Wading Through a Series of Unattractive Options

Henke, this monring:

In light of the possibility that a Democrat could win the Presidency in November, giving them control of the White House and both houses of Congress, it’s worth pointing out what Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said in 2005…

We need more than one party in charge. And the vote on Tuesday is going to be critical to decide whether American democracy still allows those of us who didn’t vote for the president to have any say in running the country whatsoever.
[…]
Someday, the Democrats will be back in charge again. Do we want a Democratic Party that’s in charge of everything? Well, you know, I suppose it’s my job to say yes. But the truth is, as an American, it’s better when parties share power. It’s better when even those people who didn’t win the election have something to say.
[…]
[There] is a culture of corruption and abuse of power in Washington. This is what happens when one party is in charge of everything.

Henke, of course goes on to ask if Dean still thinks that way, knowing full well he doesn’t. Everything with those idiots is relative to their paths to power.

Hmmm.
Ya know, Maybe it’s time I spell this out, and Henke’s comments… well taken, so far as they go… (I’ve always been suspicious of the idea of a government split by party lines as being a panecea…) …are as good a place as any to jump this off from.

I’m no fan of the Republican party, per se’.

Did you get that? Go read it again.
If you have questions, go read the line above, yet again, and continue reading it until you understand it, because until you do nothing else I will say here will make any sense.

I have said often enough here and elsewhere that I view the Republicans as the best tool with which to defeat the Democrats, but that’s as far as my love for the GOP goes. That’s a position I continue to hold, today. Interestingly, it’s a position I expressed in relationship to Henke himself, just over a year ago:

…it has been and always will be about the ideas. That goes for him or anyone else. When I have gone after Jon, it’s been about the ideas. I hold neither love, nor hate for Henke, any more than I hold particular love or hate for the Republican party. Rather, I see the Republican party at the moment to be the best tool in efforts to defeat America’s worst enemy; the Democrats.

For the last decade or so there has been nothing in the makeup of the Republican party that has made me consider as possible, much less likely, that such a perception will ever change, except for the negative. There is nothing there to endear the party to me, and in the last six months or so, that lack has been confirmed in a way that I freely admit, I never foresaw. I took McCain’s loss in 2000, as a rejection of the liberalism he’s been fighting for, and a reaffirmation Reagansim. Of course, that’s changed. ANd his claims not withstanding, he’s not a Reaganite by any stretch of the word. We knew Ronald Reagan, and this man is no Reagan.

It pains me, my friends, to see the Republicans so fragmented, but hurts worse to see them so gladly reject their principles to embrace John McCain, for the sake of the party. What about for principle and for country?

I have openly wondered, here and elsewhere, if abstaining from voting…. if deciding, loudly, to not endorse John McCain with my vote is the best way to go. I still consider that an open question because I’ve seen nothing to convince me it’s not the best path, here.

There’s one thing and one thing only, that has been keeping me from committing to sitting at home on election day… The idea that either of the Democrats will be worse than McCain. At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, that’s a close call… and frankly, too close a call to make, at least on domestic issues.

With McCain’s signing on so willingly to the global warming scam, And several other points on domestic policy, I am very concerned that we won’t be able to see much difference between Hillary Clinton and John McCain. As I’ve said, I cannot see fitting water between them, on domestic issues.

Now with John McCain and his apparent coronation, I find even less chance for an optimistic outlook for the GOP.  You see, I had figured on Republicans beating the Democrats as Reagan did; by BEING Republicans,not by becoming Democrat wannabees, as McCain has done.  What I have been always about is the advancement of the principles that the Republican party stood for back in the day…. principles which I have complained bitterly through the Bush years they’ve given mere lip service to, and which they’ve abandoned outright with McCain.  Remember, dear reader, the reason McCain lost his presidential bid back in 2000 was he was seen as being to the left of George W. Bush, who himself was seen at best as a centrist. Now McCain is leading the race. So it is that within the space of one two-term presidency, we have seen conservative values utterly abandoned by the GOP… values which I have always fought for and voted for. And at this point it’s logical to ask if telling the party to take a hike isn’t the best course.

But, I’m not just talking about domestic issues, here. The Democrats and McCain are about equal in domestic policy… so the judgment must be made on other ground.

The issue involving the war on Terror are very much on my mind in all of this. McCain’s insistence on giving terrorists ‘constitutional rights’ is misguided in the extreme, and given another option, would be enough to disqualify the man from the office he has now, much less the one he seeks.  But we don’t HAVE another option, barring Romney doing well in the remaining states, or at the convention, which leaves us with a choice between Democrats who have been playing both sides of the war against the middle, and McCain, whose apparent dedication to winning the thing, (his leanings about the treatment of terrorists aside) is just about the only attractive feature he has.

It pains me, but that one point may force me to consider a Vote for McCain in the General election. My fear is this sends the party the wrong message… that McCain’s overt leftist nonsense, is acceptable.

Further, we have the issue of the south; No Republican has won without it since Lincoln. McCain lost it in the primary, and the noise I’m hearing suggests that a goodly amount of those in the south who went elsewhere, will NEVER vote for McCain in the general election… thus making the White House unattainable, anyway. 

No matter what, we have a very unattractive option.

And I have no answers for all of this.

I will note for the record that given a McCain presidency, we will have plenty to write about here.  With the party so fractured over McCain’s liberalism, however, I wonder now if even THAT is attainable.