Stop Bargaining with your Principles. [krakatoa]

This is from email with some of the other guest bloggers (GOBs?) and COBs. One was very much concerned about the prospect of a Clinton or Sanders filling out several SCOTUS chairs, so finding himself in the bargaining stage about who he could find himself voting for.

With some minor modifications I submit it here.

I used to find myself bargaining with my principles in presidential elections, all the way up to McCain winning the nomination in a primary season that opened my eyes to what appeared to be the orchestration of both the RNC establishment and the MSM to get the candidate they preferred. McCain was floundering against far more conservative candidates early, and suddenly the hard questions died down, the other candidates were set against one-another, and he ended up being the most "electable" candidate. Hmm. That tactic ring any bells?

At that point, I decided that it was finally time to simply stick to my principles, come what may.

I was excoriated plenty for that stance. "No vote for McCain is a vote for Obama" and all that.

But of course now, we all know what I said then: That McCain was a lying scumbag who couldn't be trusted to keep what few campaign vows he was making to the right. That his record was increasingly leftist, increasingly statist, and his view on American military power was the embodiment of the caricature the Left made everyone on the Right out to be. We know now that a vote for McCain would have simply been yet another vote for delaying the inevitable slide for this country into socialism, as McCain is a big-government neoaristocrat who cares little for the people who wanted their "damn fence."

My hope of course, was that after a predictably disastrous first Obama term we could nominate a Conservative to run against him and clean the floor. Instead we got Romney. While no McCain in terms of completely unearned ego as a statesman or the earned reputation as a Yosemite Sam of foreign affairs, a paragon of Conservative virtue he was not; and he was, on paper, decidedly a relatively easy win for Obama and the Media.

Rubio can't even go so far as to promise a fence. Amnesty in any form is the final state-sponsored sublimation of the cultural heritage our forefathers granted us. Sure he makes a passionate appeal, but if he is a true believer in the power of American soil alone being the incubator of free-market Conservatism, big (R) Republican values and fealty to the real words of the Constitution; and if he likewise believes non-assimilative entry to U.S. citizenship the best antidote to the far-left values illegal immigrants are bringing into the country, then he is worse than a blatant liar farcically claiming Gang of 8 was some sort of 3rd dimensional chess move: He is dangerously deluded and unfit for office.

I think he believes none of that though. I think Rubio, like McCain and Obama (and many many others), is simply another political opportunist willing to say just enough to win an election. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that prior to becoming Senator he was principled. But he was quickly and rather decisively corrupted, and simply has no record I can trust.

Trump's stated positions on so many issues through the years have been predominantly leftist and often at odds with whatever next comes out of his mouth, and his few positions he seems firm on (deportation, halting Muslim immigration) are populist cant with only the power of his pen to make happen.

How far will that pen go against the concerted efforts of the Dems and Chamber of Commerce Republicans? And what of the unceasing effort by both parties to flood this country with H1B visa holders, taking jobs from Americans who were simply unaware they just didn't want to do those jobs? Trump certainly holds no high-ground on this topic.

Contra those who lump most anti-Trump sentiment in with the Establishment "intellectual" class, there isn't a bit of snobbery in my opinion of Trump. God knows, I am the last person to be snobby about anything. I'm just a realist who refuses to buy the snake-oil any longer in the hopes that this time, it really can do what it says on the label. And this particular label has a whole lot of ingredients that are really bad for me.

So yes, I've been there, bargaining with my principles in support of the last man standing. I supported W (in no small part due to my utter contempt for McCain), and even his dad. But that was then. I got jaded to see the ratchet just continue to move one click right, 3 clicks left, tightening the chains of the state around us all. Every vote for the lesser of two evils "electable" "moderate" candidate is that click to the right. At the very best it validates the Establishment's belief that Conservatives will just fall in line and support whoever their chosen candidate is. At worst it becomes the ratification via Executive inaction of the previous 3 clicks to the left.

I'm not saying I'm smarter. I'm not saying I know better. I've just learned that choosing the lesser of two evils only ends up delivering the rationalizing away of one supposed rock-solid principle after another. When you keep on deciding this isn't the hill to die on, you will inevitably find yourself fighting in a trench hoping your last principle will simply be able to die with some semblance of dignity. But there is bloody little dignity to be found there in the mud and the blood, right?

So yeah, the SCOTUS may go full leftist. They may overturn every 2nd amendment ruling over the past several years. They may decree that every child is a ward of the state to be molded or disposed of as the state sees fit.

But then they and their Leftist brethren will own all that, and they will have to enforce it. At some point, the states will either reclaim their constitutional authority, or... well, the people will claim it for them and it will be far uglier before it gets better.

But, and this is key: It will get better. I truly believe there can be no progress without struggle. We have gotten to this sad point in a very large degree due to our collective craving for comfort. But there are still enough liberty-loving people in this country to reclaim our own space, whatever mechanism is required to achieve that.

I see a vote for Rubio or Trump at this point to be a vote for comfort , over doing the very hard things necessary to reverse the tide of Socialism that is rapidly rising.

Like I said during McCain's farce of a campaign: I'm done with the slow slide.

I'll vote my principles. My generation and those of my parents and theirs pissed away the American heritage choosing comfort. We systematically bargained away our liberties for the lesser of two evils and refused to vigorously defend the American culture post WW2.

We are a Greek tragedy played on the largest stage: A shining state of hope and opportunity; a nation of inimitable, unprecedented strength and the envy of the world in every conceivable way, brought low not by external enemies, but our own unwillingness to defend the fundamental principles that granted us our lofty position. We refuse to teach history, much less learn it, and so we have marched ourselves well down the road to post-modern irrelevance.

Yes, Cruz most likely isn't going to win. Courtesy of yet another primary manipulated by the R-establishment & the media who unflinchingly calls a lie anything that factually represents what another preferred candidate literally said, and also thanks to some relatively minor missteps by his campaign staff that would literally be yesterday's news the moment they hit were those missteps to occur by a Dem or by Rubio.

Yes, Cruz's ego doesn't take a back-seat to anyone else's. But at least he's got the right enemies, and he's an eloquent defender of the Constitution.

So short an absolute implosion by Trump which seemed likely a year ago and completely unlikely now, Cruz is finished. He can't win a 3 man race with Trump & Rubio.

But neither Trump nor Rubio get my vote by default.

Could either of them get my vote? While I never say never, it would require some very unambiguous, public, and consistent statements in support of the principles I hold very dearly. It is difficult to imagine either of them making those sorts of promises, much less keeping them.

I'll continue to vote my principles, or not vote at all. I owe no allegiance to an organization that treats me with such contempt, and has demonstrated no remorse over lying to me repeatedly.