Posted on 03/07/2007 6:28:29 AM PST by MadIvan
In the run-up to the fateful election of 2008, conservatives face a clear-cut choice: we can rebuild our movement as a broad-ranging, mainstream coalition and restore our governing majority, or else settle for a semi-permanent role as angry, doom-speaking complainers on the fringes of American politics and culture.
We can either invite doubters and moderates to join with us in new efforts to affirm American values, or we can push them away because they fail to measure up to our own standards of indignation and ideological purity.
In short, we must choose between addition and subtraction: either building our cause by adding to our numbers or destroying it by discouraging all but the fiercest ideologues.
No political party or faction has ever thrived based on purges and insults and internal warfare, but too many activists on the right seem determined to reduce the conservative cause to self-righteous irrelevance.
The most recent outrage involving Ann Coulter provides a revealing example of the self-destructive tendencies of some dedicated partisans on the right. Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., the best-selling author and glamorous Time magazine cover girl declared: “I was going to have a few comments about the other Democratic candidate for President, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot’ so I’m kind of at an impasse. I can’t really talk about Edwards.”
Some members of the audience gasped as she deployed the forbidden slur, but many others laughed and applauded. Naturally, Democratic Chair Howard Dean and many others pounced on the incident as another example of conservative viciousness and bigotry, demanding that all Republican Presidential candidates dissociate themselves from Coulter’s comments.
This challenge creates a miserable dilemma for every GOP contender. If the candidate ignores the controversy, he looks gutless and paralyzed in the face of obviously inappropriate and over-the-top insults. If he condemns Coulter, he looks like he’s wimping out to the liberal establishment and offends right-wing true believers who feel instinctively protective of Ann the Outrageous. Any comment by a presidential candidate also refocuses the national conversation on the absurd and unacceptable suggestion that John Edwards is secretly gay.
To paraphrase the old line attributed to Talleyrand: this smear amounts to worse than a crime, it is a blunder. John Edwards deserves contempt and derision on many counts, and I go after him (regularly) on my radio show for his extreme left wing positions on foreign policy and health care, his shameless opportunism, even his long history as a fabulously wealthy and floridly hypocritical ambulance-chasing attorney. Ann Coulter could have found plenty to say about the former North Carolina Senator without invoking the dreaded f-word (all right, the other dreaded f-word).
In fact, Edwards has been a visibly loyal husband to Elizabeth, his wife of more than 29 years, who’s currently battling breast cancer. Together, they’ve brought five children into the world, including a son who died in a tragic traffic accident at age 16. Drawing attention to Edwards’ personal life and away from his policies only helps Edwards and harms conservatives.
In other words, the lame attempt to question the Senator’s sexual orientation is precisely the wrong attack, and Coulter herself is most certainly the wrong attacker. If this issue continues to attract attention, indignant liberals will no doubt point out that the devoted family man from North Carolina exemplifies traditional values far more notably than the mini-skirted, never-married provocateur from the right.
Personally, I like and admire Ann Coulter, and I’ve always defended her in the past – even when liberals gleefully quoted out-of-context from her recent bestseller “Godless” to make it sound as if she suggested that 9/11 widows wanted their own husbands to die and celebrated their fiery deaths. Her caustic humor often upstages her serious and substantive political points, as did the notorious headline “They Shot the Wrong Lincoln” appended to her column attacking her fellow Republican, Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee. That one opinion piece didn’t doom Chafee’s re-election bid, but movement conservatives like Coulter and many others expressed the desire for his defeat—a loss that insured the Democrats’ one-vote margin in the Senate.
Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of concentrating fire on a fellow Republican (even a liberal GOP’er like Linc Chafee) but there can be no argument about the purely destructive impact of Coulter’s sneering slur against Edwards. How could such a nasty shot possibly assist the conservative cause? Which potential Republican supporters would feel motivated or mobilized by her casual use of the term “faggot”? How could a smart woman expect anything other than a disgusted and negative response for her implication that a long-married father of five deserved outing as a homosexual?
The Coulter commentary (and the subsequent applause) reinforced the public image of conservatives as unreasonably hostile to gay people in general, not just opposed to the dubious particulars of the so-called “gay rights” agenda. In fact, exit polls showed that self-identified gay people made up 4% of the total electorate in the incomparably close election of 2000, and nearly one third of those homosexual voters cast their ballots for George W. Bush. In other words, more than a million gay citizens voted for Bush-Cheney, in a race that ultimately turned on a mere 527 votes in Florida, and a national margin in the popular vote of just 537,000 for Gore.
What sense does it make for a featured speaker at a conservative conference to deliver gratuitous insult and offense to that stalwart minority of homosexuals who still choose to cast their lot with Republicans, despite the party’s impassioned (and appropriate) opposition to gay marriage?
By the same token, how does it help for one of the nation’s highest profile conservative talk hosts to use his broadcast on the Martin Luther King holiday to insult the fallen hero as unworthy of federal commemoration? Yes, the overwhelming majority of African-Americans votes incurably Democratic, but in 2004, Bush still drew well over a million-and-a-half black votes. It doesn’t help these courageous dissenters from politically correct orthodoxy if loud voices on the right make them wonder whether Jesse Jackson and Howard Dean are right about the racism of Republicans.
Finally, the most serious challenge of all involves the rapidly growing and increasingly prosperous Latino communities. Were it not for his competitive showing among Hispanics (with some 35% of their votes in 2000, and above 40% in 2004), Bush wouldn’t even have come close to victory, either time.
Meanwhile, elements of the President’s party seem perversely determined to make sure that no future Republican repeats this success with the nation’s fastest growing minority group. Imagine how naturalized Hispanic citizens, or even native-born Latinos might feel, at the suggestion that their cousins amount to an “invading army” bent on destroying America, or the common equation of terrorists (who have all been legal U.S. entrants by the way) and those who enter the country to care for our children and mow our lawns. Anti-immigrant rhetoric (which increasingly dispenses with any distinction between legal and illegal arrivals) provoked a disastrous shift of Latino voters away from the GOP in 2006. If Republicans continue to draw just 20% of Hispanic votes they will never regain control of Congress and stand scant chance of retaining the White House. Nativist posturing (like Congressman Tom Tancredo’s obnoxious slogan, “America Is Full”) may play well with some elements of the conservative base but it could easily doom Republicans to permanent minority status.
Obviously, the future of the conservative movement and of the Republic itself requires GOP recruitment of more Latinos, Blacks and gays, and anything that stands in the way of such participation fatally undermines the party’s future.
The situation hardly requires retreat and retrenchment on key issues of principle in the vague hope of winning more minority support.
Republicans don’t need to drop our implacable opposition to gay marriage in order reach out to gays.
We don’t need to reverse our criticism of race-based quotas in order to bring more black involvement in the party.
And we certainly don’t need to endorse automatic amnesty or “open borders” as a way to connect with Latino voters – but we might want to avoid widespread public advertising for games like “Find the Illegal Immigrant” (devised by a College Republicans chapter in New York City) or giving undeserved respect to crackpot fringe groups like the scandal-tainted “Minute Man Civil Defense Corps.”.
On all the important issues, it’s not substance that needs to change, it’s style.
Republicans need to return to the open, expansive conservatism of Ronald Reagan: more concerned with bringing in newcomers than driving out dissenters, more committed to winning elections than to scoring points in arguments, more determined to steer the government in the right direction than to sit at the sidelines carping about inevitable decline. We should make skeptics feel welcome as Republicans and urge them to fight the issues inside the party where they can have the most impact.
Every major event, every potential speaker, every resolution, every specific approach, deserves evaluation in terms of effectiveness in party building—winning new adherents to the cause.
We should ask a crucial question before we speak or act: will this draw people to conservative ideas and ideals, or will it serve to turn them off and push them away?
It’s not a matter of pandering; it’s an expression of practical politics. At this crucial juncture, conservatives need to recall the obvious point that you strengthen your cause most effectively when you’re appealing, not appalling.
I don't recall them acting nice in 2000, 2002, or 2004, and who won those elections?
I can't tell you how many times I've been called a fag (I'm 6' 230) usually by my friends when they are taunting me into doing something risky (and usually stupid). It's a very old, long used schoolyard taunt at least here in the North East. It's used every day and rarely, if ever, refers to sexual orientation. But let's not even spend a second trying to understand what Ann's points were. That actually requires some critical thinking. Instead let's throw her to the wolves and embrace the Left's Totalitarianistic culture.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- opening lines of 101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution by Claire Wolfe
I described certain behavior and words as such. If they apply to you, I am sorry. It is vulgar to use vulgar words, it is cretinous to insult people for no good reason and it is a rube who thinks that such behavior is a good and acceptable way to draw people to your political ideas.
What are the 101 Things To Do'Til The Revolution? Here's the table of contents
1. Don't write to your congresscritter
2. Govern yourself
3. Love the ones you're with
4. Don't vote; it only encourages them
5. Do write letters to newspapers and magazines.
6. Write poetry
7. Question authority
8. Kill your TV
9. Get rid of your dependencies
10. Be ready to profit from others' dependencies
11. Just say NO
12. Know the difference between mala in se and mala prohibita.
13. Use pre-paid phone cards for privacy
14. Join a gun-rights group
15. Be a Simon Jester
16. Don't be a terrorist
17. Oppose property seizure with all your might
18. Celebrate the Fourth of July
19. Celebrate April 19
20. Cultivate some Mormon friends
21. Don't give your social security number
22. Visualize Vermont Carry
23. Don't talk to strangers
24. Don't talk to people you know, either
25. DO write to your congresscritter
26. Visualize no government
27. Fly the Gadsden flag
28. Dare to keep DARE out of your local schools
29. Identify the informant in your midst
30. Remember Mother Batherick
31. Take your kids out of government school
32. Keep your sense of humor
33. Assume all telephones are tapped
34. Don't debate
35. Cover your assets
36. Expect to l ose everything, anyway
37. Respect individuals, not groups
38. Fun and Freedom on the Internet
39. Don't say anything you don't want the world to remember
40. Throw key words into your e-mail
41. Use PGP intelligently
42. Challenge all assumptions
43. Move to a small town
44. Read: fiction
45. Read: history
46. Read: founding fathers & philosophers of freedom
47. Read: monkey wrenching & getting around the system
48. Read: self reliance
49. Read: strategic thinking and fighting
50. Read: political periodicals
51. You can't kill the beast while sucking at its teat
52. On the other hand...
53. Bust anti-freedom organizations by driving them broke
54. Another charming use for 1-800 numbers
55. Respect the individual, not the office
56. Don't blame anybody else for your troubles
57. Stand up for people who stand up for their rights
58. Don't cooperate with the friendly census taker
59. Know where your line in the sand is drawn
60. Buy and carry the Citizens' Rule Book
61. Join FIJA
62. Keep a record of your dreams
63. Consider Sovereign Citizenship
64. Get your records to safety
65. Watch your local government
66. Don't let your possessions imprison you
67. Cultivate cheap tastes
68. Close your bank accounts
69. Create a fake plot or organization
70. Create a real organization
71. Join the tax protesters on April 15
72. Learn dumpster diving
73. Get healthy!
74. Learn to disappear in a crowd
75. Find a balance point in dealing with people
76. Follow your bliss
77. Your three-day grab & go kit
78. Building your emergency water supply
79. Building your emergency food supply
80. Building your medical kit
81. Your survival weapons supply
82. Start thinking about tools & equipment
83. Some places to find all of the above
84. Building your skills
85. Prepare your children, pets and aging relatives
86. Avoid "bear bait" cars and other attention-getting vehicles.
87. Find a non-government occupation
88. Never beg for your rights
89. Make "them" fill out your paperwork
90. If you must vote (part I)....
91. Get to know your neighbors
92. Network-but wisely and discreetly
93. Intimidate back
94. Know when-and whether-you could kill
95. If you must vote (part II)...
96. Learn your privacy rights and protect them
97. Bury gold, guns and goodies
98. Maybe you're already a "terrorist"
99. Put a warning sign on your property
100. If you can risk it, don't pay your income taxes
101. Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes
I'm sure if we all teach our children to use the dictionary to look up swear words and encourage them to use them in everyday discourse, our electoral prospects will improve.
I love how you just allow the Left to define a word for you and accept their rules about which groups can and cannot be offended with impunity. If you represent even a small minority of conservatives we have already lost and it's going to get a lot worse before it (if ever) gets better.
Did you skip this chapter?
>>What do you care?<<
http://www.billstclair.com/lodge/Books101.shtml
"Would you care to provide us with a link where Medved said "Bush is Hitler", our Marines are savage murderers, or that America is worse than Pol Pot's regime?"
I didn't post that. Nor did you read the post I was responding to, or understand its point. I suggest you reread, and after you do that, try again. I'll still be here to attack after you take the time to understand who posted what, and what they meant.
>>Did you skip this chapter?<<
Did you? ;)
:-D
She isn't his friend, and didn't mean it nicely, in a friendly way.
If a D had said what she said, about you -- you wouldn't have been offended?
If someone you don't like calls you a faggot, you aren't offended?
Giving pointless offense to other people is not a conservative principle. We are supposed to be defenders of Western civilization, remember? Civilization means you don't run around insulting people.
The measure of a man is not in how many people he insults each day. If Norwegians decide they want to be called "Norwayites," then a civilized response is to call them Norwayites.
Why, because calling someone a dry drunk is so much worse than calling them a faggot?
In all seriousnes, do you not see how you're contradicting yourself? You say we "can't allow [the] enemy to fight by his rules while [we] fight with mittens on and expect to win" (post 53) but then you say that she is not using the same tactics as the enemy, and in fact it is outrageous that I've said she is. Well, which is it, should we fight like the enemy, or should we be like Ann who (accoriding to you) would do no such thing? I know it's probably hard to read your computer screen from up on your high moral horse, but pick a position, wouldyaplease?
First of all, Ann is not RR and she is not running for any office that I know of. Second, this isn't 1980. Things have changed substantially since then.
I wasn't talking about her running for office, I was talking about advancing the conservative cause. Why did Ronald Reagan succeed so magnificently?
Third, you don't really understand the point she was making which was about "Semantic Totalitarianism" of which you are either a victim or a perpetrator.
I do understand, but just because you understand what someone was doing and agree with their larger point doesn't mean it's a good tactic.
Let's see if you really believe what you're saying with all the conviction you send across. If someone had asked her about Obama, and she had said "I can't really talk about him because white people aren't allowed to use theword [N-Word]", would that have been OK with you, yes or no?
Can we be intellectually honest here? We're above it. You want name-calling, take a spin around D.U. It's a sewer. If you're in favor of handing more ammunition to the media, keep supporting stupid remarks like this. She does us no favors with this kind of rhetoric.
You forgot the part where you dig yourself a bunker and shoot anyone you don't know, who comes near it.
Sorry Dave but you lost me with your "mean and nasty" comment.
May I refer you to the Elements of Style forum?
Um, did you really just tell your kids they could call people 'faggots' in seriousness?
Not a friendly "you faggot, you drank the last Coke". But someone they do not like, in public, where they'll hear -- can your kids call someone they don't like a 'faggot' as an insult?
Thanks for going along with the media's definition of a Republican mike. Hint: the media doesn't decide what we are, we the people do (at least we're supposed to).
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