Conservatives Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

Posted by on Feb 26th, 2012 and filed under Economy, Legal, Politics, Presidency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry from your site

When I was a kid, there was a very simply rule of conduct, people in polite society did NOT talk about politics, religion, sex, or money in public.

In fact, unless you lived in the proverbial “one horse town,” your neighbors probably wouldn’t have any idea what church you attended.

A man’s vote or support for a candidate was a private matter and people who wore support pins did so only at political rallies.

That old saying, “No one knows what goes on behind closed doors,” was both a warning to mind your own business about my private life and a pledge that I won’t get involved in your private life.

Your salary, how much money you had in the bank (or under your mattress), and how much you spent or saved was simply private and personal information and most people had no idea how a person lived their financial life until the reading of the will.

Today, Republicans claim to adhere to the values that made America great. Yet, second only to blaming liberals and Obama for the destruction of America, conservatives do their darnedest to play the self defeating game of exclusionist politics all based on rejecting those basic rules of polite society. From national figures on major media outlets to your “friends” on social media, the message is loud and clear, if you aren’t “my” kind of conservative (unless you agree with me on religion, sexual or reproductive issues, my political candidate, and how people should spend their money), you aren’t a “real” conservative.

Meanwhile, Democrats have played a long game of inclusion. That is, as long as you vote with us, we don’t care what you believe in your private life, we accept you. This practice of inclusion has resulted in groups of people, who otherwise have nothing in common, voting in mass for the same candidate. Just think about this for a moment, the Democrats can count blacks, Jews, socialists, skin-heads, welfare recipients, dockworkers, and homosexuals as their support base. Clearly it isn’t because these groups all believe in the same things. Nazi skin-heads, blacks and Jews, certainly don’t all agree on world views.

In vox pols in 2008, people were asked three questions,

1.         Do you consider yourself a Republican, Independent or Democrat?

2.         With which party do you intend on voting.

3.         Why?

More than half of those who responded considered themselves Independent and of those voters over 80% said that they would vote for the Democrat candidate. Despite the fact that most of the responders said that they agreed with the concept of smaller government, less regulation, and less intrusion into the personal lives of citizens, when asked why they wouldn’t vote for the Republican candidate, the overwhelming response was essentially some version of “I’m not rich, white, or evangelical, so that candidate wouldn’t support me.”

Just last week, the leader of a local Republican group announced that “we should all support X candidate because he is a good, God-fearing Christian family man, who pays his bills on time.” I wish that I had been shocked. Conservatives for more than a decade have moved farther and farther into “none of your business territory” to the detriment of this country and the Republican Party. We can all blame the liberals for driving us in the wrong direction, but with Republicans fighting in the backseat over who is the “real” conservative, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

So, let’s get this straight. There is a difference between a political conservative and a religious conservative. A political conservative is someone who believes in a small, constitutionally mandated government, limited intrusion into the private lives of citizens, and limited regulation as to the business of citizens. Religion is NOT an element of a conservative political position. Some people who are conservative politically are also religious conservatives, but they are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, you can be a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Wiccan, or Atheist political conservative.

You can be a pro-choice or a pro-life political conservative.

You can be a homosexual or heterosexual political conservative.

You can be a wealthy political conservative or a dirt poor political conservative.

No matter what your religion, which candidate you support, what you believe about sex or reproduction, or how you spend your money, if you believe in a constitutionally based, small government, limited intrusion into the public lives of citizens, and limited business regulation, you ARE a political conservative.

Candidates and their supporters are so vehemently going after other conservatives who don’t share their religious beliefs, financial realities, sexual and reproductive beliefs, or chosen candidate that it will be impossible to forget the hateful and hurtful personal attacks and join behind one candidate come election time. Every day I hear, “oh we will all support anybody but Obama come election time,” but statistics show that that simply isn’t true. The disenfranchised conservative may not vote for Obama, but they will simply stay home and not vote at all.

It’s ironic that limited intrusion into the lives of citizens is a corner stone of the conservative belief, yet day in, day out people who claim to be conservative’s demand that we agree with their position on social issues. I say it’s high time that political conservatives adopt the real, traditional, American values of minding our own business when it comes to the religion, sex, financial realities, and the preferred candidate of fellow political conservatives.

Can we survive four more years under Obama? Unless we focus on small government, less intrusion into the lives of citizens, and limited business regulation and become open to ANYONE who agrees with the political conservative stance and mind our own business about the rest, we are guaranteeing another term and the destruction of this country. Wake up fellow conservatives, exclusion is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

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