While I'll Be Voting on Dec. 17

As of Sunday, December 9, 2012

On Dec. 17, it will be “déjà vu all over again.” Yet I will go. I will drive to Raleigh, enter our old state Capitol and vote for president. It reminds me of “Gone With the Wind.” No matter how many times I see it, Scarlett still loses Rhett, and the South still loses the war.

You see, I am one of the 538 electors who will go enact a secular passion play called the Electoral College. I know how the play ends. Obama will win. Romney will lose. Why should I go? It seems silly.

Although the Constitution might suggest differently, North Carolina law is clear. If I do not go to Raleigh this month, I will be fined. If I do not vote for the Republican nominee, my vote will not be counted, and I will be replaced by someone who will vote as commanded. All the while, everyone knows that in other state capitals, the vote for Obama will make what I do meaningless.

Yet I am going to vote for Mitt Romney. I am taking my daughter with me to watch me vote. No matter what I do, the candidacy of Mitt Romney will die as it died in November.

Like Billy Pilgrim in the Kurt Vonnegut novel “Slaughterhouse-Five,” I will realize that I have seen my death. I have visited it many times. It always turns out the same. But I go there anyway in order to make a statement about the principles for which I stand.

I believe that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party stood for something important in our election just past. We stood for an America where the individual determined his future. Hard work meant success. And that success was not an excuse for others to covet their neighbor’s possessions.

I will also go to Raleigh because I identify with the trite but upbeat philosophy of “Back to the Future” more than the morose melancholy of Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut’s hero, Billy Pilgrim, is a tribute to fatalism. His is an Obama philosophy that the poor are destined to their fate, and government needs to make them as comfortable as possible in this Earthly hell.

On the other hand, “Back to the Future” reminds us that no one’s future has yet been determined. It is what we make it. That is the philosophy I was told at the age of 11 when Barry Goldwater lost and the hope of a conservative heart suffered its greatest, albeit its most temporary, defeat.

By the time I started my law career, Ronald Reagan proved that those who claimed to have visited the death of conservatism in 1964 were no more accurate than those who expected astronauts to visit the planet Tralfamadore just after they landed on the moon.

I do not know what will happen when I go to Raleigh on Dec. 17. Perhaps I will just be a lemming in the machine of state, confirming what the powers of liberalism have deemed inevitable. But perhaps I will meet our Republican governor of eight or 12 years hence, or the man or woman who will become president in 16 years.

Perhaps he or she will launch a resurgent conservative movement from the ashes of the presidential vote I make in this moment. Or, perhaps my daughter will be so inspired by my participation in our nation’s democracy that she will be that future conservative Republican president. Of course, she will first have to get her driver’s license, something I will not yet let her do.

But I will go to Raleigh because the future of conservatism has not yet been written. My vote in the Electoral College will be my statement that no matter what the odds, I will show up to cast my ballot, for my daughter if not for me and, if not for this moment, then for moments to come.

Robert M. Levy is chairman of the Moore County Republican Party. Contact him at Law52@prodigy.net.

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The_AnonymusProfit 5 months, 1 week ago

Or maybe you along with the "leaders" of the GOP will realize finally that you are wrong in as many areas as the Democrats are and actually try to fix the party instead of worrying how to best the other guy.

Just a thought.

fugitiveguy 5 months, 1 week ago

Good column Bob. I know we had the most qualified candidate. The Obama bots have no idea what they have done, but they will.

OldPilot 5 months, 1 week ago

Oh, the pathos. Poor old Levy. Asking us to feel sorry for him because he is being forced to do under penalty of law that which he agreed to do. Sorry Levy, you backed the wrong candidate, for the wrong reasons. You refused to listen to the voices of reason. You refused to listen to the polls. The truth was there screaming at you, if you had just had the capability to discriminate between reason and the echo of only those to whom you chose to listen The future, at least the next four years, has been written. In the opinion of the majority the country is in better shape than it was four years ago when Bush II left office (don't have to be a genius to figure that one out) and the majority were and are willing to bet on the same for the next four years. Obama and the Democrats won, Romney and the Republicans lost. Don't like it? Fine. Want to stage a comeback? Get over the loss, accept it and move on. Figure out where the GOP went off the rails. Fix it, not just cosmetically, but fundamentally, no matter how much it goes against the "fundamentals" of conservative thought. Drag yourselves and your fellow conservatives, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century, no matter how loudy they protest. Do that, there is a chance for the GOP in 2016, and in that I hope you succeed. Don't, stick to your conservative principals and principles, go down in flames again,have no one to blame it on than other those folks you see in the mirror every morning. Enjoy your drive to Raleigh. It's only about an hour and thirty minutes each way, plus whatever time you spend there. Maybe give you some time to consider, or reconsider. If you do that the time isn't wasted.

Yukonjohn 5 months, 1 week ago

Mr. Levy, You and your fellow Republicans are so out of touch with what to do. You are as misguided as the Democrats. If you continue to follow the Republican platform, you will continue to lose and lose badly. From your letter, it appears that this is not happening yet.

fugitiveguy 5 months, 1 week ago

"You are as misguided as the Democrats."

John, you have said this countless times. As I recall Romney and Ryan put forth specific plans to deal with the debt, energy and jobs. I know you are a liberterian but I fail to see how the Republicans could be as bad as the Dems when there are some pretty stark differences.

Yukonjohn 5 months, 1 week ago

There are fugitiveguy, but personally, l am about as happy with the President as l would have been with Romney/Ryan. Maybe even more happy with him. At least l know that soon, we will get through the worst of it....although l believe it will be horrible, and then we can pick up the pieces. Ron Paul, maybe even Herman Cain had some of the answers, Mitt Romney did not. He is bought and paid for with the same money that buys the President. Plus he was a mormon, which for me was a total turn off. I know too many of them. Nice people, but l don't want that cult running our country. Just me, l am for total freedom of religion, but l do not believe l will ever vote for a mormon, an Islamic, a Branch Davidian etc.

cooldaddy 5 months, 1 week ago

The far left idgits (ol' pilot) and the far right idgits do not speak for most of us. Scrape off the two extreme ends like scum and you have a pretty great Country.

OldPilot 5 months, 1 week ago

cooldaddy: 1) It's spelled "idiots"; I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were trying to be funny, which I doubt. 2) If you read what I wrote, assuming you are capable of doing so, and (even more difficult for you apparently) understanding what I wrote, you wouldn't be calling people who express an honest opinion "idiots" or "scum". 3) Why? Because doing so isn't cool, it simply exposes you for what you are, and one would hope that "most of us" are better than that. 4) Reasonable people would greatly appreciate a functional two (or more) party system, as I said when I wished the GOP well in 2016, but as long as we have people out there referring to others as "idiots", "idgits" or "scum" nothing will change.

njc17 5 months, 1 week ago

Something to be said about the relevancy of the Electoral college, but while Mr Levy does his civic duty, at least he IS doing his duty. Now Mr Levy, as you read the comments on this page, what ARE your thoughts regarding the future of the Republican Party. Do you as the leader of this pack, look to new ideas, or do you look to the past? This is where I have noted before that the governing bodies haveforgottenn the basis of the Constitution, and the right of self determination, as well as states rights and personal responsibility. Let's not mewl over what we lost. the impact will be certain by next year. But look to the future by way of where we WILL BE in 2015. Will Obama have totally negated the Constitution, will Obama force the state union movements, will Obama force the USA into the world union dominated by the Muslim, will Obama level the fiscal playing field as he has promised, and further socialize America? What do you think the republican party will be able to do in 2016, and further between now and then what will the Republican party do as we see , one by one, the representatives fall by the wayside on the tax issues.