^^
This is my concern. The Republicans in power like to proclaim the evils of “tax and spend” Democrats. But right now the only alternative the GOP is offering is “spend and spend.”

Somewhere Goldwater is weeping.

Right, because it’s unpatriotic to sit out an election between candidates like these. Here’s a joke I picked up from Patterico’s Pontifications, with a few changes to fit this argument.

Q. What’s the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain?

A. One has a history of financial scandal; has spoken of setting benchmarks for withdrawal from Iraq; has said the Bush tax cuts benefitted the wealthy at the expense of the middle class; has derided Sam Alito as too openly conservative; has supported amnesty for illegal immigrants (and then lied about it); has spoken out against overturning Roe v. Wade; has repeatedly said that overturning Roe will lead to thousands of women dying in back-alley abortions; has said that we shouldn’t drill in ANWR because it’s “pristine”; has misrepresented the positions of Republican candidates; wants to close Guantanamo; has spoken of sending “greedy people on Wall Street” to jail for their roles in giving subprime loans; has been endorsed by hard-core liberal editorialists; has said pharmaceutical companies are bad guys; supports blatantly unconstitutional limits on free speech; and is hated by Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin . . .

. . . and the other one’s a Democrat.

“People who do not can be lumped in with the rest of the idiots in this country that dishonor all that our nation has sacrificed to give us the right to vote.”

You really shouldn’t call other people idiots in the same sentence as you’re making embarrassing errors in logic. You think that not voting is a dishonor to the sacrifices that were made to earn the right to vote. That makes no sense. Obviously, the right to vote includes the right NOT to vote; otherwise the right to vote wouldn’t be a “right.” You’re saying that exercising this right dishonors the sacrifices made to earn the right. As far as stupid arguments go, that one’s a beauty. Who needs Publius when we have you?

“McCain has the added benefit of drawing out large numbers of seniors and people who like his tough spending stance. It will more than make up for the nitwits that bring up his affair from ages ago.”

Part of my point in bringing up McCain’s failure to abide by the Seventh Commandment is to remind Republicans that they’ve long prided themselves on being the party of family values. That all ends with this election. Family-values voters (or family-values-oriented political commentators, or anyone who thinks that politicians should talk about family values) who pull the level for John McCain are hypocrites. Months ago, Ron Paul said that if Republicans vote for Rudy Giuliani, they owe Bill Clinton an apology. The same is true of Republicans who vote for McCain. After this election, no one will ever again take Republicans seriously when Republicans talk about family values. It’s not just “nitwits” who’ll bring up McCain’s adultery. Anyone who has a functioning memory will bring that up. And you’ll hear a lot more of it as time goes on. You’ll hear it more as Election Day gets closer, and you’ll hear it even more after the election passes. Get used to hearing about McCain’s infidelity. You’ll hear it a lot more, from people who have nothing in common with me except their disdain for hypocrisy.

By the way, you talk about McCain’s “tough spending stance.” How did he vote on the No Child Left Behind Act? Oh, that’s right. He voted for it. He’s tough on spending when it comes to earmarks, but even if he eliminates all earmarks, that won’t even come close to wiping out the deficit, because earmarks are only the tip of the iceberg. McCain is perfectly happy to see the government flush money down the toilet, as long as the wasteful spending isn’t called an “earmark.”

But of course McCain won’t succeed in his campaign against earmarks, so he won’t even get to make that teensy-weensy dent in the deficit that we’d get if earmarks were abolished. McCain is running for the presidency, not the crown. If Congress wants to keep earmarks, McCain can’t do anything about it except complain. He says he’s going to identify which members of Congress are getting money for stupid pork project and “make them famous.” That’s actually not going to happen, because it would entail naming a large majority of the people who’re serving in Congress. When you have to single out that many people, you’re not going to succeed in singling out anybody. McCain won’t be able to make the porkers famous, because there are far too many of them.

McCain isn’t serious about tackling the major spending issues–there will be no entitlement reform in a McCain administration–so McCain is just focusing on one small part of the problem: earmarks. And the one part of the problem he’s focusing on quite simply isn’t going to go away, no matter what McCain does, because McCain doesn’t have the power to do what you think he’s going to do. So we’ll have all this talk about McCain the spending hawk, and then when McCain becomes president we’ll see pretty much the same deficit spending we’ve had for eight years under George W. Bush. So what have you gained? You’ve temporarily gained the support of some people who really, really care about spending–and then they’ll be furious because they were duped. McCain promises no more business as usual, and some people will believe that, and then they’ll see they were lied to. That’s not going to sit well with the voters who support McCain this year because they think he’ll change the spending situation in Washington, D.C. It’s only going to reinforce the message that Republicans are incapable of balancing a budget. That’s the only lesson (on the spending issue) that people will take away from a McCain presidency–no matter how convicing the Republican candidate is, in the end they’ll never balance the budget. Is that a good thing for the long-term health of this party?

Not over the long run. If McCain is elected president, the next president will be a Democrat. And here’s why.

If McCain wins in 2008, he will run for a second term. There’s absolutely no reason to think McCain will step aside in 2012. He’s in good health, he’s got good genes (especially in respect of longevity), he’s ambitious as hell, and it’s clear that the only thing more fun than driving conservatives to distraction for four years is driving conservatives to distraction for eight years. (And wouldn’t it be wonderful for McCain if he gets to pick the justices who’ll replace Scalia, Kennedy, and maybe Thomas– the three members of the Supreme Court who pose the greatest threat to McCain’s signature achievement in Congress.)

So if McCain wins in 2008, he’ll run again in 2012. And when he runs, he’ll win the Republican nomination no matter how liberal he’s been. There’s no chance that a Republican will knock him off in a primary–Republicans never primary a president. So either a Democrat defeats McCain in 2012, or McCain will get a second term.

If McCain gets a second term, that means sixteen consecutive years of Republican presidents. After sixteen years of that, it would be insane to think that a Republican would win the 2016 election. That would entail Republicans’ winning five consecutive presidential elections, which hasn’t happened since the nineteenth century. It’s not going to happen again.

And you know the Democrats will win the White House SOMEday. What I can’t understand for the life of me is why Republicans think that THIS election is the one that’ll so crucially affect the country’s future. McCain isn’t going to be our savior in the War on Terror. He wants to close Guantanamo, he’ll shackle the military interrogators, and he’s an unpredictable lunatic, so emotionally unstable that giving him access to nuclear weapons would be like playing Russian roulette with the entire world.

Some people say, “We’re one vote away from overturning Roe v. Wade.” But McCain isn’t going to appoint judges who’ll overturn Roe v. Wade. The last time he ran for president, he said Roe should never, EVER be overturned, and he repeatedly invoked the shibboleth of the pro-choice movement that if we overturn Roe tomorrow, thousands of women will die. Why do you trust him to do the right thing when he becomes president? Just because he speaks in these empty platitudes about how judges shouldn’t make law? He’s just saying that to get your vote. When he becomes president, what do you think he’s going to do–appoint more Robertses and Alitos? You can’t even tell me what that means. Promising to appoint another Roberts or Alito doesn’t mean promising to appoint someone who’ll overturn Roe. And we already know that McCain doesn’t want Roe overturned, because he himself said so when he let his guard down. You can’t trust McCain to keep a promise that you don’t really understand. Hell, you can’t trust him to keep a promise that he laid out in plain English–he promised to secure the border before giving illegal aliens citizenship, and now he’s backing off from that. McCain has spent his career speaking out of both sides of his mouth. How on earth can you trust him to be any good at all?

Whichever Democrat comes after McCain is going to be at least as liberal as Obama. If the Dems lose this election, that’s not going to convince them to stop nominating far-left candidates. Why would they learn that lesson now, if they didn’t learn it after McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis? Do you have any reason to believe that Obama is somehow worse than the Democrat who’ll be nominated next time? If so, please share. Because Republicans seem to think that Obama presents a unique threat, and they’ve given no evidence of that whatsoever.

So if McCain wins, we’ll have eight years of left-wing fiscal policy under Bush, followed by four to eight years of McCain reminding you why Republicans hate him so much (something they apparently forgot along the way), followed by who knows how many years of a liberal Democrat. Over the long run, that means the country moves more and more to the left. Why is that better than losing now and coming back with a candidate who doesn’t embrace as many left-wing causes as McCain embraces? Could someone explain that to me? All I ever hear from the party faithful is that Obama is worse than McCain. But (and this is not a rhetorical question; I really want to know this) what reason do you have to think that Obama will be worse *over the long run?*

Sunday’s CBS/NYT poll shows 18-22% of Republicans planning to stay home or crossover, depending upon the Dem nominee. That’s awfully high. On the other hand, this is small potatoes when compared to the Democrats, who have over 45% threatening to crossover or stay home regardless of which candidate wins the nomination.

Obviously, there’s a lot of bluffing going on, but there’s a core truth there. There are Republican voters so disillusioned with their nominee that - while they might not end up voting against McCain - they’re certainly not going to vote for him. Alan is one example, and I know others as well. I don’t know whether theirs is a rationally defensible stance, but for whatever reason it seems you couldn’t pay them to vote for McCain.

Furthermore, by staying at home you’re also helping the Democrats win against conservatives that might be running for U.S Senate, House, or state offices in your area. How exactly does that help?

We fight these things out in primaries. We lost this time. Next time we’ll hopefully get someone more desirable. That’s life.

“McCain hates the freedom of speech, and wants to silence everyone who disagrees with him”

“He’s the only Republican nominee who’s going to make it impossible for Republicans ever again to say that they care about family values, because he cheated on his first wife”

“It’s you RiNO enablers who’ve let things get to where they are now–and you’re going to make it even worse by voting for McCain.”

You sound like a balanced, well-reasoned person.

I never insisted about perfection. Stop distorting my comments. Just because I can’t have a perfect candidate doesn’t mean I should settle for the man George Will correctly called the favorite Republican of those who regret that there are Republicans.

This is why I have no respect for so many McCain voters. You keep saying these patronizing things like, “Politics was never about perfection.” Well, I never asked for perfection, but the problem with McCain isn’t that he’s not perfect; the problem is that he’s EVIL.

McCain hates the freedom of speech, and wants to silence everyone who disagrees with him. He filed a brief with the Supreme Court in the 2003 campaign-finance case–McConnell v. FEC–in which he justified his fascistic campaign-finance law by saying that politicians shouldn’t have to put up with attack ads, so of course government should be able to regulate the content and timing of speech. He shoved a 92-year-old man on the Senate floor–Senator Strom Thurmond. He called the chairman of the FEC “corrupt” because they didn’t see eye to eye on campaign finance. He panders to a racist group, La Raza. He compared Jerry Falwell to Al Sharpton, a man who actually incited MURDERS (remember the “white interloper” speech). He lies endlessly about opposing amnesty for illegal aliens. He’s the only Republican nominee who’s going to make it impossible for Republicans ever again to say that they care about family values, because he cheated on his first wife. (I remember a time when Bill Clinton’s infidelity was half of what Republicans were attacking him for–back in 1992, when they didn’t have the perjury excuse for hating Clinton–and boy did they go after him for that.) I could go on forever about McCain.

“Id rather be in the game now and limit the damage, then wait for it to get further down the road. That is the same attitude that has gotten us where we are with social security, medicare, and govt spending in general.”

No, it’s the fault of people like you that we are where we are on these issues. Because people like you voted for George W. Bush. Bush gave us Medicare Part D, which may very well be the fiscal death of this Republic. Bush has been spending more than any other president since Johnson. It’s you RiNO enablers who’ve let things get to where they are now–and you’re going to make it even worse by voting for McCain.