I probably shouldn’t write about politics, but sometimes my paranoia gets the better of me and I succumb to temptation. Anyway, the more I talk with Republicans, the more I sense overall disgust and disappointment over the current field. Almost everyone has strong feelings against one or more of the candidates. This is not limited to activists; a question I keep hearing from older, non-activist types — ordinary citizens who lived for years in a functional two party system back in the days before Republican became a dirty word and it was respectable to vote that way — is…
“When will the GOP get its act together?”
They think that Obama will be a lot harder to beat than the younger, activist political junkies believe. Yesterday an elderly Republican woman told me that she thinks Obama’s timing on ending the Iraq War will be devastating, because “peace” will be “achieved” just in time for the election, but not in time for the fallout after it collapses.
Except for Gary Johnson (who isn’t a candidate according to the officials at CNN) none of the candidates are to my liking. What worries me the most is that the war between Romney and the anti-Romneys (mainly Perry, Cain at this point) will grow increasingly tedious, and at the same time that happens, more and Republican voters will realize that Romney will be a deal killer for so many Republicans that he will not be the candidate. (Let’s face it, he is the most hated candidate in the field.) And if he cannot be the candidate, that leaves the two leading anti-Romneys, neither of whom seems likely to be the candidate. (Cain is having credibility issues and Perry just isn’t gaining back his traction despite the cockfight with Romney.) Ron Paul will never be the candidate.
This leaves Gingrich.
I am an admitted Gingrichphobe,* and I am really worried that he will end up on top as the consensus candidate. Not because he is popular, but because he just isn’t unpopular enough to be a deal killer. (People who would never vote for Romney would nonetheless hold their nose and vote for Gingrich, who meticulously avoids positioning himself as an anti-Romney, and even manages to strike a plausible pose as a sort of reasonable elder statesman. Ugh!)
Yet Gingrich is certain to lose to Barack Obama.
I hate watching this unfold, and I hope I am wrong.
Unless the math changes, Gingrich is looking more and more like the eventual candidate.
* Despite my strong language (I mean phobia in the literal sense, as I fear a Gingrich administration), if Gingrich is on the ballot, I would nonetheless hold my nose and vote for the S.O.B. What galls me is that many of the Romneyphobes will not do the same for Romney.
What gives? Am I a wimp for being willing to vote for a RINO rather than Obama? Or are they the only true Republicans by preferring Obama to a RINO?
Seriously, why is it that because I am a Republican I have to vote for Gingrich, but even though they are Republicans, they don’t have to vote for Romney? What kind of double standard is that?
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It’s better that a Republican-controlled Congress keep Obama policies in check for four more years rather than pass a “fellow Republican” RINOs policies.
P.S. – I’m a conservative, not a Republican.
Clearly, there is a split in the GOP between those who think the most important thing is stopping Obama and those who think the most important thing is stopping the RINOs.
I’m a libertarian, and I don’t like RINOs. But I do think that someone who is wrong half the time is better than someone who is wrong all the time.
When stopping Obama means putting the country on hold for the next 12 months, how do the Republicans and you justify your position? The body starves without oxygen and nutrition, and a nation can, too.
I won’t support or vote for Romney.
Why?
Because we need the next president to roll back all the “executive orders” that Obama has put in place, like the de facto moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and to rein in the out of control regulatory agencies, like the EPA, who are hemming us in and taking our freedom by bureaucratic edict.
Romney has neither the courage nor the inclination to do any of that.
To save our Republic it is going to take someone with the will to do it, Romney isn’t that someone.
I don’t know about Gingrich, I do know the Contract with America was a darn fine idea.
I don’t know about Perry either, but watching Cain clash with those elitists/statists, Boehner and McConnell, would be a thing of beauty.
After McCain I vowed to never vote for the GOP just because the alternative is worse. I voted for Sarah Palin only to see her savaged by the GOP establishment just as much as by our fine leftist friends.
We fought the GOP establishment in 2008 and 2010 and they have not learned their lesson. We’re “unhelpful” and their derision for Tea Partiers is just slightly less than that of our fine leftist brethren. Sure they liked winning elections, but actually doing what we want? Recall Boehner attacking that Ohio congressman who was trying to do what he was elected to do?
http://doubleplusundead.com/2011/07/30/vote-your-conscience-not-in-todays-gop/ (the story I linked there is 404ed, but I quoted it there).
Like Joe Mama, I’m not a Republican.
I don’t know what “conservative” means anymore, so I won’t say I’m one, but I am an anti-statist.
Romney is a statist, it’s that simple.
My only hope is that the next Congress will have some balls and will start defunding the EPA, the TSA, the DEA, the ATF and the rest of our bureaucratic masters and all the extra-Constitutional czars running around.
A good Constitutional crisis with battle lines drawn will do this country good. We might not win, but we need to fight that battle.
If the GOP isn’t on board, well fuck ‘em.
I’m starting to think that I won’t write in Gus Hall if it’s Romney.
I’ll embrace the Libertarians, and if it splits the GOP vote so that Obama wins, so be it.
Either the GOP learns a lesson or we get a different party that’s not just a little less statist than the Dems.
Let the establishment GOP join the Dems in the “We’re Better and Smarter Than You” party and we get a real anti-statist party.
Maybe I’m being all quixotic and stupid and idealist, but I’m no longer aiding statists in the destruction of freedom.
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