Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Allegation:The RINO “Pseudo-Conservatives” Trounced The “True Conservatives”

Following McCain's victory on super Tuesday, the bloggosphere is full of posts like this from Strata-Sphere

" I told you so. Yep, had to get that out of the way finally. Ever since the Gang of 14 and Harriet Miers I have warned the angry right that their purity wars against Bush and all who dared to disagree with them (which continued through issues like Dubai Ports and Immigration) was going to end on this day - they are out of power. They are not out of influence, but they could be soon. The core problem with how the hyper-right acted on all these issues is they did not debate issues, the demeaned people. el Presidente Jorge Bush and his gang of RINO traitors were the political enemy to these people and they were led by conservative talk radio."

A Freeper I respect had this reply:"I used to have respect for this guy."

But this article and others like it can still be useful to help examine the situation. Its easy to say people should not be one thing in name only and something else in reality. People should not be big government nanny staters. Frankly, they should not be dishonest or idiots, in general.

But those are not things that conservatives can change.

"We" need to focus on what we can do, not what others should have done.

What we can do is not pretend when we have an administration that is not acting conservative - in the future, we need to be honest about that. Bloated budget deficits and extra-constitutional government actions are not conservative. But we also need not to use personal attack and name calling - like calling the President of the United States "Jorge."

We need to be honest about policy differences without going personal. We can do this. But its already starting with the candidates - conservatives are attacking personally instead of being straight forward about policy issues.

It is critical to go forward in a constructive fashion.

Ronald Reagan emphasized not just policies but constructive tactics.

He stood on the podium and endorsed Gerald Ford in 1976.
And he took George Bush into the administration even after Bush called Reagan's plan "voodoo economics."

Policies are important but so are tactics and the character reflected by those tactics.