Dear Dr. Hurd: I notice you live in Delaware, where Christine O’Donnell is running for Joe Biden’s former Senate seat. Do you plan to vote for her?
Dr. Hurd’s Answer: Yes. Or more precisely, I plan to vote against Obama and the Congress as we know it. People claim that O’Donnell is nutty, and maybe she is, although the people who make this claim also support the policies of people like Obama and Pelosi, policies which are acting as a wrecking ball to our economy. If you ask me, supporting Obama or the current Congress is nuttier than anything Christine O’Donnell has said or done.
When O’Donnell says she will vote against tax increases, for tax cuts, for repealing ObamaCare, against cap and trade, and for cutting government spending, it’s not that I necessarily believe her. What reason is there to believe just about any Republican politician who claims these things? But we really have no other choice but to vote for what the candidate claims to support, at least if you agree with it. O’Donnell is associated with the Tea Party movement, and this movement is known for being against Obama, against Big Government redistribution, and in favor of reversing years of these disastrous trends. The Tea Party movement endorses what I have been pushing for years: We need a second party, not a third party, in the United States. Their strategy of attempting to cleanse the Republican party of closet Democrats is the right one.
One “Republican” I know recently sneered at me for my plan to vote for O’Donnell. I asked him, “Don’t you want her vote in Congress? Or do you want Obama’s policies to remain in place and expand?” O’Donnell’s Democratic opponent can be counted on to vote for every single thing Obama supports and then some. It’s the principle of the thing, and the principle at stake is to oppose, in any and every way possible, the worst President—and the worst policies—in American history. Of course, most Republicans don’t think in principle, which is why, in the end, they always lose to the liberals and the Democrats, even when they control the whole government. A lot of these Republicans really are Big Government statists at heart, anyway. They’re against ideology because they have no real ideological differences with their liberal “opponents.”
Remember this is a vote for a Senator, not a President. A Senator is not a President. No single Senator sends troops into battle or controls an entire branch of the U.S. government. You count on a Senator to vote the right way, or at least not vote the wrong way. If you have a choice between a Senator who absolutely will vote the wrong way, every time, and a Senator who might vote the right way much of the time, then you choose the latter. It’s not that you’re naive and foolish enough to think you’re actually going to get what you’re voting for; but in the process, you’re still voting for a principle. As for claims that O’Donnell thinks she’s a “witch”—I’d take a witch any day over the likes of the witches and worse who, with their votes, are destroying our once great society . As for O’Donnell’s endorsement of Christianity, this is no different from the religion espoused by members of both parties. Republicans and Democrats nearly all claim to be Christians. I would personally prefer a candidate who’s an atheist, but given a choice between a candidate who uses Christianity to expand the force of government and a candidate who uses Christianity to reduce the force of government, I’ll choose the latter, every time. When it comes time to vote for O’Donnell, as with just about any other politician, I will hold my nose, keep my perspective, and pull the lever. Anything that hurts or undercuts Obama is a good thing, because Obama, by American standards, is as bad as it gets.