I totally sympathize and empathize with your passion for fighting liberalism and leftism. Your arguments are based on rationalizations I've subscribed to for decades.
But the function of voting operates on as mean a law as gravity. Gravity is cold, stubborn, hard; if you seek an easier way and defy the law of gravity by jumping off a building instead of taking the elevator, gravity cares squat about your intentions. Same with politics. When you vote for leftists (if Kashkari is at all like Romney, who endorsed him, he's a leftist), regardless of your intentions, you accomplish one thing: you advance leftism.
When is what you advise, voting for the likes of Kashkari, going to pay off? Because Heaven knows it's had it's chance over the past 25 years as most Republicans have adopted the familiar, conventional "wisdom" that you so freshly express in your piece. We've BEEN doing it your way. I voted for Meg Whitman, as leftist a liberal as Romney, registered as a Republican. I voted for her with my eyes wide open!! And it was unspeakably STOOOOOPID of me!
Sorry, JRandom FReeper, I'm getting to be a pest but I must give credit where due. Dignitas, regarding JRF's words, wash, rinse, and repeat until it sinks in: If you vote for liberals, you're a liberal. It is a fact, the same as a rectangle is a square. I had to FACE that truth in myself -- I voted for Whitman, for God's sake!
If you vote for liberal Republicans, you promote liberalism. It's like gravity. There whether you like it or not.
Seriously, the bottom line is that the only thing that matters is what you're voting for. You argue that by voting for leftist Republicans, we're voting for the chance, the hope, the strained-for outcome, of some folks to the right of them gaining access and power. In realty, you're voting for more leftism in the Republican party.
I had to face that. You do, too.
I dont disagree with you, in the sense that voting for liberals like Whitman or Kashkari is a quasi-endorsement for. And I certainly appreciate your kind words.
But I did mean what I wrote about viewing politics as warfare. And no war has ever been won with purity. We teamed with absolute monster, Stalin, to take out Hitler, before we took him on. As I lamented, its a shame that the Cold War didnt end the same way WW2 did. But the fact remains, we teamed with him to take out the more immediate threat. And thats exactly how I view this. I am terrified about the country may 8 year old daughter may one day inherit. Having grown up “behind the lines” in El Monte, California, Ive seen first hand how progressive-liberalism seduces the individual into forfeiting their self-determination and dignity and how they played off of our own mistakes and infighting to dominate this state and spread even more misery than the California of my youth. I am terrified they will do this to the entire nation, as paints my particular perspective. The Boehners of the world are easy to deal with. If we seize the political pulse and conversation of the nation, they will fall in line quicker than you can blink. They are opportunists, and will gladly follow the Gowdy’s and Mike Lee’s so long as their bread gets buttered. But we need the numbers to hoist men like this to power. And its not going to come if we spend the fall re-fighting the battles of spring.
Im under no illusions that Kashkari will somehow evolve into a Reagan. And he wont be my primary focus of activism this fall by any means. But Im not going to do anything to sabotage him because he beat my guy Donnelly. I’m not advocating that we acquiesce the fight for the GOP’s soul...far from it. But there is a time for that...for 2014, that time is now over. We count our victories and come to grips with our defeats and now we deal with the more immediate threat, which is a Democratic Party who will utilize any tactic or exploit any advantage to crush us.
And thats really all Im saying.