Lesser of two evils

Today’s Pennsylvania primary reminds me that I never posted on my experience at the Texas Democrat primary and caucus on March 4.

I did not vote in the Democrat primary in some kind of strategic attempt to lengthen the process and cause chaos within the party, as has been advocated by some talk radio figures and pundits. That’s an entirely appropriate thing to do in a state with an open primary; after all it is Democrats and Independent voters that made McCain the Republican nominee, and it is Republican and Independent voters who have driven Obama into the lead in the Democrat race (Clinton is leading by a significant margin among Democrat voters).

No, for me it was purely a matter of principle. Had there been a competitive Republican race, I would have likely voted for somebody there, but that race was over. So I chose to vote in the Democrat primary.

My reasoning was simple. It was (and is) a two horse race, and while I am no fan of either of the candidates, I find one of them downright scary, and cast my vote for the much lesser of two evils.

Clinton is what she is, and what her husband was – a dishonest hack who grew out of the new leftist movement of the late 60’s. But it seems unlikely that she would fully pursue the kind of reckless foreign policy agenda that her opponent has been promising on the campaign trail. The Clintons are just too risk averse. She may give lip service to loony left demands for US surrender in Iraq and appeasement everywhere else, but I can’t see her actually opening herself up to being the one history holds responsible for the consequences of such actions.

In short, while she gets most things wrong I believe she will ultimately get the biggest thing mostly right and end up continuing to fight global jihad. It is possible that Obama would as well, but I am much less confident given his background and his foreign policy demagoguery over the last year. This is a man who has said that an Iraqi genocide was acceptable if it would get us out of there, that we should unilaterally invade a fragile (and nuclear!) ally in Pakistan, and who promises to give anti-US totalitarians the propaganda bonanza that would be the only outcome of meeting with them.

His pronouncements display such a childlike naïveté that I don’t think it’s just thrown out there for the benefit of the hate-America faction that is his base, I think he’s just really that clueless. This is a man who would be seriously out of his depth as the leader of the free world.

This is getting long, so I’ll get to the reason I started this post – to recount my experiences at the caucus – in the next post.