Is McCain so much better than Obama that conservatives should vote for him?

M. Mason writes:

In the entry, “Replying to a reader who is very disappointed in the way I’ve treated Sarah Palin,” you wrote:

If we follow your premise that we should always vote for the lesser of two evils, then leftism wins. Because if one party is leftist and the other is slightly less leftist, we must vote for the slightly less leftist party. If one party is hard-line Communist and the other is slightly less hard-line Communist, we must vote for the latter. Your reasoning lacks any principle by which leftism—which is the political form of evil—can be opposed.

But the argument you present is a false dilemma insofar as it concerns this election and the overwhelming majority of principled conservative voters. To attempt to reduce the 2008 presidential race to a horrible/slightly less horrible choice (if that is what you’re doing) in response to Paul W’s statement is to imply that you believe that there are no significant ideological differences between McCain and Obama. Is that what you’re actually saying? According to the American Conservative Union, John McCain’s lifetime rating is 82.16%, and it was 80% last year. Obama’s ratings are 7.67% and 7%. Americans For Tax Reform gives John McCain an 80% rating for 2006 and an 82.7% lifetime rating. Barack Obama gets 15% and 7.5%. The Council For Citizens Against Government Waste has given John McCain a 100% rating for 2007 and an 88% lifetime rating. Barack Obama is at 10% and 18% (see the “2007 Senate Scorecard”). The Club for Growth’s 2007 Congressional Scorecard gives McCain a 94% rating and Obama a 0% rating. The website of the Campaign for Children and Families states that:

“Let the record show that John McCain and Barack Obama are polar opposites on partial-birth abortion, parental notification of abortion, marriage protection on the ballot, homosexual indoctrination of schoolchildren, gay adoptions, gun-owner rights, activist judges, and raising taxes,” said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families. “No one should base their vote on personality or mere feelings. Our carefully-researched report card shows you exactly where Obama and McCain stand on issues of importance to voters, their families, and our nation’s future.”

I could go on and on. Despite McCain’s terrible stand on the immigration issue and other problems with him that justifiably irk many conservatives (including myself), there certainly are very real and deep ideological differences between these two men, and when you factor Palin into the mix a graph plotting those differences goes off the chart.

Ultimately, the decision as to whether a conservative will vote for the McCain/Palin ticket hinges on the standard he uses to determine how ideologically “pure” he thinks they have to be to get his vote given the alternative. If he believes that those two candidates are, in fact, better than being slightly less horrible compared to the Obama/Biden option, and all things considered judges them to be significantly to the political right of the Democrat candidates on most important issues, then for such a voter that does indeed constitute a legitimate reason to vote for the Republican presidential ticket this year as the “lesser of two evils.”

LA replies:

I acknowledge that the McCain-Obama choice is not a choice between two nearly equal evils, which might have been seen as the implication of my comment that you quoted from the linked thread. However, I don’t think the differences you’ve delineated between Obama and McCain make that much difference in practical reality and in the long run.

Let’s take Randy Thomasson’s list of the issues on which McCain and Obama are polar opposites:

• Partial-birth abortion. That’s already been restricted, hasn’t it? So it’s not a pending issue.

• Parental notification of abortion: I don’t know the status of that, but either way it’s not going to make or break the country.

• Marriage protection on the ballot. A wash. McCain opposes the federal marriage amendment. Thus he would be even worse on the issue than Bush, and all Bush ever did was give occasional cold lip service to the marriage amendment when it was required of him.

• Homosexual indoctrination of schoolchildren. That already exists and is not proceeding from the federal level.

• Homosexual adoptions. That already exists, and is very widespread, and nothing that John (“I’m not interested in social issues”) McCain has on his plate is going to change it.

• Gun-owner rights. The gun-rights lobby in America is so strong that anything Obama tries will be shot down. Democrats have been burned at the polls so often on this issue that I don’t think they’ll go near it.

• Activist judges. Seven of the nine current Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. Anyone who expects John McCain to appoint judges more conservative than those picked by his GOP predecessors fits the well-known definition of insanity: doing the same failed thing over and over expecting it to succeed this time. And it’s even more insane to expect that outcome when we remember that McCain is not even a committed Republican but a Democrat-loving RINO. And it’s beyond insane to expect that outcome when we remember McCain’s private comment to a group of shocked conservative lawyers, reported by Robert Novack last February, that he found the mildly conservative Justice Alito “too conservative.” As I pointed out at the time, this revelation destroyed the last rationale for voting for him. Furthermore, McCain will probably have a strongly Democratic Senate, so, even if he sincerely wanted to appoint originalist judges, which is highly unlikely, he would not be able to get them approved.

• Raising taxes. Taxes rise and when they get too high they fall; this is not an issue on which the Republic will rise or fall.

I assume of course that the country will move somewhat to the left under an Obama (or any Democratic) presidency. I also assume—and I know this will come as a shock to all good Republicans—that eventually, maybe this year, maybe in four years, maybe in eight years, a Democratic president will be elected. So, folks, this apocalyptic event IS GOING TO HAPPEN SOONER OR LATER. I also assume that when it does happen, there will be a conservative reaction against it. So let’s stop acting as though the election of Obama means the end of the world.

I have said that I think McCain is so terrible that I would vote for him only if I were convinced that an Obama presidency would cause existential or at least grave harm to the Republic. The issues listed by Thomasson demonstrate that the practical differences between the two prospective presidencies would not be of such a grave nature.

Further, I believe that a McCain presidency means the validation and increasing power of a “conservatism” that keeps becoming more and more liberal (as we’ve seen happen over the past ten days as never before), while an Obama victory means the defeat of that phony conservatism and at least the possibility of a resurgence of a more genuine conservatism, and therefore would be better for the country in the long run.

* * *

At the same time, to add a further twist to this discussion, I argued the other day that the continued morphing of conservatism into liberalism that would occur under McCain could ultimately be a good thing, since, as the existing, liberal conservatism becomes more undisguisedly liberal, it will lose even the pretense of being conservative, and so will open the way for a true conservatism to arise and replace it.

By this scenario, a McCain victory could be helpful in the long run.

But we don’t know that such a scenario will play out. The opposite could also happen, and the McCainized “conservatives” will pervert conservatism and the country more and more. We cannot know or control the consequences of various events. We cannot social engineer the future. When it comes to elections, we make decisions based on our understanding of what the candidates stand for, and on what we see as best for the country now, and also, of course on our gut instincts, which are the end result of our rational thought process. So, alongside my anti-McCain gut instinct, when all the factors we’ve discussed here and elsewhere are added up and balanced out, it remains my sense in this election that it will be better for conservatism and the country if McCain is defeated.

That is, however, admittedly a judgment call or a personal preference, and not of ultimate importance. As I see it, the deeper truth of this election is expressed in the bumper sticker:

We’re Screwed ‘08

The reality we need to get through our heads is that whether McCain or Obama wins, it’s going to be bad. At the same time, whoever wins, the world is not going to end, and we will be free to resist the powers that be and try to build something positive for the future.

M. Mason replies:

LA wrote:

“The issues listed by Thomasson demonstrate that the practical differences between the two prospective presidencies would not be of such a grave nature.”

Well, if you only look at that statement of his, you have an argument up to a certain point (although I might quibble about a few of your comments regarding those items), but again, this is about far more than just Thomasson’s short list of issues that you focused on.

And further, although you began your response by stating that:

“I acknowledge that the McCain-Obama choice is not a choice between two nearly equal evils, which might have been seen as the implication of my comment that you quoted from the linked thread.”

…you then circled back around at the end of your comment to say:

“The reality we need to get through our heads is that whether McCain or Obama wins, it’s going to be bad.”

Which seems to only cloud the issue again, leaving undecided conservative voters reading VFR with a vague sense that there will be “political damage equivalence” with either option. But is that true? We must speak frankly here about the stark reality that there are degrees of “badness” and about what that actually means when it comes to evaluating these two men. The question before us is this: Is the idea of a McCain presidency—is McCain himself—really so bad that it would be an unacceptable moral compromise for “traditionalist conservatives” to vote for him—especially when we look at the totality of the ideological differences between him and Obama, the striking dissimilarity in their formative life histories and the sheer contrast in what kind of men they are? As you say, we can spin endless political “scenarios” about what we think (or hope) will happen if one or the other wins, some more realistic than others. But even your favorite one, that an Obama win would result in the “resurgence of a more genuine conservatism,” is highly debatable, since you yourself have just acknowledged that it is no more than a “possibility.”

The contrast between John McCain and Barack Obama is more significant than some are willing to concede. I also believe that in the final analysis we must look even deeper at these two men at the personal level to get a clearer sense of who the better choice is to be President. That is what I’m driving at here.

LA replies:

This is a matter people will continue to debate. I repeat that I am not dogmatic on this issue and do not feel that people who plan to vote for McCain as the lesser of two evils are in the wrong. I state my view as my personal view, not as something that I’m sure is categorically right. And that’s largely because, given the evil and madness of the left, I cannot lightly tell people to disregard them and let the left come to power.

But now I’ll say something that may shock you. My mind and my gut tell me that McCain would be more traitorous and more harmful to America than Obama. Yes, Obama is on the left, and has been closely associated with black race-haters all his adult life, and lied outrageously about it when it came out. But Obama himself seems to lack the animus that is such a pronounced part of McCain’s personality. Obama has the usual left-liberal disdain and distaste for Middle America and conservatives, but he also has a certain amiability and desire to be accepted that would mitigate any leftist agenda he pursued. I think he also can be rolled. Look at how he keeps abandoning his false or naive positions when they turn out to be untenable. I think he wants to be a messiah, with a million faces at his feet, more than he wants to do anything. McCain is another matter—we’ve seen his hard-bitten resentment against conservatives and white America over and over. I really feel that McCain wants to stick it to America more than Obama does.

To put it more precisely, I think that McCain wants to shove nonwhiteness down America’s throat more than Obama does.

LA continues:

The reason I said, “[W]hether McCain or Obama wins, it’s going to be bad,” is that I want to dispel the common assumption that because McCain would presumably be less bad than Obama, he would be positively good. Which then makes people support McCain’s candidacy as a positive good, when in reality it would be bad. That’s the way the human mind works; it needs to say yes to one thing, and no to something else.

But I’m saying that in this situation that assumption is mistaken. The more accurate way to see this is that both men would be bad. Leave aside for the moment the precise determination of the degree to which one would be “more bad” than the other. What I’m trying to convey is the fact that both would be bad, period. Once you take that in, you’re free of being jerked around by the conservative attack machine which wants to make you believe that Obama would destroy America and that McCain will protect America and therefore we must elect McCain. I think Obama would be very bad. I don’t think he would destroy America.

Also, as I said earlier, Republicans cannot realistically think that there is never going to be a Democratic president again. Eventually, whether this year or four years from now or eight years from now, there will be a Democratic president. Which, according to the conservative attack machine, would mean that America is going to be destroyed within the next eight years.

Now, either it’s true that America is going to elect a Democratic president in the next eight years and be destroyed, or it’s not true.

If it’s true, why get so excited about opposing Obama this year, since, if he’s not elected this year, some other Democrat will be elected in a later year who will destroy America?

And if it’s not true that electing a Democratic president must destroy America, then we don’t have to fear Obama so much, do we?

- end of initial entry -

September 9

Kevin writes:

You write:

“I also assume—and I know this will come as a shock to all good Republicans—that eventually, maybe this year, maybe in four years, maybe in eight years, a Democratic president will be elected. So, folks, this apocalyptic event IS GOING TO HAPPEN SOONER OR LATER. “

So you’re saying that Obama getting elected isn’t such a catastrophe because a Democrat is very likely to be elected soon anyway. I think there is a fallacy in this argument because you are assuming a false equivalence between Obama and other Democrats. But Obama is not like the great majority of Democrats running for president such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry who are liberal Democrats. Obama is a radical leftist who spent 20 years in an America hating racist church and whose mentors are America hating radicals. He is the candidate of the hate America radical left and his election would represent their coming to power. In this way he is different from any major presidential candidate ever. His foreign policy views are based on seeing America as the problem and as not having real enemies but only enemies that America itself has made enemies by its polices. The radical left is colluding with the Moslem world and Obama’s election will mean that there is no longer anyone in the world to fight this and defend the West. Also given Obama’s charisma and his rabid support by the media (similar to an Eastern European communist country) it’s a good bet that he would be in for eight years. Obama’s being elected is simply not the same as any Democrat being elected. If this isn’t an existential threat to this country then I don’t know what is. (Also it’s a certainty that Obama will do nothing to stop Iran from going nuclear which in itself is an existential threat, whereas McCain just might or at least allow Israel to do so). Your reasons for grudgingly preferring Obama over McCain are certainly logical given your assumption that Obama is not an existential threat. However I think that assumption is wrong.

LA replies:

In fact, both Gore and Kerry have made numerous statements far more hostile and contemptuous and demonizing of America than anything Obama has said. Through his whole career, Kerry has spoken of America with utter disdain. Any legitimate exercise of American power Kerry described as “shameful.” Gore said that the misstreatments at Abu Ghraib represented the “essence” of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Obama has not made statements showing this kind of insane anti-Americanism. Yes, he has the standard leftist views, e.g., putting down the “myth of raising yourself by the bootstraps,” or his comment about bitterness driving guns and religion. So he has that leftist alienation, no question about it. But he is more like Clinton in this regard in that his comments lack the sting, the intense resentment and alienation against America that is common on the left. I think Clinton harmed America. But I don’t think we can say that he harmed it existentially.

As for Islam, are Obama’s positions any differerent from other leading Democrats? Yes, as president he would make various appeasement type moves, which would have harmful effects. But so would McCain. McCain has expressed his desire to reach out to an include the Muslim world. He says his anti-terror policy would place more emphasis on scholarships than smart bombs. He wants to bring more Muslims to America.

LA writes:

In my exchange with M. Mason, I said that my views on what would happen under an Obama presidency as compared with a McCain presidency were guesses.

However, there is one thing I have said over and over again on this subject which is not a guess but a certainty: If McCain is elected, conservatives will be supporting an anti-conservative, liberal-leaning, pro-globalism president. If Obama is elected, conservatives will be opposing an anti-conservative, leftist, pro-globalism president.

Jeremy G. writes:

I think there is a case to be made that McCain would provoke a greater backlash than Obama if he were to pursue amnesty once in office. Patriotic Americans are used to Democrats being traitors (we don’t really expect better from them) and amnesty would sail through Congress with all of us watching powerlessly from the sidelines if Obama were president. But, remember how much outrage Bush and McCain stirred up among the conservative base when they tried to pass amnesty. That move was a great boon for the patriotic immigration reform movement.

Jeremy continues:

You say that, “If McCain is elected, conservatives will be supporting an anti-conservative, liberal-leaning, pro-globalism president. If Obama is elected, conservatives will be opposing an anti-conservative, leftist, pro-globalism president. ”

Paradoxically, electing McCain puts conservatives in a better position to oppose liberalism. Don’t forget the outrage and strident opposition Bush faced when he tried to push through amnesty. With Obama in office along with a Democratic Congress, conservatives would be powerless to prevent amnesty.

LA replies:

It’s not so cut and dried. In 2006, the Republican House stood like a stone wall against amnesty after the Republican Senate had passed it. In 2007, the Democratic Senate could not even get the amnesty bill to the floor.

John B. writes:

I couldn’t resist sending this:

LA replies:

“What—me worry?”, visible at the bottom of the graphic, is the motto of Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine. And Obama, with his protruding ears, does have an Aldred E. Neuman look to him. Which is one reason why I, unlike many conservatives, find it hard to see him as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse all rolled into one.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 08, 2008 07:31 PM | Send