I'm a conservative first and a Republican a very distant second.
What I gathered Beck to mean when he said that MacCain would have been worse that Dear Leader is if McCain had been prez that conservatives in the R party would have felt compelled to go along with him and compromise because he's an R. Now with Dear Leader, we can openly oppose him on the issues.
McCain was too left-wing for my taste. All issues being the same, we might agree 80% on the time. But all issues are not the same, some are more important than others. Of the 20% of which we disagree, that portion compromises about 80% of what I believe is really important. I voted for him in 2008 mainly as a vote against Dear Leader, but if he or Graham or some other candidate I consider to be a RINO is nominated again, I just won't get excited about wanting to support them.
And it really has nothing to do with demanding party purity, it's just that I see no reason to continue to compromise my conservative values. To me, it's like being told I've got to jump out of a plane without a parachute, and I get to choose between jumping from 10,000 feet (McCain) or 10,001 feet (Dear Leader). Either way, things aren't looking to turn out so great.
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