Posted by
Ernie on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 11:51:06 PM
I want to interject my opinion about this thing Rush has been doing: asking republican primary voters to vote for Hillary. It's my understanding that the idea is to keep the Democrats destroying each other a few more months while their primary is undecided, and possibly even make Hillary the victor because she's going to be easier to defeat.
I first learned about this concept in 1992, when I was informed by two co-workers that they were voting for Pat Buchanan in the California primary because they wanted an unelectable Republican to run against Bill Clinton. I was deeply hurt that people were manipulating the Republican's in this way. I learned later that this was a common practice among liberals, who would register as Republicans for primary season, then switch to Democrat in the general.
It's beneath the Republicans to stoop to this level of politics. It doesn't matter that they've been doing it possibly for decades. We are the party of intellectual honesty and integrity - at least I like to think that the conservatives among us are. I learned a long time ago to expect this kind of conduct from Democrats - they tend to have no integrity. But I can't accept it as good conduct from Republicans.
The worst news was what Laura Ingraham has been saying on her show the past two days, agreeing with Rush. I love Rush and I especially love Laura, but I can't overemphasize how wrong it is to encourage Republicans to play manipulative little games with the process. Whether it's Obama or Clinton, they're going to cheat, and have the power of millions of cheaters helping them. It doesn't matter if they're running against McCain, Romney, Huckabee or Condoleeza Rice - they're going to cheat. Ballot boxes will be stuffed, illegal aliens and felons will be voting and valid military votes will be excluded or 'lost'. Hit-piece false ads will be run on the airwaves and dropped in the mail just days, if not hours, before election day. Yet most of the time, Republican's prevail despite all the Democrats' cheating.
Let's not initiate schemes that amount to manipulating our opponents. It will eventually lead to justifying doing dirtier things down the road, and the next thing you know, we'll be no better than the Democrats.
Preserve integrity, win on the merits. If we exclude all the votes that were manipulated by Democrats over the last 50 years, we'd easily control the house, that senate, most governorships and most legislatures. The fact that we got President Reagan and both President's Bush proves that not everyone can be so easily manipulated. The news media will never do the math, none of our government agencies will ever investigate, but as soon as we lower our standards, it will be front page/top story news and every government agency and attorney general in the country will be after us. It's almost as if the Democrats are planning to cry foul. They already do it routinely in other political finger-pointing. Two Republican Senators commit improper conduct with pages and it's censure, resignation, humiliation (as it should be). Democrats run homosexual prostitution rings, sexually assault interns, etc. and a wall of protection goes up around them. Sometimes they even investigate and demonize the accusers!
We're fighting a wicked, immoral foe. We can fight them uprightly and with our heads held high, or we can become wicked and immoral along with them and be destroyed politically. Republicans openly voting for a Democrat in primaries is just the first step in a downward spiral that will leave those of us with a strong moral compass with nowhere to go.