{"id":2533,"date":"2008-05-06T07:40:33","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T12:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2533"},"modified":"2008-05-06T08:58:27","modified_gmt":"2008-05-06T13:58:27","slug":"cutting-off-your-gangrenous-nose-to-spite-your-hemorrhoids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2533","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Off Your Gangrenous Nose To Spite Your Hemorrhoids"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of people – from insufficiently-perceptive stalkerbloggers to people in my comment section – have reacted to my statement on the NARN last weekend that “defeating RINOs is almost<\/em> more important than defeating DFLers”.<\/p>\n

Some commentators have spun that, in their invincible ignorance, to read like an either-or scenario.\u00a0 It’s not, of course.\u00a0 Far from it; for the GOP to win, it has to provide an alternative <\/em>to the DFL.\u00a0 Republicans who are indistinguishable from DFLers – as Rep. Peterson, who voted with the DFL 52% of the time – are not; they provide no alternative to the DFL, and indeed one would be hard put to answer the question “if Peterson were <\/em>a DFLer, what would be different?”<\/p>\n

Put another way – if it were revealed that the way for the GOP to pick up an additional 10% come election time was to embrace higher taxes, more intrusive government, abortion on demand, gun control and a continued state monopoly on education, would we?<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 The future of the GOP is to provide an alternative <\/em>to the dominant vision of poltiics in this state.
\nCommenter MarianneS notes in my comments<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You\u2019re right, of course, in that the viability of the GOP requires brand dependability, basic core principles the general public can come to rely on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s right.\u00a0 The fringe benefit of providing the alternative tp the stultifying “moderate”\/leftist vision is that it is, in the end, the only way to really affect politics in this state; the odd RINO may or may not win an election, sure – but when the party as a whole acts like Tics with better suits – the sixties, seventies, eighties, early nineties, and 2006 – we not only lose, but we become irrelevant.<\/p>\n

Any chance you\u2019d care to extrapolate that to the presidential race?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I tried!<\/p>\n

Look – I’ll cop to it.\u00a0 I’m idealistically ideological, and pull like hell to pull the rope in the great electoral tug of war as far to the right as I can, on every issue.<\/p>\n

But I think people need to balance their ideology and their idealism with some pragmatism.\u00a0 I’d have vastly preferred Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney to be the GOP standard-bearer at this point – but that’s not the way the break broke.\u00a0 We’ve got McCain – an imperfect conservative, to be sure (although not quite as imperfect as some of the more hysterical Republican commentators would have him; as bad has he is on immigration, immigration is not the only issue), but incomparably better on every single issue than the alternatives.\u00a0 The utility of a protest vote needs to be balanced against the fact that there’ll be three Supreme Court seats opening up – and if Hillary or Obama wins, they’ll go to a French transgender-issues theorist, a Ghanaian Maoist and Dennis Kucinich.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure that I’d even say “holding my nose” applies to my support for John McCain – although I, and every conservative within the sound of my voice, should be working overtime to ensure Mac knows which way the wind really does blow in the party.<\/p>\n

Some commentators have tittered and asked that since Marty Seifert – the best GOP leader we’ve had in the legislature in forever – is publicly supporting Representative Tingelstad, so why am I being such a hard-liner on the Override Six?\u00a0 It’s simple; Seifert’s job is to lead a party caucus; it’d be very bad form for him to be tossing his team – as crummy a bunch of teammates as they may be – under the bus.\u00a0 There are people in the party whose job it is to toss her under the bus – her district’s delegates.\u00a0 And they have done their job.\u00a0 As to the appeal to authority?\u00a0 Please.\u00a0 If I were wired to yell “off what?” every time a party leader says “jump”, I”d be a DFLer.<\/p>\n

So to summarize: we need to expunge the RINOs – not instead <\/em>of beating the DFL, but so that we can do it more effectively.\u00a0 Elections are the here and now – the party is the future.\u00a0 Individual elections are games; the party is the rules, our coach, and our team spirit all rolled into one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of people – from insufficiently-perceptive stalkerbloggers to people in my comment section – have reacted to my statement on the NARN last weekend that “defeating RINOs is almost more important than defeating DFLers”. Some commentators have spun that, in their invincible ignorance, to read like an either-or scenario.\u00a0 It’s not, of course.\u00a0 Far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}