I would agree with you that it IS often a matter of choice to walk away or engage in uncivil discourse.
However, in our political arena (where walking away is tantamount to surrendering the issue to the other side) I think conservatives HAVE walked away from uncivil discourse, at least our President and other leaders in the Republican party have done so.
In my opinion, they have done this to the detriment of the issues. Rather than getting down and dirty, they have turned their backs and walked away. This has enabled the Left to set the stage and display the “truth” as they see fit.
It simply is much less interesting to the Media when someone says in a rational tone “We had valid and good reasons for acting the way we did at the time we did...” than to hear someone shout out in indignant tones “HE BETRAYED US! HE PLAYED ON OUR FEARS!”
To paraphrase Ann Coulter who is detested by many as being an expert in uncivil discourse, I would say that
“Civility is a one-way rachet for Liberals”
If Fred Thompson gets in the race, I think we’ll see someone who practices the lost art of “biting civility”.
You don’t have to shout “he played on our fears” (which by the way isn’t really an “uncivil” discourse, it is an opinion about the actions of another), in order to forcefully argue for a position.
I chastise people personally from time to time for actions they take — but not for how funny their name sounds, or how ugly or fat they are.
As I like to say from time to time, a really fat person could well have sound policies that we should enact, while if Ted Kennedy looked like Brad Pitt, his ideas would still be moronic.
So where some might say “sounds like Teddy is drunk again”, I might instead say “Ted is incoherent as usual”.