EDITORIAL - This year's election season offers a dizzying array of uncompromisingly inferior candidates to select from, and many Republicans have made the decision to “hold their nose” and vote for the lesser of two evils, believing that voting for an evil candidates somehow constitutes their civic duty.

Many will walk away from the voting booth wearing that inane “I Voted” sticker, proud that they participated in voting for what amounts to a continuance of our two-party behemoth of a system that has succeeded in enlarging our government, and our debt, to heights never before seen. Americans have employed the “hold your nose” strategy countless times before, and what exactly do we have to show for it?

The government continues to grow. Washington's influence ceaselessly expands and our priceless politicians become more plump with power and prestige, while the American people sit back and relax, prioritizing the contestants of Fox's American Idol television program over the contestants vying for your vote come November.

The American people do not seem to realize that the party to whom they feel loyalty to is playing them like a fiddle. Party leaders work to make sure any and all competition within their own ranks is quelled, making way for only one choice that their supporters can make, without regard to the fitness or suitability of that particular choice. The sheep are being carefully herded, and the people are following the inferential leader.

Voting straight down party lines mocks the system that our Founding Fathers developed for this nation and diminishes the importance of voting for the person who may lead us in and out of war, through national crises, and hopefully into more prosperous times. The presidency deserves respect, and that respect requires the necessary focus to elect the very best and brightest into the White House to guide this nation forward within its just limits.

A $9.3 trillion dollar national debt, a war without any clear-cut end, insecure and unguarded borders and a reckless justice system requires the fundamental change that neither Democrats nor Republicans can possibly offer. Contrary to what John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would have you believe, the solution is not more government intrusion. The solution is less. The solution includes removing the monstrous array of career politicians from office and electing a group of determined representatives of the people who have the relentless interests of freedom and liberty at heart, not the interests of their own careers and the continued expansion of government.

Republicans largely justify a vote for Arizona Senator John McCain based on the hapless belief that he's simply not as bad (evil) as the Democrat contender. It pains me to think that the basis for voting has come down to who is less destructive than the other, instead of choosing the candidate who possesses the drive and dedication towards downsizing Washington D.C. and implementing long overdo accountability for the money that our government endlessly spends.

Vote Libertarian. Vote Green. Vote Constitution Party. If those parties have nominated a candidate who believes in the cause of small government, rather than the cause of maintaining the costly status-quo, it is not only the duty, but the responsibility, of all freedom-loving Americans to vote for that person. Voting for the lesser of two evils because you believe that your vote will not count otherwise contributes to the very problems that we work to eliminate each and every day. We are holding our nose and voting for an inferior politician and making our jobs more difficult in the process.

Essentially, we are cleaning up the mess that we repeatedly vote for.

What if everyone placed their vote for the politician they truly believe is a champion for the cause of small government and individual liberty? The two party cesspool of incompetence that our tax dollars are going to support would not exist, and I would be willing to bet our $9.3 trillion dollar deficit may actually be a surplus. With politicians not hell-bent on expanding their own power and influence, our borders would be secure, social programs locally administered, a foreign policy of non-interventionism and a Constitution that our government uses to derive their just powers – not to mention a government that our Founding Fathers would recognize.

But neither party's supporters are willing to budge. Democrats vote for Democrats and Republicans vote for Republicans, almost without fail, based simply on the unfortunate idea that a vote for any other politician somehow won't count, or is a waste. But the truth of the matter is a vote for a candidate whom you do not truly support is the only wasted vote that can exist. Americans are falling down on the job, and we need to pick them back up.

What exactly do Americans expect by employing this strategy at the voting booths over and over again? It is foolish and senseless to continue the ghastly pattern of selecting an inferior candidate and somehow expecting a different result each time. The longer that this pattern persists, the harder it will be to organize and eventually establish true reform in a system largely fraught with deep-seeded institutional damage – that the American people continue to support.

Government, after all, is a politician's best friend. Without government, politicians would be out of a job. Without problems to solve, politicians lose. Without so-called social injustices, politicians have little reason to call for press conferences and show their faces to the world. Without things to “fix”, there is no reason for government. No one knows this better than our Democratic and Republican career politicians. Some have fought for the same causes for decades, using those talking points to re-gain their Congressional seats each and every election cycle. Nothing ever gets fixed, but politicians keep their jobs because things are “broken”.

What a system.

This is not a question of who is perfect and who isn't; nobody is perfect. Nobody expects a perfect politician, and similarly, nobody should expect to see eye-to-eye with a politician on every point. This issue transcends the question of perfection and instead hits at the more important issue of two political parties that seem to be aligning themselves more closely together every year. Rhetoric between the two parties remains in stark contrast to each other, but the actual results between the two tell a very different story.

Contrary to what the Republican party once was, they are no longer the party of smaller government. Over the past 8 years (6 of which under a complete Republican Congress), government has expanded to extreme proportions. New bureaucratic agencies were developed, huge deficits created, costly wars fully waged, incomprehensibly wasteful federal government contracting industry continued and unsecured borders not addressed.

The CATO Institute highlights some of Bush's obscene increases in government spending, power and control. Even back in 2003, CATO correctly predicted Bush to be a huge spender, similar to Jimmy Carter. “The new estimates show that, under Bush, total outlays will have risen $408 billion in just three years to $2.272 trillion: an enormous increase in federal spending of 22 percent,” writes Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven in one CATO article. “Government agencies that Republicans were calling to be abolished less than ten years ago, such as education and labor, have enjoyed jaw-dropping spending increases under Bush of 70 percent and 65 percent respectively.”

Not convinced? Maybe the $20+ billion dollar No Child Left Behind act will, or the Medicare Prescription Drug or Campaign Finance Reform bills will, which were all signed by the lesser of two evils, Mr. Bush. At what point will the American people realize that the party of smaller government has morphed into a Trojan horse, posing as the ghost-image of what they once where, but in actuality, being nothing more than a party of typical big spenders.

This is not so much a criticism of either political party as much as it is a recognition of what they really are. The assumption that the Republican party is the lesser of two big government evils is clearly no longer the case – if it ever was. Both parties feed off of each other in support of the ultimate goal: a larger and more powerful federal government and the security of their jobs in Washington D.C. With this point, they have much in common.

The impetus to sustaining this wicked spiral is a focus only on preventing the other guy from winning. The “Anybody but Clinton” and “Anybody but Bush” movements during the past several elections have successfully clouded the truly important issues that the American people face every day. They make a mockery of the process of electing a freedom-loving American to the highest position in the land and lower the expectations of our government for everyone. This rash strategy feeds on the intellectual dishonesty of the American people and provides a spurious excuse to ignore political reality in favor of our most primal human emotions.

The issues of illegal immigration, the War in Iraq, Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, education, dependence on middle eastern oil, along with massive deficits, the mortgage crisis and the falling value of the dollar, are all put on the back burner so focus can be placed on preventing the other party from gaining power. It is an abysmal tragedy, and it's destroying this nation and our electoral process from the core.

To break out of this never-ending spiral, the American people need to once again put principle over politics. Don't wait for someone else to get the ball rolling, do it yourself. Resist the temptation to vote for the lesser of two evils and instead do your homework. Read about the candidate's positions, analyze their voting records and judge them based on their support of small government, not the political party that they happen to belong to.

Besides...sometimes it is tough to determine which one is the lesser evil.