At 02:19 PM Monday 5/26/2008, David Brin wrote: >Seems to have been a fairly well-written >article, though the concepts seem bizarrely >difficult for people to grasp, even now. > >Of course the existence of a "10th anniversary >panel", in itself, was quite an honor. It is >one of the few public policy books from the 20th >Century that is not only still in print but >sparking lively discussion, as the issues become more pressing every day. > >As for the 2008 presidential campaign, well, >although the lady has yet to sing the song we >want to hear, it is nevertheless time, to resume >looking at the big picture, and start rehearsing >what well say in the General Election. And so, >yet again, I urge that folks consider the >Ostrich Gambit... each of us taking >responsibility for three or four decent >republicans who arent troglodytes or aristos >or racists or vicious, but instead sincerely >delusional and in denial over what has happened >to the conservative movement in America. > >Do not underestimate the stubbornness of such >people, or their ability to follow Fox-generated >rationalizations all the way over a >lemming-cliff! Still, if you can move just one, >youll be part of a revolution. I have supplied >the ammo! Only, remember, do NOT get caught up >in a typical party-line fight! The trick that >works is to show that the Republican Party has >betrayed decent conservative values far more >than the democrats ever could, while re-defining >those values in directions that should make even >Barry Goldwater spin in his grave. >http://davidbrin.com/ostrich2a.html
As someone who it was suggested a couple of weeks ago may be the most conservative person remaining on this list (I'm not necessarily sure that's correct, but I suppose I am more conservative than many) although I am not and never have been a member of the Republican party or any political party, and who lives in a part of the country which is considered conservative by the standards of other parts of the country and as a result many of the people I associate with and hear from are conservative (and many of them quite clearly think I'm too liberal when it comes to some things ;)), perhaps I can offer some insight into what those "decent republicans" are thinking. Note that this is a combination of things I have picked up from various sources, not necessarily a statement of what I personally believe. And in the interest of avoiding L3 or L4 or worse length I am going to try to be brief right now and am willing to expand on parts later. When Ronald Reagan changed parties in 1962, he said "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me." Many of the people I know who feel exactly the same way: their positions on social and economic issues haven't changed, but they perceived that with increasing taxes and more interference in their everyday lives the Democrats were leaving them behind. Now, the problem most folks perceive with the neocons is that they are spending our money hand over fist in Iraq and decreasing our freedoms: IOW exactly what the Democrats did earlier. They have no perception that the Democrats have reversed themselves and moved back closer to their positions (some of them saw themselves as the subject of Obama's remark about "bitter" people "clinging to guns and religion") and now they see the national Republican party as going the same way the national Democrat party did 30-odd years or so earlier. So they don't see the Democrats as any sort of option to the Republican neocons, this year or any time. Such conservatives want a national party/candidates who agree with and are willing to work for their values, not two parties/candidates who stand for one or more things which they find in direct opposition to what is important to them. However, since the way things seem to work there is no chance at all of a so-called "third party" candidate being elected President, they keep voting for the Republican candidate because until recently the positions of the Republican party were closer to theirs, at least in the claims made in their platform, even if their actions once in office did not always live up to that. Many of them still see the Democrats as further away from their positions, even when they don't as in the Obama comment seem to have active contempt for their positions, so even if they are disappointed in the current crop of Republicans many of them would rather stay home rather than vote for a Democrat. What they want is for someone to offer them a viable choice: someone they can support and vote *for* rather than holding their nose and checking because they perceive the other one major party's candidate as even worse, and at the same time they know that a vote for anyone but the Democratic or Republican party nominee for President is throwing away their vote and likely if anything to help elect the one of those two they feel is the worse choice. So in short to get a "decent" conservative to vote anything but Republican you need to make a strong case that the nominee of the Democratic party is actually going to stand for and implement policies they consider more "decent" than the Republicans are likely to. To address _one_ comment from the article at <http://davidbrin.com/ostrich2a.html >, specifically: Try asking "What happened to the moral outrage that you once fulminated towards Bill Clinton?" one answer is that many of the above conservatives remember the 1992 campaign when "Billary" campaigned on the promise that Hillary would be a "co-president" and by electing Bill the country would get "two for the price of one," and fear that if Hillary becomes POTUS they would again get "two for the price of one" in "Hillbilly*" and so would get four or eight more years of the same stuff they got during the first Clinton presidency which led to the aforementioned "moral outrage." Even if her supporters say that such fears are unrealistic and unreasonable, they need to do something to convince people that there is nothing for them to fear, rather than just dismissing it and them with something like, "You are wrong. Get over it." So in short, many "decent" conservatives who may be dissatisfied with neocons are dissatisfied with them because they see the neocons as having adopted the policies and practices which the Democrats adopted earlier which drove the conservatives to the Republican party, not necessarily because they have their heads in the sand and are fooled by them. They support the Republican party because there's no other choice and they hope if they hold on long enough they will outlast the neocon glitch and the Republican party will sometime get back to being the party of conservatives, because they see that as at least possible, unlike the apparently impossibility of the Democrats reversing the course of the past half-century or so and becoming more conservative anytime soon (in their lifetimes, anyway). _____ *<http://www.jumbojoke.com/president_hillary_clinton_1628.html?awt_l=HgQDx&awt_m=1d68SY7qX7Onkr> . . . ronn! :-\ "There isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two major parties." George C. Wallace (1919-1998), 4-term Alabama governor* and 4-time Presidential candidate (*4-1/2 if you count Lurleen's partial term.) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
