The Lesser Evil: Enemy of the Greater Good

The chairman of the Constitution Party's Washington State chapter, Robert Peck, explains "why a third party vote is not a wasted vote" at the Constitution Party's discussion forum.  He writes:

During a recent conversation with a Constitution Party of Washington leader, the fact was brought up that many people will argue against voting for a third party . . . One argument is the idea that "at least the Republican is to the right of the Democrat." I've come to see this reasoning as a trap that leads one into the belief that anything considered to be to the right of that which is considered to be left, is automatically good . . . The more meaningful question is one of direction of travel - is the candidate or party moving us toward the goal of liberty and constitutionally limited government, or away from it? The Republican Party and 99% of their candidates are not even shooting at a Constitutional target . . .

A few years back, I got a hold of a "Conservative Index" put out by an organization that I trust and respect. That index rated every member of Congress on "their adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, to fiscal responsibility, to national sovereignty, and to a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements."

This particular index rated the 109th Congress (Jan 3, 2005 to Jan 3, 2007). I harvested the data out of that index, put it into a spreadsheet, then filtered and sorted according to party designation, then averaged all the scores. Based on the index's scoring system of 0-100 (100 being fully Constitutional and conservative), Democrats voted Constitutionally 31% of the time and Republicans voted Constitutionally 42% of the time. Put another way, the Republicans in Congress were moving us away from the goal 58% of the time.