I have only been saying it for four months, and now Dennis Prager finally said what I have been arguing for a long, long time. The conservatives who are arguing against McCain are foolishly willing to allow the most left wing of Democrats take office rather than vote in someone who is to the left of the Republican party.

I am sure it won't convince any of those who have staked their identity on being "pure" conservatives, as I argued before, but let us look at the logic of their argument:

1. Republicans will be blamed for the problems McCain causes, better to let the Democrats get the blame:

So, the logic here is that McCain will be every bit as bad as Obama (more on that later), so the Republicans will be rightly blamed for all the damage left wing policies cause. However, if we allow Obama to get elected, the press will suddenly become fair and even handed and will blame to Democrats, rather than finding a way to gloss over any problems or blame the Republican minority or the previous Bush administration.

And why will this happen? Because they gave so much credit to the Contract with America instead of Clinton? Because they have been so even handed in their treatment of Obama so far? Because the same unemployment numbers were a crisis for Bush and a triumph for Clinton? Because they didn't find ways to turn successes in Iraq into defeats? Or ignore those they couldn't?

Face it, no matter what happens the press will either find a way to blame Republicans, ignore it, or turn it into a success. There will never be a situation where the press will assess the Democrats their fair share of blame. Who ends up in office will not change that.

2. McCain will destroy the Republican party:

I have dealt with this before, and argued that the public doesn't see McCain as a RINO, but as a conservative. Rightly or wrongly, the Democrats and the general public will see this election as the third defeat of a liberal Democrat. While Republicans may decry McCain's left leaning tendency, the public will see it as a renunciation of the left.

Just think of the Clinton victories. Did the public see it as a vindication of the right, since Clinton had to run right? Did it destroy the Democrats? No. It was the restoration of the Democrats after the long time in the wilderness after Carter. The public just saw a Democrat, not a Democrat who had to run right. And McCain will be the same. Rather than pushing America left, it will, in the end, push us right.

And even within the party, it will not be "the victory of the RINOs". The party is still controlled by voters, and, unless all the conservatives walk out in a snit, they can still vote in every primary to try to move the party rightward. So I don't see how McCain winning the general election will turn the party liberal, unless touchy conservative refuse to vote anymore, or leave for a futile third party run.

3. McCain will destroy conservatism:

McCain has no ability to destroy the conservative movement. Not even within the Republican party. As I said above, the party will still be the same after he wins, unless the conservatives walk out. And that would be the only way that conservatism could be destroyed, at least as an effective political movement, if the conservatives abandon the Republican party for some third party. In that case, for the foreseeable future, we would actually have what the conservatives claim we have now, two left-leaning parties, but only because the conservatives made themselves impotent. McCain can't do that, only conservatives can.

4. McCain is no better than Obama:

This claim is just absurd. McCain is right of Obama on almost every issue, even those on which he is to the left of the Republicans. Even on questions such as immigration or the environment, does anyone seriously believe he is as far left as the most left wing of Democrats? And even if someone believes that, do you think he is as bad as Obama on defense? The economy? That he will nominate justices as far left as those Obama will nominate?

But for the sake of argument, let us assume McCain is an older, whiter Republican version of Obama. There are still two arguments in his favor.

First, because he is a Republican he will still be open to his constituents. He still needs Republican votes to get elected, so he will have to listen to us, Obama will not. Obama knows he won't get Republican votes, so he has no interest in our concerns. As I wrote before, unless conservatives take themselves out of the picture by categorically refusing to vote for McCain, he will be open to requests from Republicans, which leaves open the possibility of moving him to the right.

Second, even if McCain doesn't care about Republican votes, doesn't even care about a second term, or even getting renominated in 2012, he still has to listen to the Republican party. Why? Because the Democrats in congress will oppose him. Even if he does exactly what they want, as Bush did with prescription drugs, they will oppose him to keep him from getting "credit" for what they think is a good idea. He may be willing to reach across the aisle, the Democrats are not, for them party trumps the issues every time. So McCain will need Republican votes in congress, which means he will need to listen to congressmen, which means listening, to some degree, to their constituencies.

In either case, the possibility exists, even if McCain is every bit as bad as Obama, to move McCain right. There is no such opening with Obama.

5. America needs four years of true liberalism to turn it back to conservatism:

Perhaps we do, perhaps not, but now is not the time to find out.

North Korea, always willing to sell technology, has the bomb. Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, is getting close. And, even more important, we are at war.  We need the strongest president we can find. Even if we have only bad choices, we need to pick the best of the bad choices.  We do not need a man who will try to talk his way out of a problem, who in fact promises nothing but talk.

Nor do I think the underlying theory is even valid. It was not the four years of Carter that turned America to conservatism. It was eight years of Reagan. Had we elected a RINO in 1980, we would not have turned conservative because of the Carter years. It is the success of conservative philosophy that changes minds, not the failure of liberalism. Recall that the liberal Weimar republic failed, and people turned to the Nazis. The failure of liberalism does not inevitably point to conservatism, many can take it as a need to move even farther left.

6. Obama can't do that much harm:

This argument usually follows the previous one. We need a liberal to show America how bad it can be, yet it still won't do that much harm. The logic of this argument escapes me, as if it does no lasting harm, why would it change any minds? But let us ignore that and see if the argument is valid on its own.

As I wrote before, I just don't agree. Think of all the harm Jimmy Carter did in his four short years. Or the massive changes wrought by FDR or Wilson. Carter created most of the problems we face in the middle east today. By showing how weak America could be in the face of terrorism, he set the stage for all that followed. And I doubt I even need to explain the way that FDR and Wilson altered the very political landscape itself. Before FDR could we even consider a welfare state such as we have today? Or without Wilson's income tax could we fund it? Those two, more than any others, changed the very way we think of government.

One president, even in four years, can make massive changes. And even if he does not do it himself, his supreme court nominees will long survive his presidency, and the precedents they set will go on longer still. So, yes, one president, even in just four years, can change the very face of America, even in peace time. During war time, he can do even more.

7. I just can't vote for a RINO:

This is probably the most honest complaint, that no matter what arguments are raised, many conservatives just can't bring themselves to vote for a liberal Republican. Or, as many put it "I am tired of voting for the lesser of two evils".

But as I argued in an earlier essay:

 I know that these people mean well when they say these things, but in many ways they are not acting to stop wrong because they feel it would somehow sully them. Is it not better to take on some ethical taint to do real good?

Well, that is my perspective on it. I am sure many disagree, but I just can't see it. If you can minimize the harm you should act to do so, even if it risks giving legitimacy to a position with which you disagree. You can later fight to make things better. But if the present choice is between bad and worse, letting worse win so you don't "endorse" bad is just idiocy.

And I stand by that still. McCain may be far from ideal, but the alternative is so much worse, the threat of harm so great, I can't in good conscience do anything else.

ADDENDUM

I can't believe I forgot to mention it in detailing the harm a president can do in four short years, but with our recent move toward judicial tyranny, his court nominees won't only have the ability to obstruct future conservative action, they will be able to enact new liberal legislation themselves through "reinterpretation" of existing statutes and discovery of new "rights", and thanks to the courts abrogation of Article III Section 2 of the Constitution, there is nothing anyone can do to restrain the court once it decides to act. So even if the country turns to the right following four years of Obama, the damage will have already been done. It may be too late to repair the harm.

UPDATE

For those who do not find my Weimar allegory convincing, I have two other arguments against the idea that four years of liberal disaster will turn America conservative.

Throughout the 19th century following the Civil War, we had various banking regulations. The common feature was an effort to force banks to hold reserves in some set of super-banks, in order to prevent the bank runs caused by insufficient reserves. Unfortunately, by pyramiding tiers of banks one upon the other, the solution actually exacerbated the problem, as the higher tier banks used the reserves deposited by other banks to create additional credit. So, the solution intended to stop bank runs created additional inflation which led to still more bank runs and created the modern boom-bust cycle we are all told is "natural" and part of the free market. (It isn't.)

To solve this, the Federal Reserve was created. But, as could have been predicted, this did not solve the problem. In fact, is just maximized inflation, by centralizing all reserves in one place. In addition, as the Fed was subject to political pressures, it introduced non-monetary concerns unknown to previous systems, which only made things worse.

Finally, to resolve all these problems, FDR disallowed the holding of monetary gold, and, eventually, Nixon cut us free from gold entirely. The result? Massive inflation.

In other words, rather than forcing people to question bank regulation, the failure of bank regulation led to more regulation. So, why would the failure of liberalism lead to conservatism? Could it not just as easily lead to still more liberalism?

In fact, history says it can. Hoover, confronted with the Great Depression, tried a few measures to solve it. Though often criticized in history for being too attached tot he dogma of the free market, in reality he did try several rather liberal solutions. Nothing as drastic as FDR did later, but still he increased federal spending, he encouraged state relief, he tinkered with the tariffs, he jiggered the tax code, and so on. In other words, he did precisely what FDR did later, just on a smaller scale.

And how did the people respond to the failure of a moderately liberal solution? Did they turn to conservatism? Not unless you call FDR a conservative. When intervention on  a small scale failed, rather than call for government to get out of the economy, they embraced FDR and his massive intrusions into the economy, which we continue to feel to this day.

So, please explain to me why anyone thinks that, should Obama destroy the economy, as I am sure he will, that the people will turn to conservatism? Why shouldn't I look at the record and think that they may see the failure of liberalism as a reason to ask for even more government?