The Debate, Marxism, and the Folly of Third Party Voting (or, the Tyranny of Majoritarian Mathematics)

Senator McCain was clearly more aggressively on the attack last night, but by leaving out Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he's left out one of the strongest reasons why not to vote for Barack Obama.

Bill Ayers? Unrepentant "washed up" domestic terrorist, yes, but the Weather Underground was a Marxist/left-wing organization.

ACORN? Yes, they're involved with voter registration fraud, but at their heart, they're a Marxist/left-wing organization trying to radicalize students (under the education "reform" arm) and agitate for left wing causes.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright? The context for "America's chickens have come home to roost" and "G-D America" is his Black Liberation Theology - which could just as easily be described as Urban American Marxism.

It's not that Barack Obama has individual one-time relationships with any of these people; it's that he has had fifteen-to-twenty-year relationships with all of them, concurrently. That paints a picture of a radical, Marxist leaning candidate, running for office as a Democrat.

And it's his answer to Joe the Plumber ("Spread the Wealth") that provides the meat of the charge - that Barack Obama the Marxist is a terrible choice for the country at any time, but especially in a time of economic difficulty and two wars.

Which brings me to my friends trying to get me to vote for the Constitution Party or the Libertarian Party (you know who you are).

A vote for Chuck Baldwin is a pro-choice, anti-family vote - not because Baldwin is pro-choice (he clearly isn't) but because in voting for someone with no chance of getting elected, you are allowing Barack Obama to become President - the most radically pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda candidate in our nation's history. A vote for Chuck Baldwin is a vote for Barack Obama. Please think about that before you vote. If nothing else - check out Obama's answer on Roe v. Wade last night. Roe was a constitutional disaster - and Obama thinks it was correctly decided. That alone should send shudders...

For my Libertarian friends, a vote for Bob Barr is a pro-Big Government vote - not because Barr's Big Government (he clearly isn't), but becuase in voting for someone with no chance of getting elected, you are allowing Barack Obama to become President - the most liberal, big spender in the Senate, voting against the taxpayers (either for tax increases or against tax cuts) 94 times in his short stint in the Senate. A vote for Bob Barr is a vote for Barack Obama. Please think about that before you vote.

Now, I give you these two prior paragraphs knowing that voting for a Third Party in America is an inherently irrational thing to do in a winner-take-all Electoral College sort of way. Not to get into the weeds of "rational voter theory", but as we get closer to the election, what tends to happen amongst rational voters is that they see which of the two biggest candidates can win, and choose which one they want, knowing that they want their vote to count and matter (and voting for third place usually means knowing beforehand that you aren't going to win.)

Clearly, there have been the rare exception to the rule - Independent Senators in Vermont and Connecticut come to mind. But, as a rule, and especially at the Presidential level, voting third party actually damages your cause in the long term. Rather than the two possible things you hope to do (either pull your former party in the direction you wish it was going - in this case Republicans to the right - socially or fiscally; or establish a new force in politics), what tends to happen is the opposite. By pulling your forces away from the party you used to belong to, you ensure it's electoral defeat - and get all the blame. The party in question then is free to become less like you (since you are no longer there to influence it) and your third party is also unlikely to succeed (since no new party has won a Presidential Election since Abraham Lincoln in 1860 - the first Republican President. The last President to get elected without being a Republican or a Democrat was Zachary Taylor in 1848. He was a Whig. I digress...)

My point, conservative friends, is that we have but one real, working choice to vote for President - like him or not, it's Senator John McCain.

I'm voting for McCain with my eyes open - I know the day after he gets elected that I'll be working against his policies on global warming, immigration, and probably a few other things as well. But I also know that Barack Obama is the most left-wing, Marxist major party candidate in our nation's history. And for that reason, (and for others), my car sports a McCain/Palin sticker, and I'll be voting for them.

I hope you will, too.

Debate thoughts

Since Leroy apparently missed his deadline last night, I'll give you my thoughts on the Presidential debate...

Clearly, John McCain won the night, and I would expect a small bounce out of this debate, just enough to put the poll numbers in the margins. His idea to have Treasury buy up bad mortgages and renegotiate them would have cost much less than the bailout passed last week - I only wish this one had come up sooner.

But it was his attacks on the record and rhetoric of Barack Obama that defined the night, and will define this campaign in the 4 weeks ahead. McCain pounded Obama's record and his proposals, and painted the picture of a tax-and-spend liberal who will say anything to get elected while doing the opposite in power. His line of attack connecting the dots between Obama and the Freddie/Fannie mess is a powerful one, and one that let's people know Obama's culpability in the housing and financial mess. His mention of Obama's past campaign promise to cut taxes for the middle class, when he never voted for a single tax cut while in the Senate cut to Obama's credibility.

McCain did this while never mentioning the connections with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, which we now know to have been much deeper than previously reported, including $50 million in taxpayer moneys that Obama funneled to Ayers in the 1990s. McCain never mentioned the anti-American rantings of Obama cronies Rev. Jeremiah Wright or Father Michael Flegler. Clearly Obama expected those (more personal) attacks, and came out swinging - but in the wrong direction. Instead, McCain's attacks on Obama's record and his proposals left Obama on the wrong footing, answering the wrong questions while McCain connected with the audience in the room by answering their questions directly - and by extension connecting with voters across the country.

While Tom Brokaw was, in a word, awful, the town hall format still gave McCain a chance to shine, and his command of the facts (and Obama's record) gave him the clear win tonight. That should even things up with 4 weeks to go. (Note: The best moderator so far has still been Rev. Rick Warren... someone alert the MSM - they need new blood.)

Funny moment of the night: Tom Brokaw asking John McCain who his Treasury Secretary would be, and McCain answering "Not you, Tom."

Hang on, folks, it's going to be a crazy last month...

Barack Obama’s ACORN fraud

Today is (mercifully) the last day to register new voters.

Which means today is the last day that ACORN and the Barack Obama campaign can fraudulently work to steal this election in the battleground states.

ACORN has been filing fraudulent voter applications in Michigan, Washington, Missouri, Ohio, and 12 other states.

Do you remember the “Barack Obama was a community organizer” attack in the Republican National Convention? ACORN is the organization for which Barack Obama was involved.

As Stanley Kurtz points out in National Review, Barack Obama served both as a corporate trainer for ACORN, and as legal counsel, even winning a case in 1995 that allowed additional voter fraud attempts by ACORN using Illinois “Motor Voter” law.

While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.

At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama’s role in training Acorn’s leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000 (Foulkes confuses the dates of these two campaigns.) With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were “old friends,” says Foulkes.

So along with the reservoir of political support that came to Obama through his close ties with Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, and other Chicago black churches, Chicago Acorn appears to have played a major role in Obama’s political advance…

You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn.”

Now, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review notes that the Obama campaign has reciprocated by paying ACORN $800K in “get out the vote” and “voter registration” efforts. It is precisely these efforts (listed above) that have ended in vote fraud indictments.

When the numbers come out, we’ll see just how bad this fraud has been. Hopefully, the Obama campaign won’t be able to steal this election using ACORN as a front for vote fraud.