It's probably no secret to anyone who reads my column regularly that I will not be voting for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for president.
But I also will not be voting for John McCain.
I could tell you all the reasons and have expressed them already in a number of columns in recent months. But this time, I'll let someone with whom I seldom agree express them for me.
His name is Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at The New Republic. Here's what he wrote in that magazine:
"Even though it is in the public record, McCain's voting behavior during Bush's first term is almost never mentioned in the press anymore. Yet McCain's secret history is simply astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that, during this crucial period, McCain was the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington.
"In health care, McCain co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Ted Kennedy, a patients' bill of rights. He joined Chuck Schumer to sponsor one bill allowing the re-importation of prescription drugs and another permitting wider sale of generic alternatives. All these measures were fiercely contested by the health care industry and, consequently, by Bush and the GOP leadership. On the environment, he sponsored with John Kerry a bill raising automobile fuel-efficiency standards and another bill with Joe Lieberman imposing a cap-and-trade regime on carbon emissions. He was also one of six Republicans to vote against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
"McCain voted against the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts. He co-sponsored bills to close the gun-show loophole, expand AmeriCorps, and federal airport security. All these things set him against nearly the entire Republican Party."
It is no wonder McCain actively courted the idea of switching parties before his run for the presidency. He clearly belongs in the Democratic Party - even in these times when there is so little distinction between the two major parties.
No matter who becomes president this year, the White House will become a bully pulpit for the religion of global warming.
No matter who becomes president this year, the White House will support federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
No matter who becomes president this year, the White House will be in the corner of those who want more government regulation of campaign finance, meaning more restrictions on fundamental First Amendment rights.
No matter who becomes president this year, the White House will be firmly in the corner of wildly out-of-control illegal immigration, firmly opposed to building the barriers that are needed to suppress it and in favor of some form of amnesty for tens of millions of illegal immigrants already here.
No matter who becomes president this year, the White House will oppose tax cuts, as McCain did in 2001 and 2003.
No matter who becomes president this year, the White House will name judges and justices more in the mold of the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg (whom McCain supported) than President Bush's judicial nominees defeated by the Gang of 14 (organized by McCain).
In other words, there is simply no reason for me to support McCain - no matter who his vice presidential nominee might be.
John McCain may indeed win the presidency. But it won't be because he is in tune with the will of the American people. It will be because they don't really know John McCain's record and because the Democratic Party will be split over the schism created between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
But John McCain won't get any help from me. He won't get my vote. In fact, to be honest, if the Republican Party is ever going to recover itself and become the party it was under Ronald Reagan, it will happen faster if John McCain is beaten. It will happen faster if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton gets elected and implements the Big Brother, socialist agenda they both endorse.
Bring it on. I'll do my best to expose it. Maybe the American people will wake up and rediscover the meaning of freedom after tasting elitist, top-down, command-and-control, centralized socialism.
We all are going to experience it in the next four years. It's simply a question of who is going to be force-feeding it to us. I'd rather it come from the Democrats so the American people know who is to blame.
