Monday, October 29, 2012

I, Patriot

DSCN1187

Mrs. Φ took a call from a pollster last week.  The call came from an Orlando number, 407-250-2251, an seemed to her vaguely pro-Republican, but it would cost me $.99 to find out who the number belongs to, and I don’t actually care that much.

The pollster asked for which of the two major party candidates we intended to vote for president.  Mrs. Φ replied, roughly, “Well, if we must choose between Romney and Obama, then I guess we’d support Romney.”

“Well, if you vote for any other candidate, then your vote doesn’t count,” the pollster argued.

[!?!]

Excuse me,” Mrs. Φ replied, her voice rising slightly.  “Our votes always count.  That’s the great thing about America.”

[click]  The pollster had hung up on her.

My newsreader subscribes to roughly 30 different active blogs.  Contained in the posts therein, I read quite a bit of frustration with the actual policy choices on offer from the Remocrats/Depublicans.  But while I have seen occasional discussion of Gary Johnson’s Libertarian candidacy, if the search engine and my own memory are working properly, not one of you has even mentioned the only true conservative candidate actually on the ballot in a majority of states.  (His name periodically pops up in the comments, however.)

Granted, the Constitution Party platform isn’t perfect.  It would have been nice had they advocated repeal of specific bits of odious legislation, starting with the “Civil Rights” act.  But this can be reasonably inferred from other planks supporting limited government.  What they do advocate is:  an immigration moratorium and a return to tariffs; an end to foreign adventurism; and a balanced budget now instead of the by-and-by.  That’s enough for me.

So . . .

Goode-Clymer 2012!

5 comments:

Elusive Wapiti said...

I voted Constitution last time around.

This time however, things have changed for me, so I suppose I "sold out" in the interest of buying headroom for rightist reformers to tend to the grassroots and work the sort of bottom-up change I'd like to see happen.

Peter said...

whocallsme.com
Totally free.







Anonymous said...

Thanks, Peter. I confirmed what I already suspected about one of the callers that have been plaguing us* and got to share some info on another.

There is a better than 50/50 chance I will be voting for Johnson. It helps that I am not in a competitive state so I am more free to register my protest without consequence.

I figured that you'd end up voting for Goode, Phi. It's a pretty good match, as far as that goes. The only thing I didn't know about (and was too lazy to look up) was their foreign policy positions compared to yours.

On an interesting sidenote, the Constitution Party almost threw Montana over to Obama last election. Within 3 points, anyway. Somebody got the bright idea to put Ron Paul instead of their nominee on the state ballot. Paul is extremely popular in Montana and Idaho.

* Six calls over the weekend, then when I say something it's as likely as not to give me a dialtone as an agent

Dr. Φ said...

EW: yeah, unfortunately, Ross Douthat, to both of our regret, persuaded me to support Palin in 2008.

I swore I'd never wear another life vest again.

Peter: thanks for the link. Weirdly, the number seems to be associated with random telemarketing.

Trumwill, what can I say? You know me better than I know myself.

Expatriate Owl said...

Never mind that I am voting for Romney (though I'm not sufficiently enthusiastic to place a Romney bumper sticker on my car or a Romney lawn sign on my front lawn, despite the free availability of such paraphernalia from my friends the Republican party apparatchik and/or my the County Republican Party nomenklaturanik).

The real story here is that the charitable organizations and the politicians were specifically exempted from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. And they know it. And they take full advantage of that exemption.