So Mitt Romney hired Richard Grenell as his foreign policy spokesman, and Grenell is an “out and proud” homosexual. Well, who could have seen that coming?
The issue is how these things get mainstreamed. There is a certain kind of conservative who, in Dabney’s immortal phrase, is the shadow that follows radicalism to perdition. It makes a gruff show with a respectable amount of growling, but in the end acquiesces to the last set of the left’s innovations, and runs on the hard right conservative platform of trying to make socialism work. It has no idea, Dabney said, of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom.
It is not just about elections. It is about what happens if you succeed in your political objectives. If Clinton had tried No Child Left Behind or Medicare D, conservatives would have fought it. But since it came from Bush, they didn’t. Everybody remember when women in combat was (kind of) controversial? But once the move was made, it is now our ostensible conservatives who have taken the lead in paying tribute to “our brave men and women in uniform.” Anybody seriously think there will be a conservative candidate who will set about “turning back the clock” on that one? He would be marginalized in about ten minutes as the equivalent of Fred Flintstone’s backward cousin, and establishment types would all sidle away from him with embarrassed looks on their faces.
There is a good chance that the Supremes will strike down Obamacare. But if they don’t, and the Republicans win the White House and both chambers of Congress, I don’t have the same degree of confidence that they will simply repeal Obamacare, root and branch. The chances are better than even that they will do what they always do, which is try to fix the dern thing.
Just imagine what will happen to a conservative who objects to the appointment of an openly homosexual cabinet minister three years from now. Obama couldn’t get conservatives to go along with that, but if you think that Romney couldn’t get them to, well, then, that’s what I call not paying attention.
(Just to keep this lively, I have absolutely no assurance that Ron Paul couldn’t do exactly the same thing. And if he did, we would all be just as hosed.)
So, as I have said before, I am not voting for Romney in the fall. But there are two things I need to say about this. The first is that this is not the same thing as “sitting this one out.” It is not the same as political apathy. I believe that we need an election in both the House and Senate that remminds respectable mainstreamers of a zombie apocalypse. We need (don’t know if we can get, but we need) a super tsunami of rowdy conservatives who are not about to deal with anybody. If Obama is elected under those conditions, all he can look forward to is four years of gridlock, and I like me some Washington gridlock. This has to include a willingness to fight Obama Supreme Court nominees — not in a dirty fight, with our equivalent of “borking,” but rather because the Senate simply declines to confirm any commies to the bench. No need to dig up faux dirt — have you ever eaten a dog? ever thought about it? — just a cheerful refusal to confirm a commie.
And it turns out that this is exactly the same thing we will need if Romney is elected as well. If Romney is president, we will need him to have a Congress that will not even think about any legislation to the leftward side of Edward the Confessor.
The second thing is my response to those who say it is irresponsible for us not to vote for Romney. This is my reply in the form of a question, and it is a serious question. Since this is an issue of principle with me, and I know absolutely that the principle has to kick in somewhere, I would like everyone who thinks we all need to vote for Romney now to answer this question for me. In these matters, where is the line we may not cross? What set of convictions could a Republican adopt that would disqualify him? Say he is radically pro-abort for the first two trimesters, and the Democratic ghoul is good with all three? Suppose the Democrat wants granny to go before the death panel at the age of 65, and our stalwart conservative thinks it should not happen until the age of 70. Now what? Where is the line, and how do we identify it?
I can vote for Republican presidential candidates, and I can decline to do so. I am an Independent, and not terribly hard to please. I am against bloodshed and buggery, which used to be a respectable position, although I recently heard from some folks at Indiana University that this is a position filled with seething hatred. At least I think that is what they were saying — their use of the f-bomb as an all-purpose adjective made it hard to make out their position, although I did get the general drift.
So I know there is a line, and I have a rough idea of where it is. As I have argued before, there is no nano-technology for political decisions like this. It is not a precise science. But when I go to draw that line, and I am told “no, no, no, not now, not this election, not this cycle,” I wonder what principle is being applied. It really needs to be more than that “we just have to win this election.” Because, of course, you can always say that.