I'm Voting Tonight

It's endorsement season, and this humble blogger will make his endorsements in this post.

My absentee ballot arrived from New York State today. New York State is a solid blue state; Sen. John Kerry will win all the electoral votes from that state (see Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004). This reality has informed my decision of whom I will endorse.

The current issue of The American Conservative (link via A conservative blog for peace) offers traditional conservative arguments for each of the candidates (even Kerry and Nader), and for abstaining altogther from the election. which sometimes seems like the best choice.

Each "endorsement" is prefaced with these all-too-true words:

"Unfortunately, this election does not offer traditional conservatives an easy or natural choice and has left our editors as split as our readership."

Patrick J. Buchanan surprised me by endorsing President Bush in his contribution, entitled Coming Home. (PJB must be mellowing a bit with age.) His is in no way, however, a ringing endorsement of the man he ran against in 2000 and whose war he has been a staunch critic of since before its inception. He writes:

"[W]hile Bush and Kerry are both wrong on Iraq, Sharon, NAFTA, the WTO, open borders, affirmative action, amnesty, free trade, foreign aid, and Big Government, Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing."

For me, the main issues there are values and judges. I shudder to imagine a Kerry Supreme Court.

Mr. Buchanan also offers these pragmatic words:

"If an authentic conservatism rooted in the values of faith, family, community, and country is ever again to become the guiding light of national policy, it will have to come through a Republican administration.

"[W]hile one must respect votes for Michael Peroutka by those who live in Red or Blue states, we cannot counsel such votes in battleground states."

Well said.

I live in a solid blue state, however, and while I will be hoping for a Bush victory, I will be writing in the name of Michael Anthony Peroutka (see Peroutka for United States President in 2004) of the Constitution Party on my absentee ballot.

Howard Phillips, in his endorsement entitled Constitutionally Correct Peroutka, summarizes the Perouta platform:

"As president, Michael Peroutka would end federal intervention in education, cut off federal funding of Planned Parenthood and homosexual activist groups, withdraw from NATO, the UN, NAFTA, WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. He would seal our borders, cancel the George W. Bush-Vicente Fox treaty to pay Social Security benefits to illegal aliens who have returned to Mexico, expel illegal aliens, end all foreign aid, withdraw from Iraq, oppose the Patriot Act, fight all forms of socialized medicine, and appoint only judges who are 100 percent against abortion. Peroutka would abolish the IRS and replace the income tax with a revenue tariff. He would recognize the threat posed by Communist China and rebuild the U.S. Navy, which has dropped from 600 ships under Ronald Reagan to fewer than 250 today."

[Taki, TAC's editor-in-chief, has made the same choice in his piece, entitled The Real Deal.]

Now that would certainly shake things up a bit, wouldn't it!

The nativist tone of much of that rhetoric turns me off as a Catholic, and the elevation of the Constitution to the status of near-Holy Writ by Peroutka's party strikes me as a bit idolotrous. But the Constitution is as close to Tradition as we Americans get, and the only other viable protest candidate, Libertarian Michael Badnarik, dodges the issue of Abortion.

Simply put, a vote for Peroutka will send a pro-life, anti-war message to President Bush.

[I wouldn't be voting this way if I were a resident of a battle-ground state.]

For the Legislative Branch, I'll be voting for two women, Nancy Naples for Congress and Dr. Marilyn O'Grady for Senate. Both women have received the endorsement of The Conservative Party of New York State.

As a "special federal voter," I am not eligible to vote for any local offices, so I don't need to research the pro-life credentials of the candidates for dog-catcher.