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“openly confessed to not voting fro Romney and from that time on, I’ve understood just how selfish and petty some freepers are...”

There was no pettiness or spite in my decision not to vote for that man. It was a long thought out process. The die seems to be cast for our nation. Put yourself back in 2012, and look 20 years into the future of our country after installing a man who as the chief executive of a state appointed liberal judges, was pro-choice, anti-gun, and pro gay marriage... and Republican.
Yes, we would perhaps have proceeded down this road more slowly, but is that necessarily better? The surveillance state only grows stronger with each passing year, with the ability of the people to mount a successful resistance to a totalitarian state diminishing in proportion to its growth. Another full generation of students goes through the socialist indoctrination regime and fails not only to have the means to defend itself, but the intellectual capacity to understand it needs to do so, and so forth...
Not only that, but I have no desire to delay a confrontation if it comes to the point where my children or grandchildren have to fight it for me because I am too feeble to fight it for them.

Kicking the can down the road to maintain a false sense of status quo seemed to me the equivalent of removing one of the foundational requirements of just war: that there be a reasonable chance of success.
The lesser of two evils, then, lay not in choosing the establishment candidate over the Democrat one, but in choosing to sacrifice short term comfort and stability for a hoped for longer term goal of being able to identify and resist an encroaching tyranny.
Some things seem to have borne this out as a workable hypothesis. State legislatures are learning to flex their muscles because they have no choice. They may be the “lesser magistrate” of Reformational political discourse, to stand between us and the national despot. According to a PEW research study referenced on this site a few days ago, the percentages of people who are identified as mostly conservative or consistently conservative (no, I didn’t delve into it deeply enough to see what they mean by the terms) from all walks of life or levels of education are on the rebound from just over a decade ago. The NRA’s MVP in Washington has probably given us the highest percentage of firearms ownership ever, and we’ve imported enough lead to possibly shift the North American plate.

None of this is to say that I preferred the current president over Romney. I believe the choice presented by people who phrase it that way is somewhat akin to the fallacy of the excluded middle. I chose to abstain in hope of opportunity for liberty, even while dreading the near term possibilities.

Also, none of the things I mentioned can save us from ourselves. We could become Kosovo on an exponential scale, and I believe that is the goal of at least some in positions of power. What we need is a Third Great Awakening if we are to have any hope of surviving as a nation.

I do not believe any particular candidate at this point will be our salvation or destruction. I am in fact pessimistic enough to believe that the sea change of the 2012 elections and their aftermath make this year’s choice less important in the long term direction of our nation - though I am willing or even wishing to be wrong on this, so I am trying to have an open mind on the current front runner. At least I don’t know that he can be as bad as some fear him to be.

No, I didn’t vote for the opposition in 2012 by writing in my preferred candidate, the GOP did, by refusing to back someone who would actually be against big government and for the liberty of the people. They are still doing it, and I have good cause to believe they always will, because they are not for the liberty of the people.

H G - I pinged you in reference to your post 167:

“...just as Romney and McCain were both infinitely better than Obama. Supporting the Republican nominee is almost always a no-brainer”

rather than respond to it separately with essentially the same drivel. I freely admit at this point of night my writing and reasoning skills are suspect, but I might happen to agree with that last sentence, depending on which way you choose to interpret it.