Today is the start of early and absentee voting for the Texas primaries. Most early voting is a bad idea, since we can't know what important new developments might emerge in our tumultuous world that would change hearts and minds in an instant. But many will trade that risk for the added convenience, and others need to vote absentee, so it's time to take a stand.
Watching the various candidates speak tonight after the Wisconsin primaries has only solidified my decision.
I intend to vote for John McCain in the Republican primary on March 4. Here are a few thoughts on why.
The decision on a nominee for the GOP is a done deal, and strictly speaking McCain doesn't "need" my vote. He's not a perfect candidate and won't be a perfect President. But the alternatives are impossible.
Ron Paul has now suspended his campaign to fight for his political career back in a neglected congressional district. But he could never have earned my vote anyway, at least not since I was a naive 20-year old. For years, Ron Paul has been riding along with the luxury to adopt and promote a utopian political philosophy as an ideal without ever confronting the responsibility of implementing those ideas and making real changes. He is a marginal, at most symbolic, figure whose profound misunderstanding of the world is a distraction in an age that demands focus.
Mike Huckabee has revealed himself as a duplicitous schemer. In terms of policy, his record and rhetoric are far more liberal than those of John McCain. Worse than that, however, Huckabee has looked America in the eye and, with a cynical smile, simultaneously leveraged his religiosity with evangelical voters (and the gullible in general) AND denied all the while that he is doing anything of the sort. Honesty is important, and Huckabee apparently has none. This is intolerable.
Therefore, at this point those who fear the consequences of a Leftist victory in the fall should be coalescing behind McCain, comfortably or not. No one said it would be easy.
The temptation to vote in the Democratic primary has presented itself, and if there was a way to tilt their outcome in a better direction, such an act might be alluring. However, that is also impossible.
On that side, the choice is between a cunning Barack Obama, with his high-minded speeches, increasingly messianic fervor and catastrophic ideas, and the sociopathic and equally socialistic Hillary Clinton. If this must be a Democratic year, then so be it; the voters will decide. And perhaps better a straightforward leftist like Obama than more tormented Clintonian psychodrama. But I cannot aid or abet such a scenario in any way.
Some believe that a Democratic interregnum is required before a conservative GOP rebirth. Maybe. I would just remind such dreamers that national nightmares can last a long time. And that during the most recent such epochs under both Carter and Clinton, thousands died during these "holidays from history."
We're at war with an implacable enemy, and holidays are the last thing we should be considering.
So, despite lingering concerns about some of John McCain's past positions, it's clear that he is the best choice for America in 2008. McCain has the guts and the experience to lead us in the most important conflict of our generation.
He'll get my vote on March 4 and in November.
Let's roll.
Posted by Alan at February 19, 2008 09:56 PM