Over at The Daily Beast, David Frum makes what seems to be the mainstream case for giving Mitt Romney the moderate vote:
The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won't reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP - and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013. Added bonus: a Romney presidency likely means that the congressional GOP will lose seats in 2014, as they deserve.
The above is problematic. Republicans seem emboldened by their extremist agenda, and with good reason; they've gotten around 50% of the country's voters to buy into them. Being voted in allows them to continue their agenda. Voting for their presidential candidate in the hopes that they'll be voted out later and then temper their judgment is misguided; even after 8 years of Bush, the country's short memory allowed Republicans to take back control of the House in 2010, with an even more extreme agenda.
The proper option here isn't to allow the GOP to hold government hostage by simply not doing anything except crying about plans for tax-raising, defense-cutting, health reform, and gay marriage when we have a Democratic president. The only moral option is to fight the GOP. There might be local Republican candidates worth voting for, but anybody who gives the Congressional leadership back to "the young guns" doesn't deserve a seat in Congress. Other major parties have collapsed in American history: Whigs, Federalists. The only way for government to function is to change the zeitgeist, so the Republicans are seen as the obstructionists they are.
In my next post, I'll explain an essential ingredient missing in our strategy which would allow America's Left to take the country back from the nutters.