While listening to NPR this morning, I heard a strange and surprising thing. Rush Limbaugh said

"We're going to have to drag Sen. McCain over the finish line, and then we're going to have to deal with what he does in the Oval Office ourselves,...That's how this is going to have to work. We have to save the country from Obama and then save it and the Republican Party from whoever McCain puts in his Cabinet. We have to do this one step at a time. Do not throw in the towel."

So, basically, what I hear him saying is that it's better to have a bad Republican in office than a good Democrat; that whatever damage McCain does to the country and the Party is a problem to deal with later because having a Democrat in office is worse.

I'm sure that Rush isn't the only pundit saying this type of thing and he's certainly not the only Republican who's not too happy about a McCain presidency. Some Republicans have turned to voting for McCain in hopes that he'll die and Palin will become president, which is a scary thought to me, and some have turned to voting for Obama or, even worse, not voting at all. This concept of voting for the Republican because he's a Republican baffles me.

Maybe it's because I'm from Minnesota and, while, since Franklin Rosevelt, we have voted for the Republican only when Richard Nixon was on the ticket, we have a very independed spirit as far as elections go. Maybe it's because I'm a pretty independent thinker in general. Whatever the cause, my belief is that I should vote for the candidate I believe will do the best job of representing my beliefs no matter what their party affiliation. What Limbaugh and others (I assume) are saying is just like saying that a heart surgeon who failed out of Harvard is better than one who graduated with a 4.0 from the University of Illinois.

I know that "logic" and comparisons to other, easier-to-relate-to situations rarely convince people with outlandish notions to rethink their positions, but that's the way I think. I also find that most people understand things when explained this way. I know that nobody of any significance reads my blog, but I hope that other people think about what Rush says from a position where they can't see the bottom of his boots.

-Illustration by Rex Lameray, published by Belltown Messenger on flickr.

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