A few days ago, Chris (to no one's surprise) endorsed John McCain for President. At the time he asked me to do my own endorsement post. I told him I was still thinking about it. My initial intention was to endorse the Libertarian Party candidate, Bob Barr - even though many think it's a wasted vote & honestly, I do have some reservations about Mr. Barr (albeit considerably less than I do for Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama), I still felt I should remain committed to my ideals even if for a lost cause.
Then yesterday, I read an article by Radley Balko on the Fox News website and it really struck a chord with me. You see, I used to vote Republican. Even though I believed in the libertarian ideal, I felt that you had to work within the system you had to make changes - and of the two major parties, at least the Republicans were the "small government" party. They were the ones who wouldn't try to be your Nanny or your parent - they believed people should be self-reliant whenever possible & government intervention should be kept to a minimum. True they held some platform positions on social issues I wasn't comfortable with (pro-life, anti-gay for instance) but for the most part they believed, as I did, that regulations for those type of social issues should be made, if at all, on a local level and based on the preferences of the voters in the local area.
After Ronald Reagan's presidency, something happened to the Republican Party. Little by little they gave up the mantle of "limited government" and became the same kind of bloated government bureaucracy as the Democrats. By 2004 my disillisionment with the Republicans was complete and I voted for Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party candidate for President. I knew that living in New York - especially in New York City - I could have voted for Mickey Mouse and it wouldn't have mattered, since John Kerry was a done deal for New York, so it was my own little protest. Maybe meaningless in the bigger picture but meaningful to me.
Radley Balko has apparently had a similar journey and his recent article holds the position that the Republicans need to lose this election this year, if only to send them a message.
I grew up in a particularly conservative part of the already conservative state of Indiana. I voted for Bob Dole in 1996 and George Bush in 2000, generally because — though I'm not a conservative (I'm a libertarian) — I'd always thought the GOP was the party of limited government. By 2002, I was less sure of that. And by 2004, I was so fed up with the party that I did what I thought I'd never do — vote for an unabashed leftist for president.
Since then, "fed up" has soured to "given up." The Republican Party has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government. In the last eight years, the GOP has given us a monstrous new federal bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. In the prescription drug benefit, it's given us the largest new federal entitlement since the Johnson administration. Federal spending — even on items not related to war or national security — has soared. And we now get to watch as the party that's supposed to be "free market" nationalizes huge chunks of the economy's financial sector.
This isn't to say that Barack Obama would be any better. Government would undoubtedly grow under his watch. And from my libertarian perspective, he has been increasingly disappointing even on the issues where he's supposed to be good. We may not go to war with Iran in an Obama administration, but we'd likely become entrenched in a prolonged nation-building adventure in the Sudan. Obama's vote on the FISA bill and telecom immunity also suggests that, for all his criticisms of President Bush's use of executive power and assaults on civil liberties, Obama wouldn't be much better. On the drug war, Obama has promised to end the federal raids on medical marijuana clinics in states that have legalized the drug for treatment, but he wants to resurrect failed federal criminal justice block grant programs that have had some disastrous effects on civil liberties.
While I'm not thrilled at the prospect of an Obama administration (especially with a friendly Congress), the Republicans still need to get their clocks cleaned in two weeks, for a couple of reasons.
First, they had their shot at holding power, and they failed. They've failed in staying true to their principals of limited government and free markets. They've failed in preventing elected leaders of their party from becoming corrupted by the trappings of power, and they've failed to hold those leaders accountable after the fact. Congressional Republicans failed to rein in the Bush administration's naked bid to vastly expand the power of the presidency (a failure they're going to come to regret should Obama take office in January). They failed to apply due scrutiny and skepticism to the administration's claims before undertaking Congress' most solemn task — sending the nation to war. I could go on.
As for the Bush administration, the only consistent principle we've seen from the White House over the last eight years is that of elevating the American president (and, I guess, the vice president) to that of an elected dictator. That isn't hyperbole. This administration believes that on any issue that can remotely be tied to foreign policy or national security (and on quite a few other issues as well), the president has boundless, limitless, unchecked power to do anything he wants. They believe that on these matters, neither Congress nor the courts can restrain him.
That's the second reason the GOP needs to lose. American voters need to send a clear, convincing repudiation of these dangerous ideas.
I strongly recommend you read the whole thing here.
So, I'm still not ready to "endorse" Barack Obama - but I'm going to vote for him & I think you should too.
(Now, you'll excuse me while I go pack up my stuff - because Chris is probably going to throw me out!)
