In what is probably a predictable move, Joseph Farah, Chief Editor of World Net Daily, has decided to vote for Willard “Mitt” Romney:
Based on his long and contradictory political record, I do not have much hope that Romney is going to do a 180 if he wins. I don’t think he will steer the nation on the U-turn course that is absolutely necessary to save us from the brink of disaster.
However, the idea of a second term for Obama genuinely scares me. I don’t believe America could ever recover from such a cataclysm. The country will suffer irreparable harm, if it hasn’t done so already.
While I remain a principled constitutionalist who doesn’t believe in voting for anyone who does not understand and embrace its limitations on federal power, I believe 2012 is one of those rare election years in which freedom-loving Americans will, out of necessity, be forced to vote defensively.
I won’t be voting for Romney because I think he will save America or reverse our dangerous course. But I will likely be voting for him to buy America the time it needs to avoid catastrophe. It’s just that simple – and sad.
And there is the excuse that I have been hearing from many mainstream conservatives like Joseph Farah for over a decade now. The logic amounts to this:
- Candidate A is a <opposing party> and I cannot vote for him.
- Candidate B is a <the other party> but does not share a majority of positions I would like him to have.
- Voting for a third party candidate or a write-in candidate would be a waste of a vote since nobody else would vote for him or her.
- Not voting would really be a vote for the winner (illogical, of course, but no one questions it).
- Therefore I must vote for Candidate B because things will be slightly less worse than with Candidate A.
While it is true that Joseph Farah wrote a book in 2008 about not voting for either Barack Obama or John McCain, this year he seems to have finally given into fear.
This is why I no longer count myself as a conservative by any measure. They constantly talk about principles and going back to the Constitution (which would be a great thing) but when faced with a Republican candidate who won’t do that, they vote for him or her anyway. Worse still, when a candidate genuinely presents a constitutionalist message like Ron Paul, he or she is mocked, insulted, and criticized by the very people who still agree with him 90% of the time. Instead, they focus on the “winnable” candidate, not the one they mostly agree with.
This trend has been going on ever since 1988 in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan, who duped the conservative movement into believing he was conservative (he may have been at one time) and still increased the size and scope of government while maintaining the illegal Statist institutions such as the Federal Reserve in the process. Why do you think Ron Paul ran as the Libertarian party candidate in 1988? He was so disgusted with the lack of putting principles into practice under the Reagan administration that he decided to try and go his own way.
I am tired of seeing conservatives play the game and fold every time, while claiming that this is the most important election ever. They are a collection of morons and idiots who think that somehow voting for the guy they disagree with but happens to be in the correct party is a virtue while standing on your principle is a vice.
This is also why I believe that the mainstream conservative movement, the one created by William F. Buckley in 1955, is dying. They are fading out as more and more people are realizing that they are not true to their principles and are instead shills for the Republicans who at best pay lip service to conservatives’ own causes.
Until conservatives stop voting out of fear, stop voting against something, and start voting for something, they will always be losers.