But he's made some amends of late, and I (for all his demonstrated faults) believe John McCain has also demonstrated himself to be a man of his word. I've made up my mind to vote for him in California's primary (by the time anyone reads this, I will have voted), and, assuming he wins the nomination, I will vote for him in the general election. If the nominee is Romney, I'll vote for him in the general, as well.

You may disagree, and vote for the candidate of your choice, and I will respect you. But if you vote for the Democrat or some third party candidate or don't vote at all because "McCain's not conservative enough!" you will find nothing but disgust and derision here. Ditto if you happen to be one of my few "progressive" readers: Vote the nominee who's closer to your views! I can respect that. In fact, I promise not only to respect that, but to respect the results of the election, even if they're not what I want. I have never gotten everything I want from a candidate, much less a nominee. That's part of living in a republic. For conservatives, even if McCain only moves your way fifty percent (or to use some violent hyperbole being thrown around, twenty percent, when it's more likely about seventy percent) of the time, the fallout from the next few years will be a lot less unpleasant to you and to me than either of the Democratic possibilities. So don't hold your breath, hoping for some kind of White Knight being elected by acclamation or four to eight years. Not. Gonna. Happen. This is a prime example of False consensus.

(While I'm at it, Wikipedia has a really neat list of cognitive biases that creep into decision-making. You can avoid a lot of the worst ones by being aware of the possibility they exist. The largest part of consistently good decision-making is learning how to outsmart your inner poop-flinging monkey, not to mention reptilian hind brain. The largest part of good negotiations is figuring out how to make the other guy's inner poop flinging monkey and reptilian hind brain want to do it your way)

FYI, that weak willed waffler Winston Churchill didn't just flirt with changing parties - he actually did it. Twice. Considering that he was the essential man in the right place for winning World War II, and it was largely his defiance which put spine in a demoralized public, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the viewpoint that because someone isn't somehow a "True Conservative" or in the past flirted with changing his affiliation, they somehow don't deserve the Republican nomination. One more piece of further information: Note that it's called the Republican Party, not the Conservative Party. There is a reason for that. Conservatives are only one part - albeit a large and influential part - of the Republican coalition. Learn, like the evangelical and (diminished) libertarian wings have, that it's better to have someone who agrees with you part, or even most of the way, than somebody who believes the exact opposite of everything you do.

I would draw the line at Huckabee, who apparently has all the corruption of the Clintons and none of the competence. Voting for Huckabee would be essentially choosing the abortion issue as being more important than everything else - and he still wouldn't be able to get justices that would overturn Roe vs. Wade onto the Supreme Court without sixty supporting senators, which isn't going to happen, nor would he be able to outlaw it in any states if it did get overturned. Not to mention that while I think Roe vs. Wade was a severely bad decision (definitely top ten legal mistakes of all time). I nonetheless believe abortion should be legal. Huckabee has all of the bad points of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton combined - with a few of his own thrown in. Obama seems like a great guy I'd love to sit down and have dinner with, or a political argument over a (for me) soda - I just wouldn't vote for him because of his record and the disagreements I have with it. The interests of the Clintons do occasionally coincide with the interests of the country, and so Hillary could be expected to occasionally accomplish something good for the country. Huckabee would be an unmitigated disaster for much the same reasons as John Edwards, or for that matter, Hugo Chavez, and I really hope he doesn't end up the veep choice, either, because I'd have to ask myself if the probability of McCain or Romney living through his term healthy and in command of the country, is worth the possibility that he won't.

But McCain I can live with. The limits of the damage he can realistically do the First Amendment have, to be frank, pretty much already happened with McCain-Feingold. You may not have noticed that, unlike legislators we can all name with continuing axes to grind, that there hasn't been anything new on that front in recent years. Keating Five? I think his experience there explains a lot of his character since - basically honorable man who's learned his lesson, and perhaps given it too much weight, ergo McCain-Feingold. Immigration reform and his support of so-called "shamnesty"? He has recanted, and I happen to believe it's real - see the effects Keating had on his character. Gang of 14? Anti-Idiotarians everywhere are going to be grateful for that if Republicans lose the White House as well as the Senate. Personally forswearing earmarks and fighting government pork? Brothers and Sisters, if that doesn't make you want to sing "Hallelujah John!" then you don't understand what the real basic problem with our country and our system of government is. Run "Tragedy of the Commons" through a search engine of your choice. Read the references until you understand what they're talking about. That's our federal budget in four words. Romney doesn't do nearly so well on either that level or the War on Terror, itself a critical problem and an even more immediate threat to the security of the country. If we're conquered and become dhimmi, we won't have the chance to go bankrupt in forty years.

I disagree with John McCain about many things. I disagree with most people about many things. But there is no doubt in my mind he's an honorable man who loves his country. He didn't spend five years getting tortured by the North Vietnamese when it would have been so easy to cave in because he doesn't love the country, or is afraid to work to do what he sees as the right thing. He will do what he sees as the best thing for this country, and for all of my disagreements with him, those disagreements are a lot less serious and less important than any potential Democratic nominee. Given that either the Republican or Democratic nominee is going to win on November 4th - and that's not changing until we get preferential balloting, which will be never - the choice between those two choices is clear. Consider it a vote against the Democratic nominee if you'd like - most Republican votes will be canceling Democratic ones. I can only hope and work towards there being Republican votes left over at the end when all the Democratic ones are canceled.

So to those who say "McCain isn't conservative enough!" I reply in classic Monty Python "intercourse the penguin!" You've got your eyes fixated on this beautiful illusion on the horizon that not nearly as many people see as you seem to think, and you're about to be gutted and filleted by an ugly reality close at hand - in fact, you're threatening to aid and abet that gutting. You're throwing away the good, or at least not-so-bad you can have because of the illusion of something better that you can't. You're throwing away the very real present in favor of wishful thinking for the future - because McCain's defeat will not cause the Republican party to nominate your dream of a "true conservative" - instead they'll nominate the most left-wing person in sight who's willing to put that R after their name. That's the real lesson electoral defeat teaches a party - that they haven't moved far enough to capture the majority of the electorate. McCain's the closest thing to your "true conservative" the Republicans have considered nominating since Reagan, and if you torpedo his election, it will move even the Republican party further left and completely torpedo your ambitions of moving the country right. That's damnfoolishness, and if you're not mature enough to stop throwing temper tantrums because you can't have everything you want, please do stay home on election day. Primary as well as general. If you can't take what you can get now while casting a vote that might really cause the country to go in the direction you want it to go later, then you are not adult enough to vote, in my opinion. The adults in this country will make better decisions for your absence. Even if it is even less in keeping with my immediate desires. That's the nature of a republic. Everyone votes, every pair of opposing votes cancels, and the one with votes left after all the cancellations wins the election. When your party loses, that means you get nothing, and the message it sends the party coalition in this case is to move even further from what you want in hopes of winning the next one.