Republicans edge closer to inevitable choice of Romney to face Obama

By David McElroy · January 11, 2012

I’ve never met a Mitt Romney fan in person. They obviously exist — because I see evidence of them on TV and they show up to vote for the man — but I don’t talk to real people who admit to having any enthusiasm for the guy. So why is he going to win the GOP nomination?

The short answer is that he’s the guy who most Republicans see as the least-offensive available candidate who can defeat Barack Obama. That’s not a very high standard to set, but given what most voters believe, it was almost inevitable for Romney to win.

The question I have for Romney voters is what they would hope to achieve by replacing Obama with Romney. Other than the color of their skin and their party affiliation, what are the substantial differences between the men? They certainly pander to different people with their rhetoric, but on the issues of substance, I can’t see that they’re much different. Can you?

The question I have for supporters of the social conservatives in the race — Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry — what do you hope to gain by supporting Romney as your eventual nominee? Does he stand for what you believe? Or do you simply hate Obama so much that you’ll support anyone else?

Most importantly, I have a question for Ron Paul supporters. What are you going to have to show for all of the time, money and effort you’ve poured into this campaign? The overall percentage of people who believe what we believe (or some form of it) isn’t going to change as a result of the campaign. It’s still going to be around 10 percent. When are you going to be ready to give up on the coercive state?

I’ve regularly had Paul supporters tell me — very confidently — that I’m wrong to say Paul can’t win. I’ve outlined my reasons why he can’t win and I’ve also outlined why I won’t be voting for him (or anybody else). But I’ve given up on trying to argue with Paul believers about the issue. Some tell me honestly that they know he can’t win, but they believe it’s worth it to “educate” people. (That doesn’t work in any substantial numbers, even though you won’t believe me about that, either.) But many of his supporters have honestly believed that he could win. It was always fantasy.

I’m only bringing this up to ask if it isn’t time to accept reality. The reality is that the vast majority of people don’t want a libertarian society (or any version of an anarchist one). Seriously. They don’t. They don’t trust us when we tell them that it would be better than what we have. They think we’re crazy for believing it would be. All of your high-powered logic isn’t going to change their minds.

So are you going to spend the rest of your life begging people to choose individual liberty as a political path? Are you going to keep thinking that this time it might be different? If the majority don’t get why freedom is better and more moral, they’re not going to suddenly change their minds — at least not in substantial numbers. The democratic system is only going to produce one thing. It’s going to keep producing people who want to control your money and control your life. That’s what the majority want. Honest.

So since we know what they want — and it’s clear that your beautiful logic and hard work and begging aren’t going to change that — why not consider searching for an alternative? Why not at least consider that maybe — just maybe — there could be a future that doesn’t involve elections and coercive governments telling people what they must do?

I believe there are alternatives — multiple ideas that different ones of us are going to try. (Many of us are trying to figure out which one works best for us.) But even if you don’t believe there’s a workable alternative, since it’s obvious that other people don’t want what we want — and it’s obvious that your political work is all in vain — wouldn’t it be smart to withdraw from the system and concentrate on real life? Wouldn’t it be smarter to be figuring out how to protect yourself and your family as things get worse?

There’s no return on a political investment. There is a return on the investments you make in real life — your family and in your financial future. Aren’t those investments worth more than whatever time or money you’ve wasted on a campaign that’s not going to change a things?

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When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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