[222] in libertarians
Re: Vote
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vernon Imrich)
Tue Sep 20 17:38:34 1994
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 94 17:35:22 -0400
From: vimrich@flying-cloud.mit.edu (Vernon Imrich)
To: sybok@MIT.EDU, vimrich@flying-cloud.mit.edu
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
>The problem is that Romney has said he would vote YES on the "assault weapons"
>ban as a stand-alone bill. He is anti-gun. His vote on gun issues would
Did not know this.
>be the same as Kennedy's. I can't vote for anyone like that. Might as
>well have the old shmuck Kennedy in office as an anti-gun Republican.
Anti- "assault weapons" is not always the same as anti-gun in a practical
sense. (I.e. if you look at the polls and assume the dolts in office will
follow whatever they are, then assaults would go while most others would
not). My point is not to defend him. You just gave me one more reason
to be glad that I'm not registered with either party. My point is that
he'd be less bad that the man who would amend the constitution against
gun ownership if he had the chance.
>If Romney gets elected and does a bad job, it will be that much harder to
>elect a Republican next time. With Kennedy in office, electing a republican
>is easier.
In some sense this is the plan. Bad Dem replaced by bad Rep and the voters
reject both parties in the end. I very rarely would vote for either
D or R for just the reasons you mentioned above (ther are similar reasons
for just about all candidates). However, a Kennedy loosing in MA could
have major national repercussions weakening the D's for a while. The
few times I do vote D or R is when I think I can really hurt them. I view
the strategy like the Iran/Iraq war. Keep each one just strong enought to
screw the other and eventually they'll both wipe each other out. This
has to be weighed against the possible gains the LP could make in the
race in question. As the LP candidate for Senate this year is mostly
there to get ballot access votes in a statewide race (votes which can
be gotten in four other races as well) this may be one of the few times
I jump ship.
It's hard to predict these things, but some local races have awesome
national impact. The whole "health care as political crisis" issue
began because Harris Wofford lost in a Pennslyvania Senate race. If
the health reform candidate had lost, well you never know...
>We just have to wait till the right one is around.
Like I said above, almost all candidates that I vote for because I think
they are "right" are from the LP. All other votes are purely deliberate
acts designed to weaken a given party. Sometimes I feel like the main
character in "Miller's Crossing" playing two crime syndicates off of
each other. Maybe we should watch this for a movie night sometime.
Vernon
