A Wasted Vote?

I think that the idea that a vote for a Constitutionalist, rather than a Republican, is a "wasted vote" is flawed thinking. This idea that it's better to vote of the "lesser of two evils" is nothing more than propaganda, used to keep those in power, In Power. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:

In the presidential election, as I began to consider my options, I quickly realized that the Republican candidate McCain was not a viable candidate for me. Mr. McCain and Mr. Feingold co-sponsored McCain-Feingold "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act," ostensibly a campaign finance reform bill. This law, among other things, forbid "issue advocacy adds" which name a federal candidate to be run by corporations or paid for by corporate or union funds within 30 days of the primary or 60 days of the election. In my view, this is a gag on free speech and unconstitutional. I will not vote for someone who has so little regard for the Constitution. Mr. Bush I had similar issues with the bill:

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However, the bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections.

I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.

I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law. (Full text)

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I believe that Mr. Bush, a Republican President, failed America when he signed a bill into law that he believed was unconstitutional. It was his duty to veto all unconstitutional legislation. He swore an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." He failed to do so with this bill.


After the elections were over, I found a very interesting article that debunked another "gotta vote Republican" myth: The idea that, "at least we'll get good court nominees." New American took a look at the track record of those Republican court nominees, and they had some very interesting findings.

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However, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the historical record shows that most Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices over the last century have abandoned the restraints on government power set forth in the Constitution. (Emphasis added)

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Here are some examples they found:

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Republican President Herbert Hoover appointed Charles Evans Hughes as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1930. This despite the fact that long before this appointment Justice Hughes had opined: “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and of our property under the Constitution.” Such relativistic language, placing no authority in the actual words of the Constitution, but only in “what the judges say it is,” is the essence of legal positivism — the legal theory that has led to the worst excesses of judicial tyranny in the last century. ... As chief justice, Hughes affirmed most of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s extra-constitutional New Deal legislation.

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Chief Justice Hughes was assisted in supporting the vast expansion of federal power under FDR by two fellow GOP-appointed justices — Harlan Fiske Stone (nominated by Calvin Coolidge) and Benjamin Cardozo (nominated by Hoover).

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Republican President Dwight Eisenhower nominated a string of statist jurists to the High Court during the 1950s — including Earl Warren as chief justice of the United States in 1953. Eisenhower said at the time that he wanted a “conservative” justice and that Warren “represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court.” Warren, however, turned out to be one of the most activist chief justices in our history.

Under Earl Warren, the court decided Brown v. Board of Education, which used federal power to eliminate discrimination in education by unconstitutionally usurping the power of the states. Brown established a great government lie out of whole cloth — that education is a compelling federal government interest, rather than a family and community interest.

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One thing that various people talk about a lot in elections is abortion. People who want Republicans in office talk about getting Roe v. Wade overturned by the "good judges" those Republicans will appoint in office might be surprised to learn that Roe was written by a Republican nominee in the first place:

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Republican President Richard Nixon appointed Harry Blackmun to the Supreme Court in 1970, who voted conservatively in his first years there. Then, in 1973, he wrote the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, which nullified all state anti-abortion laws in a single stroke and led to the unrestrained murder of tens of millions of babies.

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Even Regan appointees have served us poorly:

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Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court in 1981 and 1988 respectively. Both voted to strike down state restrictions on abortion (Planned Parenthood v. Casey) and state anti-sodomy laws (Lawrence v. Texas), and to uphold the McCain-Feingold campaign finance (anti-free-speech) law. Also, both have gone on record favoring the use of international law to interpret our Constitution. Recently, Kennedy wrote the opinion that ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional for a man who raped an eight-year-old child, citing “evolving standards of decency” in the United States (Kennedy v. Louisiana).

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I was quite surprised to learn how many of the Supreme Court Justices were Republican appointees:

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By 1992, at the beginning of the Clinton presidency, eight of the nine Supreme Court justices were Republican appointees. Yet, the court continued its destructive pattern of trampling on property rights, disrespecting the right to life, expanding state power, disregarding family and local autonomy, and (in general) imposing unconstitutional rulings. There was little attempt to restrain the unconstitutional excesses of the president or Congress.

Read more...

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Republicans aren't much different from Democrats. The policies coming out of Washington are and have been both Socialist and Statist. It seems to me that if We The People want to see real change, we're going to have to start with ourselves. We're going to have to move past the idea that you have to be either Republican or Democrat in order for your vote to count. We're going to have to start working a little harder than glancing at party affiliation to determine a candidate's worthiness for office. We're going to have to take a more serious look at so-called "Third Parties."

Might I suggest glancing at the platform of my own favorite party, The Constitution Party.

I ask, with the Constitution Party's national chairman,

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“How long do you think it will take to get the kind of government you believe in, so long as you keep voting for people who won’t support your views?”

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