I'VE MADE MY DECISION....
I've made my decision about the election next Tuesday. As you may or may not know, I have been struggling to come to a decision on how to vote this year. And I want to go back and discuss some of my thought process and then finally how I came to my decision.
As the Republican primaries began and the debates began, I wasn't sure who I was going to support. As the debates rolled on and the primaries began, I was open to 9 of the 10 candidates. I watched what they were saying and compared it to what they had actually done. In the end, I made my decision to endorse Rep. Duncan Hunter. To me he was the best conservative in the running with the record to back it up. Unfortunately, by time the Connecticut primary rolled around, Rep. Hunter had already dropped out of the race and Sen. John McCain looked as if he was well on his way to winning the nomination.
This was the first time this election season I had to make a decision I didn't really want to make. Do I vote for Duncan Hunter because he was the best conservative on my ballot or do I vote for someone else in order to defeat the one candidate I did not want to win the nomination? And yes, you all know by now, if you've been a regular reader of ProudConservative.com, the candidate I was not open to and the candidate I did not want to win the nomination was John McCain. I chose to vote for Gov. Mitt Romney in my primary soley because I thought he was the one candidate who could stop McCain from winning the nomination. Mitt Romney was not a solid conservative, and not my ideal choice, but he was an acceptable alternative to McCain.
Well, as we all know, Mitt Romney dropped out shortly thereafter and eventually the few candidates left in the race, Gov. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Ron Paul did as well. John McCain won the nomination.
So began my internal struggle. The one candidate I did not want to win....the one candidate who angered me more than most any other Republican in the Senate, was the nominee for the Republican party. How could I, as a proud conservative, vote for this man? I couldn't. I looked into some of the third party guys. And I liked some of the stuff some of them were saying, but I also disagreed with many of their stances on certain issues. I had basically come to the conclusion that I was most likely going to write in Duncan Hunter's name.
As the Democrat primaries were finishing up, it eventually became clear that Sen. Barack Obama was going to be the Democrat nominee. As I did some research on him and the multitude of stories came out about him and his radical associations and as I heard his wife talk and I realized not only is this man a liberal, but he's a damned marxist, I started rethinking what I was going to do.
It came time for McCain to choose his running mate. Now at this point, McCain had been trying to talk a good game to conservatives, but I wasn't buying a word of it. As a conservative, I didn't believe any of the conservative talk coming from him. However, I said that if he picked a solid conservative vice presidential running mate, I would hold my nose and vote for him.....or in reality, vote for the vice presidential candidate. And to my shock and surprise, not only did he pick a solid conservative in Gov. Sarah Palin, but he picked one of my top 3 choices. I made up my mind. I was going to vote for the ticket.....not necessarily McCain....but the ticket. I figured I was going to give McCain the benefit of the doubt now that he had actually proven to me he was trying to "make-up" with conservatives by putting Palin on the ticket. And I decided if a vote "for".....and yes the "for" is in quotes on purpose.....McCain meant that Palin would get her foot in the door at the White House, and it would most likely give her the nomination in 2012, I could live with that.
But then the debates happened, and John McCain opened his mouth with some idiotic statements and policy ideas. Then the so-called "mortgage crisis" happened and McCain voted for that awful, unconstitutional bail out bill. He also through out the idea that he would direct the Treasury to buy up bad mortgages. His handlers were ruining Palin. She had to spout McCain talking points about issues she clearly disagreed with him on. It was all getting ugly to me.
I began to go back to considering writing in a candidate, perhaps even Gov. Palin herself if not Duncan Hunter. I got a lot of flack from some friends and was told that I was going to help elect Barack Obama. I was told that a vote for anyone other than McCain was a vote for Barack Obama. I was told I was wasting my vote. I was told I had to get on the McCain bandwagon. I was even told, by someone who has extremely similar politcal views to me, that my conservative principles didn't matter in this election and that I had to vote for McCain.
I countered with, and I still hold these beliefs to be completely valid and true, that there is no such thing as a wasted vote. If I chose to write in a candidate, I would not be helping elect Barack Obama. The only way that I would help elect Obama was if I voted for Obama and that was never going to happen. If I chose to write in a candidate or vote third party, my vote would be cast for that person and it was not a vote for Obama. I own my vote. The Republican party does not own my vote and certainly John McCain does not own my vote, so therefore, if I chose to vote third party or write in, it was not a vote that John McCain lost. It was a vote he never had. And I said principles ALWAYS matter.
So for the past 2 to 3 weeks, I have been really struggling about what to do. I was reading some stuff on the internet. I listened to some talk radio. I was trying to find that one thing that just set the lightbulb off in my head and gave me the answer. And then it happened. I saw one of my very own ProudConservative.com T-shirts in my drawer. It was the "Priorities" design which says, "AMERICAN, CONSERVATIVE, REPUBLICAN....in that order."
The truth is, as a Conservative, I don't have a candidate in this race. As a Republican, I hardly have a candidate in this race. But as an American, which is what comes first to me, I have to do what is right for America. This election comes down to voting for a candidate, and not only a candidate but basically an entire party, who wants to turn the dream of our founding fathers into a socialist nightmare. Our founders were for limited self government. They drafted our Constitution purposely as a document that limited the powers of government. It is not a document of rights. It is a document that limits the power of the federal government. Sen. Obama and the Democrat leaders in the Senate and Congress want to completely ignore what the Constitution says. They want the federal government to use it's power and turn this great nation in to a cradle to the grave nanny state. They want to raise taxes on those that work so that they can give "tax rebates" to those that don't work. A rebate is when you pay something and then you get some of it back. When you pay nothing and still get money back.....that's called welfare. They want to redistribute wealth. They want to socialize our helath care industry. They want to impose windfall profit taxes. Since when is making a profit a bad thing? They want to raise capital gains taxes and income taxes and corporate taxes. They want to slash our military budget, in these very dangerous times, by 25%. They are against our nation becoming energy independant. They will ruin this nation as we know it and I have to do what I can, not as a conservative.....not as a Republican.....but as an American, to stop them.
Sen. John McCain is not my ideal candidate. He's not even close. But just as I did back in the primaries, I am going to vote for the candidate that has the best chance of stopping the candidate I don't want to win from winning. I know I will be in major disagreements with him very often. I will fight his policies that I don't agree with with everything that I have. At least I will not have to fight him on every single issue though. All of that said, and truth be told, this is more of an anti-Obama vote than anything else, but I have decided that, as an American, I will vote "for" John McCain this November 4th.
-Trent
