it has become increasingly clear to me that no mainstream Republican or Democrat can be trusted to defend civil liberties on even a basic level, and Obama is no different. The party split is meaningless because both parties will erode your civil liberties, engage in corporate welfare, and take military action that costs us billions of dollars and causes even more destruction in the countries we attack.
I realize RP has a lot of problems. I've posted about some of them in discussions with SmartMuffin here. But the cost of having any mainstream candidate become president is too high. It's still a while before we all vote but for the first time Ron Paul is in the lead for getting my vote for US president. He's the only guy I trust not to attack civil liberties or engage in warfare for no reason.