William F. Buckley was a very smart man. He is credited with almost single handedly rebuilding the Republican Party as a conservative movement after the defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964. Unlike a lot of smart people, Buckley was also pragmatic. Early on he coined The Buckley Rule which is “Support the most conservative candidate who is electable.”
Which is what I want all of my libertarian and conservative friends and readers to think about when it’s time to vote in the primaries and in November.
The goal is not ideological purity, as much as we’d like that. If we could even agree what it meant. Which we can’t because we are humans, which is what politics is all about.
The goal is to unelect a very bad President, one who undermines everything that America has stood for since it’s inception.
Figure out the candidate with a (R) after his name who can win and vote for him.
I’m locking comments for this post because frankly I don’t have the patience to hear the “Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!” chorus. As Richard Nixon was fond of saying, “Let me make one thing perfectly clear.”,
Ron Paul can not win the election. His fanatically devoted supporters skew poll results so that he looks much more viable than he actually is. He will not win in November.
The other two candidates are only less non viable. Newt Gingrich, although an unquestionably intelligent man, has a bad case of Foot in Mouth disease. Rick Santorum is conservative, but he hasn’t figured out that conservative social issues are not what this election is about and can’t seem to understand what the election is about.
To understand what the election is about, I refer you to the sign that hung at the foot of candidate Bill Clinton’s bed and was the first thing he saw when he awoke every morning while on the campaign trail.
“It’s the economy stupid”
Mitt Romney gets that. That’s why he hammers on the economy relentlessly. He doesn’t get involved in discussions about birth control mandates, green energy, or anything else.
“It’s the economy stupid”
Absent some major international event (read that as war), the economy is going to dominate this election.
End of lecture. I apologize to my non political readers, but I just had to get this off my chest.
I’ll try to get something quasi medical up tomorrow or Wednesday, promise.
