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I don’t know about reaching out but it is frustrating to try and talk with the left.

The left has spent so much time defining the right, it is hard to try and make a point with someone from the left quickly, because you must climb a mountain before you can even start on the issues. A person doesn’t always have all day, a week or whatever to try and sway and the frustration becomes enormous.

Why don’t we have as many documentaries mocking the left as they have of us? Why don’t we have documentaries showing the TRUE HISTORY of the democratic party. We have an image problem. If we can’t get past image easily, how can we talk issue?

We need to start getting in the colleges, we need to market ourselves and define ourselves and not let the left define us. I keep seeing anti-immigrant. That is a full on lie. But I see it over and over and over again.

I say much of our problem is not clearly defining ourselves and letting it be done to us. We have a marketing problem.

The left has spent so much time defining the right...

I think you hit it precisely. Let me presume to finish that sentence another way: The left has spent so much time defining the right that there is no longer any common ground on which to debate. Let me repeat that last, depressing clause: there is no longer any common ground on which to debate. And they intend to keep it that way.

You've seen it; we've all experienced it. Your opponent claims that he believes in freedom and it turns out that every single one of his applications represents a claim on your freedom, on behalf of society, of Saving The Earth, of the Greater Good. He believe in freedom, yes, but only the freedom to agree with him. She claims to believe in free speech, but only her own - yours to the contrary is offensive and "hate speech" and hence permissible to suppress. He believes that the Black Congressional Caucus is an expression of free association but any White Caucus would be intolerably racist. Don't bother trying to counter any of these arguments from principle; the rejoinder is always that you only disagree out of some sort of mental pathology or self-interest when it's really only a refusal to accept fantasy for reality.

I've made it very clear to my (nearly all) liberal relatives that politics is off the table for now for just that reason: we have no common ground. For some reason that seems to alarm them although I do not know why, exactly. Most of them haven't put much more thought into it than "hooray, my side won and those conservative meanies lost." And I don't argue politics with children.

You are right. That will work with the decent and respectful bunch. But there are hardcore people who just want to bash the right. So sometimes it is good to attack them verbally on forums. You just have to know when to do what.

The fact is the right has a image problem, with a bunch of people, and most of it a mix of conservatives being mistaken as part of the establishment thinking in D.C. that occurred during the two Bush administrations and how McCain/Romney have been so some think another repeat of that would happen if elected. The other part is nominating the wrong people for president who are not able to really articulate conservatism and as such always end up doing the wrong anti-conservative thing thus giving us a black eye.

There are at least three groups who are confused and misunderstand us.

1. Those who don’t pay enough attention to politics who either believe the left or get mixed messages and go with the left. It is called the low information voter.

2. People who think conservatives are a party of rich people who do not understand the middle class or the poor and take any comments about immigrants, blacks and the 47% percent the wrong way. And instead of thinking of it as people who live on the government on taxpayer dime and take advantage of the system, they think of examples of people who at one time or another needed services or of those on medicare. So they tend to get offended by thinking the plan is to wipe everything out quickly. Which while that is a good idea in order to balance the budget, they see it as too much too soon and as a case of having people who depend on the service being cut off in a time of need. That would be for the most part the group that won’t be able to handle any drastic cuts. They would be better off with gradual cuts and a explanation of how to help those in need. But there is a portion who have become brainwashed and will scream at any cut.

3. People who do not understand the Islamic threats, economic threats, and how radical the democrats have become and don’t treat things with the seriousness they deserve. They don’t think of the dire urgency to fix the country or get what we get. Many of those will have to suffer as they can’t grasp even the basics of the situation at hand in this time of crisis in our country and around the world. We call those both the dumb-down masses but also those who don’t understand enough and are not as worried. They have gotten misinformation.

I have to come to see it like this after managing to talk to some people in my own family this past week who disclosed that they were either voting third party or were voting Obama. I did get my own parents to vote Romney, but Mom sure has a think with thinking conservatives still get ti wrong about poor people.

I came from a family of both democrats, independents or moderates, in the real sense of the word. I am the most conservative person in the family.