As bad weather and thousands of good Republicans descend upon Florida, it’s worth keeping perspective: The best (and perhaps only) reason to vote for Mitt Romney is the same as the best/only reason Americans had to vote for Barack Obama in 2008: to punish the party previously in power.
The excesses of united Republican government in the mid-oughts, and the sheer irresponsibility and insider bias in the lame duck Bush years, as the GOP president panicked and turned Wall Street into the largest welfare queen class in America, required punishment.
Americans wanted a change. So they voted, understandably, for the man who promised change.
But what did they get?
Bush had pushed in a new welfare “entitlement” program; so did Obama and the Democrats. Bush had pushed bailouts for the wealthy and the protected; so did Obama and the Democrats. Bush had pushed war and occupation and “nation building”; so did Obama and the Democrats. Bush had presided over deficits and a rising debt; so did Obama and the Democrats.
Turnabout being not merely fair play, but the will of the pendulum to swing back, it seems like voting against Obama is what is in order. It seems almost ineluctable.
But, uh, there’s a problem. Is Romney electable?
Both major parties tend to throw up lackluster candidates when the opposition has an incumbent in the White House. Take three examples: Walter Mondale, Bob Dole, and John Kerry, paragons of pointlessness.
But, this time, a pointless challenger has history endow him with a point: Obama and the Democrats deserve to be punished.
Not much of a platform? True. But it’s something.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
10 replies on “The Punisher Vote”
Good point! I am not much on voting, but since Goldwater, having a libertarian to vote for is a rather happy occasion. I vote as a protest to the duopoly and as a celebration that there are like- minded people who “get it” and are not in the Repub/Dem quagmire. Until many more minds are changed voting is a futile exercise except as a protest.
Even if your vote was the deciding vote that got Romney elected, you would still have the same dangerous and bloated government. Don’t waste your vote. Vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson to support smaller and more civil government. Send a message > we still support freedom.
Only one candidate would make a difference, Gary Johnson. Only one vote makes a point, a vote for Gary Johnson. While he obviously has no chance to win, Johnson could win Maine and/or Alaska, and that would make a huge point going forward.
A vote for any third party to the right is a vote for Obama. Plain and simple. So, if you like Marxism, go ahead. But, don’t call yourself an American.
Having said that. NO MAN is PERFECT. Romney has made some big mistakes whether he realizes them and admits them or not. However, it’s a foregone conclusion that it will either be 4 more years of the Marxist or Romney. I prefer Romney because he at least has SOME morals and LOVES AMERICA as the incumbent does NOT. Romneycare notwithstanding, I think we will be pleasantly surprised with a Romney/Ryan presidency.
The point that will be heard is which candidate garners 51% (or a majority) of the vote. The other 49% risk being disenfranchised. Pretty big trade off, to make a point.
Of course, since the collapse of our economy and currency seems to be Presbo’s goal, perhaps the collapsed and reorganized country will balkanize, instead of being shepherded into one socialist hegomony under military rule. If that slim chance of an outcome DOES occur, then the chance for a true libertarian leader may well be an eventual realistic outcome.
As long as you assume that Presbo wouldn’t also decide to just subsume the territory and incorporate you into the fold, much as Putin has done to his errant wandering satellites.
When folks cast the blame for our nation’s problems, I find it curious that nobody mentions the Community Reinvestment Act. This is the Democrat vote-buying scheme that ultimately brought down the economy.
A vote for a Republicrat is a vote for a Demopublican, utterly wasted. I’ll vote for Gary Johnson. If he gets five percent of the popular vote, the two major parties will get the jitters and maybe change their ways. Otherwise, it’ll be more of the same.
A vote for the lesser evil only seems to get us more evil.
Doesn’t Dagney’s argument rest on the instrumental value of one’s vote? But it is obvious that my voting for Romney or for Johnson doesn’t affect the outcome. My vote has never decided an election. So how does voting my conscience — or, for that matter, voting my whimsy — mean “liking Marxism” or “being unAmerican”?
At some point, ENOUGH people voting their conscience might tip an election. Yes. But that happens only rarely.
What interests me is that Romney is allegedly so much better than Obama. As Mr. Jacob made pretty clear, he isn’t obviously better, not really. On the big issues he’s pretty much the same. He’s simply not Obama, who admittedly is bad.
Frankly, if you want to identify the unAmericans whose votes did plausibly matter, it’s those Republicans who put up such a lackluster candidate as Romney. They are the de facto Marxists, because they offer nothing better than warmed-over corporatism as an alternate.
I mean, Romney is the result of a lot of people second-guessing other people “thinking” that Romney was electable. And, compared to Gingrich and Santorum, two horrible, horrible candidates, they were right. But Ron Paul actually had some cachet with the necessary marginal voters.
But Republicans couldn’t take Ron Paul.
They prefer Obama’s “Marxism” to freedom.
You call it the ‘punisher vote’. I see it as more of an anti-incumbent vote. Even if you can’t see yourself voting for the other party, surely you can vote in a primary and vote for someone else in your preferred party. Granted, there are too few primary challenges. But that is a good enough reason to vote against the party in power. If it’s too much of a bother to vote in a primary and you’d rather vote blindly for the same party year after year then, as the cliche goes, you deserve the government you get.