Singing kumbaya

I’ll get into it in much more detail tomorrow evening, but tonight Charles Lollar came to speak to a crowded room at our Wicomico County Republican Club meeting. Within that room were a number of people who had most recently been at each other’s throats, including a long string of Tweets between two of the parties the other night.

A few counties over we have the spectacle of shifting votes, would-be aspirants dropping out, otherwise reasonably conservative candidates (based on voting record) being called not conservative enough. People are questioning the process, but shouldn’t we be questioning some of the players?

Now I’m not going to sit here and claim to be either the sharpest knife in the drawer or the conservative male answer to Dr. Joyce Brothers – who recently passed away, but was a television staple of my youth as a popular psychologist. (Surely this reference dates me, but I don’t care. Using Oprah as an example didn’t have the connotation I wanted.) But it seems to me, speaking as just a dumb hick from the Black Swamp of northwest Ohio, that there are a number of people who seem to be letting personal political interests get ahead of the conservative movement as a whole. Certainly I have my preferences in such things as the District 36 Senate seat race, but I’m not going to sit here and smear the others – perhaps the closest I come is questioning Audrey Scott’s bonafides for the position based on my observations of her past actions. But would she be better than a Democrat in the seat? Certainly. But I guarantee that someone will question my loyalty because no one is pure enough for them.

I get e-mail from the Campaign for Liberty folks and I follow the Cecil County Patriots online. But you wouldn’t think they agreed on probably half or better of the issues the way they carry on against each other. Listen, I don’t get along personally with all of my Central Committee cohorts in the respect that we hang out together at social gatherings. Some cliques have me on the A list and some have me standing out in the cold. But we all have a common goal, and that’s electing Republicans – mine might be more on the libertarian side than ones some others would prefer, but I’d rather make minimal progress with a moderate than be thrown for a loss by a Democrat.

So the situation I alluded to above may not be resolved for some time. Certainly I’ve always been a fan of Charles Lollar, so that was easy to sit through tonight. Even the David Craig county coordinator was on her best behavior. Because of that, I’m hoping the local Lollar crew will both attend the meeting and extend the same courtesy when Ron George comes next month. I’m sure they will.

It certainly would beat the question I had to answer when I was asked what a certain group of bloggers was thinking when they said whatever was said to offend the questioner. For obvious reasons I’m sensitive to that, although perhaps not as much as the club president who actually works with those guys on a regular basis. Who and what doesn’t matter so much as the question being asked in the first place.

You know, I get that politics is a blood sport for some. There are days I’d love to just sit and talk baseball all day, but I suspect I would move the conversation in a political direction after a while because it’s become my comfort zone. Yet while I don’t always like the hours or the nature of the work, having an outside job to occupy my mind several hours a day has the advantage of keeping me grounded and attuned to the real world. (Doesn’t always help my output here, though.)

So when I saw the gathering of people brought together by an overall cause – and this is not to single out Charles Lollar, because many of the same folks came to see David Craig last month and Dr. Mark Edney the month before, and will extend that courtesy to Ron George – it sort of surprises me that we can go astray over what, to 99% of the people out there, would be considered trivial things. Sometimes we have to take a step back and let life play out.

2 thoughts on “Singing kumbaya”

  1. Well said Michael.

    I hope all the parties can sit down over a bottle of wine and get past this. I’ll even supply the wine.

    Charles is a great candidate. There is something very special about him.

  2. People should never let politics get personal. Disagreements over candidates or policy should not turn into personal fighting. Not only does it waste a lot of energy, it’s also a bad long-term strategy. If your goal in politics or policy is to accomplish a certain goal (such as limiting government), you need as many allies as you can get. If you alienate someone today, it may hurt your campaign or legislation next month or next year. Disagreement is fine, but being disagreeable is not.

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