I know this is just a throwaway post, but I have to comment briefly on something I just read -- in BOLD TYPE, because it's Jim Geraghty's bottom line -- at NRO's TKS:

Frustrated with the GOP as a whole? Then support the guys you do like.

Uh, OK. I just voted yesterday, in the so-called Republican Primary, uh, "election." As to the "guys I do like," where was my "choice"? My only choice was to vote for the candidate, or write in a candidate (I guess that's an invitation for satire) or not vote.

It was a classic vote "YES" or vote "NO" ballot, which might as well be called a Stalinist ballot. There were no choices. Santorum (Senate), Swann (Governor), Matthews (Lt. Governor), Gerlach (Congress) all ran unopposed, while there were 23 choices for 23 slots on the Republican State Committee.

I wasted my time. Quite literally.

Later in the column, however, Geraghty does advise that "The real fight on so many of these issues is in the Republican Presidential Primary."

Maybe. But by the time the presidential primary election rolls around to Pennsylvania, these things are usually done deals.

Forgive my cynicism, and my lack of enthusiasm, but the last time there was a real "choice" on the ballot, it was between "RINO" Arlen Specter, and "real conservative" Pat Toomey. Here's what I said after I actually bothered to vote:

. . .while I don't agree with Specter all the time, I agree with Toomey even less of the time. I have drifted from party to party because I can't stand moral ideologues.

Toomey speaks for the moral ideologues who espouse vintage Culture War moral conservatism, and who want to "purify" the Republican Party to silence those who refuse to kowtow to their idea of a party line.

In my vote, I don't consider myself to have really voted for Specter, so much as against Culture War vitriol.

A libertarian Specter is not. But libertarians are increasingly unwelcome in the Republican Party because of the same ideologues (to say nothing of out-and-out bigots) who support guys like Toomey.

If the ideologues get their way, I guess I can always go back to being a Democrat.

Either way, I'll still feel politically homeless.

. . .if you live in a state or district where there is a conservative vs. moderate or liberal fight within a GOP primary, then you ought to be putting your effort where your mouth is.

More than a few e-mail writers seemed supremely discouraged about this course of action after Pat Toomey fell about two percent short in his primary challenge to Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania in 2004. The reason the RNC, the NRSC, and RNCC always support incumbents against primary challengers is because it is, I am told, a part of their candidate recruitment strategy.

All things considered, my hot tub in California is looking pretty good. (Well, it's gone but not forgotten. . .)

AFTERTHOUGHT: Am I wrong to despise politics? Am I alone?