The Anchoress » Gonna be interesting - First Impressions: "I expect we’ll start seeing some conservatives talk of “purges,” of pulling even harder to the right. And I think if they do that, they’ll set themselves up for a bigger disaster than this break-house blast. A few months ago, during the Harriet Miers/Dubai Ports/Immigration Debacle Trifecta - during which time some of conservatives descended into presidential namecalling to compete with the rankest sorts from DU - I thought (and said) that the “purist” conservatives (whom even Ronald Reagan said were impossible to please and didn’t know how to take 75% and walk away winners) were playing too near the ledge. The “sat home and taught ‘em a lesson” folks have let our troops down, for sure. Hope they can live with that. The conservatives who are already saying “we need to send more Tancredos to Washington” are mistaken."
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
The Anchoress » Gonna be interesting - First Impressions
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7 comments:
we need to have smarter people working harder at winning the debates on the merits. the votes will follow.
... and constantly venerating "centrism" is not an argument, it's a mantra.
exdemoccrat:
Tell that to Brad Ellsworth. He beat conservative hardliner Hostettler by almost 40 points in a district that voted overwhelmingly for Bush.
Ellsworth is a center right Democrat who belongs to the NRA, is pro life and pro military. He has been a sheriff for years.
People are tired of listening to the extremes complain and never get anywhere. Immigration reform was a perfect example. The fit over Miers, the Dubai business was so annoying that it drove people away. Bitch Bitch Bitch.
When the Democrats lost they thought, we need to go further left and so they did and they got beat again and it looks like they might be getting smarter, maybe the GOP needs to get smarter too.
And you know what? People in the center have principles too.
terrye - People "in the center" of what?
In the center of American political thought.
Scoff all you want, but all you have to do is look at this election and see Hostettler going down to Ellsworth and Lamont going down to Lieberman to understand that people do not always think being a fanatic is a good thing.
i'm not scoffing, terrye, just trying to loosen some of the ties that bind.
i don't find it useful to perceive 'fanatics' as the individuals arrayed at either end of some indelible and immovable two-dimentional axis. (nor do i subscribe to version 2 of that convenient image that the ends of the axis join up to form a perfect circle.)
to me, fanatics are simply those who inhabit a personal space that is immune from reason. i think that mental state can be found anywhere, even in "the center" of american political thought.
what matters to me now is to engage, with an open mind, in a real and meaningful debate; in which the participants listen as well as talk and commit to going (or at least contemplating) where the truth leads. In some cases, that will involve radically different approaches - not simply a halfway point between the positions most diametrically opposed.
All of us need to get away from the obsession with marketing and get back to a focus on product design. That includes those who deem themselves 'moderates.'
Ex-dem,
I agree totally. The "center" is usually just code for "people who agree with me".
Let's forget all that and move on to "what is good for our country and our civilization, and why".
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