as I noted at the time<\/a>, to try to use my one little vote to drive the presumptive front-runner, Romney, to the right. \u00a0I’ve got nothing against Santorum, but he’s not my ideal candidate.<\/p>\nNeither were any of the other candidates we’ve been through over this past few months – Huntsman, Johnson, Cain, Perry, Pawlenty, Bachmann, Paul, Gingrich, Santorum or Romney. \u00a0None of them were perfect, by the litmus tests that drive the all-important “Mitch Berg” vote; every one of them had something <\/em>that kept me from jumping onto the bandwagon.<\/p>\nBut let’s be clear – every single one of them would have been a better President than Barack Obama. \u00a0Even if they had a stroke.<\/p>\n
My various Newt and Paul supporter friends have been bending my hear with talk of “principle” when it comes to picking the nominee – libertarian princples embodied by Paul, conservative principles re Gingrich, all juxtaposed with Romney’s purported lack of them.<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding the idea that a committed Mormon lacks “princples”, I have to say I agree with both of ’em; princples are a good thing and, at some level, if you really have <\/em>princples, they are non-negotiable.<\/p>\nBut the one ultimate non-negotiable\u00a0principle\u00a0– at least as re my politics as opposed to my theology, and yes, I draw a wide black line between the two – is “doing what’s right for America”.<\/p>\n
And so even though Mitt Romney isn’t <\/em>the perfect conservative, he’s better than Obama. \u00a0Not just a little better, but much much much better. \u00a0Go ahead, Ronulans – make my day, argue with me about whether they are or are not the same thing. \u00a0They are not.<\/em><\/p>\nAnd so I’m going to pull like hell for the imperfect guy we (apparently) got, and reserve a special circle in rhetorical hell for those who say they’ll sit this election out because “their guy” didn’t get the nod.<\/p>\n
Making America worth saving is the real principle here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So Santorum is out. I caucused for Santorum two months ago – mostly, as I noted at the time, to try to use my one little vote to drive the presumptive front-runner, Romney, to the right. \u00a0I’ve got nothing against Santorum, but he’s not my ideal candidate. Neither were any of the other candidates we’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-12","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27389,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27387\/revisions\/27389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}