Comments on: Deep Blue in Colorado http://www.ryansager.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/27/deep-blue-in-colorado/ What's your M.O.? Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:13:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.4 by: rightwingprof http://www.ryansager.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/27/deep-blue-in-colorado/#comment-4532 Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:15:47 +0000 http://www.ryansager.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/27/deep-blue-in-colorado/#comment-4532 The problem isn't so much that the coalition is fractured; the problem is that it has ceased to be a coalition. You can't have a big tent party that is held hostage by one faction; a coalition requires compromises. So we either have "true conservatives" who can demand -- not ask, but demand -- that we betray Federalism by supporting a Human Life Amendment (as one of many examples) or we have a big tent party where all factions in the tent compromise with one another, but we cannot have both. The GOP must decide which of the two it wants to be. If the GOP chooses the litmus test "true conservative" route, it goes the way of the LP, into irrelevancy. As for Colorado, I have several friends whose parents have been involved heavily in the state GOP for many years, but who have been pushed out by social conservative carpet-baggers. I don't know that they've voted Democrat yet, but they are intensely unhappy that the native conservatism of the West has been forced out in favor of Alabama conservatism. The problem isn’t so much that the coalition is fractured; the problem is that it has ceased to be a coalition. You can’t have a big tent party that is held hostage by one faction; a coalition requires compromises. So we either have “true conservatives” who can demand — not ask, but demand — that we betray Federalism by supporting a Human Life Amendment (as one of many examples) or we have a big tent party where all factions in the tent compromise with one another, but we cannot have both. The GOP must decide which of the two it wants to be. If the GOP chooses the litmus test “true conservative” route, it goes the way of the LP, into irrelevancy.

As for Colorado, I have several friends whose parents have been involved heavily in the state GOP for many years, but who have been pushed out by social conservative carpet-baggers. I don’t know that they’ve voted Democrat yet, but they are intensely unhappy that the native conservatism of the West has been forced out in favor of Alabama conservatism.

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