It is time for me to offer my recommendation for voting in the 2022 midterm elections. Perhaps I’m a bit late, given the increased prevalence of early voting. Then again, people who vote early tend to be those who are pretty committed to their choices and particularly to their partisan affiliation. This recommendation is for those who are still on the edge and still trying to make up their minds, because it’s tough to figure out which of two awful choices is worse.
Wow this is hard to read! But what I needed to “hear”. As a non MAGA Republican, I’ve been troubled by our treatment since the last election. Not wanting to “throw the baby out with the bath water”, I have stayed with the Republican Party. I can no longer.
I have been active from an early age, even being chosen for Republican Leadership Program in 1993 (since renamed). I’ve both appointed election judges, and have served as one. The non truths are just horrific.
Excellent article and very well argued. I was Never Trump in 2016 but never imagined he could do this much damage. I'm sad to say our country is weaker than I thought.
I believe Ayn Rand would be turning over in her grave knowing you want the socialists to win next week. As bad as the Republicans are, the Democrats are many times worse. Just look at what they have already (in less than two years) done not just to our country but to our reputation around the world. They want to destroy our energy business but have no replacement. They want to defund our military in a world turning more war like. They seem to think the Big Lie that they use is legitimate to diminish their opponents. They tried an end around by federalizing election laws. There is so much more. Read how Argentina went from the second richest country in the world to being a impoverished nation today.
Ayn Rand opposed Reagan when he was up against Carter. The idea that the philosophy of Objectivism requires a permanent alliance with the Republican Party is absurd, particularly considering everything Ayn Rand said and wrote about conservatives.
Asking what Ayn Rand would say is a false premise. It is not a defense for your recommendation to vote socialist. I would rather you recommend to not vote for either party that to recommend people vote for the socialists. I will be choosing between two flawed parties and my decision is to vote R.
You might have a stronger case, if the Dem party were actually the Socialist Party; if it consisted of nothing but Bernie Sanderses and AOCs. Thankfully, it does not.
In reality, most Dems advocate for a mixed economy with slightly more regulation than the R's want (and sometimes, in the Trump era, even that doesn't hold true). It's one thing to say that their principles, if practiced consistently, would lead to socialism, but quite another to equate the infrastructure bill or wiping out student debt with socialism. This kind of package-deal leads to faulty threat assessments.
Even without Ayn Rand, if I lived in the US, I would not vote, given these choices.
Mr Tracinski convincingly demonstrates how awful the National Conservatism movement is but omits the fact that these criticisms apply moreso to the Democrats, including the pro-Putin foreign policy of Joe Biden and Obama before him, Biden actively encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine before he did.
I refuse to differentiate, in essence, between a punch from Frank Bruno and a punch from Lennox Lewis and certainly won't choose to have both of them punch me simultaneously as the alternative.
At least a quarter of these "hoaxes" are true (Trump calling Nazis "very fine people"), and at least another quarter are trivial ephemera claimed by a handful of people (Trump and the koi fish? Really?). I maintain an iron grip on the comments section of my site, and I will ban you if you keep posting stuff like this that I have to waste my time answering.
50 years ago, in 1972, Rand observed, evaluated, then chose.
In calendar year 1972, the Ayn Rand Letter published 25 issues.
Eight of them were dedicated to one subject with a total of 38 pages and over 18,000 words. They were written to show Rand's philosophical thinking regarding the then Democratic party platform and its candidate for the 1972 presidential election, George McGovern.
Hardly any mention was made of the GOP and its candidate Richard Nixon. They were mentioned, early in the series of articles, but only as a reference to the issue at hand, the choice of who to vote for. Her conclusion?
"...to vote for Nixon as a matter of national emergency. This is no longer an issue of choosing the lesser of two commensurate evils. The choice is between a flawed candidate representing western civilization - and the perfect candidate of its primordial enemies.
...
The worst thing that can be said about Nixon is that he cannot be trusted, which is true: he cannot be trusted to save the country. But one thing is certain: McGovern can be trusted to destroy it."
Almost every other word in the series was dedicated to analyzing the then American Left. Then, the primary focus and motive of theirs was to equalize income by redistributing the earned income of the middle class.
So, one has to ask oneself...we faced a "National Emergency" just for that? If so, what about now, with today's democratic party and candidates?
Read her analysis as to the New Left she faced (see below), then compare it to today's New Left situation. Are conditions and their ideas now better, worse...?
Then ask yourself...
Would not voting be helpful to today's Left by allowing them to think that they have been sanctioned to be in the position to destroy what still exists?
With all due respect to Rand, who could not have anticipated all of the results, Nixon ended up being a giant disaster for the cause of liberty. He presided over the collapse of the war in Vietnam and the creation of affirmative action and the EPA, along with a host of other problems. (He had already taken the US off the gold standard and presided over wage and price controls.) And then he bumbled into a scandal and a cover-up that imploded his presidency and ushered in a whole new generation of far-left McGovernite type congressmen in the elections of 1974, who messed things up for decades afterward. American only began to recover with the rise of Reagan in the 1980s--whom Rand opposed. So be careful about the precedents you cite.
And likewise with all due respect, it's not about precedent, it's about thinking. Rand was not wrong about the Left and its general destructiveness toward this form of constitutional government. That she was not a soothsayer does not diminish her critique. Sorry RT, I just don't buy it even though, as a libertarian, I cannot stomach most of the choices either of these corrupt organizations promote. Yes, there are many unfortunate Trump acolytes all over the R party. But for every one you highlight, there are ample anti-democratic counterpoints in the D party. But I want to focus on one issue in particular, because this is the second time today I've seen someone mention judges. Remember first that DJT is not on the ballot this year. Even a Rep sweep of Congress, even wins by all the deniers, does not make DJT the nominee or POTUS-elect next time around. [One could well argue that a Rep sweep imperils the likelihood of a Rep POTUS-elect in 2024 but that's just guessing.] Your own historical example illustrates the uncertainties. But as to judges, first, there will be no Trump nominees for judges for at least 27 more months. Biden will continue to nominate lower court judges, and while the process may slow, it's unlikely to stop. Second, there is absolutely ZERO evidence that any Trump judicial appointments have been anything other than qualified. ZERO. Over at Justicia, former prosecutor Dennis Afterguyt makes the shameful claim that Trump nominees in the future will "need to avow belief that the 2020 election was stolen." This is a despicable speculative assertion about the judiciary and those qualified to serve in it, with no basis in fact. Indeed, Trump appointees have already ruled against the ex-/POTUS on many occasions. People like to highlight the search warrant case, but it is the outlier, not the norm.
I live in a California, already a single-party state. You wish that on the rest of the country? No thanks.
P.S. There is a reason that polls show independents view the D party as a greater threat to democracy. And I think the primary reason for that is the D party's assault on constitutional norms like free speech and religion. While both parties have failed to protect constitutional norms as well as they should, the D party's active assault on those rights is extremely disturbing.
I literally quote a Wisconsin Republican promising that they will never lose an election again, and you think Democrats are the ones threatening a one-party state?
Robert, you’re too smart to think the hyperbole of one or even a dozen R/MAGA candidates proved your case for voting straight D. It is definitely a valid basis for Reps to vote against any MAGA types. I’m sorry, but as much as I love your stuff, recommending single party rule in a democracy is nuts. You think the people who are hyperventilating on the D side are any less dangerous? I don’t. I honestly don’t know where you live. But if it’s not California, you should take a visit here sometime and see what single-party rule has done. Yes, we are the 6/5/4th largest economy in the world being run like a feudal state, with massive homelessness, lawlessness, drug, water, and hunger problems. The home of the 60s free speech movement is now one of the most censorious states. Again, we can defeat individual atrumpist-election-deniers up and down the individual ballots. But there are plenty of Reps who believe in and work hard at ensuring election integrity. If I am not mistaken, it was a Rep SoS in Georgia that stood up to Trump’s withering pressure and even ratted him out. Reps should abandon people like that in favor of Dem election deniers like the Stacey Abramses of the world? The same sort of Dems who spent $53,000,000 to support these MAGA candidates in the primaries thinking they would be patsies? That’s the cynical politics you want Reps to support? Again, no thanks. I am simply not persuaded by your argument.
As long as believing the Big Lie is a requirement for Republican candidates, and they publicly aver that they would not have certified the 2020 election, they are the ones attempting to install themselves as a single-party government.
Ouch, that is hard to swallow. No way I can vote a party line like that - and I've been an Independent for decades. Here in Pennsylvania, the Dems running for Gov and Senate seats have an established record - and it's horrible. I don't care for the alternatives on the R tickets, and I especially resent Trumps interference via endorsement, but I'd rather turn-over bad candidates than to let them consolidate power through entrenchment.
I don't know that I'm keen on party-line recommendations, but honestly, at the National level we are better served with some balance inside the Beltway. That is simplistic, certainly, but since you did not address economic issues and the incessant meddling by Washington DC in everything related to commerce, I'll just say that I believe the current Dem charter will crush economic output, and in short order lead to serious socioeconomic upheaval if we do not restore balance of power b/w Exec/Leg.
I'm still amused by your obsession with the Jan 6 rioting at the Capital. For all of the participants who are likely subject to criminal prosecution - and there would be quite a few indeed - continuing to refer to the event as an "insurrection," and then further linking it to Republicans (38 million of them) is disingenuous. Oh, I know there were some serious idiots/criminals involved, but please - of 2000 who made it inside, how many of these "insurrectionists" were armed for... well... insurrection of our government? What to do about it: retrain Capital police NOT to open doors for the trespassers, accept any offers to supply NG troops to the Capital in advance, fully prosecute those who entered, or were violent in any way with the appropriate criminal code. That was no insurrection.
Every single sentence acknowledged crime and recommended prosecution for the individuals involved. For a country whose Founders codified our right to firearms explicitly for the purpose of conflict with government, that "insurrection" was just the most anemic, embarrassing attempt at over-throw - ever. "Total" denial... there must be something between Total denial and Total acceptance, or have I really fallen all the way to the bottom?
If you really want to undermine people claiming vote fraud, your conclusion strikes me as bass-ackwards. If we all vote Democrat, that would give the losers the chance to claim vote fraud. However, if we all vote Republican, giving them a larger margin of victory, then it would be impossible to claim vote fraud, right?
The crazies exist on both sides, of course. But we don't see the true radicals on the Left quoted approvingly by the leaders of the Democratic Party, nor do those leaders go to the conferences led by their side's crazies. These things change over time, of course: in the seventies, it was the Left that mainstreamed the vicious Marxist foreign policy of Ramparts magazine and Noam Chomsky, while the Right's foreign policy experts were... perhaps not right, but "wrong within normal parameters."
I hope that the current rethink that's taking place on the Right will lead to a return to the old days when the Republicans were the so-called "party of ideas," while the Democrats were the party of gut feelings and conspiracy theories.
Wow this is hard to read! But what I needed to “hear”. As a non MAGA Republican, I’ve been troubled by our treatment since the last election. Not wanting to “throw the baby out with the bath water”, I have stayed with the Republican Party. I can no longer.
I have been active from an early age, even being chosen for Republican Leadership Program in 1993 (since renamed). I’ve both appointed election judges, and have served as one. The non truths are just horrific.
Thank you for being honest and brave.
Excellent article and very well argued. I was Never Trump in 2016 but never imagined he could do this much damage. I'm sad to say our country is weaker than I thought.
My experience, exactly. I expected the Republicans to have some principles, at least. It turns out you and I were overly optimistic.
I believe Ayn Rand would be turning over in her grave knowing you want the socialists to win next week. As bad as the Republicans are, the Democrats are many times worse. Just look at what they have already (in less than two years) done not just to our country but to our reputation around the world. They want to destroy our energy business but have no replacement. They want to defund our military in a world turning more war like. They seem to think the Big Lie that they use is legitimate to diminish their opponents. They tried an end around by federalizing election laws. There is so much more. Read how Argentina went from the second richest country in the world to being a impoverished nation today.
Ayn Rand opposed Reagan when he was up against Carter. The idea that the philosophy of Objectivism requires a permanent alliance with the Republican Party is absurd, particularly considering everything Ayn Rand said and wrote about conservatives.
Asking what Ayn Rand would say is a false premise. It is not a defense for your recommendation to vote socialist. I would rather you recommend to not vote for either party that to recommend people vote for the socialists. I will be choosing between two flawed parties and my decision is to vote R.
You might have a stronger case, if the Dem party were actually the Socialist Party; if it consisted of nothing but Bernie Sanderses and AOCs. Thankfully, it does not.
In reality, most Dems advocate for a mixed economy with slightly more regulation than the R's want (and sometimes, in the Trump era, even that doesn't hold true). It's one thing to say that their principles, if practiced consistently, would lead to socialism, but quite another to equate the infrastructure bill or wiping out student debt with socialism. This kind of package-deal leads to faulty threat assessments.
Even without Ayn Rand, if I lived in the US, I would not vote, given these choices.
Mr Tracinski convincingly demonstrates how awful the National Conservatism movement is but omits the fact that these criticisms apply moreso to the Democrats, including the pro-Putin foreign policy of Joe Biden and Obama before him, Biden actively encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine before he did.
I refuse to differentiate, in essence, between a punch from Frank Bruno and a punch from Lennox Lewis and certainly won't choose to have both of them punch me simultaneously as the alternative.
Dear Liberals, How Many Of These MSM Hoaxes Did You Fall For?
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dear-liberals-how-many-these-msm-hoaxes-did-you-fall
At least a quarter of these "hoaxes" are true (Trump calling Nazis "very fine people"), and at least another quarter are trivial ephemera claimed by a handful of people (Trump and the koi fish? Really?). I maintain an iron grip on the comments section of my site, and I will ban you if you keep posting stuff like this that I have to waste my time answering.
Clean up your media diet. Zerohedge is a trash site and a conduit for Russian propaganda. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-15/us-accuses-financial-website-of-spreading-russian-propaganda?leadSource=uverify%20wall
50 years ago, in 1972, Rand observed, evaluated, then chose.
In calendar year 1972, the Ayn Rand Letter published 25 issues.
Eight of them were dedicated to one subject with a total of 38 pages and over 18,000 words. They were written to show Rand's philosophical thinking regarding the then Democratic party platform and its candidate for the 1972 presidential election, George McGovern.
Hardly any mention was made of the GOP and its candidate Richard Nixon. They were mentioned, early in the series of articles, but only as a reference to the issue at hand, the choice of who to vote for. Her conclusion?
"...to vote for Nixon as a matter of national emergency. This is no longer an issue of choosing the lesser of two commensurate evils. The choice is between a flawed candidate representing western civilization - and the perfect candidate of its primordial enemies.
...
The worst thing that can be said about Nixon is that he cannot be trusted, which is true: he cannot be trusted to save the country. But one thing is certain: McGovern can be trusted to destroy it."
Almost every other word in the series was dedicated to analyzing the then American Left. Then, the primary focus and motive of theirs was to equalize income by redistributing the earned income of the middle class.
So, one has to ask oneself...we faced a "National Emergency" just for that? If so, what about now, with today's democratic party and candidates?
Read her analysis as to the New Left she faced (see below), then compare it to today's New Left situation. Are conditions and their ideas now better, worse...?
Then ask yourself...
Would not voting be helpful to today's Left by allowing them to think that they have been sanctioned to be in the position to destroy what still exists?
THE AYN RAND LETTER - CALENDAR YEAR 1972
*The Dead End
*A Preview Part I & II & III
*A Nation's Unity Part I & II & III
*The American Spirit
With all due respect to Rand, who could not have anticipated all of the results, Nixon ended up being a giant disaster for the cause of liberty. He presided over the collapse of the war in Vietnam and the creation of affirmative action and the EPA, along with a host of other problems. (He had already taken the US off the gold standard and presided over wage and price controls.) And then he bumbled into a scandal and a cover-up that imploded his presidency and ushered in a whole new generation of far-left McGovernite type congressmen in the elections of 1974, who messed things up for decades afterward. American only began to recover with the rise of Reagan in the 1980s--whom Rand opposed. So be careful about the precedents you cite.
And likewise with all due respect, it's not about precedent, it's about thinking. Rand was not wrong about the Left and its general destructiveness toward this form of constitutional government. That she was not a soothsayer does not diminish her critique. Sorry RT, I just don't buy it even though, as a libertarian, I cannot stomach most of the choices either of these corrupt organizations promote. Yes, there are many unfortunate Trump acolytes all over the R party. But for every one you highlight, there are ample anti-democratic counterpoints in the D party. But I want to focus on one issue in particular, because this is the second time today I've seen someone mention judges. Remember first that DJT is not on the ballot this year. Even a Rep sweep of Congress, even wins by all the deniers, does not make DJT the nominee or POTUS-elect next time around. [One could well argue that a Rep sweep imperils the likelihood of a Rep POTUS-elect in 2024 but that's just guessing.] Your own historical example illustrates the uncertainties. But as to judges, first, there will be no Trump nominees for judges for at least 27 more months. Biden will continue to nominate lower court judges, and while the process may slow, it's unlikely to stop. Second, there is absolutely ZERO evidence that any Trump judicial appointments have been anything other than qualified. ZERO. Over at Justicia, former prosecutor Dennis Afterguyt makes the shameful claim that Trump nominees in the future will "need to avow belief that the 2020 election was stolen." This is a despicable speculative assertion about the judiciary and those qualified to serve in it, with no basis in fact. Indeed, Trump appointees have already ruled against the ex-/POTUS on many occasions. People like to highlight the search warrant case, but it is the outlier, not the norm.
I live in a California, already a single-party state. You wish that on the rest of the country? No thanks.
P.S. There is a reason that polls show independents view the D party as a greater threat to democracy. And I think the primary reason for that is the D party's assault on constitutional norms like free speech and religion. While both parties have failed to protect constitutional norms as well as they should, the D party's active assault on those rights is extremely disturbing.
I literally quote a Wisconsin Republican promising that they will never lose an election again, and you think Democrats are the ones threatening a one-party state?
Robert, you’re too smart to think the hyperbole of one or even a dozen R/MAGA candidates proved your case for voting straight D. It is definitely a valid basis for Reps to vote against any MAGA types. I’m sorry, but as much as I love your stuff, recommending single party rule in a democracy is nuts. You think the people who are hyperventilating on the D side are any less dangerous? I don’t. I honestly don’t know where you live. But if it’s not California, you should take a visit here sometime and see what single-party rule has done. Yes, we are the 6/5/4th largest economy in the world being run like a feudal state, with massive homelessness, lawlessness, drug, water, and hunger problems. The home of the 60s free speech movement is now one of the most censorious states. Again, we can defeat individual atrumpist-election-deniers up and down the individual ballots. But there are plenty of Reps who believe in and work hard at ensuring election integrity. If I am not mistaken, it was a Rep SoS in Georgia that stood up to Trump’s withering pressure and even ratted him out. Reps should abandon people like that in favor of Dem election deniers like the Stacey Abramses of the world? The same sort of Dems who spent $53,000,000 to support these MAGA candidates in the primaries thinking they would be patsies? That’s the cynical politics you want Reps to support? Again, no thanks. I am simply not persuaded by your argument.
For an interesting view contra, check out Sullivan’s column today: https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewsullivan/p/will-biden-and-the-dems-finally-get-7a7
As long as believing the Big Lie is a requirement for Republican candidates, and they publicly aver that they would not have certified the 2020 election, they are the ones attempting to install themselves as a single-party government.
Ouch, that is hard to swallow. No way I can vote a party line like that - and I've been an Independent for decades. Here in Pennsylvania, the Dems running for Gov and Senate seats have an established record - and it's horrible. I don't care for the alternatives on the R tickets, and I especially resent Trumps interference via endorsement, but I'd rather turn-over bad candidates than to let them consolidate power through entrenchment.
I don't know that I'm keen on party-line recommendations, but honestly, at the National level we are better served with some balance inside the Beltway. That is simplistic, certainly, but since you did not address economic issues and the incessant meddling by Washington DC in everything related to commerce, I'll just say that I believe the current Dem charter will crush economic output, and in short order lead to serious socioeconomic upheaval if we do not restore balance of power b/w Exec/Leg.
I'm still amused by your obsession with the Jan 6 rioting at the Capital. For all of the participants who are likely subject to criminal prosecution - and there would be quite a few indeed - continuing to refer to the event as an "insurrection," and then further linking it to Republicans (38 million of them) is disingenuous. Oh, I know there were some serious idiots/criminals involved, but please - of 2000 who made it inside, how many of these "insurrectionists" were armed for... well... insurrection of our government? What to do about it: retrain Capital police NOT to open doors for the trespassers, accept any offers to supply NG troops to the Capital in advance, fully prosecute those who entered, or were violent in any way with the appropriate criminal code. That was no insurrection.
This starts reasonably but ends up in total denial about January 6.
Every single sentence acknowledged crime and recommended prosecution for the individuals involved. For a country whose Founders codified our right to firearms explicitly for the purpose of conflict with government, that "insurrection" was just the most anemic, embarrassing attempt at over-throw - ever. "Total" denial... there must be something between Total denial and Total acceptance, or have I really fallen all the way to the bottom?
If you really want to undermine people claiming vote fraud, your conclusion strikes me as bass-ackwards. If we all vote Democrat, that would give the losers the chance to claim vote fraud. However, if we all vote Republican, giving them a larger margin of victory, then it would be impossible to claim vote fraud, right?
I agree that such behavior is inimical to our freedom, but is it exclusive to one party? This article argues otherwise:
https://www.nysun.com/article/the-fickle-finger-of-biden
The crazies exist on both sides, of course. But we don't see the true radicals on the Left quoted approvingly by the leaders of the Democratic Party, nor do those leaders go to the conferences led by their side's crazies. These things change over time, of course: in the seventies, it was the Left that mainstreamed the vicious Marxist foreign policy of Ramparts magazine and Noam Chomsky, while the Right's foreign policy experts were... perhaps not right, but "wrong within normal parameters."
I hope that the current rethink that's taking place on the Right will lead to a return to the old days when the Republicans were the so-called "party of ideas," while the Democrats were the party of gut feelings and conspiracy theories.