I got a belated response today from Robert Moultrie to the questions I sent. Rather than give him his own forum here – especially considering the length of his answers – I will only link to his new blog for anyone who is interested in learning more about him as a candidate. On the other hand, I wanted to respond to a couple of things he said in answer to my final question, “What is the most important political task for voters to undertake?”
To educate themselves! But this, in and of itself, will make no difference until voters begin to vote their consciences, and stop voting because they are afraid of the “other guy.” . . . But the truth is that we are largely getting the government we are voting for. People talk around the water cooler year after year . . . But after all the talk, after all the listening to the news, after all the thought and emotion that goes into forming what they believe, when the rubber meets the road they do not vote for what they think is right, but instead vote based on fear of the other guy.
I agree with this overall. Certainly there are some people who honestly believe that John McCain is right (to make some easy assumptions about how Utah is/will be voting) even though he was not even among their top two choices in February (he was 3rd among Republicans and probably received fewer votes than even Hillary Clinton in the primaries). But despite the true believers who vote for him, many who vote for him here will do so only to avoid “throwing away their vote” or supporting a Democrat. Where I disagree with Mr. Moultrie is when he goes on to say:
Our Founding Fathers gave the people one time, just one, to have a voice in their Government: and that is when they vote.
To make that assertion is to imply that not only should there be no lobbying (which many people would agree on) but no contacting your leaders to provide input on issues of importance to you. That attitude suggests that we should vote in November, and then watch our representatives only to collect data on whether they deserve to be reelected in the future. I don’t believe that, and I can’t believe that Mr. Moultrie does either. There are ways to have our voices heard in government between election cycles and we need to avail ourselves of those opportunities on issues of importance.
