Three things about this National Review Form Letter For Defecting Conservatives:
- It’s funny.
- It’s cynical.
- Speaking as somebody who came over to conservatism, it would have been spiffy if there had been an equivalent to the kind of support mechanism and/or pander-o-rama that the Establishment Media offers to defecting conservatives.
That last point especially. It’s like the CIA: the agency may have its faults, but as Tom Clancy once noted, they pay for treason with real money. And it paid off, time and time and time again. I’m not saying that people should lionize defectors or anything, but Come to the Dark Side: we have cookies is not actually an unreasonable operating strategy…
Well, Liberals can do that because they are a Tribe, and act as one, for good and ill. Witness the other side of the coin, Old Joe L., who has not been allowed back in the party….
Conservatives can’t do this so much because we aren’t a tribe, and so there is no real consensus on what a “Conservative” is. We are civilized, and work together when it benefits us, but not as a matter of blind loyalty. And, alas, as individuals working for our own benefit, The Democrats are able to break off enough Republicans, by various strategies, to win many political battles despite being the Minority party. Sad, but we don’t have loyalty oaths like the Democrats do, and that counts for a lot.
The Liberal alternative would be too short.
It would be: Dear Editors of the National Review, I hereby declare that I have gained sanity, and have abandoned the increasingly irrational ideology known as liberalism.
Whatever did happen to Bart Stupak ?
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Mew
He voted for Obamacare, the end. I think he’s a lobbyist now.
Yes, but before that he was making the usual “Personally, I am opposed to {Dem position}” speeches .. for *long* before that, in fact.
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My point is .. its’ a sufficiently rare event it can be handled on a case-by-case basis.
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Mew