Single issue voting
I’ve had conversations several times over the last weeks about single issue voting. A bunch of people I know are single issue voters, and frankly, it happens on both sides of the aisle. A LOT.
I understand most people who vote libertarian. If I was as committed to smoking dope as a lot of people are, I’d want a libertarian president as well. And the other, non dope smoking libertarian issues? Well, most of them make sense too.
But we willl never have a libertarian president. It’s just not going to happen. So voting libertarian is a stark waste of your time as a voter. “But Og, it sends a message!” Yes, it does. It does send a message. THe message it sends is “I love to smoke dope, and I’m bad at math”.
That’s fine. I really don’t care, and more power to you. Far be it from me to harness your freedoms to my wagon, I neither desire to do so nor desire that anyone else do so.
Being a realist and a pragmatist, it’s clear to me that voting Republican is a way of incrementally shooting myself in the foot. “Missed! Missed again! oops, there goes that toe!! Missed, missed, missed!” The Republican party will always be staffed by neer-do-wells because we can’t get anyone with any integrity and the ability to withstand the process to run. Who the hell would want to? Palin is just the damned VEEP, and they’re shreedding her like coleslaw.
But voting democrat can only be the domain of the single issue voter, or a voter only concerned wiht a few issues, and here’s why:
Democrats in the house and senate, at a federal, state and local level, have a long standing and proven track record of removing our freedoms, shitting on the constitution, and overregulating our lives, our businesses, our churches, our health care, to the point where no corner of our republic is safe from them. The only way you can possibly believe they can be good for anything is if you have a pet issue or a group of pet issues that binds you to the flawed ideology of liberalism.
I’m not saying Republicans don’t do this too, a powerful lot of them do. But the libs are the unequalled masters of it.
For me, the pot-smoking is a fringe benefit. It’s not why you fight for freedom, it’s the little extra bit at the back (Eeyore).
It goes along with not having to suffer with unending hayfever because a bureaucrat shied at the sight of a half-assed report.
It’s not having to suffer pain because some small percentage of the population misuses painkillers.
It’s not having half your income go to support causes which are anathema to you.
It’s being sure that when you step outside your own dooryard, you don’t have to wonder if the agents of the state are going to swoop down on you for some violation you couldn’t have guessed at.
It’s being secure in yourself — no matter where your self may be — from invasion of your property willy nilly by agents of the state on the flimsiest of pretexts — and having some recourse when they invade anyway.
M
Indeed. Still, I’m more likely to grow an extra appendage than a pure libertarian president will ever be elected.
I keep wondering when Republican candidates are going to take off the gloves and start hitting back.
Lord knows there are plenty of targets on the other side.
This “party of behaving genteely while being otherwise indistinguishable from the other party” crap needs to go out the window…and that soon.
I’m with you Nathan. But there is a flaw when you take up the banner labeled “Conservative” in the political arena. Know what it is.
Agreed, Og. At least, not on the LPUSA party ticket.
I’d submit that Reagan was the closest we’ll come. And look at the troubles he had getting what little rollback he got.
And what the tradeoffs were.
M