Duke It Out, Conservatives! It's Good for Us!

Twitter’s been fun for the last few nights… The raging debate-which-shall-not-be-named has brought out passions on many sides of the issue. The “purists” have accused the “RINOs” of being RINOs, and the “RINOs” have accused the “purists” of being purists. But I won’t elevate the name-calling by calling the names (RINOS/purists). Oh. Wait. (Edit note: delete this paragraph)

At times, the debate-which-shall-not-be-named has been reasoned; at other times, it has gotten ugly. The latter has led many to express exasperation that we are even having the debate. Countless tweets of this type have zipped through my All Friends Column: “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony. I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company.” Or “Can’t we all just get along, man?” 

Banish the thought! These words are for hippies. Variations on the theme include, “We just finished the election. Can’t we just enjoy it for a minute before going at one another’s throats?” I would argue that this is the very time, indeed the ONLY time that it’s REALLY beneficial to throw all our cards on the table and hash out the issues within the GOP. 

We just finished the general election, where we all “played nice” with each other for our joint benefit. We buried our hatchets and worked together to support the most conservative candidates in races across the country, which in most cases, was the GOP primary winner, despite our individual differences and pet issues. But we have been cooped up together in the big tent for far too long. It’s time to air it out. (I may never forgive myself for using the big tent analogy, but you know it’s the only way to get those RINOs to pay attention… The tent analogy will be the subject of a future blog post – if I ever write another blog post…)

These discussions MUST occur within the GOP to help determine the direction of the party as we go forward. Every so often, our party undergoes a major shift in focus – usually back to the right. The adjustments toward the center are generally more incremental and under-the-radar. This has been one of those big-shift years. In the last occurrence, 1994, we allowed the POLITICIANS to determine what the voters’ mandate must have been. Super-dumb, amazingly idiotic, incredibly foolish move. In case you wondered, my thesaurus ran out of antonyms for “smart.” In our defense, we didn’t have Twitter in 1994, so it was tough to have these debates on a nationwide scale. So the Washington elites (Yes, I said it!) got together and decided what we, the voters must have meant. They kept their focus for about two and a half minutes before succumbing to the wheeling and dealing of Capitol Hill. This time, it will be different. It MUST be different. But for us to take the reins in this country, we have to be able to clearly define our position. The best way to do that is to talk it out (or fight it out) with fellow conservatives. I imagine that the pubs, churches, and town halls of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York sounded much like the last few nights of Twitter as the citizens hashed out the founding of our country.

There is a time for everything, and this is the time for this discussion. For months our audience has been with outsiders – new voters, disengaged voters, disillusioned voters. And our message has been overwhelmingly positive and unified. Now is the time for conversation AMONG INSIDERS (Please don’t take that “insiders” to mean anything akin to “Washington insiders” or other purist slur against RINOs. I simply mean those who are inside the Republican Party, as evidenced by generally voting for GOP candidates.) We must take control of our message to our newly-elected leaders. And the time to develop this message is short. We have a brief window between November 2 and the run-up to the 2012 election. Soon we’ll find ourselves in a position of having to “play nice” once again, and debates like these will be much more difficult to have.

Do we have to agree on everything? Gee, I hope not! Unless of course, you all want to agree with ME on everything… But by raising these debates, we begin to form an understanding of the things that we do agree on. And in an ideal world, we will recognize that everybody doesn’t agree with us on every issue, and we will get the heck over it. Or we will realize that we can’t get the heck over it. And that’s a person’s right as well… We must continue to voice our opinions without fear, listen to the opinions of others with some semblance of decorum, defend our own position skillfully, and reach common ground when possible. This is HEALTHY for the GOP. Engage in the debate with gusto, and don’t let anybody shame you out of it. Remember, no election was ever won with smug (the main weapon of the shamers).

One very interesting observation about the last few nights of infighting among conservatives on Twitter: In all but ONE isolated case, I left the argument with a greater respect for and sense of solidarity with the person on the other side of the debate. Did we solve our disagreements? Most of the time, no. But at least on my end, I left with the knowledge that my “opponent” was a real person, who really cared about our country, who really valued conservative ideals, who simply had a different approach to the process. There are things we’ll never agree on. And I’m not planning to compromise my views on those things any time soon, nor should they. In almost every case, we each had an opportunity to hone our words to more clearly reflect our positions, a skill that will be advantageous as we go into the 2012 primary and general election seasons, when we will need a tight message to share with the outsiders.