continuation

I agree with the first part of Echo Zoe's statement against political compromise, and I respect his conclusion. Tying in to my previous post, here are the key parts I agree with - emphases mine:

...realizing that voting Democrat because my parents did was a bit silly, and I needed to figure things out for myself. However, I still hadn’t softened to the Republicans. In 1998, I voted to elect Jesse Ventura Governor of Minnesota. My second mistake, but heading in the right direction.

Six months later, in May of 1999, at the age of 21, I came face to face with my Savior. It was a radical change in my life, and I would never be the same. I immediately took interest in all things related to Christianity. Among the first things I ever prayed was that the Lord would show me His view of the world, and where mine was wrong. I chalk it up to answered prayer, but I immediately became very Conservative. I understood at once that no matter how I tried to justify it, abortion is murder. I realized that there was a reason why socialism is a relatively new phenomenon in America, which it hasn’t always been - that the redistribution of wealth is nothing more than legalized theft - “Plunder” as Bastiat called it. I had a year and a half to go before the next election, and I was firmly on the Right.

So you’d think I’d be a Republican now, right? Wrong. In late 1999 and into 2000, I could see that most of the candidates seeking the Republican Presidential Nomination were watered-down Democrats. John McCain was getting great praise from the media, and W. was preaching “Compassionate Conservatism”, which struck me as neither compassionate nor Conservative...

Between 2000 and 2004, and also the 2002 and 2006 mid-term elections, I received a lot heat from my friends on the Right for not jumping in line with the Republican Party. When I argued that they hadn’t done anything to convince me that they deserve my vote, or that they are even Conservative, I got all the usual platitudes about them being better than the alternative. I didn’t believe there to be only one alternative...

I have sat back this season and watched as so many Conservatives lamented the poor selection this time around. The mainstream media had decided early on that McCain, Romney, Giuliani, and Huckabee were the “viable” candidates. The punditry lamented that Fred Thompson wasn’t running, and quickly abandoned him when he did enter the race. After 7 years of unprecedented spending increases under G.W. Bush and the Republican Legislature, a war that has been promised to last decades, no dent in the abortion holocaust, and the curtailing of person freedom in the name of a “War on Terror”, one would have hoped that the Right would be eager to rally around a true Conservative. However, they quickly decided that Conservatives were “unelectable,” and resolved to have a Liberal candidate be the nominee.