I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY! (1 of 6)

by Frank Turk

Before I write this post, let me tell you a story.  And before I tell you a story, let me tell you something else.  A few weeks ago I wrote a dainty little post which did the political math for you regarding the upcoming Presidential election in the US, and that very day it was said that now, since Phil is gone, the blog has jumped the shark.

Look: this has never been one of those Christian-in-name-only blogs, one of those alleged "GodBlogs," where the name of Jesus is a cuss word and not the name of a good and great savior.  We have spent years talking about the theological issues which ought to inform our every-day lives.  And most of our readers?  They're not pastors.  So if we can talk about everything from modesty to how to respond to immoral people who think you ought to call their immorality a virtue (excluding, of course, eschatology), Politics is going to come up.

In that, I realize what makes this distasteful to many of you (the ones who aren't Mennonites, anyway)(Mennonites with Computers reading blogs being my favorite onion of irony ever) is that, at the end of the discussion, this looks like I'm telling you (and if you follow his other blogging and tweeting, DJP as well) that I will be voting for Mitt Romney for President.  The reason for that is simple: whatever I want to call it to make myself feel better about it, of course that's what I'm doing.  If he is not the next President of the United States, Barack Obama will be -- and it will be his second term, which means Mr. Obama has nothing to lose.  So here's the thing: even if President Obama's no worse than he was in the last 4 years, that's plenty of reason not to give him a second chance.  In the worst possible case, it is by a long shot better to choose the devil we know from Massachusetts than the Devil who needs to go back to Chicago. Or Honolulu.  Or wherever it is he's going to build his Presidential Library.

So I'll just say it: the several posts going up today all effectively tell you that I am voting for Mitt Romney for President.  If you stop reading there, you deserve what befalls you -- including any missives which you have deleted from the comments.

Dan and I have agreed that it's worth-while to address these questions once only, and get them out of the way.  Some will have the comments open; some will not.  Do with them what you will.  I expect that the response to these post will cause me to close the comments early anyway, so get your licks in while you can.

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I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY! (2 of 6)

by Frank Turk

Now, the question, really, is, "WHY?"  Why endorse a Mormon son of a Mormon who was not very conservative in Massachusetts and has not demonstrated very safely-right ideology in governing in the past rather than, for example, sit out the election or vote 3rd party?

This is where my story comes in, before we get to the meat and potatoes.  I know a Fellow named Jack, who believes that every human life is sacred -- they are all in the image of God. He would tell you that the slogans which minimize this are utterly false, utterly deceptive, utterly blanched from any human kindness or parently instinct -- let alone real moral courage.  Jack is intent on making sure EVERY abortion is made illegal, and he has branded all intermediate steps to that end as complicity with evil.  He says it is a matter of personal holiness.  His syllogism goes like this:

[1] Murder is immoral
[2] Abortion is Murder
[3] Abortion is immoral

[4] If you assist in any way with an immoral act, you are an accessory to that immoral act
. . . [3] Abortion is immoral
[5] Voting for a candidate who supports any abortions assists that candidate in creating abortions
[6] Voting for a candidate who supports any abortions makes you an accessory to that immoral act

[7] Personal holiness requires shunning sinful acts
[8] Accessory to immoral acts is itself a sinful act
[9] Personal holiness requires shunning Accessory to sinful acts

So Jack is going to vote for someone who cannot, mathematically, win the Presidential race because in his view, there is no difference between one candidate who wants all abortions legal and another who would make only 98% of all abortions illegal -- the 2% is the deal-breaker.  Jack has a brother named Mack, and Mack agrees with the whole scheme here except who to vote for: he's voting for nobody.

Now, here's the thing: the advocate for abortion -- the people who want it legal in all cases -- wants a better life for someone.  (One example)(Another example)  In their view, an abortion is a legitimate way to make sure someone has a better life.

The problem for Jack and Mack is that they are using the exact same reasoning, and achieving the exact same end, as the pro-abortion advocate.  The Pro-abortion advocate is perfectly satisfied if there are abortions as long as someone's choice or alleged economic freedom is protected; Jack and Mack are perfectly satisfied if there are abortions as long as their personal holiness is still intact.  Jack and Mack protect their holiness by doing nothing -- or worse, doing something they know cannot change the outcome -- but that's fine as long as their understanding of their own holiness is protected and justified.

Doing nothing and calling it a moral victory is cowardly.  It may actually be evil.  But if it is nothing else, it is certainly this: failing to do as much as possible to make a difference toward the improvement of those things which you can effect and can make better.  Failing to show that much compassion and effort is morally lazy.

See: if we imagine that the world is a place where there are no abortions right now, of course saying that 40,000 abortions a year should be considered as a policy is evil.  But in the world we actually live in, where in our country there are about 1,200,000 abortions every year, one candidate/party is saying that we could eliminate 960,000 abortions by saying the only exceptions might be physical health and welfare of the mother (though formally: they actually exclude that option).  It's moral malpractice to say that seeking to reduce the number of abortions by 80% is the same as saying 100% of all abortions are politically and morally OK.

So the primary answer to the question, "Why write posts advocating to vote for Mitt Romney for President?" is this: "To avoid the obvious moral failing of doing nothing at all -- or participating in the moral equivalent of performance art -- to turn back an unacceptable outcome even if the alternative is only less-unacceptable."

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I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY (3 of 6)

by Frank Turk 

1. I can't vote for Romney because he's a Mormon

Some have actually reasoned a saner version of this argument: they say electing Romney to President assists Mormonism in becoming a mainstream religious option.  The less-cogent versions of this range from claiming to shun idolaters to disbelief that a non-Christian can actually make reasonable judgments about justice and law.

Well, first of all, this sort of reasoning ignores the meat of Romans 13 almost as if it was never written.  There Paul says this:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

You know: the first thing this passage deals with is whether or not a non-Christian person is capable of being a sound ruler.  Paul, writing about the Roman Government under Caesar, says, "yes."  Yes: even Caesar and his functionaries were able to approve of good conduct and strike terror into those who have bad conduct.  In Paul's mind, being an unbeliever does not disqualify anyone from being a political ruler.

But it actually gets worse for those who are worrying about legitimizing any other theology or religion or way of life: in Paul's view, God has instituted the governments we find ourselves subject to, and he says they serve God.  Let's stipulate right away that they may serve God poorly, but in this case this is not Paul's point at all.  Paul's point is that the institution of government is actually God's ordinary means of looking out for justice and judgment -- and that one doesn't need to be a believer to make one into a decent magistrate.

Paul says that explicitly about the Roman government -- which, let's face it, is barbaric by our standards.  The kind of morality the average Roman would ascribe to would be absolutely wanton by our post-Christian standards.  Yet somehow the Mormon view of morality is not going to work for an American magistrate?  You know: it was the Mormons who were the major backers for the California initiative known as Prop 8 a few years ago.  And the official teaching of Mormonism on the 10 commandments is easily summed up: "Obedience to these commandments paves the way for obedience to other gospel principles."  That's pretty lousy Christian theology, but for a civil authority I think we would probably rather have someone who is a matter-of-fact works-righteousness guy than someone who thinks it ain't what you do but the way that you do it.

If a Roman could be someone about whom Paul could say what he said in Rom 13, don't you think a Mormon would be a more-likely minister to do what is right in the face of justice?

That deals with the question of whether or not an unbeliever is capable of being a sound ruler.  What about the question of assisting a cult in becoming more mainstream?  Listen: that sounds very high-minded and God-glorifying -- until we start to think about all the things we have to give up which, frankly, make things that are non-Christian into socially-acceptable practices.  We'd have to give up the internet, for starters; we'd have to give up our iPhones.  We'd have to give up books.  We'd have to give up Capitalism and Democracy.

Let's be as clear as possible here: maybe it wouldn't really be a loss to give up all the things which are not explicitly Christian for the sake of making sure we are not accidentally endorsing things that are false gospels.  Maybe that is what we are actually called to do as Christian.  That's what the Anabaptists believe, and that's not generally seen as a strike against them until we start talking about medicine or electricity.  Maybe that is what we're actually called to live like.

This, therefore, needs to be said: if that's what you mean by your objection, let's do that and not simply whip out this as a moral precept like a formidable doily to cover this part of our lives as Americans while we are, in every other way, utterly unconcerned about this matter.  But if we can rightly, theologically justify all the other ways we cooperate with non-believers on the secular stage, ignoring the means of doing so now to maintain your alleged holiness is, at best, evidence which ought to be used to convict you of greater transgressions.

That's two or three good theological reasons that this objection doesn't work out.  There is one "America" reason this doesn't work out, a reason from political philosophy.  Most of you reading this are baptists, and as baptists of some sort, you gladly, gratefully embrace the idea of freedom of religion.  You may or may not remember the history and results of the Half-Way Covenant among the Puritans, but you know that one of the reasons it was a flop is because it confused the necessity of the church to be filled with believers with the necessity of the civil government to act justly toward men.  The foundations of it didn't understand Rom 13 at all -- and it made church membership the necessary condition of civil rights (particularly voting).

Because that attempt to maintain the unity of church and state failed (as the prime example, but not the only one), our political heritage inherited the right to freedom of religion -- that a man can practice his free expression of religion without the Government telling him what he must or must not believe, and that the Church cannot dictate whether or not a man is rightly seen as a citizen.

Voting for any man does not affirm that you accept his religious expression, or his systematic theology: it affirms that you accept his right as a citizen to run for office.  If you forget that, you might need a refresher course on basic American civics.

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I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY! (4 of 6)

2. I can't vote for Romney because he's neither Reagan nor Ron Paul.

This one comes up a lot in a lot of different forms.  What's funny about this argument is that it depends on a kind of logic which the argumenter usually says he rejects.  See: this person can't vote for Romney just because he's "Not Obama".  Somehow, it's not enough that Mitt Romney is "not" anything like President Obama -- he needs to have some specific merits other than being "not the incumbent" to get this informed voter's vote.

But this person could vote for Reagan -- if he were alive and not ravaged by demetia.  This person could vote for Ron Paul -- if he were alive and not ravaged by dementia and he had ever won the nomination by a national political party.  See: things like the actual qualifications of Mitt Romney get utterly lost on people consumed with their own fantasy politics team.  In their world, they have drafted Reagan, Ron Paul, Barry Goldwater, Rushdooney, Captain America and Abe Lincoln to their fantasy league roster, and they are thereafter  absorbed by debates which are the adult equivalent of, "who would win in a fight -- Spiderman or Daredevil?"

The sad fact is that you can only vote for the people actually in the election.  Let me rephrase that: you can write in anything you want, -- that's your legal right -- but when you are trying to take the moral high ground, you have to do more than look down your nose at people who are voting for the actual candidates rather than using the equivalent of Foxe's Book of Martyrs as the guideline for those who are sufficiently sanctified and glorified to take the oath of office.

You also have to take into consideration the role of your vote.  Voting in the primaries is not the same as voting for the actual office.  As I have said before, when you are voting in primaries or run-offs, you should vote as extremely as you think is necessary or possible -- and you should vote for a person actually in the run-off.  You should drive the candidate selection process to the point on the political spectrum which you stand on with this simple understanding: whoever is elected is going to fail to get everything he sets out to do, and you want the person in the office to fail as close as possible to your position.  Using that exact same logic -- morally, mathematically, practically, intellectually -- casting a vote for someone who is not even a choice for even 30% of the precincts voting does not drive the process to your end of the spectrum: it enables the party/candidate with the plurality-winning minority to win.

Last, but not least, let's remember that you are not voting for National Pastor: you are voting for the man who will set the executive priorities for the secular government.  You cannot find a man qualified to be a pastor who is qualified for that job -- except Jesus, and he is neither running for office, nor is he in need of your vote to be King of Kings.  If you make this choice as if you were conducting a pastoral search, you will not only be disappointed, I promise you: you will be deceived.

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I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY! (5 of 6)

by Frank Turk

3. I can't vote for the RNC because of the way they treated Ron Paul delegates.

-AND-

4. I can't vote for Romney because there's no difference between DNC and RNC.

There are serious objections, and then there are statements like this one.  Let's compare and contrast:

DNC: God and Israel were booed from the floor, and abortion was enshrined as a secular sacrament.

RNC: Not one single delegate for Ron Paul was prohibited from voting for their candidate, but they were also not given the run of the place as they were a small minority of the delegates.

Casting a vote which ensures the DNC will win this election seems to me to be allowing something which seems to be bigger than the internal bylaws of the RNC.

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I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY! (6 of 6)

by Frank Turk

5. I can't vote for Romney because of my conscience.

Ah!  Conscience!  We can't violate our conscience.  It's what convicts us and approves of us (cf. Rom 2) so that we know right from wrong.

You know: except for the people in Romans 1, right?  Those people have a lousy conscience because of their idolatry, and they are given over to all manner of sin because of it.

I can't peer into your conscience, OK? I can't unpack it's sanctification or its lack thereof.  What I can do, however, is offer it at least one observation that it has not considered deeply enough: of the two men running for the office of President this year who have a mathematical chance of winning, one of them has not spent his political career and public life trading on fear and hatred; the other one has.  If you think it's OK to simply allow the career politician to win this election -- which is what not voting against him will accomplish -- then by all means, sit it out.

We'll see how your conscience feels in 4 years.

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I CAN'T VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY! (FINAL)

by Frank Turk

Now, there are other objections which I didn't directly answer:

• I can't vote for Romney because he's a liar.
• I can't vote for Romney because he passed Romneycare in Massachusetts.
• I can't vote for Romney because he's not pro-Life.
• My vote doesn't count anyway (Blue state, Statistics, etc.)

These are actually permutations of objections I did answer, so go back, wash, rinse, repeat.

I wanted to close to make sure my intention here was very clear: I do not want you all to become mindless voters for red-state dominion.  What I want is for you to not pretend this election is just another election.  In the last 4 years, the Federal Government hasn't authored or passed into law a single budget -- it hasn't even tried to outline one.  They haven't wasted any time on it.  They haven't done anything to address the problems of debt or deficit.  And they passed the largest tax increase on the country every invented -- which conveniently takes effect after this next election.

If you want a second round of that kind of governance, then feel free to either allow it or to actually vote for it.  If you realize that this is probably the last time we'll get a chance to do anything at all about it -- even if we can admit that will be done under a new administration will be too little, and perhaps too late -- then vote accordingly.  Vote effectively.  And Vote prayerfully.

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