…we’re going on a GOP guilt trip:

An e-mail sent this week by the conservative group GOPUSA.com carried the subject line, “Don’t you dare not vote,” and featured a column by veteran activist Doug Patton appealing to Republican voters’ patriotism.
    

“As you contemplate how to express your frustration with Republican leaders who may have mishandled the power we have entrusted to them,” Mr. Patton wrote, “consider how you would explain your apathy to the 1.2 million brave men who have given their lives in America’s wars over the last 230 years.”

You have to love that “may have mishandled” bit.  Perhaps this sort of cynical use of patriotism works with some people, as if it were somehow not also a citizen’s right to opt not to vote in order to express his dissatisfaction with the government.  I am left unconvinced that America’s war dead would take it terribly ill if such voter “apathy” caused the party that led an aggressive war to lose an election.