In the wake of the recent elections, I'm doing my best to be conciliatory and look for areas of compromise between the 'top down' GOP types and us 'tea partiers'.  I think my vote for Whitman shows that I'm willing to compromise --  if it doesn't I don't know what would.  However, compromise can only go so far:  past some point it becomes just blindly going along with the other person's position.

To achieve our long-term goal of returning to fiscal sanity and restoring the Constitution, it's in our mutual best interests to find middle ground on the issue of candidates for office.  I had thought that the lessons from the DE primary were extremely simple:  for the GOP -- no mega-RINOs, for the tea partiers -- no whackjobs.  Apparently it's not going to be that easy.

So, let me make a few points perfectly clear:

• Fact:  I will never accept someone like Mike Castle as a candidate for office.  If the GOP runs someone like him again, I will try to primary that person.  If he is nominated, I will sit out the general election.
• Fact:  The 'top down' types will never accept someone like Christine O'Donnell as a candidate for office.  Whether or not I like this position is irrelevant. I have to simply accept it as fact.
• Fact:  The refusal by either side to compromise will result in further defeats for both the GOP and conservatism.

These are extremely obvious points, and rehashing arguments that try to avoid these facts is a completely useless waste of time.  If someone insists on trying to argue these facts, regardless of which side of the argument they are on, I very rapidly tune that person out.

This is why, way back in 2008, I left Ace's for good (and in an extremely impressive ball of flames if I do say so myself).  It became all too obvious that the 'top down' types were going to try to ram McCain down my throat regardless of any arguments I made towards long-term strategy.  They were simply not going to accept that I could possibly have a valid point.  As there was no room for compromise, I just left.  Staying would have been a complete waste of my time and Ace's bandwidth.

In what has become a thread from hell over at DPUD, I've done the same.  I'm certainly not leaving DPUD, but I'm done with that particular thread.  Everything that was useful to say has been said, and it's quite clear that Conservative Belle has no interest whatsoever in putting aside old grievances and attempting to find a compromise.  So, she goes into my 'ignore in the future' category, just like IVD did.

CB put up another post a short bit ago, but guess what?  I didn't read it ( I always look at the author before reading past the title of a post), because I'm not into wasting my time.  I won't read the comments on that post either, as it's going to be just another pointless pissing contest.  I'm going to look for a post by someone that's willing to compromise instead of just trying to force me to accept their point of view.

In fact, there's a very interesting post over at Ace's that is, in my opinion, the single best thing he's written in 2 1/2 years (that I've read -- for most of that time I have no idea what he might have written).  Hell, even the comments are mostly good.  Yes, after a long hiatus, I'm reading Ace again.  I have been since about three months prior to the election.  The reason:  to find out if there might be some room for compromise at this point.  The referenced post is highly encouraging, as are Monty's economics posts, and some other material as well.  That's not to say I'm going to start commenting there again, but I will continue to at least scan the posts on a regular basis.

I'm willing to compromise, but the 'top down' types and the 'tea party' types have to at least get onto the same page to do so.  In regard to the DE race, the discussion that we should be having is how to avoid that kind of standoff in the future.  If that's not the discussion, if the discussion is 'accept candidates like Castle or else', I'm just going to tune out.  And that doesn't do anybody any good.

Posted by: Hermit Dave at 02:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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