Posted on 08/12/2012 11:08:56 AM PDT by Yardstick
Remember just after the 2000 election when the famous red-and-blue map first appeared? It shocked us at the time, and for more reasons than one. Geographically, red counties overwhelmed the blue. Although they amounted to half the country’s population, Democrats were clearly concentrated in just a few populous urban centers and university towns, especially on the coasts. It wasn’t just the geographic predominance of red that surprised, though. It was the contrast between the map and the election that preceded it. The Bush/Gore contest hadn’t been filled with passionate arguments or open ideological divisions. The map emerged as a kind of revelation, a glimpse into the rough, polarizing currents silently flowing beneath a more placid electoral landscape.
The 2012 election reverses all that. The combination of a slashing, class-warfare-based campaign by President Obama and now Mitt Romney’s selection of the boldly conservative Paul Ryan means that we face an epic presidential contest that will openly turn on fundamental philosophical differences between red and blue America. How did we get here, and what does it mean for our future? Above all, now that our internal battle is well-and-truly out in the electoral open, will 2012 decide whether red America or blue America wins for good?
First we need to understand that our political divisions are real and growing. They are rooted not in top-down political rhetoric but in profound and lasting social and cultural differences. For a while, analysts tended to make light of our polarization, fruitlessly predicting year after year that our culture war (still raging) was just about to end. If anything, the culture wars have expanded now to include the whole of politics. It used to be that only arguments over gay marriage or abortion were stigmatized as moral abominations. Now even differences over health care reform and the deficit are super-charged with moral accusation.
Whichever way this election goes, these divisions will only deepen. Fundamentally, this is because what President Obama and the increasingly left-leaning coalition he leads actually want is impossibly far from what red America is willing to accept. Until very recently, this gulf has been hidden by Obama’s refusal to level with the American people about his goals. What the public still doesn’t understand, despite the president’s somewhat more open left-turn of late, is just how far left his second-term agenda aims to go. I’ve laid out some of it here, and Americans are simply not prepared for what is about to hit us should Obama win. So while an Obama victory would indeed allow the president to entrench some of his most controversial policies, his restless tendency to push things ever further to the left will almost certainly generate dynamic new movements of opposition.
A Romney victory won’t quiet our national conflicts either. Although a Romney victory would be taken by conservatives as proof that we are still a center-right nation, the fact is that the mainstream media and our key cultural institutions are now in the hands of an increasingly ambitious Left. The media barely hides its bias now, and they will come at a President Romney with everything they’ve got. The Obama presidency has given the Left a taste of the transformations it might achieve, and defeat will be dismissed as a merely temporary setback. Now that both sides are out in the open and fully aware of the danger to their preferred ways of life posed by the other camp, we are entering an era of struggle and division that, if anything, exceeds what we’ve lived through for the past twelve years. This isn’t the beginning of the end of our divisions. It’s only the end of the beginning.
Romney/Ryan to save and take our country back.
Obama/Biden to send our country to hell.
No other tickets can save it our place it in peril Will you vote to save our country? If you write-in a candidate or ticket, then you send our country to Hell!!!
I’ve moved from “liberal” NY to purple PA. It’s blue enough here that it’s probably impossible that a Republican victory here (tho possible) would be the margin of victory. So I suppose that I could take that same attitude that was applicable in NY and CA - vote conservative in all seasons. But we both know that we’re not casting a real vote in that case, we’re just participating in a sort of straw poll with no possible consequences. But I sure don’t want people taking that attitude in FL and OH, or the remnants of the republic are pretty much obliterated.I started advocating a “Draft Palin” movement shortly after the midterm election, but it turned out that there was hardly any support for that, even here. I still think that was our main chance of preventing a Romney nomination, but obviously wishes and horses, and all that.
At my age I’m not sure I’ll ever vote for a candidate instead of against his opponent ever again. Only time I really felt that way was Reagan. But that’s life in the big city - in principle there are many scores of millions of people who are natural born citizens over the age of 35 who could be elected POTUS, and a simple first-past-the-pole election can’t possibly reduce that down to the mythical “single best person for the job."
So how would you vote if your vote mattered?
My situation is the opposite of yours — regardless of how I vote, Alabama will go for Romney. But I’m going to vote Romney nevertheless. I’ve been a purist in the past but feel strongly now that best thing for the country is to vote the Marxist out of office. Choosing the lesser of two evils is something grownups have to do from time to time.
In a spirit of religious tolerance and non-partisanship, an alien craft and D.C. - as in the movie, Independence Day, would be all I need.
90% of the evil in this country resides in D.C.
There’s absolutely no way I could ever vote for an abortionist/homosexualist/statist etch-a-sketch liar like Romney, even if I lived in a swing state. I’d have to hang up my spurs and retire if I did and I’m nowhere ready to do that yet. Too many battles left to fight.
Well that’s fine. You vote according to your personal hangups. The rest of us will suck it up and vote to save the country from a Marxist disaster.
I’d settle on just impeaching the usurper.
I'm glad you noticed the color change too.
And like I said before, my California vote for the presidency doesn’t matter anyway so why should I perjure myself?
bwahahahah...i just had a starwars flashback...
...the makers and the takers?
But that’s pure fantasy. Life on planet Earth, even in America, is a mess, but it’s an influenceable mess. We’re not so off track that we can’t swing it back if we keep a level head. The left would love for us to cripple ourselves with perfectionism. We shouldn’t make it easy for them.
Because your vote wouldn’t be perjury, that’s why. You’d just be saying “Romney sucks but he’s not a Marxist disaster”, and that would be the truth. There’s no dishonor in that.
I’m not going to vote for an abortionist, nor a homosexualist, nor a statist. Give it a rest.
Just a thought here... each vote matters in the popular vote total. Before the everybody starts jumping on me, I KNOW the popular vote doesn’t matter constitutionally, only the electoral college does.
But do we really want a repeat of 2000, when Bush won the electoral vote and Gore won the popular vote?
I would prefer NOT to have a victory tained that way, so even though I’m in a blue state I will add to Romney’s total.
People keep telling me I should vote my conscience because I’m in a blue state and my vote won’t help give the state to Romney. My conscience tells me Obama and his lawless posse must go, so for me it’s ABOWHASCIH (Anybody But Obama Who Has a Snowball’s Chance in Hell.) That leaves out third party long shots.
I’m not attemting to convice you, or the steadfast NO ROMNEY/NO WAY people here. Just sharing my view. I cannot be swayed, just as you cannot be swayed. We’ll just have to agree to disagree. Fair?
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