Destroy the Village to Save it?

I'm doing the train of thought thing now to decide if I vote in today's Chesapeake-Potomac-Crab Cake-VA is for Lovers primary. Ya see, I'm not a McCain fan ( I know, take a number). I'm not necessarily a hater, but I can't in good conscience vote in the primary or a man who has made a living pissing off conservatives to get brownie points from NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times (who endorsed J-Mac).

The arguments against McCain are long and at this point have been played out to the point of nausea. He's not a conservative. He pisses off conservatives. The few issues he's conservative on he is quiet. The majority of issues he is anti-conservative on he is vocal. That's it in a nutshell.

So today, I'm going to write-in someone else. Anyone else. After all, McCain has this thing locked up. So that's that....but.....

With that being said, we need to vote McCain in the general election (or more accurately, vote against Hillary or Obama). Some pundits and pollsters say voters can't be swayed by asking them to vote against someone. Eventually, as they say, you have to ask them to vote for something. Well....not me. I will vote against Hillary. I will vote against Obama. More importantly, and please pay attention, I will vote against Democrat control of the House, Senate, and Executive Branch.

Count me out as a conservative who believes in the Vietnam War era ideal of destroying the village in order to save it. One can argue, love him or hate him, that President Bush was able to accomplish a great deal in large part because of a mostly-unified Republican Congress. Under Bush's watch he was able to pass No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, Tax Cuts (across the board, dividend, and cap. gains), the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and..oh yeah..Roberts and Alito. For the record, I'm not going to defend the entire domestic agenda. Med-D, despite it's private market structure, is still big government health care, and No Child Left Behind, despite it's idea of measurable benchmarks of success, is still big government education. But...imagine the flip side to this. Imagine President Obama/Clinton with a Democrat Congress. In addition to a "rollback," as they say, of the Bush tax cuts, health care would almost certainly move closer to single-payer, or if nothing closer to general socialization (look no further than the current SCHIP debate). We would probably see at least one retirement on the Court (maybe Stevens), so there goes that opportunity. Not too mention the war on terror, which so many on the left continue to call "the war on terror." The quotes say it all...

If that's not enough to motivate anyone to vote "against" Obama or Clinton, I don't know what is. It's just not worth it to file a protest vote in the general election and lose all we gained just because McCain's conservative heart is not pure. There is a harsh reality that we often overlook: It is enormously difficult to elect the party in the Executive Branch again after 8 years, let alone when that President has an approval rating in the low 30's. The election is more often than not a referendum on the previous president. It's not rocket science to see that if want to win in November, we just might have to give a little. It's a simple choice, a moderate Republican in McCain or a Democrat Unity Government? Your choice...if you want to call it that.