In his science fiction spoof, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, Douglas Adams described an alien planet as a democracy in which the people are ruled by lizards.
"The lizards rule the people, and the people hate the lizards," we are told.
The hero asks why, if it's a democracy, and if the people really hate the lizards, they don't simply vote them out of office.
It's explained to him that the people believe that, if they don't vote for a lizard, then the wrong lizard will get in.
In the Illinois Republican Gubernatorial primary, we heard this argument from conservative Jim Oberweiss, who ran an ad claiming that a vote for fellow conservative Bill Brady was a vote for liberal Judy Baar Topinka.
With the nomination of Topinka, conservatives are already beginning to hear the argument that a vote for a candidate other than Topinka, such as Constitution Party Candidate Randy Stufflebeam, is a vote for Democrat incumbent Rod Blagojevich.
Presumably, if State Senator (and southside black pastor) James Meeks makes a third-party run for Governor, socially conservative Democrats who support Meeks will told that a vote for Meeks is a vote for Topinka.
If you don't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard will get in.
Pro-life, pro-family, religious voters should not fall for this. Whether we're Democrats or Republicans, if we don't want Illinois to be the abortion capitol of the midwest, if we don't want to be the next state with gay marriage, if we don't want to be at the cutting edge of embryonic stem cell research, if we believe that the birthplace of Reagan and the Land of Lincoln should be a place with a true culture of life, then we should absolutely refuse to vote for a lizard.
If we don't, we will only have ourselves to blame when we wake up the morning after election day to discover that we are still ruled by lizards.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Illinois will never be Utah. In addition, we need to take apart the Democratic stranglehold over this state piece-by-piece, step by step. Not voting unless the party runs a maniac like Alan Keyes is simply self-destructive.
Jason, if our method of defeating the Democrats is to become like them, where's the point?
If you want people like me to vote for Topinka, you'll need to come up with a better argument than simply to call Keyes a maniac.
I'll be voting, rest assured. Just not for a lizard.
I think there's a certain line to be walked, and there's a helluva spectrum between Keyes and Topinka. (I'm inclinded to agree that Keyes has wandered off down silliness lane.)
I was still living in CA during the recall election in 2003, and I voted for McClintock instead of Schwarzenegger -- for the simple reason that I don't want to feed the wisdom that liberal republicans are more electable than conservative republicans.
Think about the math of it. If all conservatives vote republican whether the candidate is conservative or not, than in the attempt to get more votes republicans will run liberals in order to try to bring liberal voters into the tent as well. It's only if the danger that conservatives will defect is credible that the party will avoid running overly liberal candidates.
Candidates like Alan Keyes cannot win in Illinois; candidates in the style of Jim Edgar and Jim Thompson can. This is an objective reality confirmed by polling data and elections over and over and over again.
It is better to get 70% of what we want, instead of getting 0% of what we want. Granted, Judy is liberal on abortion and gay marriage. But Judy is conservative on security and business issues. I'd much rather have Judy than the clown in there now that's driving jobs out of state, making apologies for members of the Nation of Islam, and introducing new government programs left and right.
Again, we live in a state that sends Dick Turban and Barack Hussein Obama to Washington. Deep down, you know I'm right about this.
First, Keyes' primary problem was that he was successfully painted as a carpetbagger. You're right, Marylanders will always have difficulty being elected to statewide office in Illinois. That's what we get for nominating in the first place a guy stupid enough to step aside over a "sex scandal" in which the woman involved was his wife and in which there was no sex.
Besides, what does Judy Baar Topinka offer in a governor that I want? Didn't Blagoevich promise not to raise taxes? Isn't that why he's so unpopular with his own base? Has Topinka made such a promise?
What's that 70% of "what we want" that she's offering? Open and public contempt for people like me?
And what makes you think that protecting traditional marriage and the lives of the unborn, and stopping euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research aren't my top 70%? Look around, this blog isn't about policy-wonk minutiae and political personalities, it's about the basic moral issues of the day.
The simple fact is that if the Republican Party cannot or will not provide leadership on these issues, I'll find a party that will.
Maybe you'd like to live in a state that has gay marriage, and the highest abortion rate of any non-coastal state, but I don't think an optimal taxation rate is going to overcome those problems when out-of-state businesses think about moving their employees and those employees' families here. I'm not sure that having gone a whole eight years without indicting a governor will stop Illinois families from fleeing a state to which people flock to get abortions and homosexual nuptials.
In the meantime, I'm trying to raise my kids here, and I don't want them exposed to that, and I'm perfectly willing to endure four or eight or twelve more years of what we have now if that's what it takes for the GOP to understand that my support does NOT come without a cost, and that cost is that the GOP at the state level provide moral leadership on these key issues.
My observation has been that the Illinois GOP is not a pro-life party, and wouldn't become so even if it could do it at no electoral cost. If it feels no obligation to represent my views, which are the traditional Republican values, then I certainly feel no obligation to support its nominees.
So if supporting Stufflebeam, or even Meeks, can send that message, I'm happy to do it. And I'll be sure to tell all my friends.
Douglas Adams' point was precisely that they're ALL lizards. Vote for whomever you wish: pro-life, pro-abortion, pro-tax, anti-tax; no matter what, you're voting for a lizard. To vote, is to vote for a lizard. Period.
So, Greg, what's your point? Don't vote?
Priceless.
Thanks Paul,
You've given me more to consider before I make my decision.
Blessings!
Post a Comment