The case for voting Republican

Sometimes, I remember that next year's an election year.  Which means the Republicans are going to run a candidate to rival Obama.  Now, with unemployment above 9%, the only issue that really matters is the economy.  Since the general public doesn't understand the first thing about economic policymaking, chances are if the economy is still in the tanker next Fall, a Republican could win.  The Republican debate on the economy was, as I figured it would be, a complete sham.  They stood on stage and tried to outdo each other by saying dumber and dumber things.  And some of them actually believed it.  Which is why there's no way in hell I'd ever vote for Herman Cain, whose bank teller economic adviser managed to create a tax plan that reduces revenue AND raises taxes for the poor and the middle class, while cutting them massively for buyout barons and hedge fund managers.  So he's out.  Rick Perry has a "super secret" plan he won't disclose, but he's campaigning on the "competitively lower wages against yourself" platform, which shows he doesn't understand accounting identities, so he's out too.  Jon Huntsman is running as white Obama, so the chances of him getting nominated are zero.  Rick Santorum is a fool and Michele Bachmann's nuts.  So that leaves Mitt Romney.

Right now, Romney's the front-runner, and, if things go according to plan, will probably be the nominee.  And if he is, I'd be tempted to vote for him.  Here's why.  While he's been playing an idiot on TV for the last two months to appeal to his base, Romney's no fool.  His economic team is headed by Greg Mankiw, who, while definitely a Republican, is a very good economist.  And Mankiw and Romney realize that wrecking the economy isn't good for Romney's re-election prospects.  So the results... will likely be economic policies that look an awful lot like Obama's, only more aggressive.  The rhetoric about lynching Bernanke will go out the window.  And lip service will be paid to "repealing regulations" so that, in the end, if the economy does recover, Romney can claim that it was the vague platitudes that are the cause.  But in reality, while promising less aggressive policies, he'll likely be able to deliver more.  Why? Because, while Republicans in Congress have spent the last 3 years decrying everything Obama's proposed as the death knell of capitalism, they won't want to see a Romney presidency fail.  So the apocalyptic rhetoric will die down, and we'll get better policy, simply because of the political party of the person in the White House.

Now, my main reservation about voting for Romney is that it would reward Republicans for their bad behavior.  Frankly, the last few years have been completely disgusting in that regard.  Obama hasn't been able to get even extremely competent appointees past Congress... three years into his term (Richard Shelby's claim that Nobel laureate Peter Diamond was "unqualified" for the Fed board was an embarrassment).  Any effort to relieve the economic problems has been stonewalled.  And the Republicans risked allowing the nation to default just to wring concessions out of Obama.  I can definitively say nothing like that would happen with President Romney in power.  In essence, we'd likely get more aggressive policies than we got under Obama (though not as aggressive as might be ideal) because Republicans won't line up to oppose a Romney presidency the way they did to Obama.

But the real issue with casting that vote is that it essentially sends the signal to the Republican Party that they can stonewall everything for political gain, and it will benefit them politically in the end.  So I'm really not inclined to cast my vote that way just for that reason.  But I think it's very likely that we'll be better off under a President Romney just for that reason, and it is something I've thought about.