I hate to sound overly naive but there are very few circumstances I can envision that would justify violence of any sort.
We campaign.
We vote.
We live with the outcome.
Four years later we do it all over again.
Elections (along with a great many other things) have consequences.
The other thing to consider is that, as powerful as the president is, he (or she) is only one third of the government. We still have the ability to elect conservatives to the House and Senate. The SCOTUS still votes the right way most of the time.
What I come back to in this discussion is my central point that any 3rd party run by someone right of center will almost certainly guarantee the re-election of the Dingus. And that will guarantee (barring an unfavorable SCOTUS decision) the full implementation of O'BamaCare. And whatever else his fertile imagination can dream up and implement through regulation or other means.
I think that a lot of people are under the impression that given the right candidate (a Reagan who does not currently exist) we will be able to turn things around almost instantaneously. That simply will not happen even if Reagan's biological clone emerged from a brokered convention. We did not get here in three years*. We got here in something like ninety years. It could take that long to return our country to the constitutional republic crafted by the founders. Politics, like sausage making, is something that is very hard to do without some nausea so buckle up.
What we need is a first step back toward the founding principles. Trying to get there in a single election cycle is short sighted, in my opinion. I think we have already taken the first step. I think that it took place in 2010** with the drubbing that the Republicans gave the Democrats. I think that we will take another step in the right direction next year. I look forward to more conservative Republicans in the House and Senate. I look forward to a Republican president (whomever he or she turns out to be) rubber stamping some serious walk backs on the O'Bama agenda. And yeah, a president can be made to follow Congress...if that weren't true we would have Supreme Court Justice Harriet Myers on the bench right now. It's actually somewhat of a miracle that (pre-Tea Party) this didn't happen.
Don't get me wrong...if I could flip a switch and fix everything right now I would. But that's unrealistic. It isn't going to happen.
We have an opportunity at the end of next year. And opportunity to take the White House away from the greatest threat to the country that it has ever seen: A full blown communist who won't hesitate to operate outside of the Constitution to further his agenda. You cannot tell me that any of the current candidates, regardless of their individual weaknesses, would not be a vast improvement on the aberration in chief.
But...
All that will be thrown away with any notion of a (center right) third party run by RP or anyone else. Seriously, that is the only scenario in which the Dingus ekes out a win. That cannot be allowed to happen. And anything that furthers that scenario should be resisted...not encouraged. That's why Beck pisses me off. He is throwing this idea a bone. That is defeatist and irresponsible.
I have said it before and I will say it yet again. I will vote for whoever wins the Republican nomination. Yes, even Ron Paul.
But violence? No. Not as long as the system still functions. I do not subscribe to Asimov's famous quote, "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." And I certainly don't believe that old liberal chestnut, "War never solved anything." That's moronic and is at odds with historical precedent. Pacifism is for losers. But violence should be reserved for extreme circumstances. And I truly do not think we are close to that point. I see it as one possibility among a myriad of others. I have no desire to rush to it.
For now I am content to allow the process to play itself out.
Oh, yeah, and, "Go Santorum!"
*Which, when you think about it, is as the founding fathers designed things. They knew that quick changes were unhealthy and the Constitution was written in such a way as to make a quick change difficult. They made amending the Constitution difficult. They made the Senate more difficult to flip than the House. So...we have a long and tough row to hoe. I recommend the long view.
**You could even make a reasonable argument that the first step took place in 1994 with the Republicans gaining a majority in the House for the first time in many decades. The "Contract With America" (authored in part by you know who) was fulfilled on schedule...not all passed but, as promised, all voted on. Now, as we all know, there were subsequently a step or two backward between 1996 and 2006 but on balance there was some progress made rolling back the liberal agenda. The very notion that the Democrats could be defeated and sent to the minority was revolutionary all by itself. Like the fall of the Soviet Union, no one thought it would ever happen. But it did. Small steps forward.
