Richard Spencer

October 23, 2008

Radley Balko makes a pretty good case for why conservatives and libertarians should vote for Obama: 

As for the Bush administration, the only consistent principle we’ve seen from the White House over the last eight years is that of elevating the American president (and, I guess, the vice president) to that of an elected dictator. That isn’t hyperbole. This administration believes that on any issue that can remotely be tied to foreign policy or national security (and on quite a few other issues as well), the president has boundless, limitless, unchecked power to do anything he wants. They believe that on these matters, neither Congress nor the courts can restrain him.

That’s the second reason the GOP needs to lose. American voters need to send a clear, convincing repudiation of these dangerous ideas.

If they do lose, the GOP would be wise to regroup and rebuild from scratch, scrap the current leadership, and, most importantly, purge the party of the “national greatness,” neoconservative influence. Big-government conservatism has bloated the federal government, bogged us down in what will ultimately be a trillion-dollar war, and set us down the road to European-style socialism. It’s hard to think of how Obama could be worse. He’ll just be bad in different ways.

The truth is, unless you vote for a third-party candidate (which really isn’t a bad idea), you don’t have much of a choice this November. You can either endorse the idea of a massive, invasive, ever-encroaching federal government that’s used to promote center-left ideology, or you can endorse the idea of a massive, invasive, ever-encroaching federal government that’s used to promote center-right ideology.

[…]

Which brings me back to why the Republicans need to get throttled: A humiliated, decimated GOP that rejuvenates and rebuilds around the principles of limited government, free markets, and rugged individualism is really the only chance for voters to possibly get a real choice in federal elections down the road.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that’s how the party will emerge from defeat. But the Republican Party in its current form has forfeited its right to govern.

A sound argument; however, I wouldn’t much want to rely on the GOP or the conservative movement to learn any hard lessons from the election of ‘08 and the disaster of the Bush years. This seems about as likely as J-Pod deciding that 3 pizzas would be sufficient for lunch.