With their votes Conservatives can issue a Declaration of Political Independence

[Here follows my exchange with a Facebook poster commenting on the approach I  suggest conservatives take in the November election. ]

THE COMMENT

Greg Slivkoff also commented on your post.
Greg wrote: “If what is written above is anywhere near the truth, then we already are screwed. Why, then, even vote for the “other” offices (Sen, Rep, etc.) if they too are on the Romney bandwagon? What good would they do, even if they are TP conservatives? Why, then, vote at all??It seems you are twisting yourself into a pretzel maintaining your purist idealism, Dr Keyes. We will not find a John Adams or a James Madison this time around, sorry.
But I do have confidence in P Ryan, and I have to go with my gut on “dictator” Romney, who I believe is an honorable man of good morals and not a socialist. Which is much more than I can say for the utterly contemptible BO. It’s written, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”
I’m putting my faith in God, and voting in good faith according to the information I have, that God is interested in our civil society as well as in His kingdom, and our ultimate citizenship there. And that it will be up to God which way things go. As it is, I think we’re in sharp decline, and that is because we as a people have essentially forsaken God. Few people, just the tiniest minority, possess the esoteric information you are privy to, and fewer will follow your advice. A “non-vote” for R-R, or for a Ron Paul is a vote for BO. I am unashamedly voting for R-R, who MOST CLOSELY represents my view, and I will take my chances on the result.”

MY REPLY

Greg Slivkoff:  You see no hope because you insist on accepting the false elitist faction paradigm for politics, which has voters looking to choose some leader or other, from among the alternatives pre-arranged by the “leadership group”.  By contrast, the paradigm of politics consistent with constitution self-government sees the people as the “leadership group”.  They elect representatives, not leaders, whom they then hold accountable with an independent political based on their proven capacity to “hold their feet to the fire”.  The approach I have suggested is aimed at demonstrating this independent political will.

Though you SAY you are basing your intended vote on the “information you have available”, you then say that “I have to go with my gut”, thus admitting that the existing information on Romney’s actual record in public life is not the basis for your intended vote.  In reality, you intend to ignore the facts and reasoning that show Romney to be an unreconstructed “progressive” (the weasel word for socialist) who is  shrewdly paying lip-service to conservative views.  Thus you will ignore your God-endowed common sense and reason, then incongruously pretend that you are putting your faith in God. This is like someone willfully starving to death in a place teeming with locusts and honey, while telling himself that he is making good use of the food available.  In fact, because it’s not the diet he prefers, he’s rejecting what God has provided.  Saying that this is “putting [his] faith in God” actually sets up a false scenario which will bring him to a point where he blames God for letting him starve.  In truth, the fault lies not with God but with his own willful refusal to conform his will to God’s provision. Think of the word provision also in the context of law, and you will realize that these days this is an all too common reason why some people lose faith in God.

My proposal allows people to act on the real facts, while demonstrating their capacity to reject the elitist faction’s manipulative propaganda.  You have obviously succumbed to part of that manipulation.  I do not oppose Barack Obama out of some emotional animus against him (as in “he’s utterly contemptible.”) I oppose him- and did so long before the elitist faction leaders you are willing to trust-  because of his lifelong commitment to and actual push toward  socialism, his advocacy of unconscionable moral dissolution, his constitution destroying views and actions, his assault on the rights of  conscience, his deprecation of the sovereignty of the American people, etc.  Finding much the same characteristics in Mitt Romney’s actual record (as opposed to his ambition-serving lip-service) I oppose Mitt Romney.

I did not let false notions of racial pride or allegiance induce me to ignore the good of the country and support Obama.  And I will not let false notions of partisanship or manipulated feelings of fear and contempt toward Obama induce me to ignore the good of the country in order to validate with my vote the very Obama-like record of Mitt Romney.

Contrary to what you allege, it’s palpably obvious that my willingness to stand with the ‘Platform Republicans” is not purist.  When I say the platform is not perfect, I mean it.  For example, the language of its pro-life plank gives credence to the “regulatory approach” to abortion. This approach intrinsically undermines respect for the Declaration principle that we are all “created equal”, and endowed with our unalienable rights from the moment of God’s creation (not after reaching some specified stage of development, or after some specified legal or administrative procedure is followed.)

But unlike Mitt Romney, the GOP grassroots forces responsible for the platform have consistently acknowledged the standard of principle, though they sometimes fail to satisfy its requirements.  (By analogy, they sin but are burdened with a sense of respect for the standard of God’s will that makes it sin.)  However, things have come to the point where the persistent failure to act according to their professed standard suggests that they have crossed over the line beyond which failure ceases to be an instance of backsliding and arises instead from a heart confirmed by the habit of failure in the preference for the way of life which violates and despises the standard.  If this has happened, then the Platform is a manipulative lie, not a “spirit is willing” profession of intention.  If given another chance, will the GOP’s supposed ‘Platform Republicans’ actually uphold the standard they profess? Or will they confirm that the bad pattern of their actions over the past decade and more is their true identity, as Mitt Romney has done over his whole career in public life?

By refusing Romney and giving the ‘Platform Republicans’ the benefit of the doubt one last time, the sincere grassroots conservatives will demonstrate their political capacity and resolve. They will make it clear in action that their will and numbers are sufficient to allow them to withdraw their confidence from the GOP, just as the Republican Party’s original founders withdrew their confidence from the Whig party because it refused to represent their allegiance to God-endowed right.  This will issue, as it were, a conservative Declaration of Political Independence, but by votes instead of mere words.

I don’t know whether this will have sufficient impact to change the results of the GOP’s actions in Congress. (One indication would be the kind of leadership installed by newly elected GOP majorities in the House and Senate.)  But I am convinced that it will stir the confidence of the conservative grassroots. If and when Romney is elected,  it will make it clear that his victory gives him no mandate to replace the meaning of the  conservative label some new socialist content consistent with his actual record in public office. ( I am morally certain this is what he and the elitist faction he actually represents intend to do. It’s why Karl Rove doesn’t want the campaign against Obama to be conducted on terms that identify and reject Obama as a socialist. On this, read Cliff Kincaid’s accurate analysis at www.renewamerica.com/columns/kincaid/120902 )

Most important, by using their votes to issue this Declaration of Political Independence, grassroots conservatives will make clear to themselves and all the world that they have the political will and capacity to force a realignment of the current corrupted political process which has abandoned the true purpose of politics in a constitutional republic. Thus they will cease to be elitist faction pawns in elections to choose from among elitist  “fuehrers” (German for “leader”) the “fuehrer” of the day.  They will, instead, reclaim the true, republican meaning of politics in which the people are the “leadership class” and  in which elections are their means of choosing who shall temporarily represent their goodwill, their good sense and their good hopes for their country.