[general_re]

It's all too easy to fall into playing the lib's game by trying to demonize one's opponents - in this case, it's made even easier to label the Democratic rank-and-file as worthless and lacking in moral fiber because so much of the party leadership is exactly that. But such games are ultimately self-defeating - you'll never outslime the masters of slime, and you can't beat the people who invented the game at their own game.

Better to convince them that they are simply wrong, and that there's a better way, than to dismiss them as evil - conservatism, no matter the party appellation, is already a minority viewpoint in this country, and I see no need to marginalize ourselves further by abandoning the tools of reasoned discourse intended to persuade others to accept your point of view. Those firefighters and police are, almost to a man, registered Democrats, but in their hearts, they are natural conservatives. Telling them they lack moral fiber only serves to drive them away, when we should be embracing them as our own...

[John O]

Better to convince them that they are simply wrong, and that there's a better way, than to dismiss them as evil - conservatism, no matter the party appellation, is already a minority viewpoint in this country, and I see no need to marginalize ourselves further by abandoning the tools of reasoned discourse intended to persuade others to accept your point of view. Those firefighters and police are, almost to a man, registered Democrats, but in their hearts, they are natural conservatives. Telling them they lack moral fiber only serves to drive them away, when we should be embracing them as our own...

I agree with you entirely. But note that I wasn't talking to the typical union democrat but to the conservative in a forum where the only democrats we see are the brain dead and unchanging democrat zombie types.

When in discussion with democrats (I have a family full of them) I speak in a far gentler more educational way, in the remote hope that one of them, just one, might open their eyes and see. Until they do however, I still regard them as being equally culpable. (Of course I don't treat them that way unless they prove to be totally closed to reason)

GSA(P)