McCain

In a way I miss Jim Jeffords.

Gentleman Jim always gave the wife and I an excuse to watch the Vermont Senate debates on Vermont Public Television channel 33. The beauty of these debates is that all of the candidates are included. In addition to the Republican and Democratic candidates you would have:
* The Vermont Grassroots party: The agenda of this party is the legalization of pot. The funny thing here is that I am sure the Vermont Grassroots party candidate debated stoned. What a hoot.
* The Vermont Natural Law party: Meditation anybody
* The Liberty Union party: Bernie Sanders is a right winger
* The Libertarian Party: Actually these guys were normal and interesting

However when Jim Jeffords ran there would always be one conservative running who would be the vote of conscience. One year there were two, and my wife and I decided to split our votes (my guy won with 6% of the popular vote while her guy only got 1%).

When we lived in Maine we did the same thing with Olympia Snowe (except that you didn't have the gamut of candidates to choose for and the televised debates). One year I voted for a guy you wouldn't want as dogcatcher, but he wasn't Olympia.

And that's the purpose behind these conscience votes. You really don't want that clown you are voting for to get elected (they are obviously not up to the office). You are voting to send a message. If I vote for Ron Paul (or Huckabee) in the Vermont primary that nobody cares about, it is essentially the same type of vote.

And that is legitimate. I would never say that voting for a third party is wasting your vote because you know your guy is going to lose. Otherwise according to the same logic, voting for the 'R' candidate when the opposition is Patrick Leahy is also wasting your vote.

I guess what I am trying to say is this. I understand voting on principle rather than party. I understand that there is a time and a place to vote for a third party candidate as opposed to a candidate of your party who might be only marginally better than the candidate of the other party. I have voted that way myself. Several times.

It is just that I am not sure that now is the time and that McCain is the candidate to do this on.

Now my family remembers with fondness my talk radio stage. When travelling to pick up my kids from school, they remember with fondness listening to either Rush between 12 and 3 or either Sean Hannity or Howie Carr between 3 and 6. Although I don't listen to talk radio as much as I used to (I prefer the Classical Music stations), once and a while I tune in to see what they are up to.

They are now going nuts at the prospect of John McCain being the 'R' nominee. They are saying that there is not a dimes worth of difference between him and Hillary. They rattle off the list of known transgressions (campaign finance, immigration, global warming, etc).

What they don't point out is this.

If I were to hold their favorite (Romney) up to the same standard they impose upon McCain, he should be equally unacceptible if I were to judge on the basis of his record in Massachusetts (see abortion and universal health care for example). Thus they have double standard.

By any metric that independently and impartially weighs the record based on a large number of votes (instead of cherry picked ones), McCain falls as a moderate/conservative. Last year McCain scored a 65 on the American Conservative Union rating metric. The year before he scored an 80. His comparables were noted liberals like Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Richard Lugar of Indiana. Not Hillary Clinton of New York and Barak Obama of Illinois (who scored about an 8).

And it is not that the Republican party is dealing from a position of strength here. From any polls that I have read, both Clinton and Obama kick donkey over any Republican candidate not named McCain. At the same time, McCain and both Democratic candidates are virtually tied.

I remember Florida of 2000 where the Ralph Nader voters essentially delivered that state to Bush. I wonder rather these Nader voters wish they could have their votes back.

I am sorry, but if Nader 2.x is where Rush is going, then Rush is wrong on this one.

However, that all having been said, it is entirely possible that I will vote third party this November if there is a third party candidate I like better than McCain. The reason for this is the state I live in. One day I figured out that under the electoral college my vote does not really count. Neither do the votes of 80% of Americans who live in clear red or blue states count.

My vote does not directly decide the Presidential race. My vote only decides what electors Vermont contributes to decide the Presidential race. If Vermont were to send red electors, this race would already be decided in an electoral rout for the Republican party. If this election is close, Vermont will be a decidedly blue state.

Since that is the reality living in Vermont, I figure that I am free to vote for the person I like the most and not worry about a vote for a third party being really a vote for the opponent. So if I really like the Libertarian party candidate (meaning Ron Paul is running as a Libertarian) or Constitution party candidate I would have no qualms about voting for them. It doesn't really matter.