Politics is the art of the possible. Otto von Bismark said that, and he ended up getting pretty much everything he wanted in time. What that means to me is that practical politics means having to make deals you don't want with people you don't like for only part of what you're after. A lot of idealistic politicians find that out the hard way when first they descend, starry-eyed, into the bowels of government.
I can articulate what I'm after: it's a smaller, less intrusive federal government that lives within its means and makes an honest effort to minimize its load on the electorate. Basic conservatism. I hesitate to use emotionally colored cliches such as ruling class, but there really is something to that term, and its referent spans both formal political parties, and smaller, less intrusive government is not in its interest. And so "part of what you're after" may not be available from either, in which case there isn't really much point in compromise at all.
This business of "vote for A or B will destroy the country" strikes me as little better than crude extortion even if it happens to be the case. Chaps a bit to have to pay the extortionist off, doesn't it? This is not, of course, open sanction for everything the extortionist has in mind, but it will certainly be represented as such by media openly hostile to smaller government, and they too have a stake in larger government because they're now an active part in it. Hence your dissatisfaction. Hence mine.
For me the real danger is from 0bama's decidedly left-wing, decidedly radical academic hangers-on who have been happy to leverage his administration into lasting political power. The hope some seem to hold that under Romney they will all go away is, I am afraid, a bit naive. It is they who promise to cause lasting damage to the country through control of the institutions that he hasn't the slightest desire to rein in. This is a very frustrating time to be a conservative.
“What that means to me is that practical politics means having to make deals you don’t want with people you don’t like for only part of what you’re after.”
I asked a lawyer friend about his grueling and public case on a business thing a couple years ago. “Oh - the media makes it sound worse than it was. But we reached a compromise that worked for both parties. And while it all ended up okay, it felt like such a .... well, a compromise!”