Mitt Romney is no conservative.<\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t a question in my mind that under a President Romney, America will continue down the same road that our elected (and unelected) government office holders have been dragging her from at least the time of the last half of the nineteenth century. Yet the rate of decline under Romney promises to be slower than it will be under Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And if we thought Obama was a \u201ctransformative\u201d president in his first term, just wait until his second.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I argued recently that for this reason, the lover of liberty must see to it that Obama is defeated.<\/p>\n
Though far from ideal, the only remotely viable option available to liberty lovers this Election Day is Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n
To this proposition, many of my fellow Ron Paul supporters and facebook friends took unequivocal exception.\u00a0 Our current dilemma is a result of just that \u201cchoose the lesser of two evils\u201d approach that I appear to be recommending, several people insisted.\u00a0 One person went so far as to charge me with being a \u201chypocrite\u201d and a \u201ctraitor.\u201d\u00a0 Another suggested that everything that I have written up to this juncture is now suspect in her eyes. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Let me reiterate: neither my last article nor this one should be confused with an apology for Mitt Romney.\u00a0 The former Massachusetts governor, politically speaking, is a modern \u201cliberal\u201d or, maybe, a neoconservative (for all practical purposes, a distinction without a difference).\u00a0 I would have chosen\u2014and, in fact, did <\/em>choose\u2014Ron Paul hands down over Romney and any other Republican\u2014a fact born out by the countless hours I invested in arguing inexhaustibly on the Texas Congressman\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n My position is not <\/em>pro-Romney.\u00a0 It is resolutely anti-Obama.\u00a0 <\/em>And it is anti-Obama for the same reason that it was\u2014and remains\u2014pro-Paul: the love of liberty demands it.<\/p>\n Ron Paul is not going to be the GOP nominee.\u00a0 No apostle of liberty will achieve that distinction. And with the possible exception of Paul, who already made it clear that he will retire from politics by season\u2019s end, no so-called Third Party candidate will hold so much as the proverbial snowball\u2019s chance in hell of altering the outcome of this election.<\/p>\n That leaves Romney.<\/p>\n But, my fellow Paul supporters protest, a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil.\u00a0 This makes a great bumper sticker slogan, but once we engage in just a modicum of thought, its surface plausibility dissolves before our minds.<\/p>\n The Republican Party <\/em>is a party of evil.\u00a0 <\/em>Those of Paul\u2019s supporters who now berate me for advocating evil by throwing in behind Romney (but, more importantly, against <\/em>Obama), must believe this.\u00a0 Many have explicitly said as much.\u00a0 However, what this entails is that if I <\/em>am a moral fraud and traitor for abetting evil by voting for Romney, then Ron Paul <\/em>is at least as guilty of the same.\u00a0 After all, for decades he has hitched his political career to this party of evil.\u00a0<\/p>\n No, no, no, I will be told, Paul is trying to change the GOP from within.\u00a0 This and only this is the reason for his decision to run for Congress and the Presidency, not as an Independent, but a Republican.\u00a0<\/p>\n This will not wash.<\/p>\n First, if by voting for Romney I become complicit in the evil of his policies, then by becoming a Republican Ron Paul makes himself an accomplice to the evil of his party\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n Second, I too am trying to change the GOP.\u00a0 I am also trying to change my country.\u00a0 In the short term, I aim to accomplish this by retarding, however slightly, the decline that Obama has facilitated.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n I mention Ron Paul and his decision to identify as a Republican, but perhaps his son Rand is a more illustrative example of the sorts of points that I seek to make.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rand, too, has collaborated with evil by becoming a Republican, no?\u00a0 Worst\u2014horror of horrors!\u2014Rand has said that in the event that his father doesn\u2019t secure his party\u2019s nomination, he would <\/em>indeed endorse the GOP candidate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is Rand Paul a hypocrite and a traitor?\u00a0 Should everything that he has said and done on behalf of liberty now be dismissed because of this?\u00a0<\/p>\n In the real world, as opposed to the utopian imaginings of my critics, advancing one\u2019s interests, whether in the political or non-political realms, always involves compromises and concessions of various sorts.\u00a0 Is Thomas Jefferson\u2014a man who figures to no slight extent for Paul supporters\u2014a fraud, a hypocrite, and a traitor to the cause of liberty because he owned slaves?\u00a0 It is true that Jefferson and other Founders argued relentlessly against the institution of human bondage, but they also made concessions to its defenders that insured the maintenance of slavery for nearly another 80 years.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n It may be an exaggeration to say that every choice is a choice between two evils, but, if so, it is not that <\/em>much of an exaggeration.\u00a0\u00a0 Every choice definitely consists of the loss of something of value.<\/p>\n Paul supporters should remember this\u2014especially given that they have been supporting a candidate who has been a member of an evil political party for decades.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mitt Romney is no conservative. There isn\u2019t a question in my mind that under a President Romney, America will continue down the same road that our elected (and unelected) government office holders have been dragging her from at least the time of the last half of the nineteenth century. Yet the rate of decline under…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n