I think the split between "country club conservatives" and "the religious right" is a fracture which underlies a more fundamental problem. The split, I believe, revolves around demographics, not around "the left" softening up the country club republicans and causing them to fear the religious right--after all, it's not like the religious right has had the same cachet as they did in the 1980's.

If you look at a map, with few exceptions urban centers tend to be liberal/progressive, and rural areas tend to be conservative.

Rural areas tend to encourage individualism: the culture tends to revolve around the neighborhood church as an organizing principle, and because there are so few people, individuals can trust each other and can be "self-regulating" around moral and ethical principles.

But once the population density gets above a certain level (and I'd love to see someone use the census information and voting information to figure out where that number is), people tend to start distrusting their neighbors (who may number in the hundreds of thousands), and their churches (whose morality do you follow when there are dozens or hundreds of different churches?), and turn to government as the organizing principle.

I think it's why many "country club republicans" have turned liberal and started distrusting the religious republicans. I'm sure they also have started to believe in Obama's "clinging to their guns and bibles" comment as well: the rural areas are now the "others", and their quaint ideas are either stupid (because it's not like us in the big city), or dangerous.

It could be that 9/11 hid this demographic fact by temporarily pushing the country to the right--in the face of the fall of the World Trade Center it's hard not to be an American first and support a larger military to protect our way of life. But now that people are no longer worried about terrorism, it's easy for this demographic shift to a more liberal-progressive world view to reassert itself.

Excellent point, and very well thought out. I have watched the traditionally Republican Philadelphia suburbs go from Republican to Democrat as they filled and overflowed to once-rural areas. (Bear in mind, though, that even in the old days, the religious right was never popular among the suburban GOP crowd.)

It is smart for the GOP to go after the rural voters. But if their numbers are diminishing, they also need to work on reversing the growing appeal of liberalism, especially over lifestyle issues, which have little to do with the federal government.

If M. Smerconish had just said that racial healing was the most important thing for him in this election and that only Obama could do it to his satisfaction I could buy that.

What made his explanation ring false to me was all the ancillary material that was so obviously backwards.

I could even argue against Obama as a race healer. But it is not an argument that is obviously false since he does have not just 95% of the black community but also a significant portion of the white community behind him.

If you want to attack the urban drive towards liberalism, you need to point out (in a Reaganesque way) that while we may turn to the Federal Government as an organizing factor in larger urban centers, government almost always makes things worse. Further, you need to emphasize the fact that we don't have one government (as most people tend to believe) but at least three: federal, state and local. And the problem with liberalism in practice is that it moves power away from the city where they live and puts it in Washington D.C. where no-one cares.

Sadly this requires a more subtle intellectual approach to conservatism verses liberal/progressivism that most people don't have--and so most people turn to a kind of rural tribalism (conservatism) verses urban feudalism (liberalism).

It would also require better civics classes and a reversal in media news reporting, which have all acted since the Civil War to convince the public that there is only one government, the one in D.C.

It's also why I think McCain got in trouble by taking a populist approach to the economy. The rural tribalism that passes for popular conservatism and the urban feudalism that passes for popular liberalism both sound populist. When McCain took a populist tone, he screwed up: to many urban feudalists he sounded like a poor man's Obama, and in this election cycle urban centers outnumber rural centers.

Sorry; my original point did have something to do with musical tastes: There are the stereotypes of the rural country-music loving hick verses the Haight-Ashbury dead-head liberal--which, when you scratch the surface, has more to do with demographics than musical tastes.

First of all, what the hell is an "independent, moderate, conservative?" that has to be one the dumbest things I have seen lately (and that takes some doing). If you can't make up your mind, it would be best if you'd just shut up.

Second, the idea the O! will magically produce "unity" in the country is a concept that borders on insane. He is, by all accounts, a socialist who has spent his entire life surrounded by, mentored by, and educated by Marxists, socialists, radicals, and racist demagogues. And Smerconish thinks that this douchebag will usher in "unity?" Nope. The Cold Civil War is immanent, and it will be due to the likes of Smerconish and the chickenshit "country-club" RINOs you speak of. Well, you'll get the government you derserve, I guess. Me, I'm going back to Idaho.

I'm merely trying to describe Smerconish according to the way he's been described and is commonly perceived:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Smerconish+%22moderate+conservative%22&btnG=Search

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=12574

And most damningly of all, on your website Ted Nugent refers to you as a ?moderate? conservative.

In the common parlance, Smerconish is moderate to conservative. Saying I should shut up does not change this.

I don't really care what he is, and whether the terminology works wasn't my point. These terms have become meaningless.

By the way, what is conservative? I don't know....

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2008/10/post_914.html

I think I'm a libertarian, but many would disagree.

you'll get the government you derserve

I will, and you won't?

I was advising Smerconish to shut up, not you, although the attempts to defend such a squish are unbecoming. Further, there is NO justification for anyone who claims to be moderate, conservative or libertarian to vote for someone who, by all accounts, will increase the size, cost and intrusiveness of the federal government in ways heretofore unseen and unimagined. They are already planning to revive the Fairness Doctrine, and my guess is that they will try to inject it into the internet, as well."Country-club Republicans are not likely to escape.

Obviously, I am voting against The One(TM), as many times as I can get away with (where's ACORN when you need them?). Should this empty suit win, clearly I will NOT deserve the government that results. Only those misguided saps that vote for him are richly deserving of the coming federal body cavity search.

There are a lot of people who do not follow politics. A lot of people who are willfully ill-informed and ignorant, and who are hell-bent on maintaining that status. A lot of these people are very well-educated and live in the cities and inner-ring suburbs.

And right now liberalism and casual socialism, in the person of Barry Hussein Obama, has never been cooler. Who doesn't want to be cool! Who doesn't want to sleep with hot chicks and hot studs! And in the cities, and inner ring suburbs, for the over-educated uneducated, cool rules. They're smart enough to dress up in positions on the issues -- environmental holocaust, arrogant US foreign policy, affordable health care -- but it isn't about issues and ideology. It's about cool. And Barry Hussein delivers the "cool" in hearts, diamonds, clubs and even spades.

But here's what I don't get: why are the moderate, "country clubbers" taking their wrath against religious conservatives out on John McCain of all people?

That's why I don't think the Liebermann analogy is apt. Liebermann was tossed after flaming out in the 2004 Presidential primaries and losing the 2006 Senate primary. McCain, in contrast was nominated by the Republican Party as its standard bearer in spite of religious conservatives, and is, ideologically, about as close to the country clubbers as a Republican can get while still being viable enough to win the nomination. And the country clubbers STILL want to bolt. Their little pique with Bush is causing them to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and, for the life of me, I don't get it.

I've lived all over this country, from country club Sarasota to rural conservative Idaho and many points in between. In my impression the ‘country club republicans’ are not particularly conservative, except as concerns their money and their personal prerogatives. All else is pretty much lefty type liberalism, NIMBYism, and the usual class based prejudice mixed in. Perhaps there was a time when these types actually had some connection to the rural or working classes, but not any more. Other than some nebulous affinity for a 'conservatism' for which they cannot even state any first principles these people are as intolerantly 'tolerant' as any avowed progressive. They do not wish to seek any accommodation with the religious right, they just want them gone. It is their way or the highway, and that's not going to happen.

If their judgment is so skewed they are willing to throw their lot in with the likes of Obama just to get away from the ‘fundies’ then there is not much to be said for keeping them. I wish them luck when they realize they have fallen in with, among others, the religious left. Who, while more open to the gay community, and possibly better dinner party guests, have their very own brand of intolerance and stridency. A stridency they clearly and openly advocate the government impose upon all others.

And that's the real rub for those of us who value liberty. Our best chance to beat back Leviathan is to stick together and reach an accommodation within the right. An accommodation based on the fundamental conservative principles of limited government for everyone, and the idea that long standing traditions should not be tossed aside except for very good reason.

We should be able to agree that America is the type of place that can tolerate a myriad of differences (I would use the term deviancy - not intended as a pejorative, merely as a descriptor of activities that fall outside of the norm - but do not wish to give offense or imply negative judgment where there is none) while not expecting that tolerance means force of law. In my own experience it is the religious right that better understand that a government that can give you whatever you want is also a government that can also take it all away. If the country club set has forgotten, or simply does not care about, these principles then I cannot see any lost support for our cause.

Blonde in a Boat


There was a blonde driving down the road one day. She glanced to her right and noticed another blonde sitting in a nearby field, rowing a boat with no water in sight.

The blonde angrily pulled her car over and yelled at the rowing blonde, "What do you think you're doing? It's things like this that give us blondes a bad name. If I could swim, I'd come out there and kick your butt!"