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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

A Conservative For Obama

Our own Wick Allison, stands by his 2008 choice, and tells the Daily Beast: Wick Allison, former publisher of National Review under William F. Buckley and current publisher of The American Conservative, also reaffirms his Obama decision, albeit in anguished lukewarm tones. “I will probably vote for Obama, unless I have a Gary Johnson–inspiration in the voting booth. (My vote […]

Our own Wick Allison, stands by his 2008 choice, and tells the Daily Beast:

Wick Allison, former publisher of National Review under William F. Buckley and current publisher of The American Conservative, also reaffirms his Obama decision, albeit in anguished lukewarm tones. “I will probably vote for Obama, unless I have a Gary Johnson–inspiration in the voting booth. (My vote in Texas is wasted anyway.),” Allison wrote in an email. “Romney is the opposite of conservative, with a plan that is fiscally reckless and a foreign policy that is unnecessarily militant. Obama has done about the best that could have been done, considering the united GOP opposition in Congress. My questions about Obamacare and my disappointment that we are not already out of Afghanistan are not enough to make me embrace a candidacy that even George W. Bush would have been repelled by—and, having had time to reflect on his own record, perhaps is.”

For the record, readers should know that Wick’s opinion does not represent the opinion of TAC, which is prohibited from endorsing candidates.

My thinking about my November vote is as follows:

What’s most wrong with both of them: Too given over to the status quo (but to be fair, there doesn’t seem to be a groundswell of popular support for anything too radical one way or another).

What’s most wrong with Romney: he would likely implement a far more aggressive foreign policy; he would be even friendlier to the big banks and financial interests than Obama has been; he is too beholden to stale GOP orthodoxies on tax cuts; he would probably have a united Republican Congress, so there would be no brakes on him.

What’s most wrong with Obama:  He’s hostile to religious liberty concerns, as demonstrated by the HHS mandate; he is more likely to appoint Supreme Court justices who will be unfriendly toward religious liberty with regard to gay civil rights; he has no plan for dealing with runaway entitlement spending.

So?: For social and cultural issues, Romney’s the clear choice. For foreign policy and economic issues, Obama, while not great, is better than the alternative. Which is more important? I don’t know.

I may choose not to choose, as I did with my 2008 write-in vote for Wendell Berry.

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