It is rare that posts of a political nature will creep into my blog. However, there are times when the actions of a person or people deserve extra attention for the sole purpose of helping us to think about how their actions affect us on a personal level.

The New York Times printed an article today on the calculations that led Mit Romney’s team to go on the attack. It’s no surprise that politics can get a little sticky or that there will be attacks made on the candidates. That’s the nature of the beast to some extent. However, there has been a growing trend recently to not only to attack but to utterly eviscerate political opponents. This trend needs to stop.

The absolute calculated viciousness of Romney and his his team is shocking. I’m not a Gingrich supporter, and I had thought that Romney was the best of the Republican candidates. Over the last few weeks that notion has faded. Gingrich and Romney are shredding each other like vipers with barred teeth and suffocating anyone else who might be on the ballot. When you get right down to it, this doesn’t create candidate support. It creates the Lesser of the Evils. Then again, maybe it actually creates the most calculating, most self-preserving of the evils.

We have been through a terrorist attack, more than eight years of war, a terrible recession, and a slowly recovering economy–all of which has been emotionally and financially draining on our country. Due to the number of attacks lately, Americans seem to be growing numb and weary of the political warfare created by their leaders, warfare which has led the candidates to up their game, to make a spectacle out of their attack ads that are worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, and to leave their opponents lying bloody and dead at all costs.

As a result, they’re sacrificing their integrity, their honor, their goodness, and possibly even their souls in an effort to win. What we’re left with on the ballot is a shadow of a man, which is filled with the darkest bits of his humanity, the only bits that his opponent wern’t able to consume in the fury to survive. The skills used to win these battles aren’t public awareness, public policy, international strategy, economic savvy, or homeland defense. Instead what you get is someone who knows how to keep himself alive above the needs of everyone else in his circle, his state, or his country.

When you strip away everything else, the winner has put his needs above the needs of the people whom he is meant to be representing. When you support candidates who drink the poison and who willingly turn themselves into vipers for political parties to ride into battle for the sole purpose of attaining victory at any cost, what you end up with is a hungry viper with no one but you to feed upon when his opponents have been devoured.

Is winning at any cost really winning for anyone except the victor who stands victorious upon the dead carcasses of his rivals? Moreover, when a politician is elected into the office of President as the Lesser of the Evils, what does that say about us as people and as a country?

Before voting, before choosing sides, before blindly trusting in party lines, think back to some of the greatest, most influential leaders that the United States has had–Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Roosevelt, King, Chavez, and more–and keep their qualities in mind.

If you don’t like how your polticians are acting, tell them. If you don’t like your representatives representing their own interests, tell them. If you see someone whose qualities of leadership are the kind you’d like to see more of, tell them. If you see a politician who sacrifices himself for the good of his constituency, support him.

Put the political power back into your pocket by voting for candidates who put We The People above his or her own needs and who truly represents your values as a person, mother, father, businessman, health care worker, teacher, loan officer, pastor, mechanic, etc. Otherwise, we will end up with a den of vipers nesting in our House.

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This is the only political post you will see on Underwords during the 2012 Election.