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Toning It Down

May 4th, 2009

A conservative makes some pretty mild charges about Democrats concerning the reaction to Obama speaking at Notre Dame–relatively mild considering that they are coming from a conservative, at this point in time:

They may see one of America’s leading religious conservatives repudiating the moral legitimacy of the president of the United States.

There was too much of that in the past eight years. …

I fear our side is becoming like the leftists we used to mock. We refuse to recognize the American president as our president. And we reduce our politics to a single issue, showing no tolerance or desire for engagement with our opponents, including those who dissent within our own ranks.

In the coming four years, all conservatives will have cause to oppose and fight the Obama administration on many, many fronts. But let’s not imitate the past eight years of political opposition. We are better than that. And we should—we must—be willing to share a platform with our elected President.

Yes, we liberals were so unreasonable to object to Bush and his policies over the past eight years. We should have done what many conservatives did, which was to wait eight years for Bush to shred the country to pieces, and then disown his administration whilst urging that stuff like committing torture is not worthy of prosecutions–after all, it’s not like it was a blow job happening or anything. Let’s face it, it was the Democrats who were such jerks all this time, and we should not lower ourselves to their depths.

I am beginning to come to the conclusion that so many conservatives are not being disingenuous at all–that they actually believe that they have been the calm, fair-minded, consistent voices of reason over the past few decades. And that’s scary.

David Frum encourages this commentator’s point of view:

A large part of the secret of President Obama’s political success is his self-presentation as calm, judicious, and fair-minded – and his ability to depict his opponents as intemperate and extreme. You’d think by now that Obama’s opponents would have figured out this trick. You want to beat him? Great. Be more calm, more judicious, and more fair-minded. Don’t be provoked. Don’t throw wild allegations. Don’t boycott. Don’t lose your temper.

Instead, we get Anger Theater. It’s not smart. And it’s not working.

Of course, the interesting thing here is that the comment he is presenting as one of reason and common sense is one who thought it was just to mock Democrats for opposing the Bush administration, for arguing that it wasn’t moral. The voice of reason. Let’s not get into the details of the charges–that Dems were the ones not willing to debate, that Dems were unwilling to allow dissenting voices. I disagree strongly with those assertions, especially from a relative standpoint. Instead, the main point here is that these people are throwing around all kinds of wild charges about Democrats, rather strongly biased and clearly so, admitting to mocking your opponents–and at the same time saying that the debate must become more civilized, and they themselves must be more “fair-minded” and should not “throw wild allegations.”

That aside, has Frum checked recently and noted about whom he is speaking? Very, very few notable voices on the right are anywhere close to toning it down.

And, lest the point not be noted, Obama actually is of that temperament. Frum and his colleague are asking conservatives to change to mimic it. A point to be made there. But at least they are on the right track, even if it has to be faked.

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  1. Tim Kane
    May 5th, 2009 at 14:59 | #1

    It’s obvious, Frum is a conservative who suffers from Obama envy.

    The real problem is one of political tallent. Obama was born with these tallents. From the stand point of political tallent, he has more and perhaps a better collection of political tallent than anyone in our history: his demeanor, his ability to write his own speeches better than his own speech writers, he ability to think strategically and tactically, he’s tall, thin, and calm looking – at least on television. He even has a booming voice – very important for a politician, and his is better than 95%. Roosevelt didn’t have that. I’ve heard neither did Lincoln.

    They had Lincoln, we had Cleveland. They had Teddy Roosevelt, we had Franklin Roosevelt. They had Reagan, we’ve got Obama.

    Or so it seems.

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