You Can't Have Your Republic And Destroy It Too

Over at Vodkapundit, Stephen Green is extremely upset with the National Democratic Party:

... the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to do its damnedest to turn our fine nation into a banana republic.
To these guys, winning office is more important than the sanctity of elections. Holding power is more important than the Constitution. Much as I despise at least half of what most Republicans stand for, they don't seem nearly as willing to trash the system they're trying to run. Too many Democrats, especially at the national level, just don't care that our system, our nation is far more important than any single election.
I could mention the Lautenberg Trick in New Jersey. Or Gore's ballot shenanigans in Florida. Or the voter-registration fraud currently going on in Colorado, Nevada, and elsewhere. Or the Democrat's successful call to bring election observers into this country. Bring them in from where, Venezuela? Hey, no big deal sullying the reputation of the world's oldest continuously-functioning democracy, just so long as we can make the Republicans look bad, right?
The rules don't matter. The reputation of the country doesn't matter. The political health of the nation doesn't matter. Power matters.
I don't mean to say that Republicans haven't used dirty tricks, or won't in the future. But I have yet to see them pull anything as crass as replacing a losing candidate with a more-popular one just weeks before election day, and in violation of state law. I have yet to see Republicans calling on the world's most corrupt international organization, run largely by apparatchiks from the world's most brutal dictatorships, to pass judgment on how we run our elections. I have yet to see the Republicans encouraging their own to commit fraud by shouting "Fraud!" where none yet exists, putting at risk everything we've built here in the last 228 years.
Because, in the end, that's what the national Democrats are doing: They're trying, however inadvertently, to destroy the Republic in order to rule it.
Democracy is the free market of political systems. And like any free market, it can't function without some basic level of trust. That trust comes, slowly, from hammering out rules even competitors can live with. That trust comes, with difficulty, by honoring those rules, even when your candidate doesn't win. That trust exists in relatively few places around the world.

I couldn't agree more. Why would we put our Republic's future in the hands of those who could care less about its destruction? In the hands of those who are guilty of doing their damndest to destroy it for their own personal aggrandizement? Just watch what they do when they lose the election fair and square on November 2. Their rage will be something to see, and will give further evidence of the underlying motives of the Democrats. Just check here and here, if you don't believe me.

And, about that last debate. The Democrats are so desperate to spin a win for their candidate that they have become parodies of themselves. Bush was the clear winner and for almost the entire debate Kerry was on the defensive. The absolute low point for Kerry was when he felt it necessary to refer to the sexual orientation of Dick Cheney's daughter, Mary. Edwards did it in his debate with Cheney, and it was distasteful and somewhat nauseating then. But Kerry doing it in the last debate was pure excrement. You can bet that if John Kerry had a gay daughter and Bush referred to her in such a manner the mainstream media would be calling for Bush's head and detailing his history of "insensitivity".

My mom used to tell me "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Indeed.