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It’s nice to have a higher moral code. But lately I’ve seen far to many conservatives spending all their moral outrage attacking other conservatives over which flawed candidate they have decided to support.

I never imagined the day that I would be called pro-abortion. Well, that’s not true, because since I don’t oppose contraception I knew there were some that would say I wasn’t sufficient, and since I didn’t dislike destroying embryos enough to fight to end in-vitro fertilization, or to oppose the plan-b drug, I wasn’t winning any 100% points.

But i’ve been picketing abortion clinics since before some people here were born. I’ve been giving to pro-life causes. My church is heavily involved in the pro-life women’s clinic movement. I’ve even had a column of mine published on pro-life web sites, and I think one of my quotes is still headlines on a pro-life site.

So if I decide that of our flawed candidates, I trust Mitt Romney (in no small part because he’s smart and can figure the truth, and his faith already pushes him to the pro-life cause), I am certainly open to attacks for being wrong, or for faulty reasoning, but find it tiresome to be called “pro-abortion”, or “liberal” (another label that would come as a laugh to those who know me around here).

I do think politics has become course, but I think part of that is our own tendency to to radicalize our points of view.

For example, and maybe I’m living dangerously but it’s a great example of my point, there are those who truly don’t believe Romney has converted. That’s fine, heck you can even think that people who are pro-life could switch once money and power are thrown at them.

But to insist that in this one instance a single man is personally responsible for millions of deaths simply because he bought into the conventional wisdom that in the end women had a “right” to “choose” what to do with their bodies, because that person did not truly believe a fetus was a “person” until some age was passed, is a truly radical notion — one that makes it impossible to come to any discussion or agreement. Of course, that’s not the goal, “no compromise” being the call.

But what is the goal? Is the goal to end abortion, or to make people grovel and beg forgiveness while another million babies die?

We had a rule in the pro-life movement. If you could save one life, that was one fewer abortion. Sure, a million were dying, but still saving one life was important.

But now we have the chance for example to say all but 50,000 lives a year (by electing someone who would support rape and incest exceptions), and instead of embracing the chance to save lives, we want to destroy the person for past infidelity.

My view is different. I believe in being faithful in my own life, being pure to principle, NOT to compromise on my own views or faith. But NOT to enforce some rigid adherance to MY point of view among all those I would elect. Would I prefer a perfect candidate — certainly. But I don’t see any running. Everything is compromise, when it comes to politics.

But more and more, and I blame the internet, we have played division politics. We would rather fight for 100% and lose, than get 80% and come back to fight for the other 20% next year.

And in our fight for the 100%, we end up with nothing, and the people who wanted 50% elect moderates, having given up on the conservatives who are so stubborn as to make any progress toward the goal impossible.

It’s like never getting to where you are going, because you want to be there NOW, and driving won’t get you there until tomorrow. So instead peple moan about how stupid it is that it takes a day to travel, and end up right were they began.

In that sense, McCain might be a godsend. I’ll hate his politics, but he does grasp the need to NOT make every policy difference into a struggle for the eternal good and evil.

Well, not McCain. He seems vindictive and precisely the type that would make things into a struggle of good and evil, but in a bad way.

Oh well.