...please, for the love of all that is good and holy, stand up to the people who have taken over your party.
A Democrat can't convince these people. There's no hope for that...
I've been trying to convince the Tea Party types for years that these types of stunts won't work and that we'd be better off by actually trying to pragmatically solve problems instead of creating them. Sometimes those conversations are fruitful if only for a day. (Of course the forum Democrats likely consider me neither a rational nor empathetic Republican but whatever...).
But the problem I face is that there is no constituency for pragmatic conservatism in the Republican Party these days. It's fragmented into people who are either in the Cruz crowd or folks who want two liberal parties instead of one. The "moderate" crowd more or less wants to sell out every position, particularly on social issues, adding yet more reason for the Tea Party types not to trust them. There's hardly anyone in government right now I can point to as an example of who we should be supporting. For good measure, we can throw in the Paulites as a third group, though I can't imagine how they help to conversation any.
There is something of a cultural fissure at play here I am on the wrong side of that also come into play here. There is something in American Evangelical culture that likes showy, big-splash sorts of play that Cruz can really appeal to. The problem is that what must be sold is far less glamorous, that we're in for taking some lumps for years to come before anything can get better, but that doesn't mean we can just blindly throw a fit and refuse to act for the good of our country and government. America deserves a better conservative movement than the one its getting.
