Open Letter to Andrew Sullivan

Open Letter to Andrew Sullivan - Andrew:

I owe you a bunch. I had never heard of blogs before reading your site - and I didn't read any other blogs until after I started this one.

And while I disagree with you about gay marriage, you did prompt me to think about the issue - a lot. I support civil unions now, which I didn't before. Chalk up half a convert.

But in today's column, you say:

For my part, it confirmed something I've suspected for a while. John Kerry is highly unlikely to put John Edwards on his ticket. And his spending plans make even George Bush look fiscally responsible. A must-read this week: the Washington Post's analysis of Kerry's big spending budget plans. It looks increasingly as if anyone who cares about fiscal sanity is going to have to sit this election out.

Andrew: This is insanity.

You've observed yourself; the war on terror is the major issue in this election, and it doesn't take a discerning pundit to see that John Kerry is a complete no-show on the war and all foreign policy. You know this election will be a close one, so you know that staying home will be the same as voting for Kerry, especially given the consuming Bush-hatred that animates the left.

You disagree with Bush's spending, even as you note that Kerry would be even worse, and he'd raise taxes, which would neuter the recovery, perhaps send us into double-dip recession. You are also mortified by the Administration's stance on gay marriage, even while noting that Kerry is no better.

So I'll say this: If you are a conservative and you love this country - and you've adopted it as your homeland, Andrew, so you must - then the sane course of action is obvious. We need to stop this insane talk about sitting out the election over our pet issues, and do the following:

1. Use our votes this November, and in November of '06, to make the Congress more fiscally conservative. We need to elect more people like my own governor, Tim Pawlenty - who is a moderate Republican who was forced by a fiscal conserative groundswell to swing to the right on fiscal issues, promising no new taxes in Minnesota. He had the integrity to stick with that promise. Andrew - we saw what a conservative Congress could do to Bill Clinton's spending habits; we can do the same to Bush's.
2. The American people aren't ready to support gay marriage. Some will. Some never will. Some can be convinced, either way. Some will favor a compromise. You need to take some time in the bully pulpit that God and your talent gave you and convince a lot of the latter, I think. You need to win this fight, if it can be won, in the legislature, not in the courts or via idiotic scofflaws like Gavin Newsome.
3. We all need to keep our priorities straight; if you think spending is bad now, wait until you see what it's like with a Kerry presidency; higher spending, higher taxes (leading to a vicious cycle as the economy grinds to another halt), and vast additional spending as, inevitably, the Kerry appeasement leads to the Islamofascists regrouping and taking to the attack again.

I won't say sitting out the election is "treason"', as some of my overheated friends do.

But if you really do believe that the stakes are what I think we agree they are, then it'd be dereliction of citizenship.

That goes for all of you conservatives out there.

Posted by Mitch at March 1, 2004 08:10 AM