An Open Letter to Conservatives

Hmmm, my short version of this letter would be an invitation to the right to alternate fucking themselves with choking on it.

...and as usual, the comments section is a rather depressing and soul-destroying affair.

I like you.

Well, it's been a day. I figure if Texas* hasn't seceded and declared war on the guy who wrote the article it's a testament to the strength of the republic.

* - I would substitute Tennessee, Georgia, or Alabama but they don't have the grapes to even lip off about secession

That's only because I gave you a firm handshake, looked you square in the eye, and flashed my winning smile.

Ha, yep.

I like all of you! And this letter. Jesus Christ does this sum it all up.

Surely any Republican voters that do bother to read that will just assume it's author has caught fascist-socialism or the gay or something?

Meanwhile, no one actually believes that the Republican politicians it's aimed at will ever set eyes on the thing do they?

I love the links; conservos tend to have this blind spot towards dumb shit other conservos say - "well, I think x" "didn't Sean Coulimbeck say thinking x was for fags and traitors?" "He never said that."

Here, BAM! Yes he fucking did.

Bookmarked. With all the links, I feel like I'm now the Hypocrisy Police. Maybe the pols and windbags will shrug it off, but all the snaiekes on the net can be called to account for the dumb shit "their side" says. Go forth and conjugate!

Great, exhaustive laundry list of the supreme hypocrisy and insanity that is contained within the Republican caucus. What's missing is a compelling reason why they need to change. Until they see how all the naked pandering is eating the party from within like a cancer, then they won't ever man up. And they do need to man up because as much as I think government can be the answer in a lot of situations after a generation of privatization and corporate corruption, the Dems need a loyal opposition to keep them honest. Because what we have now is a party split between old guard liberals and Republican-lites, and a party made up almost entirely of sycophants.

That's a good point, tho I'm sure Snaike will simply link to a bunch of unrelated articles that he hasn't read in full to prove his point while they actually completely undermine it. Or something.

Either that or he'll simply parrot exactly what 95% of the republican voters in the comments section to the piece are saying...

"but but the Dems/Left are just as bad"

I really, really HATE that attitude.

A good chunk of my current distaste with the Dems comes from the fact that they've decided that what "works" for the GOP will work for them and have met fire with fire.

I certainly think it's an understandable and human reaction, but trying to out douche-bag a douche-bag simply means there's one more douche-bag in the world, y'know?

i.e. "well, the Nazis killed Jews, so the US should gas Germans"

I like the comment referencing "one off examples"

Does that mean you'll kill him last?


The beautiful thing about this list is that it could apply to Democrats. It doesn't, the Democrats don't behave like this, but the beef is entirely with Republican hypocrisy and inconsistency and mendacity and other words Teabaggies would spell incorrectly on their signs and that more importantly have nothing to do with conservatism as an ideology. It summarizes the Republican Problem very nicely.

I'm still surprised at the things Republican politicians say. When I see that people believe what Republicans say surprise doesn't cut it and I am again forced to resort to astonishment. I even read a book called Why People Believe Weird Things and I still don't get it. Economic and social and military decisions involving really stupendous amounts of money and affecting an awful lot of people are going to be made by these people if they're given the chance. Republicans can't really strike conservatives as people who are capable of making smart decisions, can they? I don't mean right or wrong decisions, I mean decisions based on an understanding of the issue. People like Michelle Bachmann strike me as a little too busy with other things for her to give serious thought to issues she's supposed to deal with, to give an example.

You can't go around creating your own reality. You can tell lies about Democrats and the base might believe them and vote for you, but demagoguery and flag pins don't work on things like economies or other governments or science or nature. Why do so many teeming millions think otherwise? Why does this stuff work?

It's simple. Because Republicans have made politics no more serious than football. It's all about root for your team rather than discuss and debate policy. To many Republicans and conservatives, it was never about Health Care reform, it was about denying Obama a win. Plain and simple.

What I'd like to know is how this effects the Republican party moving forward. The '08 election was bad for them and fucked them up bad but this? Losing the battle on Health Care reform is in many ways worse than losing Congress and the Senate in '06 and the presidency in '08 combined. At least after those elections, the GOP still resembled a real political party but after this? I don't know. It's real hard for me to respect the party of Lincoln these days.

I think this is true but I think you can't discount the way faith-based belief has seemingly crept into the right side of political thinking and understanding and how it's overtaken reason, logic and facts. When you're delaing with an evangelical republican, facts, evidence and truth is irrelevant in the face of faith and belief in their ideology.

That's why in the face of evidence and facts these people can simply look past them as testings of their faith, thus ignorance becomes a virtue and a sign of ideological strength.

As a (mostly) conservative, I have no response to this.


Because it's all true.

Honestly Pomp - and I mean this as a compliment - it could almost have been written by you as opposed to the conservative lapsed republican that it was.

"Partisanship is ugly no matter which side of the fence it comes from."

Yes, home teaming it when your belief in something is tied only to the idea of sides is terrible. BUT... if your barrel houses rotten apples - at a certain point - especially if all you can see in the barrel are those rotten apples, then either you need a new barrel for the good apples, or your barrel is the rotten apple barrel.

It would be so much easier to defend Republicans if they had a leader who didn't just appeal to the base of the party. And since the base of the party is either rich people or people afraid of change, the problems with being a modern democrat is that they've effectively become the "not crazy" party. As a lefty, I would like there to be some balance so more actual liberal ideology could come through from the Dems, instead of fighting for things that are more common sense.

The ugly truth of partisanship is that Republicans run on a platform of a ton of shit they honestly don't believe in. Smaller government, more ponies for the people, etc. is not how this country has been run for the last forty years or so when they've been in charge, and when they do enact what they supposedly believe in, it's been terrible. No one wants a totalitarian state, but as we have seen repeatedly, regulation can and has been effective if the government is working towards the greater good, and if the government is acting for the American people, then there won't be too much of an abuse of power, because we won't let it.

The Republican platform has for too long been "politicians are pig fuckers. Now, I'm anti-pig fucking... that's a fucking beautiful pig. Where was I?"

I've mentioned it on a different thread before, but I'll repeat since it's timely again.

The current Republican Party has no use for pragmatism. Even before the slaughter they received in 2006 and 2008, they had no use for it. They threw pragmatic leaders like Lincoln Chafee and Chris Shays under the bus. They believe in their party like they do their religious beliefs. It's all or nothing. No compromises. You're either with them or you're with the terrorists.

In my personal opinion, there's nothing wrong with a lot of conservative thought. Does that mean those thought patterns can't be tweaked or changed with the times? No, but you wouldn't hear that from this Republican Party. They are dead set with keeping their core ideas the same because of the fear they have of losing those values entirely. It's an understandable fear in some regards, but in most regards it's totally irrational.

Take the death penalty for example: I'm a strong supporter of it. I think regardless if it works, it should be used. That being said, it's got some serious problems with it. It's administered unfairly between whites and blacks. It's also taken innocent lives. In my opinion, it should exist but it should also be tweaked to be made better. Possibly a moratorium on it in order to correct inequalities. Republicans would be absolutely against this idea because it would change the way the death penalty is currently run. They agree with the overall idea just like I do, but they refuse to change it out of fear of losing that policy altogether.

I still think their fear comes from the religious aspect of their lives. I think their told at an early age that there are no shades of gray in this world. In my opinion, there are some things that have no shades of gray as well. That being said, they take the concept too far and implement it universally. There's no shades of gray on abortion rights to them. Yet, what kind of a world do we live in when we have people who force a 16 year old girl to have a child fathered by her own father? It's fucked up, right?

I'm going off on a bit of a tangent, but I still think the point remains that in order for the Republican Party to actually change... they need to recognize the fact that the way they look at things is simply archaic and backward. It's more than just policy viewpoints at this point. It's a world view that impacts every facet of social life. It's time the GOP grapple onto the kind of empathy that Lincoln carried with him every day for those stuck in potential perpetual slavery.

Well, where else are Republicans who refuse to get caught up in this Teabaggery nonsense suppose to go and have a hope of actually effecting change?

Libertarians? No. It's a two party system, and that won't change even when the Republicans slide into oblivion. IMHO, the Dems will continue to be the real party with the Big Tent, and they'll have to deal with a wider range of opinions on matters from candidates. Primaries will mean far more now.

Beautiful post in total, Dre. But... my word.

Never done this on the board before, but: SIG!

They need to tame the wild nonsense in their party. Like you said, it's a two-party system, not a 1 party, 1 crazy system. If it keeps up, then the Republicans will eventually die off and some other party will take it's place. I don't think it's practical or possible for the Democrats to be so huge as to reconcile 2 totally opposing viewpoints. At least for very long.

So you heard about the GOP shutting Congress down at 2pm? More galactic stupidity from the party of children.

Between this and McCain saying he's not doing anything for the rest of the year to cooperate with the Dems, I am so happy I voted for Obama last year.

Even if he is a secret Muslim Marxist, at least he's good at it ;P

It's really sad to see what's become of the GOP.

I was raised in a Military, conservative household. My first vote for President was for Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Now, having read a lot of history, and having lived through some, I'd say I'm a middle of the road leaning Left but fiscally conservative Democrat. Because there simply is no one in the Republican party that represents me.

The political party that gets the White House and (for the most part) Congress is always the party that can successfully act like adults in the public eye.

Nixon and Reagan won two terms each becuase they could say "Look, you really don't want someone with childish impulses running this country. You want someone who is cool, calm and collected, who won't go batshit insane and launch our nukes (and yeah I know a lot of people thought Reagan would do exactly that; most didn't), and most of all, you can trust me" .

Now the fact that each President fell short or betrayed that promise doesn't diminish it's power.

When I evaluated McCain and Obama in 2008, I quickly realized that McCain was all about gimmicks to get elected, had no clue what to do if elected, and had a temper and an meanness that would spell real trouble if he got elected.

Obama has always acted like an Adult: calm,rational, and willing to listen to the other side and adopt some of their ideas.

Sorry for the rambling response. I think the current GOP is actually capable of organized violence of some sort, and I'm appalled at the way they've behaved these last few years.

The Democratic Party is the only political party in America with an "Open tent" and thus the only place for people like me.

What struck me as odd about this - and I'm not disputing your point - is that McCain had this great moderate, across-the-aisle streak (and I really, REALLY loved the way he appeared to be one of the last actual FISCAL conservatives on the national stage) but he swerved so fucking hard to the base that I couldn't countenance voting for him.

Of course, I felt uncomfortable voting for Obama because, as an ardent right wing acquaintance of mine put so succinctly, "who is this guy?" - in that he never really took a stand on anything or made his politics known in his legislative career.

Well, for me the whole Gas Tax (which was in April-May of 08) issue led me to decide firmly to support Obama.

There was an interview with McCain where he announced this "great idea" in which he just gave this shit eating grin and wheedled "I just think the American people need a break!". It was one of the most cynical, openly contemptuous things I've ever seen. Soon Hillary Clinton jumped on the bandwagon, promising us if we just voted for her we'd get freebies! Maybe we'd all get a fucking kitten too.

Obama's response? He called bullshit on the whole idea, even saying that they'd tried a gas tax holiday in Illinois, and 6 months after enacting it, found there was NO BENEFIT TO CONSUMERS: the gas stations and Oil companies simply raised their prices to mask the effect of the reduced tax.

So for me it was a pretty simple equation (at first):

Obama admitting to a mistake and learning from it, then decrying politicians who proposed making the same mistake on a much bigger level, all on a national stage > Hack politicians seeking to bribe voters into supporting them.

The more I looked into Obama, his background, what he wanted to do as President, and yes what he represented, the more I supported him.

Also McCain has clearly shown that it's all about the Ego for him...as witness his latest statement that since the Democrats passed Healthcare the Republicans are going to block Immigration Reform......which McCain used to think was a vital National Security issue!

McCain lost me with Palin. If he would have nominated Ridge or Lieberman, I would have voted Republican instead of voting for two dead guys like I did.