Fuzzy Rant: Voting Your Arrogance and Pretending It’s Your “Principles”

Okay, I’ve been holding in this rant for a while, but I just can’t do so any longer.  It’s been coming for some time, with Adrienne’s recent post feeding the fire.  But the last straw was some idiot Paulbot (redundant, I know) who keeps tweeting me inane crap about how establishment GOP are trying to “bully” her vote, so she’s going to vote for someone named Gary Johnson. You remember that guy who was in the GOP primary debates posing as Ron Paul lite?  No? You don’t remember? Don’t worry, he is not memorable.  Nor is he ever going to be president (neither will Ron Paul, of course).  But hey! The “principled” people will vote for him anyway!

The supreme sense of their own importance makes the “principled” ones infuriating.  [–let me interrupt this rant to note that I don’t mean all Ron Paul supporters and certainly not all libertarians, just the fringe ones who turn off the rest of us with their looniness] Like most self-centered people, they care only about themselves, their principles, their useless, pointless, self-indulgent “stand.”  It’s ignorant, sure, but I’ve come to believe that it’s mostly arrogance.  How else do you explain people who see the devastation that 0 has wrought in four years and think it’s better to have him win another destructive four years than to vote for Mitt Romney, the only person who has a chance of defeating him?  How else do you explain someone whose principles dictate that they collude in the destruction of our republic so that they can strut around declaring that they didn’t “sell out”?  What will they be strutting amongst?  The wreckage of America.  A totalitarian nightmare that they’d rather see our countrymen and women endure than vote for someone who isn’t pitch perfect, lockstep in line with their view of our republic (a view, I should note, that I do not share . . . nor do the majority of American non-leftists as evidenced by Mitt Romney’s nomination.  But they know best, these Paulbots).

Infuriating.

But, but, but whine and whinge and moan the Paulbots, 0 is just like George W. Bush. Just. Like. Him.  Really, we swear!  Bush spent big (he did); he expanded government unacceptably (he did), he got us into wars we probably shouldn’t have been in (he did). So seeeee!??!! Just exactly the exact same sameness.

Uh huh.

Two things are incredibly wrong with this childish thinking: one, Bush was a big-spender, possibly a progressive, but he didn’t hate America or Americans.  Two, Bush didn’t get away with it, not really.  By the end of his term his approval was at 25%; Americans didn’t approve of his big spending, nanny state, police state crap.  We’d had enough.  (This is essentially why I contend that had McCain been elected, the TEA Party would still have emerged. McCain, like Bush, is a big-spending, big-government nightmare. But like Bush, he’s not in the same Marxist league as 0.).  These arrogant “principle” voters for Johnson (whom they didn’t go to until Ron Paul completely failed, so how principled are they, I mean really?) think casting their vote for Johnson, or abstaining from voting, will change . . . well, actually, I’m not sure what the hell they think they’ll change by doing that. I’d have to have a significantly more inflated sense of my own importance to even begin to comprehend it.

The only way to change the Bush-type “compassionate conservative” / RINO / regressive crap is to vote them all out of office; we don’t do that by handing 0 another term in which he can potentially destroy both our economy and our Republic.  We do that, slowly, over time, with passionate dedication to correcting our own wrongs (if we supported Bush, as I did) or by steering our nation back on course with our votes, our vigilance, and our voice.  We do it by recognizing that we won’t always–may never–have the “perfect” choice, but the better of two will be evident, and that’s the one we want, even as a place-holder for a more acceptable constitutional conservative in the next election cycle.

We certainly don’t do it by stomping our feet, sticking out our pouty pouty lips, and demanding a return to American liberty and values NOW! We didn’t get here overnight, and we’re certainly not going to get out of here overnight.  But don’t try to tell that to a “principle” voter.  They just don’t get it.  I’m still not sure how a vote for what’s-his-name, er, Johnson, is a return to our core values, but whatever.  I gave up trying to reason with self-important, self-inflated, self-centered leftists long ago, and Paulbots are far too similar to leftists for me: trying to reason with a Paulbot is rather like trying to reason with a leftist.  In fact, it’s exactly like that, right down to their obsession with “following the money.”

Would I have preferred a different candidate?  Of course.  (Though, to be perfectly honest, I’m not unhappy with the Romney nomination.  Not anymore.  But that’s a different post for a different day.)  But we don’t have a different candidate; we have this one.  So it’s either Romney or 0.  Period.  It’s not rocket science.  It’s not an insolvable puzzle. It’s not even a particularly difficult choice . . . unless you are so arrogant, so unprincipled (yes! unprincipled) that you think voting on your “principles” justifies your role in America’s downfall (and make no mistake, surviving four more years of this radical, antiAmerican, unAmerican, pro-Islamofascist Marxist nightmare may well be more than even our great nation can manage).

But no, you go ahead and vote your arrogance principles.  You know best, after all.  You assert that voting for someone you would not choose–Isn’t Ron Paul your guy?–is better than voting for someone you . . . um, did not choose.

Or something.

Let’s see what’s at stake here:  the Supreme Court, with at least one and up to three appointments likely in the next four years and which is the go-to branch for leftists who can’t get a popular vote on their pet agenda projects (remember: “democracy” is only worth defending for leftists if it reinforces their totalitarian policies); the nation’s economy, but hey! who needs one of those?; global war, a very real possibility in light of 0’s horrific influence on the Middle East, China, Russia, and Europe and his acolytes’ support of the Islamofascist “Arab spring”; but hey! that’s not your problem, right? It’s the big, evil America who’s to blame for terrorism.  In India. In Bali. In Africa.  Uh huh, right; unconstitutional consolidation of power in the executive branch finalized, but gee, that’s going to happen anyway, right? One day. Why not next year?!; more and more people dragged down into poverty and onto welfare and food stamps, but hey! that’s not your problem, right?; the ObamaCareTax, it needs to be repealed and most assuredly won’t be under a second 0 term; the size of government, but hey, bigger is better, right?  Because that’s what your crap vote for Obama Johnson will guarantee; the First, Second, and Tenth Amendments, but hey! Who needs those as long as you can vote your “principles”?

The more of you who vote your “principles” (i.e. yourself), the larger the popular vote gap, the larger, in other words, the “mandate” that 0 and his traitorous horde will claim.  And use to further their destructive agenda.  But hey, who cares about the popular vote, right?  It’s only the electoral college that “matters.”  Right?  Wrong.  Ten kinds of wrong.  Sure, the electoral college decides the election, we all know that.  But the popular vote matters and not just in the history books but in the winner declaring a mandate. Most of us know that 0 won the popular vote by just over 9.5 million votes (in a country of over 300 million people).  And look what they did with that “mandate.”  Imagine what they’ll do with the one to which you are actively contributing by refusing to vote for Mitt Romney.

You are not happy with Romney.  You are not happy with either party.  They’re “just the same,” right?  So instead of bucking up, taking responsibility, and working to change the GOP, to shift it to a more limited government platform by electing constitutional conservatives and libertarians and by staying involved to ensure the party stays the course, you’ll just take your marbles and skip off to vote for that guy, what’s his name again?, who has zero chance of winning.  Genius.

You are not happy that things aren’t exactly as you wish them to be, so you’ll puff up your cheeks, hold your breath, thrash about on the floor in a temper tantrum . . . and ultimately–and make no mistake about this–aid and abet the single most dangerous president this nation has ever known (well, there are other contenders like Woodrow Wilson, but you get my drift).  And you’ll do it on “principle.”  Because, after all, that will make a “statement”; you’ll “let them know” they can’t “bully” you!  Your message will be heard “loud and clear.”

Uh huh, and what delusional, self-important world do you inhabit?

But yes, by all means, vote your “principles.”  After all, if you care more about yourself than your country, what choice do you really have?