Picking a candidate / cooperating with evil

In my view, Casey Khan's arguments about Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, and cooperating with evil are not very persuasive.  (Full disclosure:  I have donated money to the Thompson exploratory effort and intend, at present, to support him if he runs.)  For starters, although I also like the views, and respect the persons, of Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, neither will ever, ever be the President, and so it strikes me as a bit close to empty moral preening to insist that pro-life Catholics need to support them in the primaries to avoid culpable cooperation with evil.  They are as likely to be the President -- indeed, they are as likely to be the Republican nominee -- as, say, Cardinal George or Dorothy Day.    

Like Rob, I was disappointed by the news that Thompson lobbied, more than 15 years ago, for a few hours, on behalf of an abortion-rights group -- one of his large law firm's clients -- trying to lift the so-called "gag rule."  I would have -- I hope -- refused to do this work, and I wish Thompson had refused.  And, I was also disappointed by his organization's initial not-straightforward response to the news.  (Yuval Levin has a good post about the issue, here.)  Still, it seems to me that (a) there is no "seamless garment" candidate and so, all things considered, the common good and religious freedom are better served by an executive branch staffed by a Republican administration, and by judges nominated by a Republican president, than by the Administration of any of the three or four plausible Democratic candidates (as I have always said on this blog, I understand and believe that pro-life, reasonable, faithful Catholics -- and also Tom Berg! -- can and do disagree about this), (b) at present, the only plausible Republican candidates are Romney, McCain, Giuliani, and Thompson, (c) Thompson's voting record, during the years he spent in the Senate -- as opposed to the few hours he billed lobbying to lift the gag-rule -- is, like Sen. McCain's, quite good on abortion and stem-cell research.

Khan's cooperation-with-evil argument seems to assume that a voter needs to worry about whether a vote for Thompson is culpable cooperation with Thompson's (let's assume) immoral act of lobbying to lift the gag-rule.  But, it seems to me, this is not at all the question.  Thompson is not running as the "lift the gag rule" candidate; quite the contrary.  When it comes to abortion, voting for Thompson (or McCain, or Romney) would be voting for an Administration that would support reasonable regulations of abortion and nominate judges more likely to uphold reasonable regulations of abortion.