Rich:

What you wrote echoes my sentiments exactly. I mean exactly. I want nothing at all to do with those yahoos.
They've completely abandoned Reagan conservatism--that is, inclusive, positive conservatism--and made it abhorrent. Why on earth would anyone want to be a conservative nowadays with them as our public faces and voices?

James: In the "related posts," there was a link to something you wrote about Ann Coultard five years ago, "How Not to Win an Argument."

I guess stuff like this sells books to fanatics. But one wonders how many fence-straddlers on the abortion issue are going to climb over to Coulter’s side after reading that?

It's a damn shame nobody seems to understand that. It's the absolute truth.

Take a look, for example, at how John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee after last night's victories, is treated by the conservatives. dday has a great round-up of McCain-hate articles all attacking him from the right. Ann Coulter says she'll campa...

Unless it is Lieberman.

But, fundamentally, we’re the same country we were in 1980. We’re still the most religious country in the developed world and probably the most patriotic. We’re more citified and more homogenized than we were but we still cling to the John Wayne rugged individualist mythos to a large degree.

Why is this anathema to being liberal? I am far left according to 'conservatives'.

My grandfather died in WWII, I love my country, I want the deficit reigned in, I want my family safe...but I also think people should be able do do anything they want, provided no one else is getting hurt. I believe that people's lives are theirs to live, because I have enough problems. And I think that excessive wealth is as unacceptable as extreme poverty.

The neo-cons that hijacked the Republican Party are complete and total idiots. I'm glad someone has owned up to that. Thanks, James.

But, fundamentally, we’re the same country we were in 1980. We’re still the most religious country in the developed world and probably the most patriotic. We’re more citified and more homogenized than we were but we still cling to the John Wayne rugged individualist mythos to a large degree.

Why is this anathema to being liberal? I am far left according to 'conservatives'. My grandfather died in WWII, I love my country, I want the deficit reigned in, I want my family safe...but I also think people should be able do do anything they want, provided no one else is getting hurt. I believe that people's lives are theirs to live, because I have enough problems. And I think that excessive wealth is as unacceptable as extreme poverty.

The neo-cons that hijacked the Republican Party are complete and total idiots. I'm glad someone has owned up to that. Thanks, James.

Vote Republican!

It takes 8 years to ruin a country, but twelve years to kill it!

The problem the Republican party faces today is that it's continually shifted further and further rightward ever since the ascendancy of Reagan... and the base has followed right behind, ever ready to attack any deviance from the script. On the other hand, there has been no corresponding leftward move from the Democrats... if anything, the Democratic Party is less liberal than they were in, say, 1972. Meanwhile we have the likes of Jonah Goldberg publicly declaring that a man like Richard Nixon can no longer even be considered a conservative... and in the righter-than-thou environment of today's GOP, he's absolutely correct. (For once.)

Now we have the spectacle of the GOP presidential nominees spending a shocking amount of their debates engaged in what amounts to playground taunts of, "I'M more conservative!" "No, I am! You're a big dirty liberal!" With the sometime exception of Ron Paul, they distance themselves from Bush as if he were carrying cholera, meanwhile deviating barely a jot from his policies. God, how very much I wanted to hear Romney or Thompson just come out with it and say, "I'll do everything EXACTLY the same as Bush would... only THIS time, it'll WORK!"

This is an era in which a charismatic Republican moderate could win hugely in a presidential campaign... problem is, moderates are all but barred from GOP politics. If Arlen Specter is what passes for a "centrist" Republican, I humbly submit that the very term is meaningless.

Anyhow, I hope that the Republican party someday manages to get its act together in a sensible way, even though they certainly won't in time for this November. And that's why my vote will be going to the Democrat... after all, this country will have had eight years of Bush incompetence to clean up when Dubya finally exits, and I can't see either McCain or Romney having the slightest inclination to roll up their sleeves and grab a mop.

It is odd that you would think that Senator Obama is leaving identity politics behind while he is getting over 90% of the black vote. He also supports an expansion of Affirmative Action (even to the point that his kids should get into the Ivy leagues based upon Affirmative Action) and started his political career in identify politics.

There is nothing any conservative can do to appeal to blacks or Hispanics. Both groups have an illegitimate rates above 50%, both groups have high poverty rates, and both have developed a culture of voting for Democratic candidates. I would guess that most blacks have never voted for a Republican.

There is no issue, no strategy, no candidate that can run as a conservative and appeal to blacks or Hispanics. When President Bush is used as an example of a successful Republicans because he got 1/3 of the Hispanic vote, it shows you that identify politics is alive and well and greatly beneficial to the Democratic Party.

The U.S. just needs to brace itself that it is going to become a one party state. Why would anyone donate money, time, or run as a Republican with so little chance of winning and no chance of affecting policy.

I think a third alternative is that conservatives see no candidate to rally around and are therefore a) sitting out the primaries, or b) flipping a coin to decide among McCain, Romney, and Huckabee, who are all conservatives of a kind, but nothing you ...

I'll offer you a third option. Accept the reform that Obama is pushing - one that constitutes one of the main reasons conservatives like him, to the extent that they do - namely, the ditching of the racial/gender/ethnic identity poltics of old.

Forget about the "white vote", hispanic vote etc. Just put out some good ideas that resonate with the people. The Dems sure aint gonna get everything right.

Radically restructuring government to create an unaccountable executive is not conservative.

Building a security apparatus that is designed to spy on citizens is not a conservative principle.

Runaway spending and bloated budgets are not conservative ideas.

Torture and permanent aggressive wars are not conservative principles.

Fearmongering and keeping the electorate scared is not a conservative principle.

And on and on.

I have to say amen to that, and I have to ask conservatives, how did you allow this to happen to your movement?

I've been hearing a lot of conservatives lately trying to re-paint Bush as a liberal... a task about as nutty as Jonah Goldberg's attempt to portray fascists as liberal and vice-versa.

All I can say it, Hello, Mr. Conservative? When did YOU ever stand up against Bush? You've done nothing but enable him ever since he came to power, and look where we are now: our "shining city on the hill" is an international embarrassment, our military are bogged down in an endless quagmire, our national treasury is depleted...

I call special attention to Bush's unconstitutional use of "signing statements", something which I've only ever heard the conservative Bruce Fein vehemently denounce.

After all your years of blather about "original intent", you guys just casually ignore Bush's attempts to override laws duly passed by Congress.

Well, all I can say is, don't you righties dare start crying when a Dem president pulls this exact same shit.

You had your chance to denounce it on principal, and you refused to do so, based solely on political expedience.

I also note that now the concept of "state's rights", once supposedly so dear to the hearts of conservatives, has similarly been discarded for sheer expedience. You guys are suddenly struck silent when comes to the state's right of California to enact tough pollution controls, or the state's right of Massachusetts to allow same-sex marriage.