bizarrenormality wrote:sjfcontrol wrote:And so of the people who actually have a chance of winning in November, who might that be?
The answer depends if the Republicans have the guts to nominate a conservative at the end of the month.
With all due respect, it's not a matter of "guts." Your proposition entirely ignores the realm of political reality for a couple of reasons:
- Romney is far from perfect, but he is a long sight better than the incumbent. If you can't see it, it's because you don't want to.
- Romney won in the primary. He won the right to be the nominee, whether or not you or I like it. That's how parties work. Nobody seriously thinks anymore that a nomination happens because 5 guys in a dark room speak it into being. It doesn't; not when there are literally millions of involved voters. The man (or woman) with the biggest support is going to be the nominee. For better or for worse, the republican voters of America elected a less than perfect candidate in a fair fight.
So that is the reality of it. The nomination is already decided. If one of the other candidates had maintained a close 2nd place, it is possible that there could be a brokered convention. But not only did that not happen, but the losing candidates have already given their support to Romney, releasing their delegates to him. So he's the nominee, protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Some of us need to get over that and move on.
We have a choice to make from among 4 possibilities:
- Vote for Obama
- Vote for Romney
- Vote for a third party candidate
- Stay home in protest
Here are the irrefutable consequences of each of those choices:
- Helps to keep Obama in office
- Helps to replace Obama with Romney
- Helps to keep Obama in office
- Helps to keep Obama in office.
Now, you may have a third party candidate or write in candidate that you prefer to vote for, but the above 4 possibilities are immutable. There isn't a political scientist in the nation, from Libertarian to Republican to Democrat who would disagree with that analysis. If you disagree, that is wishful thinking. There is not one single other possible candidate that can beat Obama except Romney, because there is not one other single candidate besides Romney who has even a prayer of getting enough votes. It doesn't matter if your libertarian sensibilities are correct or not, there simply are not enough voters who will agree with you to vote for whomever your favorite is.
So you really have to decide which is worse, and vote accordingly. I will tell you that a business associate of mine just moved here from Massachusetts on June 1 of this year. He is a hard core libertarian. He has lived under a Romney governorship and hates him. He is also going to vote for Romney over Obama because he realistically knows that electing Obama a second time will destroy the nation irreparably; and so he is going to set aside his pride for the good of the nation.
I would encourage you to do no less than vote your conscience, but I cannot let those kinds of comments pass without stating the hard truth for the sake of clarity. I value clarity above most other things, even when I don't like what that clarity reveals to me. So just be clear that your vote will do one of those 4 things listed above. Whatever you think your motives are, you cannot escape the clarity of those 4 choices, because your motives may inform your choices, but your choices will always have consequences that you may not have intended—and that's just the cold hard facts.