True believers.  Litmus tests.  Angry partisanship.  Absolutism.  Us vs. them.

It might sound odd for a borderline radical libertarian-republican (lowercase in both instances) such as myself to say, but I have had it absolutely up to here with this garbage.  I am sick of it, and for thousands of reasons.

But chief among them is the blind, cynical tunnel vision it gives to people who live in such narrow political worlds.  Listening to angry true believers drone on endlessly about “real” conservatives, and “real” Republicans, as they dish a plate of steaming (pardon my French) bullshit about any poor sap who may have offended their sensibilities by even shaking hands with one of those evil “enemy” people or groups is enough to make me want to put on a postal uniform and pick up a gun.

One of the saddest narratives about the modern political process is the growth of these types of people.  To them, strong beliefs in certain issues or causes gives one carte blanche to throw rhetorical hay-makers at anyone who betrays their concept of what a “real” conservative is.  (All of these examples apply to the other side of the isle, of course, however given that Democrats have power and are happy about it – right now this isn’t a problem for them).

In politics, the chief business of compromise, coalitions, and counting votes, it is amusing that any of these people believe candidates can or should follow their advice.  Were these people the campaign managers of the world, they would prefer to “go down fighting” without giving a single inch, while getting 30% of the vote and running an angry, isolating and petty campaign.  That would be preferable to “selling out” by doing anything that could possibly even leave a hint of ideological betrayal behind.

I care about ideas.  I wager that any of you angry conservatives who are reading this right now and shaking your heads at what I am saying would be shocked to know that I am probably to your right on fiscal issues.  The extremities of my views on certain issues do not make me one of these angry, tunnel vision, litmus test, absolutist partisans.  I care about ideas, moving the needle in a direction toward those ideas, and I want to see what I believe in advanced.

But I refuse to turn that into some kind of irrational ball of anger.

I am sick and tired of these people going over the edge.  It is one thing to raise legitimate concern over something – like Les Otten donating to several political opponents of his party, and then implying that creating jobs requires buying favors with lawmakers – but these people take it a step further.

They take anecdotal information, and create an entire cynical scenario around it to fit their paranoid, angry, absolutist world where anyone who smiles at a Democrat becomes an enemy combatant.  It doesn’t matter if their fantasy delusion is reality or not – once a reaction is set off in someone’s head they take it to the extreme and don’t stop until they’ve exhausted themselves.

You’ll soon hear things like, “it’s obvious” and “real conservative” and “why don’t you just become a Democrat” and “clearly out of touch” in an echo chamber snowball that gets completely detached from reality.

I’m sick of this garbage.

What set me off?  Well – this is an opinion I’ve held for a long time.  I used to be one of those people who saw boogeymen everywhere.  Any Republican who played poker on Fridays with a Democrat had betrayed the movement to me.

At some point, however, I realized that my point of view was not only irrational, but counter-productive.  I felt more comfortable as a true believer than a rational partisan – but it got in the way of reality.

I soon realized that it was possible to do a great number of things without compromising your beliefs, or your integrity.  There is often times absolutely zero correlation between playing that game of poker, and giving away all your chips.  Politics isn’t a zero sum game where being in the same room with somebody means you are rolling over for them, or giving in politically to them.

Bruce Poliquin has been attacked in more than one conservative circle for serving on the board of the Natural Resource Council of Maine.  The organization is the leading environmental advocate in the state, and conservatives almost universally consider the group a thuggish partisan left wing environmental bully group.

Is there anything solid behind this?  Has Poliquin ever done anything – anything - that would give a conservative cause to be worried that he is a closet Al Gore, waiting to produce his own Inconvenient Truth and wash the brains of Maine’s young people to hug and kiss trees?  Are his policy positions and stated goals worrisome in that regard?  Is he making environmentalism an uncomfortably central part of his campaign?

The answer to each of these questions is of course no.  But that doesn’t stop some among us from saying, “I don’t trust anyone to be a real republican who hangs around that crowd.”    Oh dear, there is that real Republican stuff again.  Joy.  One minor association with no corroborating information is enough to send some people into orbit.  Is that really what this has come down to?

Peter Mills appeared at a healthcare rally that was sponsored by the SEIU a few months ago.  He spoke for a while, essentially saying that healthcare costs were going to cripple the economy if not fixed, and he gave his perspective as a small business owner on the issue.  He talked about not getting much “bang for our buck” on healthcare spending.  He talked about inefficiencies and insane costs for specialists.  The whole speech was essentially, “the system is broken”.

He began by saying he wanted to “bring a different perspective” to the dialogue than had previously been heard that day.  He said nothing about supporting universal healthcare.  He said nothing about supporting a public option.  He said nothing about Dirigo Health.

But, that didn’t matter.  Simply appearing in “enemy territory” was a sin that not only meant that Mills was a closet Democrat, but it implicitly meant that he was on board with the Nancy Pelosi healthcare reform plan.  Indeed, by simply showing up, he apparently implicitly agreed to the entire Democratic agenda on other issues as well.  Immediately afterward, it was said that “obviously Peter Mills isn’t a true conservative“.  Kill me now.

Matt Jacobson spoke at the SEIU Friday night, and was immediately attacked for it.  Was there any actual hard information present in the attack?  Any quotes from the appearance showing that Jacobson said “I love unions, and I’m going to be your best buddy in the Blaine House”?  No.  Based simply on the appearance, the lunatics who are so afraid of anything outside of a conservative friendly audience went on a rampage.

Nevermind that Jacobson’s remarks at the SEIU event dealt with shrinking government spending, growing jobs, and his past private sector work dealing with unions.  I’ve been told he received little more than polite golf claps – it is very clear he said almost nothing they liked.  Frankly, conservatives should hear that and cheer.  But nobody even bothered to ask those basic questions before they went berserk on him – which is exactly the point I am making here.  Reality doesn’t matter – angry, bitter, paranoid over-reactions do.

Do I think there are lines that can’t be crossed?  Do I think some Republicans – heck, a lot of Republicans – deserve scorn, deserve to be labeled turncoats, and deserve to have the ire of the conservative, activist base thrown at them?  Yes.  Yes I do.  Just as an example, I was a rather vocal anti-Scozzafava voice for the New York 23rd congressional district special election.  She was not only too left on the issues, she was quite literally in bed with the other side too much to be trusted, even if she was right on the issues.  She deserved it.

But just because she deserved it for supporting the stimulus, being in favor of card-check, and being endorsed by the SEIU (I could go on, there is a lot more than just that) does not mean that having a conversation with an opposition group equates to a mortal political sin.

Ronald Reagan is the favorite president for every “true conservative”.  Ronald Reagan spoke to unions.  Ronald Reagan was in a union.  Ronald Reagan was the president of a union.  Ronald Reagan won more than 40% of the union vote in 1980. Ronald Reagan spoke about building coalitions with people who agreed with him 80% of the time.  Ronald Reagan’s Vice President was a moderate Republican who called his economic policy “voodoo economics”.  Ronald Reagan was great friends – great friends – with Tip O’Neill.

I sometimes wonder if Reagan were to have run today, if these same angry, bitter absolutists would throw him out with the bathwater.

Believe it or not, a Republican candidate is going to have to do something other than exclusively talking to Republicans to win.  Yes, I am aware that this is a Republican primary and all of these men are asking for the votes of the Republican base – but how many times can the same few hundred people hear “fiscal house in order” from five different candidates before we realize it is time to think a little differently, take a few chances, and change things up a little.  It is time to troll for votes in some new places.  Any candidate who does (without selling out) will probably win the primary.

Has anyone ever considered that it is time for the Republican party to grow and expand again?  It doesn’t have to sell out its principles to do so – but I can tell you one thing for damned sure, having punch at a county Republican meeting isn’t going to attract any new voters to the party, or convert any independents or conservative Democrats to the GOP.  We have five people (probably six soon) circling around the state saying essentially the same things to all the same audiences.

Do I really need to explain the concept of “Reagan Democrats” again?  Those people weren’t energized because Reagan talked about cutting taxes at the local orange country Republican meeting.  He took his message – in tact and without betraying it – to new places, talked to new people.  It worked.

Maybe Bruce Poliquin knowing some people in environmental circles might inspire a few dozen people who believe in global warming, but also believe in low taxes, entitlement reform and spending restraint.  Maybe Peter Mills at that healthcare rally energized a few dozen people who think healthcare is a mess, and are open to hearing some free-market solutions to that mess.  Maybe Matt Jacobson speaking at an SEIU meeting peeled off a few people who realize that while he will never promote a union agenda, he will work hard to get jobs to the state and provide economic opportunity for our families.

And maybe all of them struck out.  Who knows.  But to operate under the assumption that all “enemy” groups and people are part of a monolithic anti-Republican hate ideology means you are forever relegating yourself to shrinking your party, retreating into your cave and bouncing your message off of people who already agree with you.  Ignoring these seemingly futile exercises of outreach means you’ll never convince anyone, you’ll never earn any of your opponent’s respect (which believe it or not, matters a great deal), and you will forever be on the outside looking in.

Sometimes, candidates do go to far.  Sometimes they do go into enemy territory and try to suck up.  Sometimes they do flip their positions to curry favor from the opposition.  We should look, and call them on it when they do.  But there’s a huge difference between calling them on it when they actually do it, and calling them on it when – well, they didn’t.

Somewhere along the way in the conservative movement, we have lost reason.  We are so angry about leaders and politicians who have betrayed our principles over the years, that our optimism has died, and our ability to give anyone the benefit of the doubt is gone.  Now we are little more than a reactionary band of hyper-partisans who rather enjoy cutting off our nose to spite our face.

It is time to inject a little sanity back into politics – well past time.

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