442:
How can you ignore the failure of "lesser-evilism?" That is how we got McCain, for goodness sakes. As a long-term strategy, it has a 0 percent chance of success.
That ship has sailed. Huckabee or Romney or any other GOP candidate is not a candidate to be president. Lesser evilism may in fact be a guaranteed failure now and in the future. Certainly there are those that would argue that. Further right conservatives like Limbaugh would argue it. Air America and Keith Olbermann types would argue it that a moderate Dem is the left equivalent of a McCain. I would agree that both parties have moved further left in the last few decades. Scoop Jackson Democrats of the 50s and 60's are the current GOP mainstream. Hillary Clinton, is pretty representative of the standard Democrat norm and looked at 30-40 years ago would have been called a French Socialist. Much of that is imo due to social issues and society not agreeing with the 14% of republicans who say abortion is their biggest issue. Some is also due to the almost inevitable rise in the size of government. I suspect that the movement left is going to continue. Obviously McCain instead of a Romney for instance as the GOP nominee is a sign of that. Would it have been better and created less of a move to the left if they had run a solid conservative and lost the election or if a McCain were to win? I would say that the former would result in a further move to the left than the latter. Unfortunately this year a libertarian has the option of "using his brain" and voting for whoever the libertarians put up there (or some other non-Big2 party candidate) and getting nothing out of it or voting for McCain, and hoping that his victory does less harm to their cause than an Obama win certainly would. Same goes for Nader and the greens again this year.
I could make an argument that a President who is in philosophical disagreement with Congress and/or a Congress where the Dems control one side and the GOP controls the other would create a gridlock of government where little gets done.
It falls under the "first do no harm" mentality.
I could also make the argument that who is president means much less than who is in Congress. Congress is the body that makes laws. The president is only president not a king or dictator- as much as paranoid types would argue against that. In Congress is where third parties have a chance to get voted in. Work in that direction to get a third party going more strongly.
Indeed Hangtime there are many people who vote based on the importance of one issue like abortion (either way). It is their right and they are being a bit narrow minded by doing that. Sometimes they cause a negative happening their cause. I believe it was 98 where a Right to life group turned out in force for a Anti-abortion third party candidate in New Mexico's gubernatorial election. They took a lot of votes away from the GOP candidate who was pro-life but not as strongly as they liked. Bill Richardson won the election in a margin that was much smaller than the third party percentage. So instead of the pro-life candidate GOP governor, the pro life folks got a pro-choice governor. But hey they were using their brains. Who can argue with that?
Hangtime we can agree to disagree but stop telling me to use my brain. Just because we disagree does not mean that I am not using it. It is tantamount to telling me I am stupid and THAT is something that I find insulting. I am not going to convince you of the merits of my argument and I can live with that.
