Schwarzenegger's GOP

While acknowledging bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's political success, Matt Welch of Reason highlights his failures and warns the Republican Party:

Republicans in 2009 are in a mess of their own making. If they interpret the Democrats’ sweeping victory as a clarion call to foray further into religiously inspired, Terry Schiavo–style politics that uses government as a lever to manipulate and control other people’s lives, then they will deserve their exile from power.

But it will take more than just eschewing cultural conservatism and adopting the Democrats’ interventionist economic approach to refresh the Republican brand. There is room right now for an opposition party that emphasizes what the governing party does not: freedom, as both the ultimate goal and the means to achieve it.

If Republicans use government to manipulate and control people's lives, then Democrats also do the same, albeit in a different fashion. Democrats manipulate and control people's lives by burdening them with higher taxes. They fight for the freedom to abort a fetus and pass laws that fund organizations supporting that devious cause. Eventually they also want you to drive "green" vehicles because the planet is warming (never mind the snow storms throughout the country), and again, pass laws for taxpayers to fund themselves out of a regular automobile. Is that not manipulation and control?

Welch thinks the Republicans need to be more like Democrats in order to regain power. That may be the case to spell the GOP's demise. However, it is a fact that many conservative voters chose Obama/Biden simply to send a message to the GOP, and that these voters still understand that the Republicans can still check-balance the Democrats (recall the high-profile Georgia Senate race). Conservatives are wandering the desert in search of a home, and as long as the GOP leaders can prove themselves to return to conservative politics, I don't see a problem for the Republicans in the future.

Vote, with vengeance or principles?

Let's face it: many conservative voters are in a bind this year in choosing the next president. Conservatives are not thrilled with Sen. John McCain, but casting a vote to the opposing candidate, the furthest-left ever in American history, would cause countless sleepless nights. Many people will go the "lesser of two evils" path and stick with McCain. 

Then there are those who will vote blue (and turn blue as well?) to punish the GOP for its failure to reign in government largess and the prolonged war in Iraq. That's the mentality of Radley Balko who'd voted Republican in 1996 and 2000, but voted Democrat in 2004. His frustration is clear as he pens in Reason "Why the Republicans Must Lose":

...The Republican Party has exiled its Goldwater-Reagan wing and given up all pretense of any allegiance to limited government. In the last eight years, the GOP has given us a monstrous new federal bureaucracy in the Department of Homeland Security. In the prescription drug benefit, it's given us the largest new federal entitlement since the Johnson administration. Federal spending—even on items not related to war or national security—has soared. And we now get to watch as the party that's supposed to be "free market" nationalizes huge chunks of the economy's financial sector.

Agreed, agreed, and agreed. But even Mr. Balko understands "This isn't to say that Barack Obama would be any better." So why vote for the "more of the two evils"?

His argument is simply... revenge. Wake up call. Punishment for the GOP. Let the Republicans have it for four years and hopefully they'll come out better and stronger. But guess what? Politicians, Republican or Democrat or whatever, won't suffer as much as the everyday folks, supposedly the "Joe the Plumbers" across America.

Your vote, that piece of paper so honored in a democratic society, is not really a weapon. Don't think of it as a firecracker that'll get a politician's undivided attention. Rather, think of a vote as a reflection of your beliefs and principles. Cast your vote because you agree with Obama or share McCain's agenda.

Don't throw away that vote simply because of your vengeful partisanship.