Convinced by Mr. Obama’s Website: Now I Can Vote in Good Conscience

It’s almost October and thus time for me to decide for whom I will vote for President this year.  This is always difficult for me.  While I could just forget about it, I would take that as a dereliction of my duty.  The moral standards I profess and attempt to uphold are grounded in the Christian faith as expressed in the historic Christian scripture, the Bible.

Without going into all the details here, those standards require, in the political realm, a maximization of human liberty that is consistent with such liberty for all.  This is what causes difficulty for me:  liberty maximization, even proposals for such, are hard to come by these days.

Also, in my state (actually, commonwealth, in my case) my only significant choices are Democrat or Republican.  I would probably vote for a pro-life Libertarian, were one on the ballot here, but that is not the case this time around.  (Even that can be problematic, because many Libertarians do not recognize liberty for people from the moment they are conceived.  But that’s another story.)

Here is where I was on all this until today:  nothing done or advocated by Barack Obama so far is a move toward greater liberty.  On the other hand, Mitt Romney struck me as a typical ‘middle’ Republican who would probably not move the country off its current anti-liberty status quo.

So today I studied the candidates’ web sites, and I was convinced to vote for one of the two major candidates.  But I was a little surprised how that came about.

I first visited Romney’s website.  I saw some (not all, but some) decent ideas that would tend toward liberty.  But I must say that I was not convinced by what the Romney site told me.

Then I explored the official Obama website.  What I found on the official Obama website convinced me to vote for Romney.

What convinced me to vote for Romney were some things that I found under “Get the FACTS” and then “Issues.”  Here Obama’s site lists what he says on various topics, followed by what the Obama team has selected that they claim Romney has said on the same matter.  Their Romney material is in red, which makes it stand out.

Reading through all the issues, what the Obama website attributed to Romney convinced me to vote for Romney.  I am giving the Obama people some benefit of the doubt in assuming that they have not distorted Romney by taking him out of context.  But the red-colored Romney material on the Obama website is about 90% what my ethical standards call for in the way of government policy on various issues.

If I were the Romney campaign, I would run on this material.  I am not naïve enough to think Romney will actually do all this.  But if he acts on even a fourth of it, the country will be a better place.

Mr. Obama, I am convinced by your website to vote for Mitt Romney.  (I am not being silly or tongue-in-cheek here at all.  If you love liberty and are having trouble deciding for whom to vote, go read the red Romney material on the Obama website.  If you are not convinced, you either don’t understand liberty, or you don’t love it.)