Lesser
Evils
by
Joseph Sobran
As
a rule, conservatives support the presidential candidate of the
Republican Party, and more often than not with reluctance. To vote
for a smaller, purer conservative party, the saying goes, is to
"waste" one’s vote and help ensure a Democratic president.
Safer to settle for an imperfect Republican president, a Nixon,
a Ford, a Bush, a Dole, who at least has a chance of winning.
But
even when such a Republican wins, conservatives wind up gaining
nothing and feeling betrayed when the president they supported raises
taxes, imposes wage and price controls, and otherwise capitulates
to liberal pressures.
The
argument for staying within the two-party system is the old argument
for choosing the lesser evil. It may not be satisfying, but it has
the seeming merit of being "realistic," rather than "utopian,"
which is considered a conservative virtue. After all, it’s an imperfect
world and is likely to remain so.
This
attitude allows Republicans to take conservative support for granted,
since the conservatives, by their own admission, have "nowhere
else to go." So Republican presidents ignore their conservative
base and concentrate on appeasing liberals; and the federal government
continues to expand even under "conservative" presidents
like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
In
life we sometimes do have to choose the lesser evil rather than
a positive good. This is the basis of armed robbery. Forced to choose
between your money and your life, you give the mugger your wallet.
But though you walk away with relief that your life was spared,
you’d be a fool to feel it was a profitable transaction for you.
For
conservatives who vote Republican, every election is like that.
They never really win; that is, they never advance toward a freer
society and a more limited government. They merely stave off Democrats
who would blow their brains out in favor of Republicans who settle
for taking their wallets. Yet they feel victorious when the Republicans
win a truly irrational assessment of their situation.
This
year conservatives have a chance to vote for what they really should
want: a full restoration of the Constitution, limiting the federal
government to its few allotted powers and abolishing the personal
income tax. This, in a nutshell, is what the Constitution Party
stands for. Its presidential candidate is Howard Phillips, founder
and leader of the Conservative Caucus; I have the honor to be his
running mate.
Howard
has always been among the most far-seeing American conservative
leaders. Among many other distinctions, he was the only conservative
to warn that David Souter would promote abortion if he was confirmed
as a Supreme Court justice; not even President Bush, who nominated
Souter, realized this. But Souter was being pushed by Senator Warren
Rudman, a pro-abortion Republican who is now John McCain’s closest
advisor. Rudman urged Souter on Bush precisely because he knew how
liberal Souter really was, as he later admitted in his memoirs.
That
episode taught me to listen carefully when Howard sounded an alarm.
He learned long ago that Republicans can’t be trusted; in the end,
they differ from Democrats only in the velocity with which they
seek to centralize power. Sometimes they mean well, but they eventually
succumb to, or are simply outsmarted by, liberal Democrats.
Restoring
the Constitution restoring the original balance between the states
and the federal government is the aspiration that defines true
American conservatism. Most Americans understand the principle of
separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government,
but they have largely forgotten the even more basic division of
powers between the states and Washington, which has been all but
destroyed by countless federal usurpations of power that have made
the Constitution a dead letter since the 1930s.
But
does the Constitution Party have a prayer of winning? Not this year.
But we can build for the future, attracting a few conservatives
who know that their votes are only "wasted" when they
are cast for the feckless and futile Republican Party the "lesser
evil" that achieves no lasting good. In time, we trust, more
and more conservatives will come to their senses and realize that
the Constitution is not a utopian hope, but an absolute necessity
for a free and healthy America.
Copyright
© 2000 by the Griffin Internet Syndicate
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