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Nov. 4th, 2010 09:59 amThere was an election. I voted.
I suppose the thing to say is that I pretty much feel like a man without a party at the moment. I've self-identified as a moderate Republican for my whole voting life. And there have always been factions in the party that I've disapproved of. There have always been platforms I disagreed with. But I've always felt comfortable in the party, always felt there was a place at the table for my kind of moderate fiscal conservatism, for the kind of compassionate conservatism Bush articulated better than he delivered, for Rudy Giuliani-style Republicanism that was constructed on pragmatism and sanity rather than on hatred and fear.
In the wake of this election, for the first time in my voting life, I don't have that feeling. "My party" has seized the House with promises of all sorts of things that I don't want to happen. Have I turned into a Democrat? No, not at all. I have big problems with the health care bill, with the stimulus, with the Democratic approach to energy reform. I think a lot of really big mistakes have been made by Obama in foreign policy and I think that a number of them stem from liberal foreign policy ideology rather than a misread of the situation (Others, like the stalemate on Israel-Palestine at the moment, I do think stem just from a misread of the lay of the land). But on the other hand, I think the reason the health care bill is so bad is because Republicans refused to participate when offered the chance. For all their talk of tort reform and limiting the tax burden, the Republican leadership turned down the chance to get their legislative goals done in order to score political points, and I find that reprehensible in this moment of economic difficulty.
I don't want to be a Republican right now. I don't want anything to do with the Tea Party. I don't want anything to do with Jim DeMint and I sure as hell don't want anything to do with Sarah Palin. I'm willing to let Eric Cantor win me over, but he hasn't done it yet. I don't want anything to do with a party that runs the failed CEO of HP for Senate in California or the abrasive CEO of WWE for Governor in Connecticut. They've been sending me a message, and the message is "You don't belong here."
So yeah, there's that.
I suppose the thing to say is that I pretty much feel like a man without a party at the moment. I've self-identified as a moderate Republican for my whole voting life. And there have always been factions in the party that I've disapproved of. There have always been platforms I disagreed with. But I've always felt comfortable in the party, always felt there was a place at the table for my kind of moderate fiscal conservatism, for the kind of compassionate conservatism Bush articulated better than he delivered, for Rudy Giuliani-style Republicanism that was constructed on pragmatism and sanity rather than on hatred and fear.
In the wake of this election, for the first time in my voting life, I don't have that feeling. "My party" has seized the House with promises of all sorts of things that I don't want to happen. Have I turned into a Democrat? No, not at all. I have big problems with the health care bill, with the stimulus, with the Democratic approach to energy reform. I think a lot of really big mistakes have been made by Obama in foreign policy and I think that a number of them stem from liberal foreign policy ideology rather than a misread of the situation (Others, like the stalemate on Israel-Palestine at the moment, I do think stem just from a misread of the lay of the land). But on the other hand, I think the reason the health care bill is so bad is because Republicans refused to participate when offered the chance. For all their talk of tort reform and limiting the tax burden, the Republican leadership turned down the chance to get their legislative goals done in order to score political points, and I find that reprehensible in this moment of economic difficulty.
I don't want to be a Republican right now. I don't want anything to do with the Tea Party. I don't want anything to do with Jim DeMint and I sure as hell don't want anything to do with Sarah Palin. I'm willing to let Eric Cantor win me over, but he hasn't done it yet. I don't want anything to do with a party that runs the failed CEO of HP for Senate in California or the abrasive CEO of WWE for Governor in Connecticut. They've been sending me a message, and the message is "You don't belong here."
So yeah, there's that.