My take on reading this is that the writer is not a self-identified Republican, or even a conservative, yet. What some here are calling his ‘qualifier to stay hip’ is merely his honest views, whether you agree with him and his reasoning or not. The guy has probably voted for Democrats or leftist third-party candidates his whole life.
Lay off his ‘qualifier’ and see the guy for what he appears to be - someone whose worldview and take on American politics are starting to mature and take form as conservative. Not long ago, this is how I started. I kept examining what I saw in the real world and compared it to what i heard and said in the liberal echo chamber of the average early 20’s guy in blue-state ville. Like this guy, my music and social life didn’t expose me to much conservative thought. Fugazi rocks, but they’re slightly to the left the Khmer Rouge.
I issued these qualifiers often early on. I’m still on your side guys, but... (insert rational conservative observation of the world here.) After continuously doing this, one day it simply dawned on me that I was a conservative/libertarian and that my suspicion of the government and media was shared by other conservatives, not by my liberal friends.
This election will be decided by people like this writer. They can issue whatever qualifiers they want. They can call themselves whatever they want. They don’t have to agree with everything and everyone on Free Republic. They just have to decide that Marxism is a step too far for them, and that they’d rather have McCain than Obama as president. Cut the guy some slack.
I still don’t get the slammin this guy did you read the whole post, the majority of it you would never in a million years hear out of the mouth of a democrat or even left repub/ moderate, only one statement in the whole thing that you’re basing your view on that one qualifier. But like a lot of conservatives this guy probably is sick of gw bush’s spending, keeping his veto pen in a lock box, and his freakout on this bailout. I know thats how I feel, but if I were to write to a certain audience that i wanted to hear what I had to say and didn’t want to just get them mad then I would be vague to get them to listen and figure it out for themselves all I know is this post sounds like the guy is for: 1. small government 2. gun rights 3.low taxes 4. pro life 5. supports the war 6. can’t stand anything about obama. The guy sounds conservative to me, maybe leaning a bit libertarian at most