It's Gotta Be Tough

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

I have been aware for awhile that it’s got to be tough to be a Republican these days.

The moderate Republicans have been eschewed and discarded by their more passionate “compatriots” to their right; the right wing shoved its ideology down the American throat only to have it (semi) promptly regurgitated -- in public.

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has pinned the tail on the elephant: he says the GOP is at risk of becoming "irrelevant as the Whigs;” that the GOP would only further decline in influence should it "alienate social conservatives."

The social conservatives are, to a large extent, incapable of accepting other views and they are repelled by the idea of associating with others with mildly differing values.

Remember, to a large extent, these are the folks who think a retail store which doesn't include “Merry Christmas” in its winter season greeting is attacking, literally attacking Christianity.

Asking them to accept difference views is, in their minds, attacking them and thus alienating them.

In an interview with the California newspaper The Visalia Times-Delta, Huckabee "Throw the social conservatives the pro-life, pro-family people overboard and the Republican party will be as irrelevant as the Whigs."

As some have noted in another area of societal battle: “can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without them.”