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Thanks for the rant. It demonstrates the difficulty of any balance. Arnold Schwarzeneggar flunks the test. I find the choice in CA to be intriguing. Vote for a bad guy who is a baby killer. Vote for OUR "star" who is a baby killer. Or vote for OUR loser who is a baby saver and theonomically sound in other areas. Conservatives are told to ignore McClintock in favor of Arnold. Many of them are going that route. To date, I've not heard a single conservative principle espoused by Arnie.

Well, that's because Arnold does not espouse any Conservative principles. (shrugs and grins -- seems obvious to me).

Arnold espouses Center-Left principles (weighted towards the center economically, and towards the left socially) -- as opposed to Bustamante, who espouses Hard-Left principles.

Now, as I do not live in California, I am relatively uninterested in the California Recall Election -- except to the extent it sucks away media attention from the Democratic candidates for President, which is arguably a good thing. However, I don't really consider the choice in California to be all that difficult -- to me, it's simply a question of What You Want to accomplish with your vote.

IF you want a Republican Party Governor, you vote Schwarzeneggar.
- 30% GOP Votes + 20% Arnold Swing Votes = GOP Victory
- 30% GOP Votes + 0% McClintock Swing Votes = GOP Loss
On the other hand, IF you want to "Make a Principled Statement" with your vote, and you are comfortable losing, then you vote McClintock. Or do you?? I wouldn't. I decided a long time ago that the odds of my single vote influencing the outcome of a major Election was less than the odds of being struck by lightning on the way to the voting booth, and so I always vote for the candidate who most closely reflects my Principles -- simply to increase their Vote Totals, thereby making my one-vote "Statement of Principles". And, being perfectly confortable with voting for a losing candidate, I would vote for CONSTITUTION PARTY candidate Diane Templin (as there are no pro-life libertarians on the Ballot of whom I am aware).
- I mean, if you are going to Lose anyway, why not Lose with Gusto? Why cast a Losing vote for 85-90% of your Principles, when you could cast a Losing vote for 100% of your Principles? What's the point of Losing for the sake of "Making a Principled Statement", if you only make an 85-90% Principled Statement? Why not make a 100% Principled Statement?
- See, I understand Voting to "Make a Statement" -- it's how I vote. What I can't understand is, if McClintock Voters have resigned themselves to losing anyway, what grounds would cause them to prefer GOP McClintock over Constitution-Party Diane Templin? If McClintock Voters have decided to be "Principled Purists", why not be a 100% Constitution-Party Purist rather than a 90% McClintock Purist?

I can understand voters like BibChr who hold their nose and vote GOP. It's not me (except when the GOP guy really is the best on the slate, which did actually happen fairly often when I lived in rural Virginia), but I can understand it on tactical, pragmatic grounds.

What I don't understand is, if one is perfectly comfortable with the GOP losing anyway... why vote McClintock? Why not just go all the way and vote Constitution??

Honest question, not baiting at all.

As a non-Californian, my interest in California's governor election is due to a couple of things. One is the intriguing choice being presented to conservatives, especially to conservative Chrisitians. The 2nd reason is some hope that a different administration might care about national security in this age of terrorists and try to stem the unchecked illegal immigration. The 3rd reason is simply the size of California's economy and the effect it has on the rest of the nation for good or ill. The 4th reason is the number of voices California gets to send to our House of Representatives. It'd be nice to get rid of some of the radical socialist votes that are coming out of that state.

I don't see Schwarzeneggar helping with any of the above. He's going to campaign on his star-power, and I think that a real candidate in the race who isn't an anti-black, race baiting, hate-America-first, Mexifornia advocate like Bustamante or a male bimbo moral reprobate like Arnie JUST MIGHT attract a few reasonable voters and really win.

I have no problem with throwing a bunch of votes to the Constitution Party UNLESS that 85-90% conservative has a realistic chance of winning IF he soundly defeats the bimbo and has the "party-minded" RINOs throw their support to him.