"but (as) for me" redux

I don't think I've convinced stubborn ol' Dr. Hodges that I'm not wrong. Here's another way to think about the issue:

1. The locution "as for me" is equivalent to "regarding the matter that is moi."
2. The locution "for me" is equivalent to "from my perspective."

I've been arguing that the two locutions are functionally interchangeable, but this doesn't mean they're semantically interchangeable. As we see, the locutions actually mean distinctly different things. In the first case, "as for me" shines the spotlight directly and conspicuously upon oneself in a self-consciously deliberate way. By contrast, "for me" is self-referential, but in a more casually offhand way: "This is just my opinion."

So the difference, then, is not merely a matter of style: it's a matter of intended meaning. This is why Patrick Henry's "but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" feels so noble and stentorian (and yes, somewhat pretentious). It's also why I feel comfortable writing, "...but for me, as a crotchety 50-something, I had trouble understanding..."

I often have to deal with well-intended people who try to "correct" me when I'm not actually wrong. And for what it's worth, I haven't even broken out the "common usage" argument yet. Let's do that now. When I Google the respective phrases, I get these results:

"but as for me": 40,800,000 results
"but for me": 149,000,000 results

True, some of the "but for me"s will actually mean something like "except for me" or "were it not for me." But I think that's a solid enough search result to make the claim that "but for me" is widely used as I've used it, whatever the prescriptivist might say.