Withdrawing in disgust isn't apathy

Let us grant that withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy -- and that irony is the shackles of youth -- but that doesn't mean such withdrawal is intelligent.

How does it advance a single issue conservatives care about to cede the election to those who are, in many issues, completely opposed to their positions?

Repudiate the party that disappoints you, and who do you think takes its place? A party that will do a better job advancing our positions? Hardly.

Such a withdrawal is stupid and petulant and short-sighted. Larison's entry might be emotionally satisifying, but that doesn't persuade me that it's anything more than a temper tantrum.

This is a representative government; but if you don't vote for the candidate here-and-now that stands the best chance of winning the election and even advancing bits and pieces of your agenda, you're putting the power of the vote in the hands of others.>

For those unfortunate enough to live in New Jersey, there isn't a candidate, except perhaps the libertarian, worth voting for in November. There is no difference between the Democrat and the Republican.

I take that back. At least with the Democrat you know what you will get.>

Non-votes are quite significant in other ways. They represent a vote of alienation at times. They represent a vote of no-confidence in the candidates at others. Other times they represent a vote of despair or lack of confidence in the system itself. I was amazed at the recent poll figures on the number of people eligible to vote who had no confidence that their vote would actually be counted.>

To ape Blankley's imagery, the Republican Party thinks a sh!t sandwich is perfectly good sustenance to conservatives.

Eat up!

Yes, it's terrible. It's not what you want, and it isn't what you were promised, it isn't principled. And your causes-less govenment, less spending, a cold stop to illegal immigration and either a war fought ferociously and remorselessly or not at all-c'mon. You don't expect us to actually do those things, do you? Heck, we don't really care; just keep the votes and cash coming. DC is GOOD for those lucky enough to be on the government qand K Street teets.

And the excrement on the other side is much much worse!We cannot have those guys occupying these seats.

Yes eat up! Sh!t sandwiches for everyone!Which is pretty much all we've gotten since 2000.>

Max-

Bush is so programmed that if you said soemthing like this in his presence I'm certain his head would explode like in "Scanners".

Islamics do not respect pluralism nor others. They openly espouse the killing of Jew, they sotto voce say much the same about Christians. They more than any other group has self-segregated. To quote Axel Rose, they indeed wish to start a Mini Iran. And somebody must say it-if you didn't come here to become an American, there a planes leaving Kennedy Airport each and every day back to you beloved Arabia. GO BACK!

Yes, prior immigrant groups kept to themselves, and may be most were ultimately economic immigrants more than anyone looking to "breath free". But they and their children embraced America. All we get from the CAIR crowd is the victim card and demands to be acommodated.>

The link above got broken and doesn't work. I will repost it here:
">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321167/from/ET>

I think it would at least be better to do a write-in vote than just not vote at all. Then you're participating. God bless.>

Joey, one thing regarding write-ins.

If a candidate isn't registered as a legitimate write-in, then you can't vote for him. This keeps people from voting for Mickey Mouse, etc.

I speak from experience. I was a poll officer during the 1990 general elections in California. One genius decided to vote for himself for both governor and secretary of state. We had to void his entire ballot, even though he placed legitimate votes on other candidates and propositions.>

Joe wrote:

I'm not crazy about mediocrity and ideological compromise but I'll vote for that over dishonesty any day of the week.

Ding, ding, ding!!! We have a winner. (I'd actually add "and evil" after "dishonesty," but not even Joe is perfect. That's for me.)

The problem is that "there is no other place to go" is simply a fact. An ugly fact. A fact I don't like. But a fact. Maximos lists a lot of good reasons to be dissatisfied with how Republicans have governed.

But he cannot honestly believe that, **on those issues** any conceivable Democrat wouldn't be infinitely worse.

Would Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy even let a marriage amendment reach the floor? Frist and Specter did -- it just didn't have the 2/3 majority needed to pass.

Would President Hillary Clinton (or John Kerry) not have approved over-the-counter Plan B? We don't even have to rely on hypotheticals here. It was Hillary who put the hold on the FDA boss's confirmation over Plan B. And when Rod put up a link to my post criticizing the grounds for the Plan B decision, not a few liberals here said, "now we need to make Plan B available to minors and make the Pill itself available OTC. How dare you suggest women are too stupid to self-medicate!! Sexist!!!"

Can you even imagine how much federal money that cloning and stem-cell research would get from a Democrat Senate or president? If they take control, there'd be an embryo in every pot. (And why shouldn't they, given their religious devotion to the Sacrament of Abortion.)

And immigration? After Clinton-Gore forced INS to naturalize hundreds of thousands in the name of minting new Democrat ethnic voters in key Electoral College states in the year before the 1996 and 2000 elections, what do you think their priorities are? Admittedly, there are complicating factors in the Democrat coalition (the unions primarily; possibly blacks), but the Democrat Creed states that any criticism of immigration is racist, mostly an attack on Hispanics. In fact, it's immigration that I fear the most on for the next two years. A Democrat Congress and Bush in the White House (which is all that can happen next month) is a recipe for a big-scale amnesty, and they'll have two years to do it. More than 10 million new voters. Who do you think they'd be voting for in 2008 and subsequent, given the circumstances under which the amnesty will have happened?

And nobody would think that Democrats would be any more amenable to deporting the Mahometans and making Islam illegal, or levelling Fallujah and putting Moqtada al-Sadr's head on a stick? I'm sympathetic to the notion that Bush has tried to fight the war against Islam too "nicety-nice." But if anything, Democrats like the nicety-nice" and detest having to blow things up.

No, Blankley's right.

To leave the field because the Republicans have made missteps on the life issues and other social-religious matters is -- petulance.>

Maxiumus, if you believe that the Republican Party is selling out conservative principles, then I suggest you get involved in local Republican politics so that the positions in which you believe get noticed and supported, where you can advocate them and solicit support.

Realize, however, that every mainstream political party has to balance ideological "purity" (however that's defined) with the practical necessity of getting elected so that it can implement at least its general principles.

The Democrats also have this problem. They answered it by allowing the counter-cultural, anti-American wing to take over.

Politicians can be virtuous (often despite their own profession) but political parties can never be relied on to impose social virtue (which differs from social order).

Look at history. On the religious end, we have Cromwell in England, Calvin in Geneva, and the Puritians in the Massachusetts Bay Colony trying to impose Christian virute based on Calvinist prinicples. Ask Roger Williams about that.

On the secular end, we have the Nazis trying to create a utopia based on racial "virtue" and the Communists trying to create an economic utopia on Marxist "virtue." We all saw the results, didn't we?

In the end, it's not the political parties or ideological utopians who can encourage virtue. It's the churches. And if the churches fail (as they are failing now), then we are all in profound trouble.>

The GOP leadership at every level "wants for character and integrity"? That sort of rhetoric, I think, is what confirms me in my purpose to vote as I normally do, for the lesser of two evils: I know the local GOP fellow who is running against the incumbent Democrat and he doesn't want either character or integrity. If it is a question of changing a party's leadership (and it is obvious that this needs to happen in D.C., on both sides of the aisle), let it be changed: but to allow the Nancy Pelosis and John Kerrys free (well, now I am exaggerating) rein for two years: I won't do anything to make that possible, not because they are members of the Democrat party but because they are advocates of bad politics. The whole 'faith in a political party traduced' meme is overplayed, I think.>

Realize, however, that every mainstream political party has to balance ideological "purity" (however that's defined) with the practical necessity of getting elected so that it can implement at least its general principles.

I don't deny this. But what the Republicans have done with respect to the issues I have cited does not amount to such compromise, but is rather on the order of betrayal. There was no necessity imposing Plan B upon a reluctant GOP. It was an adminstrative decision rished through under cover of darkness; they could with equal ease have just decided "No". The GOP, moreover, is in the majority, and need not even accept proposals for federal funding of ESCR, let alone propose them. They could, if they were principled, state their opposition and its justification, and face the music, whatever it might be. That is what honourable men do. As for the question of marriage, where three-quarters of the public are supportive of the stated GOP position, yet not necessarily persuaded that an amendment is necessary, the Republicans could have spent a little more political capital, instead of squandaring what they possessed in the quixotic campaign to reform Social Security, which, rightly or wrongly (I say the latter) the public oppose, and on a sort of invade-invite foreign policy. Finally, as regards immigration, there exists no necessity imposing the 'abolish America' open-borders position of the adminstration; the Republican base is much nearer Tancredo on this matter, and would crawl over miles of broken glass to vote for candidates who could credibly promise - and deliver on those promises - to fence the border. The base would back them, because they grasp that this is a fundamental question of national identity; the only reason it is not done, other than stale ideology, is that they money-men want the contrary thing done. Betrayal.

Politicians can be virtuous (often despite their own profession) but political parties can never be relied on to impose social virtue (which differs from social order).

Look at history. On the religious end, we have Cromwell in England, Calvin in Geneva, and the Puritians in the Massachusetts Bay Colony trying to impose Christian virute based on Calvinist prinicples. Ask Roger Williams about that.

No, political parties cannot be relied upon to impose virtue; but they can be expected to reinforce what virtue exists in the populace, inasmuch as most meaningful legislation is codified moral judgment anyway, and inasmuch as legislation presupposes that its binding status will have an influence on behaviour. If it does not, then it is nothing more than an arbitrary imposition upon the wills of the would-be malefactors, which would be conceived as inalterably fixed upon their evil ends. You don't think that criminalizing at least some abortions would give at least some people occasion to reflect prior to dismembering a developing child? The social and legal environment of any given society conditions, though it does not determine, the moral judgment of the individual. This is why conservatives oppose the pornification of the culture, the denigration of marriage, and so on. It may not take a village in Hillary's sense, but it does take more than a solitary individual.

What any of this has to do with the loathsome dictatorships mentioned is lost upon me, unless, of course, it is an invocation of the hoary canard that any non-liberal politics is, of necessity, authoritarian. The GOP could fight on the basis of a principled opposition to these corruptions, rather than actively connive at ways to accomodate them. It is better to suffer an honourable defeat than to engage in barter with evil.

There's a certain philosophical sense in which that is true. But in that very sense, 90 percent of America is liberal, as is the whole national ethos and mythology, outside of which politics simply doesn't exist. So nonliberal politics is simply a nonstarter. Off-the-table. Unless you wish to dissolve the people and elect a new one. Or simply impose a dictatorship outright.

I do not accept the tendentious judgment that the American ethos is wholly liberal. The small-government, decentralized, virtue-is-the-basis-of-republican-government ethos of the Founding owes more to the country tradition of the English political inheritance than it does to any of the theorizings of Locke and the liberal tradition, which, in any event, did not become the dominant tradition of our politics until the latter half of the nineteenth century, particularly with the co-optation of the populist movement by the progressives, with their belief in the efficacy of the concentration of political and economic power as the great twin engines of meliorism, material improvement, and the transcending of "parochial" ties and authorities. That country tradition in politics, something like Jeffersonianism without the admiration for the philosophes, was hardly authoritarian, sought to secure the people in the exercise of self-government at the most meaningful levels of their social existences - in local society - and embodied an understanding of the social context of the virtues requisite to a free, self-governing, republican society. Moreover, it has always been the remnants of this tradition, attenuated though it has become over the course of the past century as the consolidators of central authority have waxed ever-stronger, to which much of the core GOP message has sought to appeal, at least as a matter of public rhetoric, since the days of the leftist takeover of the Democratic party. Small government. Local government and control. Virtue. The small businessman and entrepreneur.

To state, therefore, that a non-liberal politics is a non-starter, is effectively to state that much of American political history is itself impossible, and that many of the political themes the GOP has ridden to power - however little they have done to advance them - are essentially impossible in America save upon the foundation of dictatorship.

I find it curiously suggestive that those who question the rectitude of those of us who weary of GOP temporizing, and who wish to hold the party to account for its defections from principle, find it necessary to invoke avowedly liberal shibboleths in order to advance their arguments. I don't rule illigitimate attempts to reform the party from within, labouring from the grassroots upward; my only qualification to this objective would be that it does not oblige me to vote for ideological fellow-travellers of the left who happen to have "Rs" next to their names on the ballot. Compromise is undertaken from a position of weakness, not proposed, and certainly not proposed from a position of strength. It is the latter two circumstances that increasingly obtain in the case of the GOP.>

"NAMBLA's Christian-hating Socialists?" Really?

BTW, I'm voting in state and local elections. My vote is useless in my US House race, because I'm in a gerrymandered district owned for life by a liberal Democrat (though I'll probably vote for the Republican as an anti-incumbent protest vote), and I'll sit out the US Senate race. Don't like either of them.>

Joseph,

The difference between us may lie in our respective estimates of the remaining virtue of the populace. My judgment is that, with respect to the handful of largely social/ethical issues I raised, that we possess a government less virtuous than the people. Certainly, there has been no great clamor on the part of the electorate for further entrenchment of the abortion regime, for sodomite simulacrae of marriage, and etc. As with the advent of the judicial usurpation of abortion jurisprudence, it would seem that the virtue of the public is undergoing a gradual erosion at the behest of the regime imposed by the elites of law and governance. Hence, my expectation is that a just politics will reinforce, by reflecting, the higher level of virtue I judge to exist among ordinary Americans, as over against the moral degradations of the largely leftist elites. My expectation is that such a politics would at least halt a precipitous decline so that churches, for example, could at least find themselves working with, rather than against, the tide of the age. I do not expect political agitation to engender moral reformation; I expect it to place no hindrance before those labouring for such reformation. The American people, for all our faults, are still better than the cultural jurisprudence to which they are subjected, and a GOP which seems to manifest a predilection for the facilitation of a marginally less-odious moral radicalism is not a party reflective of that relative soundness.

I believe that the American people, on the whole, are, at a minimum, less degraded, where the virtues are concerned, than the holdings and entailments, say, of the jurisprudence of a Kennedy or Ginsburg, to say nothing of the Ninth Circus. The coalition of interests which predominates in the GOP (ie, not the social conservatives) functions to obfuscate this reality, and the constraints of the two-party system actually operate in such a way as to minimize, and even neutralize, the influence of those of us who are concerned with virtue: this is the existential meaining of the oft-heard refrain concerning social conservatives, that they have nowhere else to go. In other words, the particular configuration of the political institutions of a given nation can introduce factors which actually reduce the expected level of correspondence between the virtue of the populace and the laws in accordance with which they are governed. The present dissension within conservative ranks is merely the pushback against the contingent, extra-constitutional features of our system which generate these counterintuitive results.>

My expectation is that such a politics would at least halt a precipitous decline so that churches, for example, could at least find themselves working with, rather than against, the tide of the age. I do not expect political agitation to engender moral reformation; I expect it to place no hindrance before those labouring for such reformation.

Maximos, I also believe in the fundamental decency of the American people on certain issues. Unfortunately, I think your hopes are in vain, given the deteriorating knowledge and appreciation of the fundamental values on which this nation was based. A lot of rot about "theocracy" is being trotted out just so that political agitation can hinder moral reformation.>

Reader-

I also put an "Esq." at the end, but I don't think it gives me any special insight. Nonetheless doesn't the Miers misstep tell you a great deal about the cluelessness of Bush? You know as well as I do that we've had Federalist societies spring up across the country in every law shcool in the last 30 years. They've produced some great legal minds. And Bush bypasses all that to appoint some spell-checking schoolmarm hack. And he was utterly shocked that supporters, especially those with legal backgrounds, were disgusted. It did show that he doesn't understand or care about restraint nor original intent. Bush had no problem putting another Sandra Day "In 25 years" O'Connor on the bench. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to appoint Alito.>

I respectfully point out to my less-informed fellow citizens that you always have one more choice on election day, and if enough of you exercise this option there are two possible outcomes. That option is the write-in vote.

The more likely outcome, if enough disgusted people use it, will be a wake-up call to both parties, especially the one that loses the race in which you wrote in. It will give fodder to the media, and will be talked about to the next election and beyond.

The less likely outcome is that you will succeed in actually electing someone not from either major party. Wouldn't that be something?

Get in there and vote. Force the poll workers to earn their free meals by having to count write-ins. Instead of a nebulous "none of the above" inference about the numbers of people not voting, give the statisticians direct evidence of your disgust.>

Franklin,

Did you not see the earlier post by someone who had been a polling-place worker -- perhaps it was on another thread -- to the effect that, unless a write-in vote was cast for someone who was a *recognized write-in candidate for that office in that election*, the voter's *entire ballot* would be discarded? I think that's a rather self-defeating way to try to make a point.

So if, say 1000 people cast ballots in a particular race (just using round figures for the sake of example), and 600 of them write in "Mickey Mouse" and the other 400 vote for, say, the incumbent, the incumbent won't lose to Mickey Mouse; rather, he will be unanimously re-elected by the voters *whose ballots are counted*.

I suppose the rules vary from one jurisdiction to another; but my mother worked in the voting booth for years when I was growing up, and I believe that they had the same rule: writing in someone other than a *recognized* write-in candidate for *that specific office* in *that specific election* was regarded as turning in a spoiled ballot, and the whole ballot was simply discarded.>

Don't vote, don't participate?

Doesn't that assume that the government is in the mind-reading business? Somehow the state rep, the city commissioner, the congressional rep will just know your position?

The honest truth is that for both parties, left and right, there are large number of districts where your candidate has zilch chance of getting elected. So why participate? This is especially true at the level of national or state-wide offices. Any one's vote seems too inconsequential.

The only place to be involved is at the local level where two benefits accrue:

First, you meet others who share your convictions. Sure you may lose, but it is a lot easier to do so in the company of others than in muttering to yourself watching the evening news, or taking the resentment to Sunday servcies.

Second, the local engagement can be a place to build a real political community, a place to see your efforts have an impact. This hands-on engagmement also provides the opportunity to inform our own political convictions. Idealism can blinker us to the real stuff that can be accomplished.

Disengage? As a Dem, I want to say sure, be my guest. As one engaged in electoral politics, I can only say,"what! are you crazy?">

Franklin,

Alas, a lot of it takes place in Philly.>

As an example of someone being a "recognized" write-in candidate, I remember a local election some years ago, where the incumbent county engineer was implicated in some sort of scandal (misappropriation of funds, or something) with just a month or two to go before the election. Someone decided to challenge him in thet election. It was too late for the challenger to be listed on the ballot, but he filed in time to be recognized by the Board of Elections as a legitimate candidate for the position, and voters were instructed that if they wanted to vote for him they had to write his name in a specific place on the ballot, together with the name of the office for which he was running.

He lost, but he came very close to winning.

PS -- I was living in Philadelphia during the 1987 Goode/Rizzo mayoral race, when people said, "Thank God only one of them can win!" Steve Lopez, former columnist for the Inkwire, referred to it as the race between the Evil of Two Lessers. ;-)>

Reader-

I heard Bush in each debate use word like "judicial restraint" and "original intent". But when he appointed Miers, it was clear he doens't understand the concepts. I found that disturbing. He doesn't really get it. He's saying things because he's been told to do it by advisers. I'd grant you-no politician is going to be conversant on every issue. But that he didn't recognize why Miers was so abysmal was genuinely scary.These are critical concepts that have been the central battle in American jurisprudence for 40+ years. And Bush acted like "what's the big deal?".

And when you
add his "family values don't stop at the Rio Grande" tripe,it feeds the impression that while President Bush has been successful, there aren't any deeply-held beliefs. He bumbles from one crisis to the next mostly totally dependent on advisors. And it's taken him very far. But increasingly the emperor has no clothes. And he doesn't really want to lead us anywhere than might make anyone think him a lousy dinner guest with the country club set.>

Bugg, where's your political cynicism? Miers was in no way a serious nominee. She was a sacrifice to the liberals, to let them feel good about getting a nominee s**tcanned. She paved the way for Roberts and Alito.

AA,

Thank you for a demon-stration of irrational analysis (demons) around something that doesn't exist (Democrats, or any human being really, cheering over death). You are truly the poster-person for the Republican's line of "trust us, we know what we are doing, and you have no need to watch as we do it." Oh, and by the way: what's the American body count in Iraq this month?>

Not to be pedantic, but the character who uttered the "Withdrawal in disgust" line in Linklater's great movie SLACKER wasn't Linklater himself- it was another character (I don't know the actor's name-- all of the characters in the movie are no-name actors anyway, which is part of the movie's charm). Linklater has a speaking role himself, but he's not the character who delivers the line in question.

And by the way, I agree with Dreher on this one. I'm tired of all of the hand-wringing over "voter apathy." I say don't vote-- it only encourages them.>

Bubba,

You're right, but you also read more into it than I intended. On that note, I could have been less vague in my original wording.

Besides, AA was referring to Democrats celebrating the abortion deaths. I don't find that to be quite human in either conception or delivery... if you'll forgive the puns.>