What Digby Said 4
This is my sixth edition of What Digby Said.
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September 15, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Hmmmmm
I pretty much feel insulted. Yes, I consider myself a social conservative, no I don’t believe Rudy is, just looking at his track record, but all of us don’t fit the description in that post.
September 15, 2007 at 9:25 pm
True, all social conservatives do not fit the description in Digby’s post.
It is those who pose as social conservatives while not living the ideals they profess who fit Digby’s post.
There are other words to describe persons like that. Digby was not talking about average voters. She was talking about those who shill for votes.
Those other words include “hypocrite,” “televangelist,” and “Republican Congressperson.”
They say one thing in public to get votes, and do something entirely other in private.
As has been amply documented.
September 16, 2007 at 9:08 am
“Many social conservatives are phonies, and the rest are willing dupes.”
While Digby goes on to write “How many diaper wearing wingnut senators…” later in the same paragraph, the original statement about social conservatives is not qualified or limited solely to that group. The sentence about social conservatives is complete and encompassing and appears to stand on its own.
I agree with Karen. Anyone who considers themselves to be a social conservative should be insulted by such a “mean spirited” statement.
Such writings add little (actually nothing) to any meaningful discourse on the state of our current national mess. Therein lies the problem.
It appears to me the folks on the left have become the thing they seem to detest the most. They have become their own version of Rush Limbaugh. To quote Pogo: “We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us.”
September 16, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Insincerity has become the lifeblood of social debate, and it’s why I’m turned off to politics and the public square. Too many commentators these days have become bitter, vindictive hateful people who rail against bitter, vindictive hateful people. They don’t seek to persuade their opponents, only to condemn and denigrate them. When you point that out, they either deny it or claim that the moral superiority of their point of view entitles them to it. And anyone who thinks this goes on in one given ideological camp more than another may be deceiving themselves but not me.
The beginning of the end, for me personally, was when people who didn’t know anything about me other than that I was conservative started assuming I was a racist. People who didn’t know my heart, didn’t know my history and didn’t know me told me I was a reason for continuing racism in society. Consequently, the last Democrat I ever voted for was Paul Simon and I may never vote for another one again. The heck with them all, they’re only out to smear people who interfere with their political ambitions.
The next spike in the coffin of my faith in politics was when the Republicans took the House back in 1994. People who said they wanted to try the things I wanted to try in government got elected and I thought things were going to change. As it turned out, most of them had clearly been studying for decades how the Democrats had used congressional perks and pensions to feather their own nests, and wasted no time in simply doing the same thing from the other side of the aisle.
I’ll never forget the example I learned from a personal hero of mine, Steve Coates. Years ago he was a campaign manager for a conservative political candidate. The opponent’s campaign began accusing Steve’s candidate of making racist remarks in private. Steve drove straight to the opponent’s campaign headquarters, politely introduced himself, told them that nobody was with his candidate more than he was and that these remarks were not being made, and asked them to stop the accusations. As he ended the conversation, (which turned out to be lengthy,) his parting words were, “I understand that I am your opponent, but I never want to be your enemy.”