{"id":8829,"date":"2010-02-24T06:35:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T11:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8829"},"modified":"2010-02-24T06:35:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T11:35:22","slug":"relax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=8829","title":{"rendered":"Relax"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a conservative.\u00a0 I’m pretty ideological about it (which manifests itself in the fact that I write a conservative blog<\/em>).<\/p>\n

But I’m no purist.\u00a0 I try to be pretty tough about my reasons for departing from my ideology – and let’s be honest, it’s easy for me, personally, to be pretty uncompromising, because I neither govern nor represent<\/em> anyone. Just like all the other ideological purists – the Libertarians, the Greens and the Constitution Party.<\/p>\n

Being a purist is the mark of those who sit in splendid, uncompromising isolation, unhampered by ever having to worry about governing anything.<\/p>\n

Brown votes for Obama’s “jobs” bill:<\/a><\/p>\n

A month after being crowned the darling of national conservatives, Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts is being branded “Benedict Brown” for siding with Democrats in favor of a jobs bill endorsed by the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

Like the four other GOP senators who joined him, the man who won the late Democrat Edward Kennedy’s seat says it’s about jobs, not party politics. And that may be good politics, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Massachusetts, it just might.<\/p>\n

The four other GOP senators who broke ranks – Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio and Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri – also were criticized on Tuesday. But Brown was the big target on conservative Web sites, talk shows and even the Facebook page his campaign has promoted as an example of his new-media savvy.<\/p>\n

“We campaigned for you. We donated to your campaign. And you turned on us like every other RINO,” said one writer, using the initials for “Republican-In-Name-Only.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buncombe.\u00a0 He’s a moderate guy in a whackdoodle liberal state.<\/p>\n

And as big a waste as this “jobs” bill is, it’s small potatoes compared to Obamacare and the various stimulus and bailout bills – which Brown campaigned against.<\/p>\n

Do RINOs exist?\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n

The new senator responded by calling into a Boston radio station.<\/p>\n

“I’ve taken three votes,” Brown said with exasperation. “And to say I’ve sold out any particular party or interest group, I think, is certainly unfair.”<\/p>\n

The senator said that by the time he seeks re-election in two years, he will have taken thousands of votes.<\/p>\n

“So, I think it’s a little premature to say that,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course it is.<\/p>\n

And let’s face it – Brown is going <\/em>to have a more centrist record than a John Kyl; he represents Massachusetts. We knew he wasn’t an orthodox conservative. But let’s not talk about “RINOs” until he’s been in office 6-12 months, or until he squibs out on a promise, like Obamacare.<\/p>\n

The bad thing about this, of course, is that the left is going to try to use this as a wedge between the GOP and the Tea Party.\u00a0 To succeed, the GOP needs to share some goals with the Tea Party; the Tea Party, in turn, needs to live <\/em>Ronald Reagan’s admonition; if you agree with someone on 70% of things, you need to ignore the other 30% and get along with things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a conservative.\u00a0 I’m pretty ideological about it (which manifests itself in the fact that I write a conservative blog). But I’m no purist.\u00a0 I try to be pretty tough about my reasons for departing from my ideology – and let’s be honest, it’s easy for me, personally, to be pretty uncompromising, because I neither […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8829","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=8829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8830,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8829\/revisions\/8830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}