I really thought that if Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination, I'd be able to vote for some third party, secure in the knowledge that it didn't really matter which moderate Republican got in. I thought that would mean the Republicans had decided not to double down on the crazy. I was wrong.
Watching the nomination fight, it was pretty obvious that Romney decided - probably correctly - that he couldn't win without pretending to be just as crazy himself. You only have to look at the opinion polls, with one crazy challenger after another spiking in the polls, getting enough attention to show off their crazy side, and dropping back down as the Republicans went looking for somebody electable who wasn't Mitt.
Back in 2000, running on a platform of tax cuts for the rich, rolling back bank regulations, increasing defence spending and invading a Middle Eastern country might have seemed vaguely plausible. Wrong, but plausible. Twelve years later, we have run that particular experiment and we have seen the results. Doing it again would not be wrong; it would be delusional. I would be derelict in my duty as a voter to allow it to be tried again.
There is still a risk that the Republican party will conclude from a Romney loss that they have been too moderate and reasonable. Romney has substantially mitigated that risk both by the arguments he has chosen to use and his VP pick. It's my hope that Ryan carries with him enough Tea Party credibility that they will not be able to pretend that moderation was the problem.
I suspect that Mitt Romney really is the kind of moderate I was hoping for. Not the guy I want running the country, but enough of a reasonable politician that he would be no worse than Obama. His record as Massachusetts governor suggests that. Unfortunately the Republicans don't trust him, or don't like him, enough to let him run that way. He has to continually take up stupidly extreme positions to keep them on side; and he has made his choice to go that way, and to be running in a party that requires it.
I think the reason Jon Huntsman never got one of those not-Romney poll bounces is because he wasn't prepared to do that. He earns respect, and now I am hoping that this election is enough of a slap in the face to the Republicans that they will turn to someone like him in 2016. I think the best thing that could happen to this country is for the Republicans to get crushed this year; mere reality has not proven enough of a wakeup call.
My consolation is that Obama appears to be a better choice than the moderate version of Romney would have been. Romney appears to be stuck in the 1980's on foreign policy - seriously, Russia is the USA's biggest strategic threat? - and foreign policy is going to be critical to the future of the US.
I just wish I had an election where I could vote against Obama with some hope that my vote would improve things or just not make them much worse...
