opinetree

To whom it may no longer concern,

I've been getting your emails and messages about supporting Mitt this year. As a for-the-most-part libertarian (though not a Paulista), I cannot stomach the thought of voting for a Hillary or Obama ticket. I do not wish for my government to be capable of infinite growth, infinite control, and subsequently infinite inefficiency.

That being said, I have some things to confess:

From the start, Romney was not my man. Granted, I didn't have a candidate. I wanted to fuse them together, take the best parts from each, and form some sort of super candidate. But of course that wasn't a possibility. For some reason Mitt just didn't resonate with me; I admired his business experience and executive sensibilities, but I saw him as a shill who was too slick and too well spoken, and so he had faded into the background as I dealt with my disenchantment over the future of the country.

I also have to confess that I did not vote in my primary. I wasn't alone, however. On Super Tuesday, the Democratic primaries drew 76% more voters than the Republican primaries. The conservatives stayed home because they felt like they didn't have a candidate. Just like me. But low voter turnout proves that the conservatives have a great amount of power in November. They haven't even been heard from yet.

But, there's one final thing I have to come clean about after hearing Romney's "suspension" speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference: I wish he had made that speech a month ago. I feel the conservatives would have come out in droves to support him against McCain, who has advantageously opted to take "Huckabee for the block." They would have put "electability" out of their minds and chosen the person who they heard speak (finally) for the nationalist, the individualist, and the American who wants to see taxes low, security promises kept, spending and government reduced, and energy as America's responsibility (not that of a brutal theocracy).

Maybe it's the fact that he's out of the race and doesn't have to worry about swinging over independents and disenfranchised conservatives and libertarians (an uphill climb we've been watching McCain make over the last few months).

Maybe he feels more secure while addressing his base than while sitting in what is essentially a grammar school desk answering irrelevant and spurious questions from Blitzer, Cooper, or some over-privileged and hyper-indoctrinated WASP spending his free time (between bong hits) uploading half-baked rants about poverty on YouTube.

But for the first time I felt like he was speaking honestly, and to rational Americans faced with a grim but inevitable choice.

Here's to 2008. G-d help us.

Labels: Election 2008