Waaaaaaah. Voting for your "principles" is so hard!

Waaaaaaah. Voting for your "principles" is so hard!

Perhaps no other election has posed such a difficult personal decision for some conservatives: How do you vote if you're ideologically conservative, but you're benefiting, or stand to benefit, from the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"?

What a quandary You really have to wonder just how stupid a voter has to be to believe this is a difficult personal decision. Gosh, I sure hate that Obama fella, but I love his policies even though they're the kind of big-government socialism I supposedly can't stand. What should I do? Tough call. Very tough call. You almost have to feel sorry for someone who is so torn by wanting to vote against the black guy, but not wanting to lose all the goodies the black guy has made possible for you.

Like this guy:



[Jon] Campbell, 49, has voted Republican in nearly every presidential election since he cast his vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, but this year might be different. For two years his 22-year-old stepdaughter, a self-employed dog trainer, didn't have health insurance. Then Obamacare kicked in and she was allowed onto her father's insurance. [...] The Olathe, Kansas, resident is leaning toward Obama, but not just because of his stepdaughter. Campbell's wife, Barbara, has diabetes and is in the final stages of breast cancer treatment. She's now on his insurance, but if he ever lost his job, his wife would be faced with trying to buy insurance on her own and would surely be rejected.

"I'm really torn," he said. "Because of Obama, I now have a wife who can get covered. But really, at heart, I'm a limited-government kind of guy." Campbell said if the election were held today, he'd vote for Obama, but not without a lot of reservations. "It's really an intriguing conundrum," he said.

So does Jon Campbell stick a big Obama sign in his yard and then get down on his knees and thank the president for the very thing that is keeping both his wife and step-daughter insured and alive? Hell no, because socialism!You have to hope that Obamacare also covers treatment for the kind of severe cognitive dissonance from which this man suffers. He acknowledges that "because of Obama," his sick wife gets the medical attention she needs that she would not otherwise get but for Obama. Yet, it's a "conundrum" because, well, this astute political observer is a "limited-government kind of guy," which apparently means he thinks it's terrific that his family has health care, but he'd prefer the government stay small and limited and not help any other families get health care. So if he votes for the guy who wants to get rid of health care, he can really stick it to his fellow Americans. On the other hand, his wife might die.

What a conundrum!

At least he has his fellow Republicans to join him in this tough pickle of a decision—like Jill Thacker, who has a pre-existing condition that makes comprehensive insurance prohibitively expensive and is still paying off a $22,000 emergency room bill from a year ago. You know, that "free" emergency room health care Mitt Romney says is just fine for people who aren't rich like him. Sure, Obamacare makes Jill Thacker's life better. It allows her 25-year-old daughter to have insurance too. But, on the other hand, "she just doesn't like Obama."

So while some Republicans like Thacker and Powell are considering voting for the guy they don't like, others know that no matter what, they won't vote for him. Because nothing says "Suck it, Obama!" like voting for the guy who will let you and your loved ones die from lack of health care because freedom.