I am not naïve enough to believe that having elected Mitt Romney president or consigning the Democrats to the minority in both houses of Congress would change all that. But unless you are ready to give up on electoral politics entirely — and I confess to wavering on that question with a bias toward despair — then it is a matter of deciding whether X is preferable to Y. And sometimes that is a pretty easy call. Contemplating the inevitable shortcomings of elected Republicans, conservatives may consider the situation and think: “The lesser of two evils is still evil.” And it is. But it’s also lesser. And if that’s the choice we have, it may be unpalatable — but it is a choice that we have to make. I liked the Cthulhu 2012 slogan — “Why Vote for a Lesser Evil?” — but that’s a joke, not a program. The reason to vote for a lesser evil is because we’re responsible adults who don’t want the greater evil to prevail.

If this seems inconsistent with more than a little of what I have written before, I suppose a personal note is in order. I left the Republican party because I didn’t want to be part of any organization that would have Arlen Specter as a member, and because I was appalled at the fiscal incontinence of the Bush years. And I’ve very much enjoyed being able to tell people that I’m not a Republican. (Some days more than others, as you might imagine.) That being said, I am coming around to the view that I’d rather be disappointed by Republicans who periodically fail live up to their principles than have my country pillaged and hobbled by Democrats who consistently live up to theirs. I admire the Tea Party and organizations such as the Club for Growth for being willing to do the hard work of trying to ensure that the Republican party serves the interests of principled conservatism, not the other way around, because the only real available channel of reform for conservatives who don’t like the Republican establishment is to become the establishment. I don’t know where to find a Republican registration card in New York City, but, moral and intellectual vanity be damned, I think it may be time for me to get a new one. It’s not a matter of white hats vs. black hats, but of competing visions about how the country should be governed. There are some honorable and intelligent people in the progressive camp, but the final outcome of allowing them to hold power is to make the country and the world worse off — unnecessarily poorer, weaker, and more vulnerable. Former union president Ronald Reagan talked about “a time for choosing,” while Harlan County union organizers a generation before him demanded to know: “Which Side Are You On?”