You go to war with the army you have

Cameron - a Tory in name only

Since I'm a highly dedicated and loyal member of the Green party I probably shouldn't be sticking my nose into Republican affairs, but...

It seems to me a fair number of people on the right side of the political spectrum are starting to lose the plot. Unhappy with Romney and the rest of the Republican field they're starting to drift off into a "pox on both their houses" attitude that can only help Obama.

Some people are even starting to rationalize that a protest vote, which would give Obama a second term, would be a good thing because a second term of his would be so disastrous it would bring the whole big government edifice down and open people's eyes in the process. Neo-neocon, in her post Obama’s second term, dashes some well-aimed cold water on that notion:

Obama is a politician, and although he’s no genius he’s a smart man, smart enough to have been at least somewhat strategic in his decisions during his first term. Unless you think he really is a moderate Republican in his secret heart, there is no reason to suppose he will govern moderately in his second term, when he will have no longer have any need to appeal to independents in order to be re-elected.

It is logical to assume that he will see his second term as an opportunity—perhaps his last—to accomplish what he could not in his first. That can be done not only be legislative means but by executive fiat. His power to veto the legislation passed by a most-likely-Republican Congress that will almost certainly not have the numbers to override him will remain intact, and he will exercise it. He will be setting foreign policy and appointing Cabinet members and czars, and they will be setting domestic policy as well. 

And, of course, he will most likely be appointing one or several liberal Supreme Court justices, who will remain in office for life.

I chose David Cameron, the British PM, to illustrate this post because I think Romney would be his American analog. That is not praise, Cameron is a wishy-washy Tory (the British conservative party) who has done little that the party's ideological core wants: an EU referendum, controlling immigration, scaling back the power of the QUANGOs and so forth.

However, when it did matter he vetoed the new EU treaty that would have turned over regulation of a considerable part of Great Britain's financial sector to the Germans and French. Had the Tories, who knew Cameron's shortcomings, split their vote with other conservative parties and allowed Labor to retain power Gordon Brown or some other idiot would have stepped off that cliff.

Do any of you doubt that Obama would step off that cliff? Small victories are better than huge defeats.

The potential Tea Party groomed candidates are new to either statehouses or the Congress. They aren't running. The current slate of candidates is the army the Republicans have to go to war with. Aside from that lunatic Ron Paul, any one of them -- even if they could only raise to the level of being America's Cameron -- would be a better choice than Obama.

One more strategic consideration. A defeated Obama would not be a Carter who just faded away. He would still have his own constituency in the Democratic party and perhaps hopes of a second term down the road. If you want him to cause chaos, get him out of the White House where his chaos would cause national harm and let him muck up the Democrats' internal politics instead.

Er... not that, as a faithful Green party mover and shaker, I approve of any Republican candidate over such inspiring Green choices as Kent P. Mesplay or Jill Stein. Go Green!