A few months ago, I was resigned to voting for Senator McCain out of a moral obligation to oppose, as effectively as possible, the election of Senator Obama. I reasoned that Senator McCain was more likely to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would, given the opportunity, vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus allowing the states once again to outlaw the crime of abortion. Several things have happened since then, though, to change my mind. Here are the ones that stand out:
1. In light of increasingly unfavorable polls, Senator McCain has pulled his campaign out of Michigan. He has given up on the one-time battleground state in which I am now registered to vote. If Senator McCain has decided that my state is a lost cause, why should I waste my vote on a candidate that I dislike to begin with and who is now a guaranteed loser in my state?
2. Senator McCain is not the boon to the anti-abortion cause that I had thought that he was. In last week's debate he claimed that he would not impose a pro-life "litmus test" (an expression that has become one of my pet peeves!) on any potential appointees to the Supreme Court. He weakly, reluctantly, and unconvincingly added that support for the bad law inherent in the Roe v. Wade decision might render a candidate unqualified, but the gist of his statement was that liberals needn't worry that he'd be too much of a stickler on the whole question. I seriously doubt that, given the opportunity, Senator McCain would appoint the kinds of justices we need.
3. We actually don't even need justices appointed to end the federal ban on state bans of abortion! Congressman Ron Paul's Sanctity of Life Act would constitutionally (Article III, Section 2) restrict the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction on the question of abortion. We can end abortion in this country through congress, not just the Supreme Court via the Presidency!
4. I was at first enthusiastic about Governor Palin, but in the last few weeks I've become convinced that the liberals are actually right about her being unqualified for the Presidency, and she has heartily embraced all that I dislike about Senator McCain. Both she and Senator McCain support tightening federal regulation of the economy. (By the way, it irritates me so much how government intervention in our economy, especially in the monetary supply, has cause our present financial crisis, and now the media, together with both major candidates and their running mates, claim that the crisis was caused by too little government intervention! Now there will be more and more of a push toward socialism in this country, which will make things worse and worse, and all the while they can claim that it was a failure of the "free market"--which we don't really even have--that made such extreme economic lengths necessary...)
So what does this all mean? I now plan to vote for Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate (U.S. Taxpayers' Party candidate on the Michigan ballot) who has been endorsed by Congressman Ron Paul, who supports the Sanctity of Life Act, who respects the Constitution's restrictions on the power and extent of the federal government, and who recognizes the value of sound money (i.e. no fiat currency issued by the Federal Reserve--only gold and silver coinage!). He won't win (barring a miracle, and there is precedent for that), but at least my vote will count. If I vote for Senator McCain, my vote will be lost among the millions who will vote for a candidate who will lose in Michigan anyway. If I vote for Chuck Baldwin, then if I accomplish nothing else, at least I will add to the number of those who have expressed their dissatisfaction with what both major parties have been offering us.
Would anyone like to try to convince me otherwise? Please feel free.
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I agree in many ways with what you say. I'm inclined to be more positive about Palin, in large part since I think she's been a rather good governor in Alaska and she has proven that, if given a specific problem to look at, she can do her research pretty quickly and thus become informed about things that she previously didn't know. However, I'm also a huge proponent of "sending a message" to the major parties by voting third party. In fact, if enough people vote third party, a major candidate who otherwise might have won could very well lose a state. This will force his party to look at why it happened, and hopefully it will inspire reform toward more reasonable (more lawful, less treasonous, what have you) policies.
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