Deal,

I agree that if facing Obama, anger will not be a convincing tool. However, hasn't McCain shown himself to be very angry and aggressive while campaigning, conservative or not?

Andy, good point. McCain has a legendary temper. I'm told by people who know him well, and for a long time, that he has, well, tempered. No one changes that much once they are in the 60s and early 70s, but edges can come off, and I think that is the case with McCain. Thus far, he's been very humble in all my interactions with him. But you never know what goes on behind the scenes at crunch-time. You should talk to some Bush White House staff about the morning meetings with the president -- Bush, evidently, loses nothing to McCain in that department.

Deal: You mean that you only recently found talk radio to be beyond your tastes? It has been hateful for years. I've always wanted a thoughtful counterpart for liberal media. We got Limbaugh and his copycats instead. Thoughtful and faithful conservatives should have condemned those hatemongers from the start.

There actually is a talk radio host worth listening to - one who doesn't simply regurgitate GOP talking points, who is obsessively self-effacing rather than neurotically egomaniacal - and that man's name is Glenn Beck.

I don't agree with him on everything, but he's a decent human being. He doesn't fight dirty, he seeks truth wherever he can find it, and he's a true social conservative. His sincerity, I'm sure, is what has led to his meteoric rise from obscurity to the top three, just behind Limbaugh and Hannity.

He does, admittedly, channel conservative anger, but not, in my opinion, in a hateful way. Conservatives have just cause to be angry, particularly when a men like McCain, Romney, Giuliani and even Huckabee, for that matter, become our only choices if we want to stick with the party. For those choices to then be further narrowed down to John McCain of all people is an insult to what we hold dear.

A conservative, in the true sense, is a noble thing, and the principles behind that once proud badge of honor have been trampled on by Bush and company to the point that people can call McCain a "conservative" with a straight face and expect us to swallow it.

Anger has a purpose if it is tempered by charity and rooted in justice. Sometimes "Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" works too.

As for fresh air? I don't see how that's possible.

It seems to me that the problem talk radio is presenting to the Republican Party right now is that the hosts are NOT regurgitating GOP talking points. That's why there's all this fuss about conservative vs. moderate Republicans.

I would be careful before labeling the talk radio conservatives as 'angry', 'hateful', or any of the other labels that liberals usually throw out to describe the hosts or listeners. Conservatives who pay attention to politics on a regular basis have had problems with McCain for years, the latest example being last summer during the Immigration Reform fiasco.

There are true differences of opinion between McCain and many Republican conservatives, and expressing these differences, and the accompanying frustrations that a McCain ticket brings to light, is natural and should be expected. I don’t think it is constructive to start labeling those who are expressing such frustrations as anything other than genuine (unless there’s a good basis for doing so). Telling those who are upset by a McCain nomination to calm down or shut up is not constructive; hopefully McCain himself will have the humility to figure this out over the next few weeks.

The Republican Party has traditionally been the party of ideology. As such, ideological clashes should be expected. Hopefully these clashes will be constructive, but we need to be careful about branding those whose opinions differ from ours as something less then genuinely concerned about our country and the direction in which it is headed.

Before the Civil war, the Whigs were the "anti-slavery" party, but divided between wealthy industrialists who were pro-slavery and the "religious right" of the time. The Whigs very briefly held the government during the 1840s and had the chance to end slavery, but didn't.

After that, the Whig Party fractured, and the Democrats took over for 10 years, until the founding of the GOP, when Abraham Lincoln won as a third party candidate.

The fracturing of the GOP doesn't surprise me. The attitudes of most of the "talk radio" types don't surprise me.

What bothers me are the people who should be the pro-life/pro-family leaders. We were told that conservatives had to vote for either a pro-abortion Catholic, the man who legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts, or a man with a consistent record of gutting the constitution and opposing any substantial pro-life legislation.

As Pat Buchanan recently put it, McCain has supported everything Bush has done wrong and opposed everything Bush has done right.

Then, as the other field of candidates wound down in the debate cycle, two candidates emerged who spoke for authentically conservative philosophical principles: Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. But for some reason, the conservative establishment, including many pro-life leaders, developed an absolute antipathy towards both these men.

I just don't get it. Many of McCain's votes in South Carolina came from "independents" and Democrats. If the religious right had rallied behind Huckabee the way it rallied around Dubya 8 years ago, things would be different.

Now, instead, people on both sides of the aisle are referring to a man who supports infanticide as a "voice of hope."

I find this attitude towards the "talk radio" folks quite annoying. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, he admired those people "who were in the arena." To me there is nothing worse than a "moderate," a term to define someone with basically zero convictions other than those in which the current wind is blowing.
I quote from the Deal Hudson article as follows,

"As we enter the season of the general election we are facing a man who sounds the note of hope, a man who does not use anger as a rhetorical weapon: Barack Obama.

If we make conservatism synonymous with angry denunciation, rather than reasoned and optimistic encouragement, we will lose the White House, and lose the battle for the protection of unborn life."

BEWARE...and this is the key, if the choices are Obama/Clinton and McCain, the choice is simple. For a conservative, the choice is simple.
For a Catholic Christian, the choice is simple. Behind that silliness of "hope without anger" lies a pro-abortion, socialist agenda "most liberal" Senator who wants to give drivers licenses to ILLEGAL immigrants.

Most people are easily swayed by drama, emotion and sadly, a profound lack of intellect. Consider those 15 million really smart people that voted last Tuesday for Obama/Clinton. I can assure you a recurring thought to most of them was "What can the federal govt. GIVE to me?"

Conservatives, and Thank God for Rush, Laura, Sean, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage....conservatives would say " Federal govt. Defend me and Protect me and then get out of my way."

These are huge philosophical differences.

Rob Schultz

Deal--

First, some of these radio talkers have wrapped Ronald Reagan in gold and given him godly status. Hannity, Limbaugh, Levine, claim to be the standard bearers of Reagan and, in a fanatical way, claim that they alone hold the keys to Reagan Orthodoxy.

Second, I liked Reagan very much, but Reagan did compromise when dealing with the democratic congress. Reagan also appointed Sandra Day O'Conner. Many of these "conservative" pundits have alluded that McCain is some sort of crypto-pro-abortionist when it comes to judges while they supported Mitt Romney or even Guiliani.

My point is, Reagan was not the "Mythological Reagan" that conservatives such as Sean Hannity, Mark Levine, et al. have made him out to be. Reagan was also a forward-looking man. What some of McCain's more shrill critics have accomplished is turning conservatism backwards-looking.

I'm fairly certain that one critical factor during this presidential election is about the ever-expanding role of the state, and this issue is exemplified in the abortion debate.

In the abortion debate, the proactive role of the state looms even greater. Back in 2002, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a law that coerces medical students working in public hospitals to take abortion training classes as a requirement. This was a state response to the lack of doctors and medical students willing to perform abortions. Medical students who have moral objections to abortion are required to explain, in writing, why they are opting out of this required course.

In effect, what the Republican Mayor Bloomberg has done is require medical students to identify their religious, moral, and perhaps, political beliefs.

Is there a similar plan for medical students in the works on a national level? It's a good question to ask Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, especially given the fact that the number of doctors and medical students who are willing to perform abortions has decreased, which has alarmed folks like the National Abortion Rights Action League.

When democrats such as Rodham-Clinton and Obama discuss "health care," you can be sure abortion on-demand is part of their system.

Writing in the summer issue of the Modern Age, Richard Bishirjian identifies conservatism as follows: "[W]e conservatives and our allies the libertarians are threatened by one main adversary to our social order and the precious freedom of American citizens--the administrative state--and we share a sense that the public spaces of our beloved America are being closed, constricted, and our lives deprived of opportunity and of freedoms that previous generations enjoyed."

If these so-called Reagan purists like Hannity, Limbaugh, Levine, et al. keep going, they will fracture the big picture. They will continue to divide the coalition that Reagan managed to build.

Certainly, your comments make sense in their overall objective but to claim the radio hosts claim to be the standard bearer is giving them more credit than THEY would seek. They are simply flawed people, humans, you know, like the rest of us except they do take public positions and certainly Ronald Reagan is a hero for them and to me as well. Conservatives cannot be the home of "the big tent." To use your "ever expanding role of the state," as an example, real conservatives would attack that philosophy with all the zeal of a Senator at the earmark barrel.

Steve thanks for the recommendation. I'll try to check him out sometime.

Rob: You are confusing "moderate" with "wishy-washy". One can have strong convictions that both extremes are seriously wrong in different ways. I am a moderate of that stripe.

To those who defend talk radio, I think you are too biased to know what y'all look like to the 80% or so who aren't just like you. Roughly half of the moderates like myself end up voting with you but we still see you the same way: angry, resentful, bitter, smug, self-righteous, and hateful. Note please, I'm describing Limbaugh enthusiasts not conservatives in general, though not everyone is able to clearly distinguish the two. SO talk radio is great if you like to be snarky with those who agree with you. It works against you if you want to convince voters to join you.

I'm amazed that thoughtful conservatives haven't seen this trend much earlier.

Among prolifers, another trend is emerging that Catholics should have seen much earlier. More and more of us are tired of those who use abortion to defend every bad thing Republicans do. If conservatives fall flat it is because they are perceived as unfriendly and morally uneven.

Thank you! I have been annoyed with the Republican "talking heads" ever since the Monica Lewinsky scandal, during the course of which I read an editorial in Franciscan University's student newspaper that asserted that Clinton had ordered air strikes in Afghanistan only to distract attention from his scandals. This editorial alerted me to two things: (a) some conservatives deliberately ignore one of the foundational principles of British and American common law: innocent until proven guilty, and (b) some conservative Christians deliberately ignore Christ's injunction that we love our enemies, pray for for our persecutors, and do good to those who hate us and the related Old Testament injunction that if we see our enemy in need, we should help him. Did Clinton have what seemed like good reason to order the air strikes in Afghanistan? Perhaps he did, perhaps he did not, but assuming that he did not without any evidence will not help anyone ascertain the truth.

This kind of vindictive, vitiolic conservatism, with its disregard for truth, must die. The world and particularly the Church would be better off without it.

I am pleased, Mr Hudson, that you can see things concerning the intolerant blowhards who are besmirching by their behavior the honorable edmund burke style name "conservative."
Burke was on the side of honor, as was Churchill. I believe you have discerned correctly that McCain is also on this side. I have been just reading, for example, his book "Character is Destiny." In it, he valuably delineates what Catholics would call "the virtues," chapter by chapter, for younger people to emulate. I think his being spiritually in tune and honorable is why he is suffering unjust persecution, and we catholics know about that.
"Due Diligence" is required in this great election of 2008. I also agree that Obama has run an honorable campaign. I also am extremely concerned about the "False Shepherd" level of this campaign. Our Lord implied the closer we get to His coming, the more these false shepherds would arise and seek to lead astray. I think Romney was bad news, the more you researched his background; he hurt the Catholic Church in Massachusetts. He's gone, hopefully for good. Now we turn our attention to Huckabee - and, ditto, there are uncomfortable aspects of the False Shepherd here too - an alliance with the Christ denying and Catholicism denying Hagee. Huckabee's odd glee at describing burning up squirrels in a popcorn maker when he was in college. His release of a rapist while Governor because some conservative evangelicals wanted it because the man had raped a relative of Clinton - and then the man went out and raped again and killed someone. Our Lord warned us to beware of those who wear their faith on their sleeve. I think we should be concerned with Huckabee and pray real hard that McCain picks just an honorable man like General Powell to be his VP running mate and not some evangelical show-off. No more False Shepherds for a good while. We need to fast and pray and say the Holy Rosary and ask our Lord would hold back any impending wrath and condemnation, like Our dear Lady asked us to.

Rob--

Thanks for the response. The thing is, both Hannity and Mark Levine have made this claim themselves-- that they are "Reagan Conservatives" and anyone who doesn't join their tarring and feathering of McCain is somehow "un-conservative."

As for "earmarks," I'd file that one under your statement about "flawed people."

... by John Kerry to be his running mate in 2004 before he asked Edwards?

McCain is not a conservative. It seems many are giving him a pass on his support for the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

It seems to me that we need another Lincoln. The Republicans appear to be going the way of the Whigs as Mr. Hathaway pointed out.

Another Lincoln? But though it is often forgotten, Lincoln ran as a "moderate" on the issue of slavery, not calling for its abolition but only for its restriction, and it was only several years later that he abolished slavery, and even then only in the states that had succeeded from the union. That would seem to make McCain's stance on pro-life issues the most "Lincolnian" of any of the candidates.

From a Catholic Christian perspective, I would offer that
true conservatism relies on solid traditional principles. To begin, God created all people not just Americans. It just so happens that we are blessed to live in America where it appears may people want to come and few actually want to leave. We were founded on and grew based on solid fundamental beliefs, certainly driven by Divine guidance.
On issues of the day, everything is not clearly defined as to Right or Wrong but for a true conservative, most things are not in that vast wasteland of gray.

I believe in an America where the Federal government defends and protects our lives and our liberty(and most assuredly, our borders); in reduced taxation, especially for risk-takers and achievers, in fiscal restraint on federal spending. This last one can be difficult because it is so tough not to spend other people’s money, especially when you can build a bridge or a building or a lock and dam. Posers, posing as conservatives have done just that while their liberal Democratic colleagues smiled and said, “I know, isn’t this fun.”

True conservatives realize the threat of the muslims. Victory over the muslims can never waver or be minimized. Until the muslim threat is defeated, we must always be on guard,
ever vigilant and always on the offensive. Failure to do so will result in our destruction as the litany of terrorist acts have proven.

True conservatives are Pro-Life for the innocent unborn, they are against embryonic stem-cell research, they reject the evil of human attempts at cloning, they are against euthanasia and they patently dismiss the disordered immorality of homosexual “marriage,” a term that is technically an impossibility .

John McCain probably would not be considered a true conservative as described above but in light of the opponent, ObamaClinton (one word, YES) McCain is conservative enough for me. America is too valuable to let socialist policies assume command.
For the most part, on Super Tuesday, about 15 million people voted for ObamaClinton.
Of course, I give them little credit for their level of intelligence but one of their heroes,
John F Kennedy, if you recall his quote, “ask not what your country can do for you”
Sadly, that was when the batteries ran out.

My initial point, I believe, is that Reagan wasn't this uncompromising bastion of conservative ideology that the Hannity, Levine, and Rush block have portrayed him as being. This foolish comparison game of Reagan to McCain is a bunch of nonsense and, I have to repeat myself, makes conservatives look as if they are backwards-looking.

Moreover, Reagan never expected every southern Evangelical Christian to be in 100 percent agreement with, say, a northeastern Catholic republican. What I believe Reagan stood for was halting the expansion of the "administrative state."

Now in politics, sometimes we have to pick the lesser of two evils, as you all know. I understand that for many on the right, McCain is not the perfect candidate. Yet Reagan was not perfect, either. Reagan was not the "Reagan" that Hannity, Rush, etc. all claim he was. McCain is the best pro-life candidate out there, even when Romney was in the race.

On embryonic stem cells: I agree that McCain veered from the pro-life position. A number of pundits have stated that McCain supports government funding of embryonic stem cell research because of Nancy Reagan. I also believe that this is a moot point: It's my hope that the debate will be settled with advancements made in adult stem cells.

Julie: So what if Kerry considered McCain as a running mate in 2004? So what if he considered leaving the republican party? After what happened during the 2000 primaries and the smear job some republicans made against him, no wonder.

And... I was just watching Sean Hannity's America program. The self-proclaimed "Reagan Conservative" and "true conservative" said he was rethinking his position on the death penalty and that he might be against it.

Ooopsie!! Now Hannity's starting to stray a little, isn't he? Hannity's gonna change his mind??? We can't have that, can we?

Does this make him a "flip-flopper?"