I’m afraid I just don’t understand people with your POV.
It’s like being given the choice between being breaking a leg and having it amputted. It’s not even a binary choice, since amputation is the default. It’s what you get if you refuse to make a choice.
So since you don’t like the available choices, you refuse to make a choice and therefore accept the default.
Very strange POV, IMO.
Heard lots of similar ideas back in 08. I’ve often wondered to what extent (understandable) conservative distaste for McCain contributed to Obama’s victory.
I assume nobody thinks things would be AS bad now with McCain in the White House. Except that the probably still existing, though not as bad, financial mess would in that case be being blamed on Republicans and conservatism in general.
This is a choice between eating a sh*t sandwich and eating a sh*t sandwich. No amount of mayonnaise can change that. Hopefully we can secure the senate and all will not be lost.
This is all very logical, but the point the anti-Romney crowd would make is that there IS no choice, or what there is what is sometimes called "Hobson's choice", i.e. your choice is purely hypothetical as both alternatives lead to the same thing. To use your analogy, amputation may very well be worse than having your leg broken, but whichever one you choose, you still can't walk.
The counter-argument to your very pragmatic approach is that the USA is slowly and surely becoming more and more socialist every year, and has been for decades. The trend of history is, currently, against us. There is no use denying this, it is true. The evidence is all about you. If nothing else you can tell by the way that the progressives push for legislation and actions today that would have been unthinkable, even to themselves, a decade ago. Now, Romney is quite palpably NOT the man who is going to reverse those trends. He may slow them down. He might even, under pressure from folk like Paul Ryan, arrest some of them. For a while. But he is not a true conservative, and a true constitutionalist conservative is what the country desperately needs if there is going to be even the remotest chance of stopping the country's slide into economic, social and political ruin.
On a tactical level voting for Romney may make a lot of sense, as you say. After all, no matter how flabby he is on certain issues he isn't Barack Obama! However, strategically it might be a very bad move. By voting for him you send a clear message that you approve of, or at least are prepared to put up with, his RINO type stances. That will make it more unlikely that a true conservative candidate will manage to get on the ticket in the next four, eight or twelve years (beyond that it will probably be too late to matter). If Romney fails to get in regardless, it will only further demoralise the GOP. If Romney does win, his non-conservative policies will fail (naturally) but conservatives will still be tarred with that failure (bizarrely), which will make it even harder next time round.
I frankly don't know what the answer to this is, but I do know that we all of us have to make a stand sometime, some place.