To boil it down, I use The Rule of Threes:
1.) One third of us who are/were Republicans think a Republican candidate who has liberal views can govern effectively and save the country. They would contribute money and vote for the candidate enthusiastically.
2.) One third of us who are/were Republicans think a Republican candidate who has liberal views cannot govern effectively, but might help save the country by staving off the day of reckoning by voting for a candidate who will do less damage until a real conservative comes along. A large portion of this third will not likely contribute to the candidate and will vote for the candidate unenthusiastically.
3.) One third of us who are/were Republicans think a Republican candidate who has liberal views cannot govern effectively, and will bring us to the same ruin that a fully liberal candidate would, with the imprimatur and tacit approval of the conservative voter, albeit in a longer time frame. A large portion of this third will not vote for the candidate under any circumstances.
Between each of these categories are narrow bands of gray that mix the two categories adjacent to each other.
The net result is not a good one, electorally, in my opinion. We are divided broadly, and this puts non-fully-liberal candidates (anyone but a current fully leftist Democrat) at a disadvantage both electorally and financially.
Democrats do, I think, view this much differently than we do, and I am not speaking ideologically, and here is why: Liberalism is like a one way ratchet. Once liberal policies are enacted, they rarely are rolled back.
Think a python eating a pig.
The pig is large, and takes a very long time to get down for the python. But the python knows, as does the pig, that in the end, there is no escaping. Because the teeth of the python only allow movement (however slow) to occur in one direction, full ingestion of the pig is inevitable in this model.
Liberals may not actively realize this in any way since most (except the bottom third of the most hard-core of liberals) do not think about politics at that level. Liberals are a mile wide and an inch deep. Even though they may not realize that the one-way ratchet of liberalism is a long, slow, inevitability, deep in their political hindbrains, they know it.
As a result, even though the interests of liberals may be as widely disparate and divided as those of conservatives (or ostensible conservatives) are, they do not have any problem whatsoever voting for or contributing to a candidate who is only half as liberal as they would like, because they know some small portion of their liberal interest will be acted on, and they will eventually get there.
Bottom line: They can be patient and have the latitude to do so, because time and the direction of movement is on their side. Conservatives do not have that luxury, and as a result, our outlook is by necessity, more sharply delineated and focused.
This is a pessimistic outlook, but I fail to see how we can have any outlook other than a pessimistic one at this time.
But because I am pessimistic, that does not mean I have lost hope. This country has seen grim times before, and will again. We are not in those grim times yet, but when things are still this good and we have people rioting because of sneakers on sale, one has to wonder what will happen when our industrial, agriculture and energy sectors are finally destroyed, and food becomes scarce.
The rule of law and the integrity of legal contracts have already been discounted by our government (see recently, treatment of investors during the bailout and the non-prosecution of the New Black Panther Party) and there are now crimes being openly committed that are no longer prosecuted.
The optimist in me says this can all be turned around. But the pessimist in me says it isn’t going to take half measures, and at this time, there is no stomach (except in the lower one third of conservatives described above) for full measures.
I agree, r. Very, very well stated. I’m somewhere between #2 - #3, in that “gray area”, I guess. I just don’t see a choice for America, at this point. We have to get that POS out of The White Crib, at any cost. Otherwise, America is past the point of *no return*. We may already be there, I don’t know for sure, but I’m not giving-up without a fight for Her.
Post of the week: “Liberals are a mile wide and an inch deep.”
Perfect!
Excellent commentary, rlmorel.
Put me in the third category.
I can tell you what I am doing. For the first one in almost thirty years I am vegetable gardening again and have three cords of wood seasoning and another left over from last year. I am set up to harvest over 12,000 gal of rain a year now and more coming an line. Our needs for food, energy, water can be met right here, right now. Good Luck, and God Bless!
But, let me add, the pig is poison and eventually it must be regurgitated or death is the inevitable result.