Lazio Endorses Lesser-Evilism, not the Lesser Evil

Rick Lazio wants the world to know that he has not endorsed Republican nominee Carl Paladino for the New York gubernatorial election. He clearly reserves the right to blast his victorious rival, as he did earlier today on the radio. While withdrawing yesterday from the campaign, for which he had won the Conservative party line, Lazio insisted that Paladino, like Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo, was a "deeply flawed individual," and that neither man had produced a real plan for economic recovery. I don't doubt that Lazio hates Paladino's guts right now, but his hatred may have blinded him to the implications of his actions.

Lazio claims that he was not pressured by Conservative party leaders, who were allegedly (and I think unreasonably) afraid that Lazio would not draw the 50,000 votes the party needs to retain automatic ballot status in the state, to drop out of the race. But if he was not pressured, and if the consolation-prize Republican nomination for a judicial post in a safely Democratic district -- he had to accept a nomination for another office to surrender the Conservative line for governor -- is no real incentive to quit, then I have to wonder what exactly Lazio thinks he was doing yesterday. The one thing he made clear in his belated concession speech is that he deemed the election of Andrew Cuomo "unacceptable" and did not want to be held responsible for such a calamity befalling New York. Lazio may want to convince himself that his comments did not even imply an endorsement of Paladino, but the real implication of his renunciation is that people who might have voted for him were better off voting for someone else in order to prevent the election of Cuomo. According to Bipolarchy logic the only way to thwart Cuomo is to support Paladino. If Lazio did not think this way himself -- or did not assume this unconsciously -- he would not have withdrawn from the race had he not somehow been pressured into doing so. If Lazio were not himself a bipolarchist he would have declared himself the viable alternative to both Cuomo and Paladino. He has not done so because he really can't see an alternative to the Republican-vs-Democrat choice that most people still consider the "real" one.

Rick Lazio is in denial right now because he's angry. I don't think he's lying consciously to the people so much as lying unconsciously to himself when he says he won't endorse Paladino. He's consoling himself by bitching out Paladino at every opportunity, as if to prove that he really is an independent voice, but his actions have proven otherwise.