Your Causes are Worthless, Too.

Cross Posted: RedState

We've had some great debate on this site over the Harriet Miers nomination, and I want to say thanks to everyone who's participated. Even those who have made just want to scream have, for the most part, put forth your arguments in a reasonable and civil fashion. Here I offer my apologies for any I've offended in a fit of emotionalism. And I also might offer a pre-emptive apology for any I might do it to in the near future. This stuff is important to me.

Which is kind of the whole point of this diary. If people want to disagree with me, that's fine. Even if they want to do it in a way that displays no class or ability to reason, that is also fine. What is not fine with me is worthless garbage like this that denigrates the sincerity and conviction of others:

What does irritate me is those conservatives who basically want to take their marbles and go home since they're disappointed in Bush's nomination. Fine, stay home next election. I hope your sanctimonious conservative purity is warm comfort through the years of Hillary's presidency. Remember that our choice is rarely between the perfect candidate and some other person. Mostly, we have to deal with two imperfect candidates and figure out which one would be less bad for the country. If you're lucky, there might even be a candidate you can like. My experience is that such politicians are rare.

I don't know who the heck Betsy is, I've never read her page before, and I only got there because Hugh Hewitt (who slides down the scale of my estimation on an hourly basis) linked the aforementioned trash favorably. So, I have no idea why Betsy votes Republican, and don't really care to know. Those kinds of things are often personal, and I'm happy to have everyone in the big tent.

But let's hypothesize that Betsy is a small government conservative, who's primary objective is to see federal spending slashed. I'm behind that agenda, too, but it's not at the front of my burner. Nonetheless, I would never have been so belittling and insulting, in the wake of Medicare "reform," to berate upset FisCons like children and tell them to quit threatening to "take their marbles and go home." It would be insulting, and I'd be frankly ashamed to whisper such a thing to a friend, much less publish it on the Internet for thousands of people to see a day.

This may come as a news flash to Betsy and Hugh, and a lot of other people I've been reading and emailing with, but some of us have what we like to call principles. And we involve ourselves in this incredible mess called politics because we like to see those principles advanced. And when it becomes plainly obvious that after a protracted period of time, our principles are simply not going to be advanced - well, then, we have families and jobs and churches and whatnot that would be grateful for the extra time.

So, if you don't agree with my principles, or just don't hold them as strongly as I do, that's just fine with me. They're my principles after all. But if you go start calling me a kid because I try to live by the strength of those principles, you're just going to expose yourself as a second-rate party hack who views winning elections as an end rather than a means. May I be eternally saved from such a pitiful political existence.

So go ahead and sell out your own soul and use your hours and money to try and get the least crooked crook in office. If that's a profitable use of your time, more power to you. But by trying to look down your nose at folks who work in politics because they actually believe in something, you only make yourself seem even smaller than you actually are.

Comments

[Dwilkers]

"And when it becomes plainly obvious that after a protracted period of time, our principles are simply not going to be advanced - well, then, we have families and jobs and churches and whatnot that would be grateful for the extra time."

That's the problem I have with the Miers nomination.

From the beginning my support for Bush has been based to a large extent on these SCOTUS nominations. It is in the courts that the left is getting their agenda enacted, since they cannot get it done at the polls. You name it, whether it is barring religious displays, abortion, the gay agenda, handing out condoms in schools, you name it - the courts are where the left gets their agenda enacted.

Its high time for all our sake's that the left be forced to make the case for their agenda in the public arena and have it tested at the voting booth.

Even if Miers turns out to be a conservative voice on the court she's 60 years old. This nomination is wasted for that reason alone.

Let's face it, the POTUS has little to no impact on my life. Judges - changing the basic culture of our country through judicial fiat - affect us directly every day. If we aren't going to nominate conservatives to the courts to get some corrections to this course I see no reason for me to bother with politics at all.

[corph]

Leon-

An appeal from the Dark Side.

So another Republican President has failed in his implicit commitment to overturn Roe. Is Bush simply being timid? I doubt it. Is he addicted to cronyism? Maybe, but he could have picked a more pro-life crony. A third more devious motive seems more plausible at the moment.

What if this
NYTimes Op-Ed
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/opinion/06wilkinson.html?th&emc=th

and Thomas Frank ("What's the matter with Kansas")are actually right? What if the leadership simply wants power for the sake of power, and is not interested in provoking a pro-Roe backlash?

The Democratic party will never overturn Roe, of course. It doesn't mean we can't be on the side of the angels.

While we can't agree on abortion being murder, we have common ground in wanting to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. I'm assuming your pro-life views don't extend to outlawing contraception.

I personally have no problem with teaching abstinence, as long as it doesn't exclude safety nets like condoms and the morning-after pill. I'd be for some sort of compulsory counseling, because abortion is, after all, a traumatic experience. Not notification, though. A parent who's daughter gets pregnant is likely not doing a good job of parenting in the first place. Not to mention the possibility of abuse.

What if a Democratic plan could reduce the number of abortions from a million to a hundred thousand? I saw someone post a plan for this on Kos.

And it's not like the other planks of the Republican platform are all that strong either. Smaller governement? Free trade? Few conservative principles are left to be sacrificed to the quest for power.

We Dems are more likely to have learned the lesson of our overspending porky ways. We have some pro-lifers like Casey and Reid. We found common ground on welfare reform and free trade under Clinton. We could focus on domestic programs that help encourage self-sufficiency and break the cycle of dependance. Dems don't like bloated Medicare rolls much more than you do.

Don't take your marbles and go home. Take them and switch teams! C'mon, you've got little left to lose.