Joseph FarahSays No To McCain: A Principled Position and a Tactical Blunder

Joseph Farah has stated his presidential endorsement for 2008. It is "None of the above". Farah points to global warming and immigration as issues where McCain has diluted conservative principles to a critical extent.He makes the critical point that a Democratic Congress will be able to wring concessions from McCain, block his remaining objectives and then to blame the Republican Party for the resulting problems.His arguments are persuasive on paper.
As a New Yorker, I have faced the same decision locally that the nation now faces. Rudolf Giuliani is in favour of legal abortion and gay rights. He has left undisturbed the promise made by every New York mayor for over thirty years not to enforce federal immigration laws. In every other state except Vermont he would have been a flaming liberal.
When Giuliani ran for mayor the first time, I voted for the Right to Life candidate for the same reasons that Joseph Farah gives for opposing Obama and McCain. After four years of mushrooming crime that was even worse than it was under Ed Koch, and the loss of scores of businesses that relocated out of New York City, I made the same decision in 1993 that I am making in 2008. I voted for Rudy Giuliani. He was true to his word, and instituted changes in law enforcement that resulted in a plummeting crime rate. He reformed welfare , instituting work requirements and fingerprinting. The lowered taxes and safe streets have resulted in thousands of jobs due to the increased confidence of investors in the city.
When David Dinkins said that he would be guided by the policies of Mayor Lindsay, our panderer in chief during much of the sixties, I made a decision of which Joseph Farah would approve. I voted for principle, thereby indirectly voting for David Dinkins, who was true to his promise to follow in Lindsay's footsteps.
I feel that America is at a crossroads similar to those faced by New York in 1993. Believing as I do in an ideology that is both pro labour and conservative from a religious viewpoint, it is not possible for me to support any candidate, liberal or conservative without the nagging feeling that I have betrayed some tenet of my political philosophy. Despite these reservations, I compromise my principles all the time, hoping my candidates will disappoint someone else and not me.
I do not want to imagine the shape that America and the world will be in after four years of an Obama presidency. I think Farah's suggestion is impractical and dangerous. Yet I am posting Farah's criticisms of McCain because his reservations are my reservations . John McCain should know that such opinions exist among the American electorate in generous measure.
Yes, there are serious problems with both candidates. And yes, I am voting for John McCain. It is John McCain that I will criticise for four years if he is elected. There are 300,000,000 people in America to please. Under John McCain, I will certainly at times be disappointed. But I do not believe that traditionalist opinions will be demonised. I do not believe that such attacks on free speech as the "fairness doctrine" are likely under a McCain administration. In these critical times McCain deserves our support, just as Giuliani merited our votes in 1993 and 1997. He also deserves our opposition, but after he is elected.