CONSERVATIVES SHOULDN’T CHOOSE BETWEEN TWEEDLE-BAD AND TWEEDLE-AWFUL

By Don Feder

Posted January 30, 2008

This may just be the year when conscientious conservatives decide sit out the election.

It’s a step not to be taken lightly.

The idea of a perfect conservative candidate is a dangerous illusion. As an old Democrat ward heeler once told me: “When you’re running for public office and look in the mirror, that’s when you’ll see a candidate you agree with completely.”

Most of us are willing to compromise. I voted for Bush in 2000, knowing full well that his “compassionate conservatism” wasn’t conservative at all, but big government with a smiley face. In the expectation that he would disappoint me, I was not disappointed.

As Barry Goldwater said at the 1960 Republican convention, in urging the right to unite behind Richard Nixon, “Grow up conservatives!” It is immature, to the point of petulance, to demand purity as the price of party loyalty.

Still, many conservatives – who’ve held their noses and supported the Republican nominee, in election after bloody election -- are now literally gagging.

The prospect of John McCain as the Republican nominee caused Rush Limbaugh to declare last week, “I can see possibly not supporting the Republican nominee this election, and I never thought that I would say that in my life.”

With Hillary or Obama as the alternative, this is not an easy decision, but one dictated by both conscience and common sense.

John McCain is a conservative’s worst nightmare – I mean other than George Soros being elected president.

In a January 25^th editorial, The New York Times – the Dark Tower of liberal Mordor – endorsed the Arizona Senator for the Republican nomination. (In a January 27^th column, Frank Rich, the Times’ capo of political correctness, who earlier was panting after Huckabee, is now telling Republicans that McCain is their best bet to retain the White House.)

Though admitting differences with McCain on issues like abortion and marriage (he nominally favors normal marriage, while voting against the federal Marriage Amendment) the Times lionized its favorite Republican:

“He was an early advocate for battling global warming (crippling the U.S. economy for a convenient lie) and risked his presidential bid to uphold fundamental American values (crime pays) in the immigration debate …. He has been a staunch advocate of campaign-finance reform (hamstringing the First Amendment while augmenting the power of the mainstream media), working with Senator Russ Feingold, among the most liberal of Democrats, on groundbreaking legislation, just as he worked with Senator Edward Kennedy on immigration reform,” the Times swooned.

The Manhattan edition of Pravda forgot to mention McRINO’s partnership with Joe Lieberman (who endorsed the Senator’s presidential bid) to impose a cap on industrial CO2 emissions which, if enacted, would amount to a tax of $660 billion to $2.1 trillion from 2012 to 2030.

McCain has a penchant for partnering with the far left. He feels more comfortable with members of the liberal Comintern than he does with the conservative movement or his Republican colleagues. (McCain was the only candidate for the GOP nomination to boycott last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.)

On the most momentous question confronting this nation (whether we will defend our borders or allow an alien invasion to redefine our identity), McCain is on the side of the ACLU, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the National Council of La Raza and his good bud Ted Kennedy.

He is Senor Amnesty, co-author of the bill that would have “regularized the status” of millions of illegal aliens, and sent millions currently south of the border heading north.

He also opposed an Arizona English initiative. (We wouldn’t want border-jumpers to feel uncomfortable by officially designating America an English-speaking nation.) Over the years, McCain has also opposed English-only ballots and supported bi-lingual education. Can I get an ole?

For all of his vaunted candor, the Arizonan has had one of those election-year epiphanies. He now says he supports border security – reflected in his rousing declaration, “I’ll build the G-d -damned fence, if they want it.” Now, isn’t that reassuring?

Just how cosmetic this is was reflected in last week’s news that McCain has appointed Juan Hernandez, who holds dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, to head Hispanic outreach for his campaign.

In 2001, Hernandez told ABC’s Nightline, in reference to Mexican “immigrants” in the United States, “I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’” This is a prescription for national suicide, but is very much in keeping with McCain’s insouciance when it comes to U.S. sovereignty.

McCain has spent the last 20 years shamelessly pandering to the establishment media. To call him their favorite Republican is like saying feminists are rather fond of Hillary or the Sierra Club is partial to Al Gore.

As the Times noted, McCain teamed up with another doctrinaire leftist, Russ Feingold, to perpetrate the latest Campaign Finance fraud. – McCain-Feingold, which protects incumbents from any discussion of their records within 60 days of a general election and 30 days of a primary.

In so doing, McCain, who claims he’s consistently pro-life, has made it impossible for defenders of the unborn to mention – oh, say a candidate’s support for partial-birth abortion, within two months of an election. That’s McCain’s great contribution to the pro-life cause.

McCain was part of the gang of 14 which blocked Senate Republicans, when they were still a majority, from changing the rules on judicial confirmations to prevent permanent filibusters by the friends of an activist judiciary.

Of course, under President McCain, the left wouldn’t have to filibuster. Potential nominees would be vetted by Kennedy and The New York Times editorial board before they were sent to the Senate.

So, what’s the case for voting Republican at all costs?

Democrats will raise taxes and increase spending.

Don’t look now, but under the current occupant of the White House, federal spending grew at the fastest rate in 30 years. McCain voted against the president’s modest tax cuts of 2001, and has called for a bi-partisan commission to “fix” Social Security, from which would inevitably come a hike in the payroll tax.

A Democrat in the White House will give the left a lifetime lock on the Supreme Court.

As my friend Gary Bauer points out, on inauguration day, 2009, six of nine Supreme Court justices will be over 69 years old. The next president will appoint at least two and perhaps as many as five members of the Supreme Court. Do we really want Hillary to make those choices? (Justice William Jefferson Clinton is not beyond the realm of imagining.)

Do the names Earl Warren, Harry Blackmun (author of Roe v. Wade), David Souter, Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor mean nothing? All of these enemies of the Constitution were appointed by Republican presidents (the latter two by Ronald Reagan, arguably the best president of the 20^th. century).

The current Republican president wanted to nominate his good friend, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as chief justice. (Focus on the Family and National Review said they’d fight that nomination tooth and nail.) He did nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers. (A conservative revolt caused the nomination to be withdrawn.) Each was a wild card who could have turned out to be another David Souter.

Giuliani (who’s poised to endorse McFraud) says he too would appoint “strict constructionists” to the federal bench – like his mayoral appointment of a municipal court judge who ruled city funds could be used for sex-change operations?

A Republican In Name Only in the White House guarantees we’ll have strict-constructionists in name only nominated to the federal judiciary.

In the age of terrorism, Hillary or Barack Hussein Obama as commander-in-chief is unthinkable.

Reagan excepted, Republicans have a less than stellar record here.

Nixon engineered the rapprochement with China. It’s likely we’ll be at war with the People’s Republic within a decade – a war which will be financed by U.S. consumers. (In 2007, our trade deficit with Beijing was $237 billion.)

Speaking of great moments in Republican diplomacy, in 1976, Ford didn’t know Poland was a communist country.

The current occupant of the White House insists Islam is a religion of peace (imagine Churchill calling Nazism the embodiment of brotherhood) and sees the creation of a Palestinian state as one of his lasting legacies -- it will be, in much the same way that Munich was Chamberlain’s. As part of our crusade to spread democracy in the Middle East, we seem determined to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East.

Those who think war-hero McCain will hit the ground running as commander-in-chief, need a cold dose of reality. Like the ACLU, the Arizonan wants to grant due-process rights to foreign terrorists. He would close Guantanamo and mainstream jihadists in the federal prison population. Given his multiculturalism, perhaps he’ll let them proselytize fellow inmates..

Do we want a commander-in-chief who needs therapy or medication – or both? A man who shouts “F--- you” at Senate colleagues and once called another Republican Senator who’d incurred his wrath an “a—hole” (in public, no less) – you don’t want his finger anywhere near the nuclear trigger.

A Democratic presidency would not be the end of the world as we know it, except for Republican lobbyists who sell access to the White House.

It would galvanize a conservative movement which often acts like a dog waiting to have its belly scratched when it comes to Republican presidents. In the past seven years, how much complaining about runaway spending and budget deficits have you heard on the right?

If a Democrat refused to defend our borders and let two brave Border Patrol agents rot in prison for shooting a drug smuggler, there would be calls for impeachment from the conservative movement, instead of incessant fundraising appeals.

Congressional Republicans would rediscover their manhood.

With a nominal Republican in the White House, it takes a minor miracle to get the party of the right to do the right thing. Party loyalty all too often trumps principle – witness NAFTA, No Child Left Behind and the administration’s current economic stimulus package, among other insanities.

Since 1964, Republicans have won seven of ten presidential elections.

An occasional Democrat in the White House may be necessary to remind the American people of what lies on the other side of the ideological divide – socialism, pacifism, Hollywood-Huffington Post values and treason. Without Carter in ’76, there would not have been Reagan in 1980.

We are at a crossroads. If Republicans nominate the wrong man this year, it could spell the end of the party. Like the Whigs and Federalists before them, the GOP will lumber toward the dead-party burial ground. Why should conservatives play make-believe to keep Republicans on life-support for a few years longer?

If you’re a conservative who decides on principle not to vote this year, don’t let them make you feel guilty. “Brave men have fought and died to secure your right to vote, and you’re throwing it away,” they’ll tell you. (More often, they fought to preserve the sovereignty politicians of both parties seem intent on throwing away.)

But those brave men also fought for our right to refuse to choose between tweedle-bad and tweedle-awful.

An earlier version of this commentary appeared at GrassTopsUSA.com