Worthy of contemplation.. Well put, and reflects Farah well.

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Still 'None of the Above'

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Posted: September 01, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

© 2008

The Republican base has clearly been energized by John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. There's no reason why it shouldn't be. It was not only a brilliant selection, but one that has a very reasonable chance of clinching an improbable electoral win for the Republican Party. It was also a fairly obvious choice once Obama picked Joe Biden, which is why I said McCain would choose Palin when asked for my opinion on the matter by Right Wing News last week.

The choice of Palin for vice president has apparently caused many Republicans to change their minds about supporting John McCain for president, as formerly disgruntled conservatives are suddenly rushing to donate money to the old maverick and declaring a new found willingness to vote for him. This enthusiasm is understandable, if more than a little disturbing, as it bears more than a small resemblance to an abused wife who embraces her erstwhile tormentor and declares all is forgiven simply because he bought her flowers for once.

Sarah Palin merits conservative enthusiasm in her own right; she may – I stress "may" – one day become a legitimate conservative standard bearer in the Thatcherite tradition, and her selection as vice-presidential candidate is a big step towards her eventually reaching such status. Pro-life and anti-corruption, she is certainly a huge improvement over the nonconservatives, fake conservatives and strong-government conservatives who have dominated the Republican Party since the failure of the 1994 Republican House.

She is a huge improvement, one notes, over Republican politicians such as John McCain – who, I hasten to point out, is still at the top of the presidential ticket.

While McCain-Palin is a much more effective electoral pairing than McCain-Romney or McCain-Lieberman would have been, it must also be acknowledged that a McCain-Palin administration will not be substantively different than a McCain-Romney or a McCain-Lieberman one. While Sarah Palin will indubitably look better at state funerals than the older male alternatives, it's impossible to argue that John McCain will be any less likely to invade sovereign nations, increase government spending or grant immigration amnesties to invaders from the Third World due to her holding down the vice presidency.

It's true that Obama would make for a disastrous president if he somehow managed to stop his ludicrous campaign of self-parody in time to turn things around, take advantage of the pro-Democratic electoral wins and win in November. In fact, I suspect that an Obama presidency would serve up interesting times in epic proportions, a national experiment in black Democratic rule that would follow the success of similar experiments in Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and South Africa. He is clearly the greater of the two evils on offer.

Nevertheless, Joseph Farah is right in urging conservatives and independents to steer clear of supporting John McCain this fall. Supporting the lesser of two evils is still supporting evil, and a McCain victory will both preclude the Republican Party from returning to its small government ideals as well as ensure Hillary Clinton's ascendancy in 2012. McCain's selection of Palin should not be interpreted as moving the Republican Party toward the right, but rather as a bone thrown to the right specifically to prevent what will otherwise become the Republican Party's move to the right after yet another moderate Republican failure.

Time and time again, Republican conservatives have fallen blindly for the blandishments of party elitists. They supported the hopelessly unelectable Bob Dole because the elders declared Pat Buchanan to be unelectable. They bought into the idea that George W. Bush was the second coming of Ronald Wilson Reagan, not the bastard stepchild of Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Baines Johnson that he turned out to be. They refused to back Ron Paul, the lone champion of the Constitution contesting the nomination, and got the architect of the McCain-Feingold limitations on free speech.

If McCain is defeated, four years of an Obama administration will force the Republican Party to embrace candidates like Sarah Palin who conservatives can actually support. If McCain wins, thanks in part to the conservative support he has hitherto despised, conservatives can expect nothing but a long and ugly line of Bushes and McCains as their standard bearers for the foreseeable future.

Joseph Farah is right. Vote Libertarian, vote Constitution, vote "none of the above." But don't vote for either of the two evils on offer.