Vin Suprynowicz, who has been a huge influence on my political views over the years with his columns and books, has decided to vote for the GOP.

I have only one marginally effective way to tell those who have spent the past three months libeling and trashing Sarah Palin — and with her, every “regular American” who owns a gun or goes to church and lives outside their oh-so-correct urban enclaves of Washington, New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles — where to shove it. And that’s to vote against the communist sympathizer who would make legally owned self-defense weapons as rare as whooping cranes, and for a true American hero — to vote a Republican presidential ticket for the first time in my life.

Via spankthatdonkey

I ran across this post over at Pass the Ammo via GunBloggers.com. I made what I thought was a fairly reasonable reply to the posting.

Later in the day I wanted to check out the rest of the site, and noticed that my reply was missing. I was pretty sure I’d done it right, but anything is possible. I happened to have it open on the laptop so I re-posted it this morning. Its gone again. Now, this doesn’t really bug me that much, I don’t have any ‘right’ to have my comment posted, but I do think that silently deleting opposing viewpoints gives the false impression that everyone agrees with you.

update It ends up that my post was the victim of an overzealous Askimet spam filter! Spammers certainly have made it harder to manage comments on blogs these days, and Askimet usually does a reasonable job of things. Sorry to Pass the Ammo for thinking the posts were being dropped on purpose.

So, I give you my original comment:

Please don’t.

I felt the same way in 1992, and by voting for Ross Perot helped hand the country over to Bill Clinton.

All through the primaries I swore I would not vote for McCain this time around.

But I have to act like a grownup now. The economy is sliding into a recession, people wrongly blame the Republicans for that. We WILL have supreme court judges retire in the next 4 years. Congress will likely be under democrat control. Bush has already tipped us over into the nationalization of banks and the use of public funds for private benefit. Obama will only make this worse.

If you vote for anyone but McCain you will be helping to hand the country over to the socialists, and once they reinforce their hold there will be no turning back. This is a turning point in the history of the United States. Can we survive as a nation of Free Men?

The WTC image and video archive is still open. It was created in the days after the attack as a way to preserve the images and the feeling that was present.

It’s election season and we need a reminder of just how serious the job of protecting American lives is. Are you going to vote for the team that wants to negotiate with those who would not hesitate to kill you and your family? Or for the ones who would spend sleepless nights protecting you from the barbarians at the gate? The war has not gone perfectly, mistakes have been made, but on balance we have been safer because of the choices made by our leaders. They are not the evil ones, they are not the ones that want to see your burning corpse falling through the sky. For all their faults they are doing the job of combating the shadows that creep in the night and so far have been successful.

That success is no accident. It takes hard work and planning. It takes accepting mistakes and learning from them. It means standing up for unpopular positions and drawing a line that shall not be crossed. America has seen no major terrorist attacks since 9/11 because of these steps. Imagine for a second where we would be at had AlGore won the election. Not just him, but his whole team of radical liberal ideologues running around scared of global warming while extremists slaughter our families in the name of their God.

Never Forget what we are fighting against. Or for.

I’d better start this off with a disclaimer – I’m glad the Republicans picked her to be the Vice President. She’s a breath of fresh air to the party. But we need to stop treating her like she’s the Conservative incarnation of Barack Obama.

Let us be realistic about this. She’s not running for President. And if elected won’t have much, if any, effect on our lives. John McCain is still the one who will be signing or vetoing the laws. He’s the one who will still be making deals with the Democrats. He’s the one we have to hold accountable for carving away at our rights. Out enthusiasm for Sarah Palin is understandable. Just look at who we had to choose between during the primaries this year. If we’d had someone like Palin running maybe we wouldn’t have to settle for John ‘Lets gut the 1st Amendment’ McCain.

I stand by the slogan of my newest political shirt from We’re Screwed ’08. No matter who wins this election the US Constitution is still guaranteed to be be on the losing side. McCain has a history of compromise and disrespect for the Constitution. I don’t expect him to give that up just because his running mate is an NRA member and has held an AR-15.

The Palin nomination seems a bit like a magician’s trick of mis-direction. “Don’t mind the white haired man, just look at the pretty lady” as he signs away the rights that our forefathers fought so hard to protect. John McCain is still the one with the real power here. Palin might make a good Presidential candidate some day but that isn’t what this election is about.

What this election is really about is the choice between the lesser of two evils. Who will do less damage to the Constitution during their time in office? That’s who I have to vote for, no matter how unhappy it makes me to do so.