Every presidential election season, those of us who find ourselves less than enthused regarding the GOP\u2019s potential nominees\u2014conservatives\u2014are invariably castigated by politicians and pundits alike as \u201cpurists.\u201d\u00a0 We are unrealistic, we are told by the self-styled champions of \u201cconservative values\u201d\u2014the Anti-Purists\u2014in expecting an \u201cideal candidate.\u201d\u00a0 We are reminded furthermore that should we decide to sit out the election or cast a \u201cprotest\u201d vote, we will, in effect, have casted a vote for the Democratic contender.\u00a0 When, as is usually the case, disenchantment with the Republican candidate stems from the perception that he or she is a bit too accommodating of \u201cabortion rights,\u201d the conservative is scolded for being a \u201cone-issue\u201d voter.<\/p>\n
We who wish to stay the leftward drift in which our country has been caught up for far too long need to grasp one crucial point: each of the foregoing claims is baseless.\u00a0 In fact, so great is the difficulty in accepting that anyone genuinely believes them, it is tempting to call them lies. <\/em><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know of anyone who has ever endorsed anyone who he could in good faith characterize as his ideal <\/em>candidate; and I would be willing to bet anything that neither have the self-appointed guardians of Republican \u201cconservative\u201d orthodoxy ever encountered anyone fitting this description.\u00a0 That a person refuses to vote for someone who fails to remotely approximate his ideal of a candidate doesn\u2019t mean that he refuses to vote unless and until a candidate runs who perfectly embodies that ideal.\u00a0 There is nothing \u201cpurist\u201d about such a person.<\/p>\n By abstaining to vote Republican, one does indeed make it easier for Democrats to win.\u00a0 But this is what philosophers call a tautology: it is trivially true and, thus, insufficiently enlightening. In other words: so what?\u00a0 Presumably, it is precisely because the disaffected Republican thinks that the GOP candidate is virtually indistinguishable from his Democratic rival that he refrains from voting in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Anti-Purist will object that while the Republican may very well be far from ideal, he or she isn\u2019t as likely to undercut \u201cconservative values\u201d as the Democrat.\u00a0 Thus, it makes no sense for a conservative not to vote for the Republican.\u00a0<\/p>\n This objection, unfortunately, isn\u2019t nearly as sensible as first glance may suggest.\u00a0 In fact, the conservative has a counter-objection ready at hand.\u00a0 The conservative need only reply that, in the long-term<\/em>\u2014and it is the long-term with which we are all, in the long-term, concerned, correct?\u2014his vision for his country stands a greater chance of being implemented if the Republican actually loses <\/em>the next election.\u00a0 After all, if the Anti-Purist isn\u2019t guilty of compromising his beliefs by voting for a Republican that doesn\u2019t share them, then the conservative isn\u2019t guilty of compromising his <\/em>by acting in a way that could lead to a Democrat victory.<\/p>\n For as disastrous a president as Barack Obama undeniably is, had John McCain been elected in 2008, chances are not too shabby that the backlash against \u201cBig Government\u201d that we have witnessed during the last two years and emblematized by the Tea Party would not have occurred.\u00a0 This wouldn\u2019t have been because of any commitment on McCain\u2019s part to Constitutional principles; McCain has no such commitment.\u00a0 But because he isn\u2019t quite as far to the left as Obama, and because he is a Republican and any resistance to further consolidation of the federal government\u2019s power is only going to derive from those already disposed to sympathize with the GOP\u2019s platform, McCain\u2019s Big Government philosophy would have persisted unchallenged.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet there is an even juicier counter-response at the conservative\u2019s disposal.\u00a0 Ultimately, he can say, it isn\u2019t his decision to sit out the next election that may account for the Republicans\u2019 loss; it is the Republicans\u2019 betrayal of their own plank and, hence, their constituents, that explain their opponents\u2019 win.\u00a0 And this is the truth.<\/p>\n Finally, there is this business of the conservative\u2019s being a \u201cone-issue\u201d voter.\u00a0 It is true that for everyone there are some issues that weigh more heavily than others.\u00a0 Yet it is equally true that the Anti-Purist is no less a \u201cone-issue\u201d voter than the conservative. All that differentiates him from the object of his criticism is the content of his concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n The issue that matters most to the Anti-Purist is foreign-policy related.\u00a0 It goes by different names: American Exceptionalism, American Interventionism, and, most recently, the War on Terror.\u00a0 The various names notwithstanding, the Anti-Purist knows exactly what he wants: the Democratization of the non-democratic world.\u00a0 As the example of Ron Paul makes abundantly clear, the Anti-Purist promises to be astronomically more tenacious toward a Republican who lacks this <\/em>desire than he would ever think of being toward his Democratic rivals.\u00a0 Indeed, Democrats<\/em> aren\u2019t as ruthless toward Republicans generally as the Anti-Purist is ruthless toward those Republicans devoid of his enthusiasm for militarily-driven projects to promote \u201cAmerican values\u201d around the globe.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is high time for conservatives to expose the Anti-Purists for who they are.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published\u00a0in The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every presidential election season, those of us who find ourselves less than enthused regarding the GOP\u2019s potential nominees\u2014conservatives\u2014are invariably castigated by politicians and pundits alike as \u201cpurists.\u201d\u00a0 We are unrealistic, we are told by the self-styled champions of \u201cconservative values\u201d\u2014the Anti-Purists\u2014in expecting an \u201cideal candidate.\u201d\u00a0 We are reminded furthermore that should we decide to sit…<\/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-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n