Why I Can't Help Voting GOP.2

Let me say from the beginning that I am not and never have been (and probably never will be) a registered Republican, as they seemed as far from my early constitutionalism in 1997 when I could first vote as they seem from my political views now. Not only has the GOP on a presidential level never seemed to be an option for me, but after the last two terms I cannot imagine any candidate credible enough to win me "back" (and I am only one generation removed from my parents' own alienation from the Democratic Party).

I take a rather odd view of the question of parties, since I have lived most of my life in one form of Democratic machine politics (New Mexico) or another (Chicago and Illinois) but could never take the local Republican opposition seriously, as they were constantly trying to compete by becoming, David Cameron-like, indistinguishable from their opponents. Even though everything about the mismanagement of government by the machine screams for actively supporting the opposition, the opposition is preposterous. Still, in state and local elections I do follow my anti-incumbent rule and vote for Republican candidates.

On the national scene, however, the NM GOP is an embarrassment. The conventional wisdom in New Mexico is that a moderate Republican is needed to win in our First District (no one has ever tested this assumption), and so we have been reliably represented by that part of the GOP strongest on the DoD and big government and weakest on all questions of life and culture. Those who live in the Second District at least usually get an avowed pro-life representative. If anything, it has only gotten worse since I started voting. Maybe if I lived in Idaho or Tennessee the virtues of the GOP would be more obvious to me.

In my two longest local experiences with the GOP, I have seen the state party either routinely push conservatives to the margins (as was done very clumsily and obviously to Bill Davis to get Heather Wilson the seat in NM-1, and as has been done to Oberweis in Illinois this year) or engage in spectacularly incompetent campaigns (think Alan Keyes), as if they had the intention of giving conservatives a bad political rap for a decade.

Everyone will say, "Okay, but what's the alternative?" Aside from presidential campaigns, where third parties represent something of a real, if limited alternative, it strikes me that the only alternative available at the moment, if you're going to vote, is to be consistently anti-incumbent or, if you cannot bring yourself to vote for the party on the outs, at least abstain from endorsing the incumbent party.

The GOP has not yet gone through the wilderness of the Major-Hague-Duncan-Smith-Howard-Cameron years that may precede its eventual collapse. I take the Peter Hitchens approach to the GOP: let it fall to pieces, and we may yet build a political movement worth supporting. Surely there is no sense in a representative government of supporting a party that does not, in any real sense, represent you, is there?>

Read Ponnuru's Party of Death, and you'll understand why the current version of the Democratic Party, at least at the national level, is a nonstarter for people who want to combat the PoD. The PoD has influence in the GOP as well, but not as much. So, as a practical matter, the Party of Life has more influence in the GOP. That doesn't mean that we should give up on the Democratic party, but for the near-to-medium future it won't be possible to vote for them on the national level.>